Open Hand, Clinched Hand | +Quigg Lawrence

Let me set up a video clip we have. If you want to darken the lights for a second, you're going to see Mama Gloria and Archbishop Ben. So what you're about to see is about 74 kids that live in the Quasi Home who have been without their parents for eight and a half months. The thing you may not know is most of these kids were actually rejected by their own parents. Some of them have AIDS, some of them have different physical situations. One kid whose name is God Bless—God Bless was actually found in a garbage dump, and all his family had been killed by Boko Haram. They're like some fanatical jihad Muslim group that kills Christians in Northern Nigeria.

Ben would show me videos that he gets from his bishops and his friends. His brother one week sent a video of 146 people killed in one week, and the next week there was another number, and the next week there's another number. These are kids, like God Bless, who have no parents. So for their parents to go away—imagine if you had no parents, you'd been rejected, and all of a sudden Mama and Ben had taken you in, and all of a sudden they're gone, and you don't even know if they're coming back.

Watch with joy. Do you see it? There are some other clips of Mom and Ben dancing and doing the African dance that was just even more fun, but there's a limit to how much I could show you. But the point being is, why are those kids so excited? Well, because their mom and daddy are back. Ben and Gloria are back.

The Miracle of Ben's Healing

How is it that they could celebrate on this day? Well, number one and most importantly, it's the Lord. The Lord healed Ben, and His healing Ben is a miracle. But God actually uses people, and there were people all over the world who prayed for Mama Gloria and particularly for Ben who had stage four cancer, and some of you did that. Do you see what your prayers did? Your generosity to stop what you were doing and to take Ben before the throne of God and ask him to heal him of cancer so he could still be a dad to these kids—it worked. That rejoicing is a fruit of your prayer.

There were a number of people that gave generously. I remember I got an email from somebody who writes on Anglican matters. He goes, "Oh, it's bad news today. We got Archbishop Ben Kwashti of Nigeria has colon cancer." And so I do what I often do. I didn't think about it too hard. I just knew that I knew. So I wrote Ben on WhatsApp. Excuse my French, but I said, "Ben, get your butt over here. This is a matter of life and death. Get your butt over here, because if you don't come, you're probably going to die."

Now, do we have any money saved to pay for this $300 or $400,000 worth of surgery and treatment? No. But you know how sometimes you just know that you know? Without you even thinking too hard, God just kind of speaks through you like a pipe. I told him to come. Rather than say, "Yes, I will. Great. Thank you for offering," for seven days, nothing. I didn't hear it. I was like, "Did you get my email?"

Then I get this very detailed letter, because Ben's a charismatic evangelical, but he's also a real thinker, and he had all these questions. It was, I don't know, a page and a half of questions, and I'm thinking, "Heavens, man. We just want to help you get well. Don't worry about all the questions. Just come." Finally, I tried to answer the questions I could, and finally I said, "Ben, there's some questions I can't answer. I just know that the Lord is going to provide for this. I know it. It's not wishful thinking. It's not positive thinking. What I do know is I know what I know, and the Lord said to tell you to come here and come now."

So they finally said, "Okay. We're going to leave our family, leave our church, leave all our kids." I called a friend of mine, Bob Williams. Bob's retired from practicing medicine. And I said, "Bob, I need help. I don't know how to do all this. Could you make a few phone calls?"

Well, you take a newly retired doctor who's bright, smart, and loves Jesus—just get out of his way. He called me back in like three days and goes, "Okay, so I've got Doctor Madge Ellis. She's going to do the surgery using a da Vinci robotic machine and do it for free. We've got the anesthesiologist. Oh, by the way, he's in our church, Gennard Lanziera. He wants to do this for free. There are so many others that volunteered."

The day of the surgery arrived, and Madge had her hands in this fancy da Vinci thing. It's kind of like a video game, except you save people's lives with it. It's how you do surgery. She gets in there, she sees the colon. She said, "Yeah, I was expecting you," and she takes it out. Then she's looking around some more, and she goes, "Rut-roh. Uh-oh." Then one of the other people in the room said that Madge Ellis just started to cry.

It's not that she's never seen cancer. She sees cancer all the time, but she had a love for Ben. Like, there's something the Lord did—he gave Madge this incredible love. Maybe it was a kid's love, I don't know, but she had it. And so there she is, really distraught. I mean, she's in the middle of surgery. Ben's on the table. So I guess she pulls out of the da Vinci or whatever it is. She's still wearing all her gear, and she calls up this other surgeon who, by the way, came from Africa and lives here. His name is Dempe. Dempe's specialty is liver surgery.

