Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, today we are concluding the series “I Resolve.”  This has been a short series, just three weeks here, where we’ve been taking a little bit of time at the beginning of the year at a time of the year when we tend to make what we call New Year’s Resolutions.  And we’re resolving to give ourselves to some things this year.  The problem, as I set out to say in the first week, is that we make these resolutions, but we quickly lose our resolve.  We start with a bang of firm intentions, and not long after that we’re back to our old ways.  We end the year with a whimper of sad regrets.  And we want to change that trajectory and that habit.  And I’ve tried to focus our resoluteness in three areas- our time, which we talked about in week one, the stewardship of our talents and spiritual gifts, and this morning we want to venture into the stewardship of our treasure or our money.

 

0:01:14.5

You know, the Bible has a lot to say about money.  More than you could possibly even imagine.  Somebody once counted up 2,000 verses in the Bible that talk about money, wealth or material possessions.  That’s a lot of editorial space in the Bible compared to 500 verses on prayer, 500 verses on faith.  And you get some sense of how much God has told us about this subject, primarily because He understands, as only He can understand, how money can threaten the lordship of Jesus Christ in our life.  Money can easily become a god, and He said, “Let no other gods come before Me.”  Money and materialism and the consumerism of our day can draw us in and reorder our priorities.  And so the Bible has a lot to say about it.

 

0:02:10.6

I want to begin with a couple of places in the scriptures that help us begin to think about resolving the stewardship of our treasure.  Let’s begin in Psalm 24:1, kind of an all-encompassing verse when we think about this thing called stewardship or the sacred trust that is life, even as it is broken into our time, our talent and our treasure.  Psalm 24:1, let’s read it together.  “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.”  Pretty all-encompassing, isn’t it?  “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”  It’s all His.  He created it.  He has the title deed to it.  “The world and all who live in it.”  We go from everything to every who in who-ville, I like to say.  It all belongs to Him.  That’s why we said in week one, “I resolve to view my life as a steward and not an owner.”  That’s a difficult transition to make from ownership—what’s mine is mine—to stewardship—no, what’s mine is God’s.  He owns it all.  You have any doubt it? Listen to the Lord Himself in Haggai 2:8. “‘The silver is mine, and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”  Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.  We have troubles with that word, don’t we?  What’s mine is mine.  No, the Lord says, “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine.  It all belongs to Me.”  He owns the title deed to all of it.

 

0:03:44.9

It kind of reminds me of the Toddler’s Creed.  Have you ever heard this?  “If I want it, it’s mine.  If I give it to you and change my mind later, it’s mine.  If I can take it away from you, it’s mine.  If it’s mine, it will never belong to anybody else, no matter what.  If we are building something together, all the pieces are mine.  If it looks just like mine, it’s mine.  If it breaks or needs putting away, it’s yours.”  That sounds just like a toddler, doesn’t it?  The problem is we grow up as adults and we have a toddler’s mentality when it comes to money and possessions and things.

 

0:04:26.7

One of three worldviews can really capture our hearts. One says, “What’s mine is mine, and I’m going to keep it.”  And we make all we can, and we can all we get, and we sit on the lid.  Another one says, “What’s yours is mine, and I’m going to take it.”  That could be a thief, somebody who is really competitive in business.  It could be a socialist or a communist who says, “No, all this belongs to the state.”  Or you say, “What’s mine is God’s, and I’m going to share it.”  Or let me bring it into your marriage relationship.  “What’s ours is God’s, and we’re going to share it.”  Cathryn and I have talked for years, encouraging couples—young couples, middle age, older couples—to become what we call financial soulmates.  The Bible talks about being one flesh.  How about one financially?  And we talk about that because what we’ve discovered in the marriage relationship is the greatest point of stress in marriage is money and finances.  And you might have one who has come to that reasoned conclusion that “What’s ours is God’s, and we’re going to share it.”  And the other says, “No, what’s mine is mine.  What’s ours is ours, and we’re going to keep it.”  And there is stress, there’s tension in the marriage relationship over finances.

