Unfolding Rewards of Giving | Fierce Pathways

Hey, what up?

It's Mark Carter.

I'm the pastor of Fierce Church.

Welcome to our podcast.

I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.

I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.

Enjoy the message.

I don't know that there's anybody really on planet Earth that doesn't need a little bit more wisdom with their financial life.

So we're going to talk about that today and I just want to encourage you.

Sometimes, when we talk about financial stuff in church, all kinds of emotions just get in my way as a teacher.

Okay, some come in and you've seen some villains or you've been burned, or you just have kind of a cynical, suspicious idea that well, you know the church, they just want your money.

So can we just put that off to the side for a second, like, let's not even go there today.

I don't expect anyone to give more today than they would have anyway.

Let's just learn God's word.

Can we do that?

I just want to teach you from God's word.

It's important to me that we just learn what the Bible says and then you got your own relationship with God and you are certainly competent to walk with him and talk with him and see how he wants you to live on planet earth.

So no pressure, okay, let's just understand it.

It is important to me that we have crystal clarity on God's priorities, how he made us to function with him in the world, and so one of the things that gets in the way of that is sin.

Sin created a barrier between us and God.

There's distance from the moment that we're born between us and our Savior.

That distance also produces additional sin.

When I say sin, I mean there's things that we don't do right.

You guys know this.

There's all kinds of stuff that you've done that you're not necessarily proud of, but there's also there's goodness we leave undone.

There are places where our heart that is meant to be good and generous and always thinking about other people atrophies a little bit and we just you've even been prompted to step into certain situations and you didn't step into it.

You were prompted, maybe, to check in with some folks and you're like, ah, no big deal, and I'm not trying to create pressure, but there are times where maybe you really should have, like that would have been love to do that, but we didn't do it.

You could have spoken a kind word to somebody, you could have had quality time with somebody and honestly, if we're honest, that's what Jesus would have done in that moment.

But our hearts have shriveled a little bit with the goodness.

So sometimes it's just hit or miss.

Sometimes it's even larger stakes.

Sometimes you know, you see somebody on the side of the road and they're broken down.

You're like, oh, I could turn around, I could get off, I could go back.

Ah, someone else will come along.

And I'm not saying that somebody won't come along.

I'm not saying it's the end of the world.

I'm just saying there's times where we are comfortable leaving good undone in ways that Jesus would not have left undone, and it's because of the sinful nature that is a part of our experience.

So what does Jesus Christ do?

Jesus Christ removes the distance between us and our heavenly father.

He brings us into relationship.

That's his purpose.

Jesus did not come to give anybody religion.

He came to give everybody relationship with God through him, through him paying the penalty for our sin.

Something you got to know about God, and many of you know this.

You've heard of the idea, the concept progressive revelation.

What that means is when the Spirit of God imparted the Bible to us over 1,500 years, he did not reveal everything all at once.

He revealed things slowly, about his personality, kind of like I don't know if this is even still a thing, but pen pals when you've got a pen pal, maybe it's like there's some online version of that, but pen pals in the old times they would just write a letter and you didn't necessarily get anything else from them for quite a while and what you got in that letter was some information about them.

Well, you know, I'm a Midwestern kid, I grew up in the Midwest, or I like to play with transformers or something like that.

Whatever it is, it's bit by bit.

You're learning little things about them.

My favorite ice cream is chocolate malt, something like that.

You're learning slowly, and God has actually done the same thing.

He's taught us things slowly over the years.

Now, blessed are we because we have the entire Bible and we can see everything that he wants to say.

But my point is, as he revealed stuff about his personality, about the way he wants things done, there's a lot to learn as we just go step by step, age by age.

What did God reveal in this time that he wanted us to know about how he wants us to function as generous people on his planet.

Does that make sense?

So we're going to try to grow in our understanding God's gave us understanding that grew over the centuries, about how he wants us to relate generously and we're going to grow today by evaluating those different eras.

And hopefully we're going to grow today by evaluating those different eras and hopefully we're going to grow in generosity ourselves.

Should we do it, let's start with the first era, that is, the era of the early Bible heroes like Abraham.

And here's the first era faith, thanks and reverence.

