Hey, this is John Collins at The Bible Project, and this is our fourth and final conversation in a series talking about the theme of generosity in the storyline of the Bible.

God is the generous host of all creation.

He created life in abundance and he created humanity to share and extend that abundance.

But what we find instead is that humans don't trust the host.

We don't believe there's enough and we believe that we know the best way to create security

and life for ourselves. but our way doesn't create life.

It creates mistrust, broken relationships, pain and death.

We don't create abundance.

We create Babylon. And God's response to the death and destruction of the world

that he loves is to give it a gift. This is such a great way of thinking about the

calling of Abraham in response to Babylon. It continues to give gifts. That's so the seeds of a new creation.

God wants this family to trust in his generosity and to become the blessing to every other family in the world.

And as it turns out, they struggle. Now if you think about it, it's a pretty odd strategy that the Bible is claiming that God has.

God keeps giving gifts to humans and humans keep ignoring and mistrusting him.

But this is God's strategy, and the idea here is perhaps one of the most famous verses in the Christian Bible, John 316.

God so love the world that he gave.

This little one liner, just summarizing the meaning of Jesus life, death, and

resurrection in the language of generosity and giving. God gave to his enemies. So God gave the ultimate gift to humanity, Jesus Christ. And Jesus

taught often on giving and generosity saying things like it's more blessed to

give than to receive.

So apparently the good life for Jesus

actually has very little to do with your economic situation.

...