Picture it. They're poor, they're afflicted, so a good, natural human way to respond would be to say,

you've taken up enough offering from us, go to the rich people and take up more offerings.

We've given all we can give. And these people are saying, please take another offering.

Isn't that what verse 4 says?

Please, we beg of you, take another offering from us.

We know we're poor, we know we're under affliction,

but would you please take another offering from us?

When you agree that there's a kind of generosity that doesn't make sense unless something deeper

is going on, something rooted in joy that's not tied to comfort or ease.

I'm Dan Kroover.

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper unpacks how joy in God becomes visible

in real sacrificial love for others. This message was originally delivered at the Bethlehem Baptist

Church Youth Retreat in the winter of 2004.

Let's go to 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

Let me give you the setting here.

Paul is on a missionary journey and he has passed through the upper regions of Greece, which are called in those days Macedonia.

That's where Philippi is, and Neapolis and Thessalonica.

He has passed through there, preached.

Amazing things have happened there.

And then he's gone on to Corinth, and then he's moved on,

and he's writing a letter to Corinth to tell them what happened in Macedonia as a means to motivate

them to give for the offering that he's taking up for the poor down in Jerusalem.

...