You are listening to David Platt Messages, a weekly podcast with sermons and messages from

pastor, author, and teacher David Platt.

If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, let me invite you to open with me to 2nd Corinthians

Chapter 8.

I thank God for the privilege of being part of this body of Christ.

I thank God for you.

I thank God for Christ in you and His generosity and his love that is expressed all over you all across this faith family. That was just

such a snapshot. I mean, you could see as fast as those screens were going. There's too much

information, and that wasn't all. But there are so many evidences of grace all across this faith family and demonstrations

of the glory of God. So praise God for his work in this faith family. And tonight I want to,

I want to encourage us as we give of ourselves to give more of ourselves. And I want to

challenge us to give more of ourselves based on 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and 9. Coming up on

three years for me as pastor here. And tonight is the first time where we have specifically addressed in the word

giving to the church we've talked about giving in different capacities being followers of

Christ for giving but we've not talked about giving in the sense of tithing which we'll talk about

a little bit later on but that next sentence in our church covenant is an important one

and it deals with giving scripturally. It's part of what it means to be the church. When it says

at the bottom of the church covenant you see there, it's bolded, we will give cheerfully and generously

to the support of the church, the relief of the poor,

and the spread of the gospel through all nations. 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and 9 being the

primary text there, which we're going to look at tonight. I'm a bit hesitant though, even in diving

into this, because I know that there are likely people across this room

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