 

0:05:46.9

Jesus had a lot to say about money.  He said more about money than He did heaven and hell combined.  You can study the Gospels and add up and calculate the editorial space.  Even in His parables.  There are 38 short stories in the Gospels- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  And 16 of them have a money or stewardship theme to them.  Why?  Because He knew better than anybody, looking into the human heart, that money has a way of crowding out the lordship of Jesus Christ in a person’s life.

 

0:06:26.9

One of those parables or short stories that He told is found in Luke 16.  We’re not going to take the time to look at the totality of this, but it begins this way.  It’s called the parable of the shrewd manager.  And it says, “Jesus also said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager”—or a steward, we might say—“and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.  And he called him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.”’”  A sobering day in this money manager’s life.  He was managing the finances and the resources for somebody else who had gone away.  And he was wasting, he was squandering the wealth.  Of course, in the story here, God is the rich man, and He has gone away.  He has entrusted us with the management of His resources.  At best, friends, we are God’s money managers.  We are His money and property managers.  He has entrusted the stewardship of the earth to us.  And you have a little bit of that to manage.  I have a little bit of that to manage.  One day He is coming back, and we will be held to account.  There be an accounting.  Will we hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord,” or will we hear something more terse and hard as this wasteful manager did?  Read the totality of the story sometime when you have time to read it on your own.

 

0:07:59.3

This is why we’re resolving.  We’re making a definite and earnest decision about something.  That’s what the word “resolve” means, to make a definite earnest decision.  And we’ve tried to make that definite and earnest decision about our time and about our talents and the spiritual gifts that God has entrusted to us.  Now it’s the sacred trust of things and money, those things that pass through our hands.  And we want to say together, “I resolve to be a faithful steward of the treasure that God has given to me.”  However much or however little He has entrusted to you, resolve to be a faithful steward of that.

 

0:08:39.7

Now, one other place that I want us to go is Matthew 6, right smack in the middle of a section of scripture known as the Sermon on the Mount.  You ever heard of the Sermon on the Mount?  It’s probably one of Jesus’s most famous sermons or a collection of sermons.  And He is talking about kingdom living. He is talking about how citizens of the kingdom of God would live.  And this runs so contrary to the world and to our culture.  But it shouldn’t surprise us, as He scans through a number of different topics and subjects, He lands upon the subject of money in chapter 6 beginning in verse 19.  Follow along as I read these words. Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Let’s just stop right there.

 

0:09:47.1

A couple of two or three, maybe four principles I want to draw from these verses and all the way through verse 24.  The first is the idea that giving is an investment in eternity.  Do you see that?  Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth.”  Why?  It’s not the safe and secure place to invest.  Thieves will break in and steal.  Moth and rust will corrupt.  You might even update it and say even the identity thieves will break in and steal your bank account.  Or you’ll experience wide and crazy fluctuations in the market.  You’ll try to buy low and sell high, but you end up buying high and selling low.  It’s just not a safe place to do that.  Imagine Jesus as a talking head on the financial news network.  And somebody asks Him, “So, Jesus, what’s Your investment advice for the coming year.”  And He says, “Pull everything out of earth and put it into heaven.”  That’s kind of what He says here.  Pretty radical thought.  “Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”

 

0:10:55.0

And circle the words “for yourselves.”  I call this sanctified self-interest.  Jesus doesn’t want something from us. He wants something for us.  And He is giving us the best investment advice we can ever get.  Invest in eternity.  Invest in heaven.  I always say you need at least two portfolios in life.  You need an earthly portfolio, and you need a heavenly portfolio.  The fact of the matter is, according to recent statistics—and you’ve probably heard this—78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  That’s up from several years ago when the Wall Street Journal said 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  Now it’s 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  Are you kidding me?  First of all, you need an earthly portfolio, and it starts with an emergency fund so that you’re prepared whether there is a shutdown or a breakdown somewhere in your family life.  And you can endure that time.  And you need to plan for the future- savings and investments and all of that.  Only 12% of Americans can endure a government shutdown or a breakdown of the washer, the dryer, the car because they have…They don’t even have $500 in the bank.  That’s where we are as a nation?  That’s where we are sometimes as a church too because we haven’t put our finances in proper biblical order.

