West Willow Community Church

God’s Purpose For Recession from Don Tines on Vimeo.

What Is the Recession For? Some of God’s Purposes

TEXT: II Corinthians 1:1-11

THESIS: God is Sovereign, That Means He Is In Control! Not Just Of Some things, Not Just Big Things, But Everything!

INTRODUCTION: This is a message about God’s purposes in the recession. By recession I don’t have any sophisticated definition in mind. I just mean various financial setbacks like business slowdown, decreasing profits, massive layoffs and joblessness, the bursting of the housing bubble, thousands of foreclosures, personal and business bankruptcies, bank failures, investment company collapses, the loss of retirement funds, and the social ills and unrest that go with the downturn.
God is sovereign over these things, He foresees them all, He causes or permits them all, and when He causes or permits something, He does so with purpose and design.
• The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (Proverbs 16:33)
• Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. (Proverbs 19:21)
• The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He frustrates the plans of the peoples.” (Psalms 33:10)
• [The Lord] declares the end from the beginning . . . saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:10)
At the time of Paul’s writing to the church there was a major recession within Rome’s economy. To add to the problem if you were a Jew and you became a believer often times you were put of the temple, cut off from your family and even lost your possessions. If you were a Greek you were shunned, rejected, ignored and turned away from. You were seen as ignorant, foolish, and senseless. Certainly no one would want to do business or employ such a person. Yet the church grew and even multiplied causing a great burden for those who did have resources, lands or incomes.
So none of the recessionary events surprised the Lord then or now. His purposes and designs are being fulfilled according to plan. And what I want to do is draw your attention to some of those purposes. Now what are some of God’s purposes in this recession? I will mention five:

SCRIPTURE READING: PRAYER:
I. Recessions Expose Sin and Bring Repentance

A. The book of Job in the Old Testament begins, “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). But in the last chapter of the book, Job says, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). He was “blameless,” but later he repented. What does that mean?

1. It means that the most godly people in the world are like a clear glass of water with a sediment of sin hidden at the bottom of the glass.
2. And when the glass is struck—with Job’s suffering, or with our recession—the sediment of sin is stirred up and exposed, and the water becomes cloudy.
3. That’s one of the things that recessions are for.

B. Recessions work both individually and socially.

1. Individually Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:8–9, “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.
a. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.
b. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
c. God brought His own faithful servant Paul to the brink of death so that he might learn more deeply to rely not on himself but on God.
d. If that happened to Paul, we may be sure that God is doing that for us as well in this recession.
e. That we may rely on him and not ourselves.
f. At the bottom of every Christian heart—no matter how advanced in faith and godliness—there is the sediment of self-reliance.
g. Then God shakes our lives, sometimes to the foundations, to show us our self-reliance and clean it out with a new, deeper reliance on Him.
2. Socially, the recession reveals a host of sins that hurt people.
a. The recent Ponzi schemes are one of the clearest examples.
1) Promise people huge returns on their investment when there is nothing to invest in, then pay those returns with some of the next investments in nothing.
2) And keep doing it for years, while you skim millions for yourself.
3) Until a recession makes people want their investments back—and they don’t exist.
4) Recessions have a wonderful power to expose that kind of deceit.
5) What will it expose about you?

C. Recessions reveals waste, greed, and selfishness.

1. Recessions are especially good at exposing the sin of wasting other people’s money (or our own),
2. Recessions reveal the sin of selfishness and greed in the mortgage business.
3. Recessions reveal the sin of fear especially when everything starts coming down,
4. Recessions reveal the sin of grumbling and impatience.
a. And on and on. What a gift the recession is in the exposure of sin.
b. May the Lord give us all the grace to repent and receive the forgiveness that God offers in Jesus Christ.

II. Second, Recessions Awaken Us to World Poverty

A. It’s astonishing how prosperity makes us blind to the miseries of the world.

1. God has some remedies for that kind of indifference. For example, it says in Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.”
2. How does that work? He says that there are people that we should care about who are imprison and mistreated.
3. We tend to forget them. So he says, “Remember!”
4. And He says: “As though with them” and “since you have a body.”
5. So how does it work? It works like this: You have a body and sometimes it hurts. When it hurts, remember that there are people right now who are being mistreated—who are hurting much more than you.
6. Imagine yourself in their shoes, and treat them the way you would want to be treated.