When Madge goes in and sees that the cancer had spread to the liver, she realized she wasn't really qualified. She wasn't the doctor to do it. So she goes, middle of the day: "Hey, Dempe, this is Doctor Ellis. I've got a friend on the table, and unexpectedly, his cancer has spread to his liver. I need you. I need you now. Will you do it?" He said, "Of course I'll do it. I'll cancel all my patients, all the ones that are in my office right now. I'll cancel them all." She said, "Oh, there's one more matter. I need you to do it for free." Friends, that's like a $7,000 liver surgery. He said, "I'll do it for free," and on and on and on it went.

I didn't give any thought to chemo. It was like, God's going to provide. Well, sure enough he did. Doctor Paul Richards and his staff took such amazing care. I don't know how they got the drugs. I don't care. I just thank Jesus. But friends, I'm just telling you that is a visible and tangible sign of people—honestly, of them weren't even church people, right? They weren't our church people. They'd never heard of Ben and Gloria. They just were generous, ridiculously generous.

Do you see the fruit of their generosity? When I saw that video, I was thinking of another way this story could have gone. The story could have gone like this: all these people were generous, but those of you who prayed, you wouldn't have prayed. Those of you who volunteered your services for free didn't do that. Those of you who drove—we had kids in our church, 20-year-old people driving here, driving there, driving to Minnesota. I mean, crazy generosity. But you know what? If that hadn't happened, he would have died. The doctors tell me there's almost no question he would have died.

I imagine what that group of 80 kids would have been like had we not been generous as the Lord tells us to be generous. Instead of celebrating that their mom and dad are back, they would have been grieving and falling down at the loss of their second father.

So friends, that's a tangible example. That's a sermon. We could walk off right there, but I do want to take you into Proverbs. And this week I just said, well, if I'm going to preach from Proverbs, I need to read the whole book. Now, that's one of the blessings of being a pastor. You get to do those things. That's part of your work. So I read the entire book of Proverbs. There's 31 Proverbs, and it doesn't take that long, but can I tell you, even though it's not like reading War and Peace or the Encyclopedia Britannica, it took some time. But I wanted to make sure that I knew every single word in Proverbs. What does it say about generosity? What does it say about greed? That's what we're going to look at today.

Generosity and Greed in Proverbs

There's kind of four points: three on generosity, one on greed. Friends, I totally ripped this off. I hear of all these pastors who get their job because they read something online or read a book and they use some of that material—that's called plagiarism. So I'll just tell you, a lot of times I'll surf to a website and I'll borrow this and I'll borrow that, but don't worry. We'll give them credit. Some guy from California, who's a financial planner, had these headings on his website. So I ripped those off, but then I put my own words underneath them. Okay, is that fair? Great.

So the first thing he said is he's trying to teach his clients about managing the resources God puts in their hands. It comes from Proverbs, and the heading is: Generosity is a path to blessing. Generosity, being generous, is a path that's going to take you somewhere. According to this man, and I believe he backs it up with Proverbs, generosity is a path not just to somewhere, but to blessing.

Now if you have your Bible or if you have your app, it's way better if you look. Otherwise, you'll remember one percent. There's some of us, by the time we get to our car, we're like, "Did the pastor preach on something?" And my wife goes, "But honey, you were the one preaching." I'm just like, I know. I know. That's why we need to follow along and learn visually and write things down.

So Proverbs 11:24 says this. Again, the heading is Generosity is the pathway to blessing:

One person gives freely and yet surprisingly gains even more. — Proverbs 11:24

One person gives freely yet gains even more.

Another withholds unduly but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshed others will himself or herself be refreshed. Could anything be more clear?

One person gives freely and yet he gains even more. Another withholds unduly but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will himself be refreshed. — Proverbs 11

In other words, they shovel out with a ladle. God shovels in with his ladle. God's ladle's bigger.

Annette and I could testify. We had so many Nigerians call us. They're an emotional people. They're a loving people. They're a passionate people. They're an educated people. We had so many call us, and they're crying on the phone thanking us like literally we saved their kid from death.

I don't know about you, but everybody likes to be thanked, and I didn't want to push their thanks away because it takes something to step into saying thank you. And yet I had to say, guys, to be honest with you, can I just be honest with you? Thank you. I received that in Jesus' name. But could I also be honest and go, my brain wasn't working that fast. All that happened is I got an email without even thinking, without analyzing, without calling, without raising money. The Lord just spoke, and I said, Ben, get your butt over here, and he came.