 

0:12:26.1

You need an earthly portfolio, but you need a heavenly portfolio as well.  Again, Jesus says invest in eternity.  We invest in our earthly portfolio for the purpose of getting income.  But when we invest in eternity and in heaven, it’s for outcome.  We invest in our earthly portfolio by buying and selling.  You buy low, you sell high.  You invest in your heavenly portfolio by sowing and reaping.  Totally different kind of thing.  And Jesus just says the best place to invest where, if I could paraphrase, the dividend reinvestment program is literally out of this world, friends.  You have no idea how the Lord is going to compound the value of what you invest in eternity.  Giving is an investment in eternity.

 

0:13:21.6

Secondly, giving moves my heart closer to God.  Do you see this in verse 21?  Jesus says, “For where your treasure is…”  We’re talking about resolving the stewardship of our treasure.  He says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  I say it this way.  A peak inside your checkbook is a glimpse inside your heart.  You can say all day long that Jesus is number one in your life, but if He’s last in your budget, you’re living a lie.  And Jesus was really trying to get to the heart of the matter here, wasn’t He?  He’s going right for the jugular.  He is going right for the heart, because He’s not looking for donors.  Don’t misunderstand this.  God doesn’t need your money.  It’s not yours and mine to begin with.  There’s a lot of money that’s tainted out there.  It ‘taint yours and it ‘taint mine.  It all belongs to God.  And once we understand that, Jesus goes after the wallet and the finances and all that because it’s a heart matter.  It’s a matter of the heart.  “Where your treasure is.”  You can look inside your financial life as much as I can.  It will be like a mirror reflecting back your priorities and who or what is number one in your life.  It’s a matter of the heart.

 

0:14:48.4

Number three, giving clarifies my vision.  Now, let’s read on.  Matthew 6:22, Jesus goes on to say, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”  That sounds kind of confusing.  The first time I read that, I said this really doesn’t fit into the flow of the teaching here.  Jesus is clearly talking about money in 19-21.  He clearly talks about it in verse 24.  What’s this 22-23 about the eye and the lamp of the body and all that?  It didn’t open up to me until I understood a little bit about Hebrew idioms and the rabbinic traditions.

 

0:15:37.8

In rabbinic tradition a bad eye person was a stingy person.  A good eye person was a generous person. And so read that back in.  The eye is the lamp of the body.  We can tell everything about what’s really going on inside of you by whether you’re a good eye or a bad eye person.  So if your eye is health or good, your whole body is full of light.  But if your eye is bad, if you’re a stingy person, a scroogy kind of person, your whole body will be full of darkness.  It’s pretty telling, isn’t it?  Are you a good eye or a bad eye person? Are you stingy?  Stingy people often have what I call a scarcity mentality.  They’re the ones always saying, “We ain’t never got enough money around here.”  Generous people, generous “good eye” people have vision.  And they have an abundance mentality.  Why?  Because they know God owns everything.  He never has a scarcity problem.  And He has promised to supply all of our needs.  You don’t ever have to worry that we’re not going to have when you walk by faith and you trust God with your finances.  It’s a matter of the heart.  It’s a matter of faith.

 

0:17:00.6

And then fourthly, giving focuses my priorities.  Look at how Jesus says it in verse 24.  He just holds nothing back here.  He says, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”  Now, in some of your translations the word “money” might be capitalized.  If you have a King James translation of the Bible, it is translated this way- “You cannot serve God and mammon.”  Mammon.  Mammon is an old word that speaks of the false god of riches and avarice was the idea with mammon.