God was trying to teach us faith, thanks and reverence.

One of the reasons he was trying to teach us this we're going to see is because he wanted us to know very clearly in every century then and now he wants us to know you are not all there is and you are not why you're blessed.

You are not all there is and you are not why you're blessed.

In fact, I've created a lot of other people and I'm the one who has blessed you, even when you've done things that have led to your blessing.

Behind that was me, god says.

I'm the one who gave you those opportunities.

I'm the one who gave you that education.

I'm the one who caused you to be born in that particular place.

I'm the one who opened the door for you to be able to attain that, or whatever God says.

Really, all your blessing is from me, even if you've done certain things that seem to cause it here on earth.

Now we're going to go all the way almost back to the beginning Genesis 4, 3.

Two brothers.

They've inherited sin from their parents.

They're noticing the world around them is very good.

They recognize.

You know, it's just kind of right that I look at my creator and even though I don't have a microwave and I don't have a cell phone, I still have a lot of good stuff, and God is the reason for that and God deserves my acknowledgement for that.

Verse three when it was time for the harvest, cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord.

Abel also brought a gift the best portions of the firstborn lambs of his flock.

The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift.

This made Cain very angry and he looked dejected.

Cain goes on to murder his brother.

But let's just look at those two brothers and learn some lessons from them.

First, they recognize it's right for me to bring God something.

Now what we've got to understand is they represent two different approaches to our relationship with God.

We could do a whole series, probably, on Cain and Abel, but let's just boil it down to real simple.

Abel represents I'm sure that he had a good heart, I'm sure that he was very reverential, but it's more than just his heart was right.

He brought something that God made to God.

He brought an animal or animals and he said I didn't do this, it's not my work that created this, god, your work created this.

I'm just giving you back what is yours as a way to honor you.

And I recognize something has to die to make up for sin.

That's right.

In the beginning of the Bible, man In fact, when his parents first sinned, what did God have to do?

He had to kill animals to make skins to cover their nakedness.

And so he grows up knowing, you know, I guess, like when you do something really wrong, god has to kill something in order to cover that sin, with that blood, with that some kind of offering in place of me.

And so he brings God an offering, the same way that his parents would have put on those animal skins.

Cain brings something else, and it's really important when we see that he gave grain In Genesis 3, 17,.

It says that cursed is the ground.

It will only produce now, by the sweat of man's brow.

It'll only happen because you work.

If you work really hard, the ground will now.

It's not just going to come up.

If you work really hard, the ground will now produce stuff.

And so, figuratively speaking I know this is a little bit difficult to grasp, but just think about it.

Cain represents us bringing our works to God and kind of saying here's my payoff.

Here I'm paying you off for what I did wrong.

Hope this is good enough.

Okay, this is my religious duty.

There you go, god, there's my payoff.

And God says I don't accept your payoff.

You don't have enough grain in the universe to pay off sin.

The only thing that covers sin is the blood of an innocent.

Abel brings the blood of an innocent and God says I accept that and it's all a precursor, it's all a prefigure of Jesus Christ.

It's all to teach everybody in the Bible and down through the centuries your work is not going to work.

You can't be religious enough.

You can't be churchy enough.

You can't be Bible-y enough.

You can't be smart enough.

You just need to be blood covered enough and you only get blood covered enough by Jesus Christ.

That is the gospel right at the beginning.

God is communicating that to us.

So these folks, they recognize I owe God something and I'm only really giving back to God what was God's to begin with.

Are we hearing that Noah and Abraham both, as we go throughout Genesis we see they both recognize God has blessed me, slash protected me.

Noah knows, okay, I survived the ark, I survived the flood because God protected me.

And so he brings an offering to God.

Abraham wins this battle against all these kings.

He gets his nephew Lot back and he recognizes after he gets through this war oh my gosh, it was God that protected me, it was God that kept me alive.

And so he gives an offering, the only way he knows, he tithes.

He gives 10% to this priest named Melchizedek.

Melchizedek is the representative of God and Abraham recognizes him and he says this guy is closer to God than me, he has more spiritual authority than me.

I don't know, maybe he can do something with this.