A lot of people think, "Oh, wasn't that hard to have somebody in your house?" I mean, you've had house guests that don't leave, right? In our fraternity, when people wouldn't leave, we would pour ammonia on the floors to get them out. Try it sometime. You've got some people hanging around for Thanksgiving dinner, pour ammonia on the floor, they'll leave, I promise you.

But what I want to tell you is, our life was different in the last eight months. We had a family living with us, and we went back and forth to the doctor, but all that is just minuscule nothing. The big thing Annette and I are left with is we were blessed, we were refreshed, we had joy. There are people all over the world that love to have Mama Gloria, woman of God in their house, and she's not just in our house, she's our sister. We love her. We love Ben. We ate dinner every night. God, you blessed us. You refreshed us. That's what generosity does.

Again, generosity is a pathway to blessing.

A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. — Proverbs

I wish I had known the Bible well enough to share this with my grandparents. Friends, I believe that. I believe scripture.

What I would say is if you're getting near the end of life and you've got a wad sitting somewhere, there's an amount you want to give to your children and grandchildren to bless them. Really give them a little hand up. But if you give them too much, you're not really blessing them.

I have had so many friends that received a wad, and then they just didn't work at age 34 or 40 because they didn't need to, and they just took to this and took to all kinds of things, and their lives were train wrecks. I had one of my best friends receive $10,000,000 in 1985, and I joke and say, you know, in '85, that was a lot of money. Do you know how much he died with? Zero. He spent every penny. He ended up in Greenville County Mission in a wing where his own parents, who were very wealthy, had built the wing. That's how he ended his life, penniless.

And so what we understand is Proverbs says, generosity is the pathway to blessing. If you give freely, God's gonna bless you and give even more. It could come in money, but it could come in other blessings. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes will be refreshed.

The Pie Mentality

Let me share a quote. I ripped this off from somebody else. I don't even remember who. Stingy and greedy people see the world as a pie. As soon as I thought of this, I thought of my childhood. I mean, if you had siblings and you had pies and cakes, you know how that works, right? Your sister or brother, they always took the bigger piece, and it led to a rumble. Right? And then your mother came up with this great idea. It's like, well, one cuts, the other chooses which piece. And if you want to see a millimeter cut—I mean, it was awesome, y'all. I would have this knife, and I'm like, at this thing, and I'm like, okay, there it is. Oh, no, that's a little bigger. I didn't want my sister to get a nanometer more pie than me.

So it says, stingy and greedy people see the world as a pie, and there are only so many pieces to go around. If they give away what they have, they believe they'll have less. And so they try to hoard to try and protect their wealth.

Generous people, on the other hand, see the world through the lens of anticipation and gratitude, while the greedy see the world through the lens of scarcity.

So the number one thing we learned from Proverbs through these two: generosity is a pathway, a pathway to blessing.

Number two, the generous lend to the Lord. I imagine a lot of you are going like, what are you talking about?

Now you've seen, and this is an English word—it's not a cuss word—the bastardization in the church where some televangelist guy says, all right, I need you all to plant a seed of faith. I'm thinking maybe a thousand dollar seed of faith, and if you plant that seed of faith, God has promised to multiply it a 100, yea, 500, yea, thousand fold. And what we find out with most of those cats is that money doesn't go to God. It doesn't go to the poor. It doesn't go for the spread of the gospel. It goes to their jet.

And so we have to use good judgment. We have to be wise. The rescue mission tells us, don't hand out money to people in the street because that's helping one person probably buy drugs or alcohol, but even if it goes for a good purpose, it's a very inefficient way to help. They go, what we have at the mission is well thought out. It's 60 in the making. We know what we're doing, and you know, we pay 32¢ for a meal. How much do you pay? So it's wiser to give your resources when you're trying to bless the poor, whether it's the rescue mission or the Salvation Army or somebody who does it well. You want to do it intelligently.

But let's not make an excuse. The Bible says what it says. The generous lend to the poor.

Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and he will reward them for what they've done. — Proverbs 19:17

So if you're kind to the least of these—Jesus said, the least of these my brothers—you're actually doing it for me. And so again, I'm not telling you to just give money to some dude as a sign because I think a lot of times they just need to work. But there are many hungry people. It's staggering, not only in the world. I mean, how many billions of people out of seven and a half billion actually go to bed hungry, who don't have clean water, who don't have medical care? We've seen it, but you know what? You don't have to go to Rwanda, or Burundi, or Uganda to see it. You can actually see it in our own city.

