Rick Warren - God's Promises About Giving Part One

Welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Today we embark on

a journey through a powerful series called God's Amazing Promises.

In the upcoming lessons, you'll discover some of the most

profound promises that God has made to you. These promises

are not mere words. They are the keys to a

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six hundred five thousand and four. Right now, here's Pastor

Rick Warren with part one of a message called God's

Promises about giving.

And I want to begin by telling you that the

words promise and promises are actually used over a thousand

times in different English translations of the scripture. One scholar

did a study and he counted over eight thousand different

promises of God in the Bible. The Bible tells us

that God is a promise making and a promise keeping God.

He makes promises in the Bible to literally everybody. Now,

God's promises are like a divine insurance policy. And in

an insurance policy, when you know what's covered, then you

don't sweat it when that circumstance happens in your life

or that illness of that accident. When you know what's

covered in the policy, you relax. On the other hand,

if you don't know what's covered in the insurance policy,

if you're ignorant of it, you worry. And one of

the problems that we have today is people don't know

the promise of God, so they spend a lot of

time worrying. Today, we're going to begin a new series

that I'm calling God's Amazing Promises, and each week We're

going to look at a different set of God's promises

to you. We'll look at promises of God's help, promises

of wisdom, of power, promises of forgiveness and guidance, promises

of salvation and blessing and heaven, promises of guidance, and salvation,

of success, of victory, and many many other benefits. You

can't afford to miss this series on God's Amazing Promises. Now,

I want to begin the series by explaining three fundamental

facts about the promises of God. The first one is this,

God wants me to build my life on his promises.

God doesn't want you to live a life built on

petty rules. He wants you to live a life built

on great promises. And we're going to look at many

of these eight thousand promises in God's Word to you,

God's Insurance Policy to you. Number two. God makes two

kinds of promises in scripture, and we're going to look

at both. First, he makes unconditional promises, and then he

makes conditional promises. The unconditional promises there are no strings attached,

and no matter what you do, when God promises something unconditionally,

it's going to happen. For instance, God has made an

unconditional promise about the second coming of Jesus Christ. It's

not going to be dependent on anything that you or

I do. That's an unconditional promise, and we'll look at

many of those. But God also makes conditional promises, and

these promises are based on your faith and your obedience,

and God says, if you do this, then I will

do this. It's not automatic. These promises aren't automatically yours.

You have to meet a requirement or a circumstance or

a condition. And if you don't meet that requirement and

you forfeit the promise. In other words, there's a premise

to every promise that's conditional, and we'll look at what

some of those conditions are now. The third thing I

want to say about God's promises is that God makes

promises for us for two different reasons. The first reason

God gives us all these eight thousand promises in the

Bible is to teach us to trust Him in difficult times.

To teach us to trust Him in difficult times. The

Bible says in Psalm one nineteen, verse fifty, when I'm hurting,

I find comfort in your promises that lead to life.

You know, if you weren't in ever bad circumstances, you

wouldn't need the promises of God. If everything went great

in your life, you wouldn't need the promises of God.

Psalm one nineteen one fourteen says this you God, You're

my refuge and shield, and your promises are my only

source of hope. So, as I said, if things always

went great in your life, and everything always looked great,

you wouldn't need any promises. It's when the situation looks

hopeless that's when you need a promise of God. It's

when situations seem like they're all falling apart, that's when

you need a promise of God. So God first gives

us promises to help us get us through the tough

times in life, the difficult times, the times when we're hurting,

or it just looks like maybe he's not even around,

we hold on to his promises. The second reason God

gives us promises is to make us more like him.

We've talked about this many times that God's number one

goal in your life is to make you like Jesus.

One of the ways that he does that is through

the promises. In this book. The Bible says that God,

and first excuse me, second Peter, Chapter one, verse four,

God has made great and marvelous promises so that his

nature would become part of us. Look at that verse again.