 

0:17:53.5

John Milton in his book Paradise Lost, he personifies with his creative pen the devil and his demons.  Maybe you’ve read it in one of your English classes, Paradise Lost.  And he names one of the diabolic creatures—you might have guessed it—Mammon.  And he describes Mammon as the “least erected of the fallen angels.  He walks hunched over with his eyes cast downward as he looks to the ground for lost treasures.”  And you can just picture Mammon just kind of going along on the ground here, and he’s just looking.  He’s greedy.  He’s always hungry for gold and money. And Milton’s depiction of Mammon reminds us of just how easy it is for mammon and for money to become our god.  And Jesus just says, listen, you can’t serve God and money.  You can’t be full of consumerism and materialism, trying to keep up with the Joneses or the Smiths and Browns, living on (0:19:00.1) 110% of what you made because you’re just leveraged up to your eyeballs because you’re just trying to keep up.  You’re trying to keep up and fill that emptiness in your soul with things and the things that money can buy.  There is not enough room in the human heart for that and for Jesus.  And that’s why Jesus was so ruthless when it came to money.

 

0:19:23.2

He once told a rich young ruler who said, “Jesus, I want to come follow you” …Jesus, as only He could do, could peer into that man’s heart, and He says, “Fine, you want to follow Me?  Here is what you need to do.  You need to sell everything and give it to the poor and come follow Me.”  Now, is that something that we’re all supposed to do, just divest ourselves of all of our bank accounts and just give to the poor and take a vow of poverty and go follow Jesus?  Well, that may be what it takes if money has become your god.  It may take (0:20:00.1) something that radical.  But it’s also possible to possess money and things without money and things possessing you.  Do you understand the difference there?  I’ve met all kinds of people that have been very wealthy.  But the money isn’t lodged in their spirit and their heart in a way that it’s sitting on the throne.  If it’s gotten there, it’s going to take some radical, radical surgery.  And Jesus says, “You cannot be My disciple and serve God and money at the same time.”  You have to make a decision there.

 

0:20:37.8

Now, maybe you’ve heard all of that before.  And you’ve come to the place where many people come, and they say, “Okay, Pastor.  I’m ready to resolve.  I’m ready to get after this once and for all.  Where do I begin?  How much do I give?”  And I want to take the rest of our time just to talk a little bit about the concept of tithing in the scripture.  This may be new to you.  It may be old to you.  Maybe you’ve heard it before, but you’ve never considered it much for your own life.  I want to diagnose this a little bit.  Ask the question, is tithing as a concept…and “tithing” means a tenth.  It’s an apportionment that means a tenth.  Just like 25 cents is a quarter, a tithe is a tenth.  And is the giving of a tenth or a tithe for us today?   Is it something that New Testament and new covenant Christians should practice? There is a lot of discussion, a lot of debate about that.  Some of you grew up in a church where tithing was taught.  Others of you, this is brand new, and you’re thinking, A tenth?  You’ve got to be kidding me, Preacher!  All right.  Just relax.  I’m not passing the offering plate anytime soon, even for the rest of the service.  We’re all done with that.  So I just want to talk a little bit about this.

 

0:21:52.5

Tithing is an Old Testament concept.  It didn’t start in the mosaic law, but that’s a good place to start our discussion.  Under Moses, the Israelites, the Old Testament Hebrews lived under a theocracy.  And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments and the law of God, part of what was codified and even expanded was this concept of tithing- that the Old Testament Israelites who lived in this theocracy would give a tenth.  Actually, if you study the scriptures real carefully, they gave several tithes at various time increments.  And it came up to about 23 1/3% of their income.  Sounds almost like a tax.  Some people say that was the Old Testament tax system, but it was called a tithe.  All right, there is some justification in that because they lived under a theocracy.