B. Recession hurts us. It imprisons us. What is God’s aim? That we would wake up. Does this recession bother us? If it bothers us, we should be bothered by the fact that millions always live in recession. Only live in recession.
1. One billion people do not have safe water to drink.
2. Sixteen thousand children die every day from hunger related illnesses.
3. Almost eighteen million children are orphaned in sub-Saharan Africa.
4. Women give birth without benefit of sterile conditions, or even clean water.
5. Of the babies born alive one-third die before age five.
6. Drought and malnutrition make them vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, conjunctivitis, and other water-borne illnesses.

C. It is good to know these things. And to pray about these things. And to cultivate a radical culture were at WWCC in which people dream of ways that their lives can count creatively and long-term for the relief of suffering.

D. Recessions have a way of changing our priorities and releasing effort and money for others.

1. Part of our overall vision at WWCC means that if we can’t go, if we can’t correct then we can help those who can and will.
2. My dream is that we can set aside ten percent of everything given here at WWCC to Missions
3. We want to do more than just send money we want to know that we’re helping send the message of Christ Love around the world.

III. Third, Recessions Relocate the Roots of Our Joy in His Grace, Rather Than in Our Goods

A. God sends recessions to His people to pull up the roots of our joy from the pleasures of the world and sink those roots into the pleasures of the glory of his grace.

1. II Corinthians 8:1-2 are clearest recessionary text in the Bible.
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.
a. It describes the roots of the joy of the Macedonian believers in their “recession.”
b. This is my dream WWCC
c. Verse 2 ends with a “wealth of generosity.”
2. We want to be a generous people.
a. Generous in every way.
b. Where does it come from? From prosperity? No. Extreme poverty. “Their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of liberality.”
c. This is why I call this a recessionary text.
d. Here are people overflowing in generosity when the economic times are very bad.
3. Where then did the generosity come from if not from prosperity?
a. From a supportive and sympathetic culture surrounding them? No. Verse 2 says they were in a “severe test of affliction.”
b. That means they were being harassed. You can see what that looks like in Acts 17:5–9.
4. Where then did this wealth of generosity come from?
a. Paul says it came from joy, abundance of joy. Verse 2: “Their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.”
b. Their joy was not rooted in prosperity or popularity. But it was very great. Paul calls it “abundance of joy” in the middle of verse 2. Where did that joy come from?
c. It came from the grace of God. Verse 1: “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia.”
5. What makes people grumble and be stingy is a sense of entitlement. But if we have tasted the measure of our sin and the magnitude of God’s grace, we will have abundance of joy in recessionary hardships.
6. God’s grace overflowing in Jesus for sinners like us is the most glorious thing in the universe.
7. This is where our joy is rooted. Our joy is not rooted in circumstances. God has relocated our joy in His grace, not our goods—in His mercy, not our money, in His worth, not our wealth.

B. If the recession can assist that relocation, it will have done the most important thing possible. Because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

IV. Fourthly, Recessions Guard His Glory by Advancing His Saving Mission in the World Precisely When Human Resources Are Low

A. We see this all over the Bible. God does His great advancing work again and again when it looks least possible for us.

1. He promises the heir when Abraham and Sarah are too old to have children.
2. He splits the Red Sea when Israel is hopelessly trapped by Pharaoh’s army.
3. He gives manna when there is no food in the wilderness.
4. He stops the Jordan River when it’s time to take the land.
5. When a city stands in the way, he makes the walls fall down.
6. When the Midianites were as many as the sand of the sea, God whittled Gideon’s army down to 300 so God would get the glory for the victory.
7. When Goliath defies the armies of the Lord, God sends a boy with a sling and five stones.
8. When the Son of God is to come into the world, God calls a virgin to conceive.
9. And when the mighty devil himself is to be defeated, a Lamb goes to the slaughter.

B. 2 Corinthians 8:1–2, when God wants to raise money for the poor in Jerusalem, He uses afflicted, poverty-stricken Macedonians and fills them with joy because of His grace.

1. Where is your heart, that is where your treasure is.
2. Are you like the Macedonians whose joy—in times of “recession”—was invincible because it was rooted in the grace of God?
3. May God open our eyes to glory of His grace.
4. When He does, the last purpose for the recession that I will mention will come true.

V. Recessions Bring His Church to Care for Her Hurting Members and Grow in Love

A. Buildings exist for people, not the other way around.
B. May no effort to care for this building ever keep us from caring for Christ’s followers.
C. Acts 4:34 describes the early church: “There was not a needy person among them.”
D. This is what the church does. Every member will have his needs met.
E. God will test us to see if we are a church or a club.
F. May the Lord grant us “Macedonian grace” to “finish the million” and care for each other
G. Romans 8:28 applies at all times!