The people that work in the city schools will tell you, there's so many kids that are homeless. The last number I heard was 168. I don't know if that's still accurate. In our city—are you kidding me? We're a bunch of people that love the Lord here. We're a generous people. We're people from the Mountains of Virginia and yet there are kids that go to bed hungry every night. There are kids that don't know the gospel. There are kids that don't have health care. There are kids that have a cracked tooth too bad for them.

And so when Proverbs says, whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, Jesus really means it. God meant it in Proverbs, and Jesus, he said, as you've done the least of these, you've done it to me. He meant it.

The Proverbs 31 Woman

There's actually an example in Proverbs. Can you think of an example in Proverbs where a generous person is lending to the poor and thereby lending to the Lord? I'll give you a hint. It's in Proverbs 31. The Proverbs 31 woman—she's awesome.

Men, if you ever think that women just need to stay at home, my wife chose to stay at home after working, but what I want to tell you is evangelical Christians seem to think women are not allowed to work in church. And what I would say to that is, that's a nice opinion. It's not a scriptural mandate. Not at all. I think of all the doctors and the nurses and the lawyers and you who are working—you females that are working—how you've blessed me, how you've blessed my family, how you've blessed our church. Thank you. Thank you, guys, for working. And those of you who are having to work with kids, thank you times two.

She opens her hand to the poor, and she reaches out her hand to the needy. — Proverbs 31

That's a tangible example. She opens her hand to the poor. She reaches out her hand to the needy. She was a businesswoman. She was a woman very involved with her family. She was selling property. She was doing all this stuff. She didn't have time to do this, but she made time to do it. She opened her hand to the poor, she reached out to the needy.

And so we see just as generosity is a pathway to blessing, we saw that blessing here. We see the generous lend to the Lord.

Now, let me tell you some good news. Have you heard of extreme world poverty?

Extreme world poverty is defined as any family that makes less than $1.99 a day. Let's round it to $2 a day times 365. That family income would be around $730 a year. And you might think, "Well, things aren't expensive over here in Africa." Are you kidding me? We have friends that make salaries like that—priests, pastors, people that work hard, teachers—and they don't have enough money to buy that nice little red medicine when their kids get an earache. If their kid cracks a tooth, sorry, we just don't have money for it.

There are days where our own friends—I've had bishops tell me that there are times in their life they had no meat for months. I've had priests tell me, because they make even less, there are nights where my kids go to bed hungry. I had one guy who was a bishop say, "I get to take my kid for an ice cream cone twice a year."

So friends, I'm just telling you, there are levels of poverty. But Jesus said the poor you'll always have with you, and we can't solve it all. But the way the kingdom works is He's invited us to step into it—not just throw money at the first person with a sign, but to think deeply and strategically with a kingdom mindset.

Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord. — Proverbs 19:17

The generous woman opens her hand to the poor. She reaches out her hand to the needy.

Do you know what's happened in worldwide extreme poverty in the last thirty years? Before COVID, the population exploded from 6 billion to 7.5 billion. Do you reckon there's more people in extreme poverty or less? Less. Way less. It was about a 60% drop prior to COVID, and COVID has really messed with that. But it was about a 60% drop. Do you know why? Did it just happen? Yes, there's prayer, and prayer is effective, the Bible says. Prayer is a part of that.

Also, honestly, to be frank with you, sometimes the government has to stand up to a dictator. You think of the Democratic Republic of Congo—they have all the wealth in the world. Nigeria has so many natural resources. Those countries aren't poor, but the people that lead them are crooks. They're dictators. They steal. Kids can't even go to school. Kids can't have health care. So sometimes we thank God for government who can exert a little pressure.

But the main reason extreme poverty rates have fallen worldwide is this: because of regular believers like you and me who said, "You know what? It is not right that a kid should go without clean water. It's not okay for kids to keep dying of dirty water. It's ridiculous. We can fix this. This is easy. This isn't even hard." There are vaccinations and medicines for malaria. We can work to make sure that people who don't have the resources we do have these things for their children as well.

Because of what I would even call just modest generosity of Christians, we've seen a major impact in the decrease of extreme poverty.

Kingdom Ears

This is kind of a weird statement. You can tell this isn't my language, but I think it's a good one: the generous, like Jesus, have kingdom ears. Go ahead and grab your ears. I'm gonna see if anybody has as big ears as I do. I never realized what big ears I had until kindergarten or first grade. I thought my ears were awesome. Everybody thinks their ears are awesome. Then some little five-year-old boy said, "You've got big ears." I cried. I said, "Mom, I have big ears. I'm like Dumbo."