 

0:22:42.5

And we can go to a number of places where the tithe is mentioned in the Old Testament.  Probably the most famous verse that we all run to is Malachi 3:10. The Lord was speaking to the nation of Israel at a time when they just weren’t doing very well with God.  And He was correcting a lot of things through Malachi.  And in chapter 3 the Lord said to the nation, “You’ve been robbing Me.”  “What do You mean we’ve been robbing You, Lord?  How have we been robbing You?”  “You haven’t been bringing the tithe into the storehouse.”  So verse 10 says, “‘Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house and thereby put me to the test,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for a blessing until there is no more need.’”  You see, it’s nothing new for people to get a little tight around the britches when we talk about giving and tithing and all that.  Even the Old Testament Israelites struggled with this.  And the Lord said, “Bring it all in.  And if you can’t trust Me in your giving, put Me to the test.”  Yeah.  Really?  It’s the only time in the Bible I know that the Lord God of heaven and earth said, “Test Me.”  His character is rooted in what He will do here if we walk by faith financially.  “You test Me,” He says, “and see if I will not open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing to you.”

 

0:24:23.8

Now, before I go on further with that, tithing is mentioned in the Bible not just in the mosaic law.  Four hundred years before Moses came down from Mount Sinai, Abraham, the Bible says in Genesis 14, gave a tithe of the spoils of war to somebody named King Melchizedek.  You say, “Well, who is King Melchizedek?”  Well, the writer of Hebrews tells us that King Melchizedek was an Old Testament type of Christ.  And then in Genesis 28, Jacob—again, hundreds of years before Moses and the mosaic law ever comes on the scene—Jacob vowed to give a tenth to God.  He kind of cut a deal with God.  And so you often ask, how did Abraham and Jacob learn about tithing?  It wasn’t from Moses.  It wasn’t because it was part of the law.  I just conclude…And by the way, I did my doctoral research on financial stewardship in the local church, and I came to this conclusion and other conclusions, and my doctoral professors agreed with me. So for what it’s worth…yeah, for what it’s worth.  Tithing was a lifestyle long before it was a law under Moses.  And it as an act of worship under Abraham and Jacob.  And so, yeah, it got codified and expanded under Moses.  In a sense, when the Lord wanted to teach the nation of Israel, the Hebrew people, how to live generously, He gave them the tithing laws.  And it was obligatory.  It was compulsory.

 

0:26:03.9

That doesn’t feel real good today, especially when today we read in the New Testament we’re not under law, we’re under grace.  Right? And some people have taken that to mean, well, we can do less and not more.  Try that in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about kingdom citizens and kingdom living.  And He says, “You have heard that it was said not to commit adultery.  I say you if a man looks at another woman with lust in his heart, he has committed adultery already.”  He ratchets up the law.  He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not murder, do not kill.’  I say if you have anger in your heart toward another person, you’ve already committed murder in your heart.”  He ratchets up the law.  So should we expect anything less when it comes to an expectation of giving that we do better, not worse, than what they did in the Old Testament.  I just come to the conclusion that tithing as an apportionment is a good starting place in our giving.  It’s not a ceiling.  It’s not a stopping place.  It’s a floor.  If 78% of Americans right now are living paycheck to paycheck, the studies have shown that about 5% of churchgoing people actually tithe.  And those numbers aren’t much higher than what the IRS says the average American, let’s say the average atheist or non-churchgoing person gives to charitable causes.  And so when you look inside the church, we don’t look any more generous than the world.  And that should make us feel a little bit convicted, I think.

 

0:27:49.2

I’m the first to say there is no command under the new covenant and in the New Testament that says, “Thou shalt tithe.”  We are not under law.  We’re under grace.  But if grace is the motivation for our response…if God’s grace, His generosity toward us, this God who so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, what is our response to that?  Two percent?  Really?  You’re telling me that’s acceptable?  Okay, don’t put a number on it.  Don’t put an apportionment on it.  Do you feel guilty or legalistic about 10%?  Give 11, 12, 15%.  Go the other direction.  Come on.  And let’s show that as redeemed people of God, He has redeemed us even from the materialism and the consumerism of our day.