I'm just going to give him 10% of what I got and hope that the Lord receives that as reverence toward him, not toward this priest.

We learned later that Melchizedek also represents Jesus Christ in another way.

Man, a whole doggone Bible's about Jesus.

How many know that?

But either way, the point is they were thankful.

They were thankful.

They were thankful, they had reverence.

They recognized not everything that they have is from them, it's from God.

And so they said you know, in light of that, I should do something to demonstrate my thankfulness.

It's weird when we don't say thank you.

I mean, think about all the places.

Okay, let's say, um, uh, you get an Uber somewhere, even though you paid that Uber driver.

You're going to get out of the car and you're gonna say, probably, thank you, you paid them and you're still saying thank you.

And if you don't say thank you, they'll probably feel weird.

And you'll feel weird, what about?

I mean, even if someone covers your shift, okay, you're working and someone covers your shift, they're getting paid, and you're still gonna be like, wow, man, that's awesome that you did that, thank you, thank you for having my back like that, if, if somebody gets up their seat on the bus and they give you their seat, you know that's not a big deal, but you're still, it's a very, very little deal and you're still like, oh, thank you, I acknowledge you, you're a human, and so isn't it weird that we don't thank God for everything that God has done?

I mean, think about what God has done for you just today.

Think about you have shelter probably most of us.

You have clothes on Okay, that's great.

You've probably already eaten and you'll probably eat again For many of us.

You even live in a place where there's a pretty view, like you can look out the window somewhere in the home and be like that's pretty over there.

I get to see this.

This is where I get to wake up.

Not everybody does Every one of us here in the room, most of those around the world.

You are free, meaning you can do whatever you want.

Next, whatever you want, you can just go do that.

That freedom was given you by God, so want you can just go do that.

That freedom was given you by God.

So we'll thank the person that covers our shift or that takes a picture of us while we pose with somebody, but we won't thank God.

Did you see how weird that is?

And even the very first humans they're like.

You know we have nothing like that, but we still need to thank God, because every good and perfect gift comes from the father of heavenly lights.

So if we're thankful, we should give to God.

If we're reverential, we should give to God and we should do so in faith, just like Abel did.

Hebrews 11, 4 said the thing that was going on in Abel's heart was he was offering his offering by faith.

We don't totally understand everything about that, but somehow he believed.

This blood covering me is what I need.

To be acceptable to God.

An innocent must be offered.

The gospel is right there.

Let's go on to epoch or era number two.

So first we said what is God revealing to us about giving over time?

He's revealing faith.

Thanks and reverence are really important.

Here's what else is important to God that we learn about in the book of Exodus and the law era Structure temple and the poor Structure temple and the poor.

The Lord is revealing now.

He's unfolding, he's writing his pen pals and saying here's what else you should know about me.

There are others and they're really important to me.

It's important that they know me, not just that you know me.

And so here's what I want to do.

I want you to take an offering and I want you to build a tabernacle or a temple.

I want to have a kind of a permanent place where people can come and they can seek God.

They can get close to the God of heaven and earth.

Not only that, I want the people that have to run that thing.

I want them to be provided for.

I can't have them out in the field all day.

I can't have them out doing all the farming everybody else is doing.

I need them taking care of God's place and God's people.

That's what I need them to do.

That's why it says in Leviticus 2730, a tithe of everything from the land, whether grain or from the soil, or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord and it is holy.

He's telling the people of that generation hey, just so you know, everything you have is mine, and I'm especially calling for a tenth of your stuff.

I want to use it, not just because I'm worthy of it, though I am.

I also want to use it because my temple is important as a signpost to the rest of the world.

This is where you can come to seek God.

I also want the people that have to run that.

I want them to be provided for.

And there's one more thing he wants to happen, though.

God cares about the poor.

We can find that in Deuteronomy, chapter 14, 22 through 29.

Deuteronomy 14 · chapter mention

He cares about the people.

He says there's folks that are going with less and I care about that and I want to help them.

During COVID times, everyone was so generous man Like I don't know if you were around here then but people were, they were.

We created like a COVID fund and people just give money all the time to that thing to take care of people.