But do you know what kind of ears we all need to have? We need ears that listen to the cry of the poor. Proverbs doesn't say eyes, but I believe we need eyes to see. But we need to listen to the cry of the poor. We don't have to give to every single person. We're called to be strategic and wise, really wise, because you can help one person but rob a thousand because you're giving this guy things he doesn't even need. But the bottom line is we're not going to make excuses with that. What we have to say is we have to have ears to hear. We have to have ears to hear.

Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered. — Proverbs 21:13

What the Lord's saying is, if you're tight-fisted, if you don't have ears to hear the cry of your brothers and sisters in need, you yourself will cry out.

Do you think my friend who inherited $10,000,000 and spent it like a drunk sailor—he was a Christian—do you think he ever thought he'd be one crying out for mercy? That he'd be living in a pauper's ward? No.

God's word is true, and it says, if you shut your ear to the cry of the poor, you also will cry out and not be answered. Friends, that may not happen in your seventy years in life, but there's going to be a day when we appear before the Lord and he says, as you did unto the least of these, you did it to me. For some he'll say, depart, I never knew you, because the love of God was not in you. Oh, you raised your hands, you went on mission trips, you sat in a pew, you did religious things, you could say Christianese words, but you did not open your ears to the cry of your brothers and sisters.

And so the command is so clear. It says:

Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker. He is generous to the needy honors the Lord. — Proverbs 14

Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord himself. — Proverbs 19

Are you starting to get the picture? It's pretty clear, isn't it? Jesus basically said the same thing, didn't he? It's not just Proverbs.

Truly, truly, I tell you, as you've done it to the least of these, my brothers, you've done it to me. — Jesus

When you take time, make time in your life to love a kid who doesn't have a mom or dad, then you're doing that for Jesus. If you make time to pray for somebody—I don't mean a five-second dip your head and come up kind of thing. When you intercede for somebody, you're not just doing it for that person, you're actually doing it for the Lord. When you help somebody get clean water, that's like you're giving Jesus clean water. This is not my idea. It's actually Jesus' idea.

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. — Jesus

The Danger of Greed

What's the opposite of generosity? Greed. Greed is a weird thing, man. Greed is a thing where you go, I'm going to provide for myself. This week I heard a guy, 70 years old, a multimillionaire, and he got upset about something. He goes, You know what? I'm just going to keep all my money for myself. I'm not giving it to my kids. I'm not giving it to anybody else. I'm going to keep it all for myself. And I thought to myself, you poor, pathetic man. You will have no blessing. And guess what? You won't take a dollar with you.

Proverbs warns against greed, and the way Proverbs actually warns about it is ripping people off. It's called using unequal weights and unequal measures.

See Proverbs 20 and Proverbs 11

God is warning us, don't be greedy. Don't be like that man that goes, you know what? They probably won't notice when I weigh out their grain. But I'm going to adjust the tare weight on my scale. If you ever have a scale, you might notice. If you do coffee, you would know this. You can adjust the tare on the scale, but some greedy little man figured out, what if I just tilted that scale 7%? I'll gain 7% more on every sale. So I'll just create a scale that looks like it's telling the true way, but it's not. That's what they were doing, and God says, stop it. It's an abomination to the Lord. Not only are you not being generous, you're being greedy, and that's not like me.

The Joy of Generosity

Friends, my close this morning is I want to invite you to the joy of generosity. You know, I will no longer be the rector here one day. I was counting it out. I was like, turning 62. Four or five years from now, there'll be a new rector, and he'll be awesome. We don't know who it is yet, but it'll be awesome. And I hope after some time away, he'll let me come volunteer here on a prayer team or working with youth or handing out bulletins. I hope he will.

But the thing I want to leave you with is our DNA as a church, as Christians, is to be a generous people.

Now here's the last thing. It's kind of weird, but go with me. Hold your hands up. If you only have one hand, that'll do. Okay. Now what I want you to do is the same thing the doctor says. You know, he says, I want to see how strong your leg is. Push against me. Especially guys where I go, oh, you want to see? Okay. I want you to squeeze your hands as hard as you can till it almost hurts. I want you to hold it. Keep holding. Keep holding. Squeeze it harder. Right now, squeeze it harder, really hard, like you're showing off. Harder, harder, harder. You starting to feel it?

Now open it easily. Do you feel that? That's a parable for your heart. This is a greedy person. This is a generous person. Friends, I want you to experience the joy that comes from being an open-handed people so you can enter the joy of your master.

Amen.