 

0:28:46.0

You know, generosity is like kryptonite to mammon.  It frees us up from the entanglements of all the “buy this” and “trade up this” and “keep up with this” and “I need more, I need bigger, I need this.”  You start living a generous life.  You start just tithing, not because we’re obligated to or it’s commanded to, but just because it’s not a bad place to start.  You’ll find that it’s hard to be materialistic when you give that way.

 

0:29:19.8

So you go back to Malachi 3:10 and, okay, we’re not under law.  We’re under grace, and maybe that has changed from the old covenant to the new covenant, this matter of tithing.  But I can tell you what hasn’t changed, and that’s the character of God.  The same God who says, “Test Me in this.  You’re struggling with giving?  Put Me to the test and see if I won’t open the window of heaven and pour out a blessing that you cannot contain.”  Jesus said it kind of this way in Luke 6:38. If you’re looking for something in the New Testament, Jesus said, “Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap.  For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”  A proportional gift will yield a proportional response from God.  I have people say, “Pastor, should I tithe on the gross or on the net?”  Do you want a gross blessing or a net blessing?  What are we talking about here?  What kind of proportional response do you want?

 

0:30:33.3

One of the beauties about tithing—again, as a general starting point in our giving—is it is proportional.  I’m not talking about equal gifts, but equal sacrifice, right?  Ten percent of your income is different than ten percent of my income.  It kind of reminds me of a story I heard about a guy who made an appointment to go see his pastor.  And he comes in, and he says, “Pastor, I heard your message a couple weeks ago about giving and about tithing.  And I just want you to know, I’m a commission sales rep.  And it wasn’t too long ago I was making about $1,000 a month.  And I took you up on that tithing thing to kind of jumpstart my giving.  And I’ve been writing a check for $100 a month.  And I’ve gotten pretty about that.  And then my business started to grow, and now I’m making $10,000 a month.  And I thought, Wow, now I’ve got to write a check for $1000 or more.  It just seems to be too much.  But I stretched, and I did that.  And my business keeps growing.  And, Pastor, you won’t believe this.  Just last week I closed a deal, a $100,000 commission.”  And He says, “Pastor, I’m just having a hard time writing a $10,000 check.  I don’t know that I can do that.”  Pastor says, “Well, I understand.”  He says, “Can I pray for you?”  He says, “Yeah, Pastor, I really need some prayer about this.  This is great.”  They bowed their heads.  The pastor said, “Lord, you’ve heard this man’s struggle in his heart.  You know what he’s dealing with.  Will You do everything in Your power to reduce his income back to $1,000 a month so that he can be comfortable about giving a tithe of his income?”  Yeah, it gets hard, right, the bigger the numbers get.  But you can’t out-give God.  He says, “Test Me.”

 

0:32:20.6 

Cathryn and I will come up this year celebrating out 25th wedding anniversary.  When we got engaged, we had an eight-month engagement.  And we talked about a whole host of things, went through premarital counseling.  We came upon the money question.  How are we going to handle money in our marriage?  And I said, “Well, honey, I’ve been practicing tithing and tithing plus for quite some time.”  And she said, “What’s a tithe?”  She gulped.  She will tell you back then she was a tipper, not a tither.  And after she paid her bills and after she had her fun, she said, “I might have dropped a leftover gift in the offering plate, maybe 20 bucks here, 30 bucks there depending on how much fun I had.”  You know, we talked about that.  And we started our marriage giving to God first and with tithing, 10% as a starting point.  We’re beyond that now.

 

0:33:24.1 

The New Testament talks about growing in the grace of giving, growing in your response to the grace of God in your life.  For some of you it’s been easy to do the tithe thing.  You need to grow.  It’s about the heart.  It’s about faith.  Cathryn will look you square in the eye today when it comes to giving and say, “What are you waiting for? Serious?”