God has made great and marvelous promises. Okay, all of

these promises are in the Bible, so that here's the

reason his nature would become part of us. The more

you trust in God's promises, the more it's going to

change your life. That's where we're going to do the

series on God's amazing promises. You grow more like Jesus

through God's promises. In fact, I'll just be real, Frank,

you can't become like Jesus without trusting God's promises. The

Bible tells us that God works in our lives through promises. Now,

let me give you a quiz. Can you guess what

subject in the Bible God makes more promises about than

anything else? Can you guess what subject in the Bible

God makes more promises about than anything else. It's not faith,

it's not prayer, it's not love, it's not patience. It

may surprise you that God makes more promises in the

Bible about generosity or giving than anything else.

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Now back to more from God's Word with Pastor Rick Warren.

God makes more promises in the Bible about generosity or

giving than anything else. Why is that? Why does God

make more promises about being generous and being giving? Well,

there's a couple of reasons. First, because God is generous

and he wants us to become like him. God wants

his children to take on his qualities. Everything we have

in life is because of the generosity and grace and

giving of God. In John Chapter one, verse sixteen, I

love this In the message prayer phrase look up on

the screen, it says we live off his generous bounty.

Gift after gift after gift. Everything you and I have

in life is because of God's generosity. So God just

wants us to become like him. He wants his children

to be like father, like son, like father like daughter.

Second reason God wants us to learn generosity is because

giving is hard. And the reason giving is hard is

because it challenges our selfishness. I don't want to give

anything to anybody else or to God. I want to

spend it all on me, So it's hard. So God

gives rewards for us learning to be like him. God

is a generous God. Everything you have in life is

because of the generosity of God, and he wants us

to become like him. So to kick off this series

on God's amazing promises, We're going to start with the

most frequent promises in the Bible, the promises about generosity.

In fact, there are so many of them we couldn't

possibly cover the hundreds and hundreds of promises about this.

So I've just picked out nine categories. That's all we

have time for. We're gonna have to go through this

fairly quickly anyway, But let me give you nine rewards

that God promises to me and promises to you if

we learn to be generous with our money. All right,

let's look at nine different rewards that God promises to

us if we learn to be generous with our money.

As I said, I could give you hundreds of promises

about generosity, but we only have time for these nine.

We're going to go through the pretty quickly, all right,

So write these down fast. Number one, God promises good

things will happen to me when I'm generous. When I

learned to give like God gives. God promises that good

things will happen to me. Psalm one twelve, verse five

says good will come to him who is generous. Good

good things come to him who is generous. Proverbs twenty two,

verse nine, Generous people will be blessed. That's a promise

of God. So if you want God's blessing in your life,

and you want God's goodness in your life, and you

want good things to happen to you, the Bible says

giving generosity unlocks the key. God promises that good things

will happen to me when I'm generous. Number two, God

promises my children will be blessed if I learned how

to give like God gives. That's covered in Psalm thirty seven,

verse twenty six. It says they're in the NIV translation,

the Godly are always generous. That's a mark of Godliness.

If you're not generous, you're not Godly Because God is generous.

The Godly are always generous, and notice their children will

be blessed. I want you to notice that when you

learn to be generous, when you learn to be to

give the way, God gives that blessing. Not only blesses you.

Now good comes into your life, but God that says

it gets passed on to the next generation. Now, do

you want your kids to be blessed by God? Do

you want the next generation in your family to be blessed?

Then you need to learn how to be generous. I'm

expecting God's blessing on my kids and on my grandkids

because Kay and I have been generous all of our lives.

We learn generosity early on. God says, I will bless

your kids if you are generous. Third promise of God.

God promises he will bless my work and my business

if I learned to be generous, not just my family,

but also my business. Let me show you a couple

of verses about this. Proverbs three, verse nine says, this

honor the Lord by giving him the first part of

all your income. We honor God by giving him the

first part of all our income. That's called tithing. We'll

talk about that later. But he says, then that was

the premise. Here's the promise. Then your barns will be

filled to overflowing, and your vats will overflow with the

finest wines. Now, I doubt any of you have a

barn to fill or vats to fill with the finest wine.

But let's put this in a cultural context. In the

Bible times, everybody was a farmer. Almost everybody was farmer.

So when you looked inside a person's barn and you

looked inside their vats, that represented their business, it represented

their investments, it represented their livelihood. And what God is

saying here is if you learn to be generous. God says,

I will bless your business. I will bless your work,

I will bless your career, I will bless your investments.

