Generosity: Part 3 of 4

This week, I am reviewing the message I preached last weekend on the topic of biblical generosity. Generosity and charity are themes that run throughout scripture. Jesus instructed his followers to practice it, and generosity really became a defining characteristic of the early churches.

The early churches were quite a site. Nowhere else would you see the rich and poor standing side by side in worship. Only in the church would you find a Roman soldier celebrating the same God as a Jewish convert.

At the end of Acts 11, we see an example of one church helping another. The church at Antioch had heard about coming hard times, and took an offering to send to the church at Jerusalem. This kindness really set the church apart from other religions. It also is what really helped propel the Gospel message throughout the world.

The generosity of the church proved to be an unstoppable force, and within a couple hundred years of Jesus’ founding the church, the entire Roman world had accepted Christianity as its national religion.

Here’s an example of how Christian generosity really played a part in the spread of the Gospel. In the 4th century A.D., the Roman emperor, Julian, assumed the throne. He had spent his early years being taught Christianity, but never embraced it, and never accepted Christ as his savior. In his early adult years, he latched onto pagan teachings. As emperor, he sought to bring the old Roman pagan worship back into prominence, while strangling Christianity out of existence.

Because Christianity had become so widespread, he couldn’t just issue an edict to stamp it out. Instead, he tried tactics such as requiring the Gospel texts be taught in public school. He hoped that the loss of students would force the Christian educators to go out of business. He also intended to manipulate the texts to control exactly what was being taught, and combine it with the religion he was pushing.

When that didn’t work, he recognized that the Christians love for one another, and their generosity were one of the keys to winning over converts. So, he instructed his pagan priests to start emulating the Christian practices. But, without the one true God behind him, Julian failed miserably, and was quoted as saying that the Christian faith

“has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers,
and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is
not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans (his term for
Christians) care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those
who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them."

That’s one of my favorite quotes that really demonstrates the power of the church and Christianity when it is doing what the Bible teaches.

Tomorrow, I have some take-aways from this series.