 

0:33:51.6

Some of this kind of reminds me of a little boy.  Imagine this little boy growing up in poverty so much so that he wasn’t sure where his next meal would come from.  And he developed a food insecurity.  You ever met somebody like that who is maybe homeless?  This little boy was adopted into a new family that had three meals a day.  And this was new to him. And his adoptive mother baked him a cake.  And he started eating that cake.  He loved that cake.  It was his favorite cake.  And his adoptive mother comes up to him and says, “Can I have a bite of the cake?”  And he says no.  Not because he was selfish, but because he was scared.  He was insecure.  He wasn’t sure where the next meal was coming from because he was food insecure.  He didn’t know that his adoptive mother had three more boxes of cake mix in the pantry and enough money to go to the grocery store and buy 10 more.

 

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Sometimes we’re scared to take the financial step of faith because there is an insecurity in us.  And we don’t know that our heavenly Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  He has no scarcity problem.  There is always an abundance.  And you can’t out-give God.  I know this by three, four decades of just personal experience.  And God is always pushing us.  This has been, the last three or four years, the most expensive time in Cathryn and I’s married life- two kids in college in private school.  Try that one on for size.  We sort of planned along the way for normal school.  And the athletic scholarships pay for a portion of it, but not all of it.  This has been an expensive time.  I have ample reason to say we’re cutting back on our giving.  No, we increased it.  We increased it.  And we’ve seen God show up in ways…I had no idea where He had the box of cake mix to deal with my insecurities.  But my wife is the one leading out on this now.  So I’m just saying to you, friends, these principles work.  The scriptures, too.  God’s character doesn’t change from one covenant to the next.  The obligation, the command, yes.  His character, His promise, His invitation to test Him.

 

0:36:28.0

One more section of scripture.  Let’s go to 2 Corinthians 8-9.  My doctoral research in financial stewardship in the local church took me heavily to this section of scripture because it’s the largest section of scripture found anywhere in the New Testament given to financial giving.  Let me give you quickly the background here.  Paul is writing to the Corinthians and inviting them to participate in an offering for the poor in Jerusalem.  He’s not talking about their giving to their local church there in Corinth.  He’s gone around to all the churches that he’s planted, and he says, “Listen, on behalf of the poor in Jerusalem, I’m asking you to give presumably over and above what you’re doing in your local church to help the poor in Jerusalem.”  He talks about all of that.  He talks about how the Macedonians, who were the poorest of the poor, gave the largest gift proportionately.  And he brags about the Macedonians.  And he uses the Macedonians and their generosity to encourage the Corinthians to do the same.

 

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It’s the largest section of scripture…a lot of the terminology used in 2 Corinthians 8-9 kind of sounds like what is called the free will offering in the Old Testament.  In the Old Testament there were two ways that the Israelites gave.  They gave a tithe or tithes, and then they gave something called—over and above their tithe—a free will offering.  The Tabernacle, the temple, all the building projects in the Old Testament that King David led, and Solomon led, they were all built with free will offerings.  And it was voluntary.  Nothing compulsory.  Between you and the Lord in response to what God ahs done in your life.  Free will offering.

 

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Think about that when I read these verses from 2 Corinthians 9 beginning in verse 6 where Paul is summarizing.  He says. “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  Some people have take this to mean, “Yeah, see, we’re not under law.  We’re under grace.  Give whatever you want.”  And where 95% of churchgoing people end is 2-3%.  I’m just asking the question, is that a reasonable response to the grace of God in our lives?  No, when you decide in your heart as a new covenant Christian, take into account the fullness of scripture.  I concluded—and we’ve practiced this for 25 years of our marriage—the minimum expression of generosity found in the Bible is 10%.  It’s just a starting point.