I will bless how you make a living. A verse

that goes right along with that, as Proverbs eleven twenty

five that says a generous man will prosper, will prosper.

A generous man will prosper. And he who refreshes others

will himself be refreshed. Question, those of you who have

your own business or your own store or your own shop.

Do you want your career your business to prosper well,

of course you do. Do you want your business to

be more profitable? Of course you do. Well. If you

want God's help in your business, not just your family,

but in your business, you have to fulfill the premise

of his promise. And God says, the person who is

generous will profit, will be blessed in what he does.

Let me show you another verse here on the screen, Deuteronomy,

chapter fifteen, verse ten. I love this in the message,

it says this, give freely and give spontaneously. Okay, that's

the premise. Don't have a stingy heart. The way you

handle matters like this triggers God's blessing. Look at that

on the screen. The way you handle matter if you're

generous with your money, you're not a stingy art. It

triggers God's blessing in everything you do, in all your work,

that's your job, that's your business, and ventures. Some of

you are venture capitalists, some of you are serial entrepreneurs.

Do you want God's blessing to be triggered in your work,

in your ventures, in everything you do?

Well?

The Bible says generosity triggers God's blessing on your work.

These are amazing promises. God says good will come to you.

Your kids will be blessed, and your work, your career,

your job will be blessed. Generosity triggers God's blessing on

your job. Let me give you a fourth promise. God's

promises that if I learned to give like he does,

I'll be happier. Now, everybody knows this except people with

the stingy heart. You already know this already, Sesus said

in Acts, chapter twenty, verse thirty five. Paul R. Lucas

talking here, and he says, remember the words of our

Lord Jesus himself, who said there is more happiness in

giving than in receiving. You know, when I was a

little kid, I honestly didn't believe that verse because I'd

rather get Christmas gifts when I was a little kid

than when I was older. I didn't want to give him.

I wanted to get them. But that's a mark of maturity,

and maturity comes when you realize that they're actually more

happiness in giving than in receiving. So here's the fourth promise.

If you learn to give generously, God says, you'll be happier.

You'll be happier you get your your business blessed, you

get your family blessed, your children blessed, and you get blessed.

Good will come to your life. Number five, God promises

that if I learned to give like he does generously,

my influence will increase. My influence will increase. Here's another promise,

Proverbs eleven twenty four. The message says this, the world

of the generous gets larger and larger, the world of

the stingy gets smaller and smaller. If you want your

world to get larger, learn to be generous. If you

want your world to get smaller and more compact and harder,

heart and build walls around you and just be a

stingy person. But if you learn to be generous, the

Bible says, the more generous you are, the larger and

larger your world will get. I could give a personal

testimony about this one, how that God teaching me generosity

in my life actually expanded my influence into areas I

never ever thought would be possible, into fields and into

countries and around the world, simply because I was faithful

in little things. Then God gave me more, and I

was faithful in that God gave me more, and I

was generous with that and more and more. And I

could tell your personal you a personal testimony that this

promise is true. Your world expands the more generous you become.

All right. Number six, God promises that if I learned

to give like he gives, and if I learn to

be generous, I will end up with more. This is

part of the economy of God. Now, we don't give

to get. I don't give to get a blessing. I

actually give to be a blessing. But the truth is

you can't outgive God. And God plays this little game

and says, let's see who who can outgive the other person.

You give to me, and I'll give to you, and

you give to other people and I'll give you, and

we'll see who wins. God says, I promise you, and

he says this over and over and over in scripture,

that I will end up with more if I learned

to be generous. Let me show you some verses Luke six,

verse thirty eight. These are the words of Jesus himself.

Jesus says, give and it will be given back to you.

And notice in full measure. You don't get a little back,

you get it all back and more given. It will

be given back to you in full measure. God's gonna

make sure he out gives you given. It will be

given to you in full measure, and what you receive

will need to be pressed down and shaken together. What's

that talking about. Well, let's say if you're getting grained

and people are pouring grain in your sack, and you've

paid for a whole sack, you're gonna shake it like this,

and then you're gonna press it down so you can

get the maximum amount of grain or coins or anything

else into that sack. And he's saying, God wants to

give you so much, you have to press it down.

You have to shake it together to make more room,

because God wants to give you more than your sack

can hold.

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