 

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Jesus was impressed with a widow who came to the temple one day and dropped in two lepta.  It’s like dropping in two pennies.  And He was astounded by that.  And the disciples are looking at Him like, “What’s that all about?”  He says, “She gave everything.”  Where is that kind of radical generosity?  One of the most generous people in my church experience as a pastor was in the first church that I served in Houston, Texas, was a single mom.  She was all over this tithing thing.  She didn’t have two nickels to rub together.  But she tithed.  She gave over and above that.  She’s like, “Pastor, anytime you want somebody to encourage the church family in giving, let me at ‘em.”

 

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“Each one must decide in his heart, not reluctantly.  And then just in case you’re still saying, “I can’t afford to do this,” listen to this.  “And God is able…”  Say that with me.  God is able.  “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all time, you may abound in every good work.”  He’s not going to let you go.  He’s not going to let you down.  You can’t out-give Him.  “Give, and it shall be given unto you.”  “He who sows sparingly shall reap sparingly.”

 

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So you’ve got Farmer Brown up here, and then you’ve got Farmer Jones over here.  And they both have a bag of seed.  And Farmer Brown, he wants as much of a big harvest at harvesttime as Farmer Jones does.  But Farmer Brown is holding onto his bag of seed.  And he reaches in there and just grabs a little handful of it and tosses a little bit of seed out there into his field.  What kind of a harvest do you think Farmer Brown is going to get?  A little tiny harvest.  Farmer Jones, on the other hand, he took Farming 101.  He takes that big bag of seed and he dumps it out there on his field, scatters it in all directions until the bag is empty.  Because every farmer understands he who sows sparingly, reaps sparingly.  He who sows bountifully reaps bountifully.  Get this, Paul is using this farming analogy specifically in the largest section of scripture in the New Testament given to the subject of giving.  And giving…What did I say?  How do you invest in your heavenly portfolio?  Through sowing and reaping.  Sowing and reaping.  And you have heavenly Father who is an incredible farmer.  And He can make what you’ve sown reap in a way that you’re never going to be without.  You won’t.  You won’t.

 

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Here’s the deal.  And again, tithing is just a starting point.  Soar beyond that.  But you can either take 100% responsibility of 100% of what you have, or you can give God 10% and be left with 90%, and He will take responsibility for making the ends meet.  But as long as you’re not willing to take that step of faith, guess what?  He’s going to say, “Fine. Let Me know how that’s working for you.”  And when you have more month than you have money, when things just aren’t working out, when you’re working three jobs… “If you would just trust Me here, I will make all grace abound to you so that at all times you will have all sufficiency to meet all needs.  And when the next giving opportunity comes, you’ll have an abundance to given to that opportunity as well.”  You want to live that way?

 

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Listen, don’t confuse me with the prosperity theologians.  I’m not that.  But I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  God’s character doesn’t change.  His economics do not change.  We don’t give in order to get.  We give out of a loving response to the grace of God in our lives.  But don’t ignore a proportional gift yields a proportional response from God.  How big of a blessing do you want?

 

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We could go on further, but I’m running out of time.  We’re not looking for donations.  Jesus isn’t looking for donations.  He’s looking for disciples, fully devoted followers of Jesus who are willing to let Him do some radical surgery on the heart.  And if He detects anything of money and wealth and material possessions in there that is crowding out His singular right to sit on the throne of our hearts, He’ll go after it.  He’ll go after it.

 

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But here is the beauty of it.  When you resolve once and for all to be a faithful steward of what God has entrusted to you, you are stepping into an adventure.  You can’t even begin to understand what God is going to do in your life, because the Bible says without faith it’s impossible to please God.  Nothing pleases Him more than faith.  And when we step out in financial faith, that stretches us.  That’s why I say to those of you who have gotten comfortable tithing, time to stretch again.  Time to stretch again.  And as you stretch your faith, God will take you to places and always make sure you’re taken care of.  And He will show up in ways… “Test Me now in this,” He says.  “Test Me and watch what I will do.  You just stand back and watch what I will do.”  Amen?

 

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“Every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

Romans 8:28 MSG