And you know, not only would we give to people who were in need, because maybe they lost their job or whatever, or they couldn't get paid, they would also it would pay for just groceries.

People would just go buy groceries and they'd run up to their house with their mask on and they'd ding-dong, ditch them and then they'd leave the groceries there and then they'd run away.

And it was just an awesome season of generosity and it was demonstrating that God cares about people that, for some reason or other, can't get what they need.

Right now, can I tell you it is a great time in the history of fears to start to give to benevolence again.

Maybe that's a first step for some of you.

Maybe it's like well, I don't really care about Carter or the church, but I care about people, so I'm going to give to this fund just to help out.

It's been a little while since COVID so that's kind of dried up, but I would encourage you.

God cares about that and it's an appropriate thing to give.

Now, all these laws we have to know they're actually very precise.

If you go, look at the books of the law, you look how God commanded different things.

It isn't vague.

And one of the things God is teaching us is I'm not vague.

I'm not vague about obedience.

We can kind of be in just a like well, you know, whatever, whatever's fine, just offer whatever you got to the Lord and dude, you are totally justified by grace through faith.

God loves you in through and through and there's nothing you can even change that.

But that doesn't mean he's a worthy God and it doesn't mean he wants to just be flippant about what he says.

He wants us to be serious about what he says.

In fact he's so serious about what he says.

He just says I won't settle for anything less than the blood of an innocent to cover the sin of the people, than the blood of an innocent to cover the sin of the people.

We might say God, why did you have to even do that?

Like, why did Jesus have to die?

Didn't you have another way?

And God's answer is no.

There's no other way to fulfill justice and to cover your sin, to draw you to me in love.

There just wasn't another way.

And Jesus was so in love with you and so obedient to the Father that he says the specificity that is needed to fulfill the law.

I'm gonna do it because God's worthy Guys.

God can be very specific sometimes.

He can lay on your heart.

I want you to give and I want you to give here and we can argue with him for six months and God is like I'm worthy of it.

It's what your Savior taught you to do.

Come on, man, what do I got to do around here?

So you know, when we care about God's priorities, we make time and we make effort toward those things.

So why does he want us to do it?

He wants us to give so other people know him, so that we know him, so that the poor are provided for, but also so that we learn what it means to do things.

Because God is asking us to do things, just like Jesus Christ.

So we're in the era of Abraham.

It was faith, thanks and reverence.

We're in the era of the law.

It was structure, temple and the poor.

Now we're going to move on to the era of the kings something of value and sincerity.

God is teaching us more throughout the centuries.

Here's what else you should know about generosity it needs to be something of value and it needs to be sincere.

Why?

Because he knows, if you do this thing in a structured way, like he was leading them to in the books of law, if you do this thing meticulously, the danger is your heart is going to draw away from that.

You're just going to do it to fulfill it.

You're just going to be like, yep, done, I'm cool, I'm out, I don't need to worry about this, god knows.

The problem is your heart can drift from the why of that.

Have you noticed this?

So maybe you're on a date for the first time and you go somewhere with that person you're on a date with and everything about it is like meaningful, like every way.

You know every little step you take, every little fountain that you stop at.

You know every little, you know the very specific corner of that restaurant.

Oh, it's all so beautiful and so wonderful.

And then you're married for five years and you're like yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

This is all here and you'd like to say it's meaningful, but in your heart you just haven't kept, you haven't continued to think about it, you haven't continued to meditate on man.

They're so awesome, I'm so lucky to even be with them.

Oh, my word, you're just kind of used to it.

You're over them in some ways.

God word, you're just kind of used to it.

You're over them in some ways.

God says I don't want you to get over me so you can say yep, yep, yep, yep, got it, got it, got it.

But God says I want the heart.

I want you to make sure you've got the heart in it.

And to get the heart it's got to cost you something.

This is what David did.

David was commanded by the Lord.

He needed to bring an offering to God, to do a bunch of stuff, to fix a plague and all that kind of stuff.

But he goes to this man named Arana and he says Arana, I need to buy your threshing floor.

That was a place that they prepared grain.

I'm going to make some offerings to the Lord.

And Arana says hey, david look, man, you're the king.

I will give this to you.

You don't need to.

I love it that you're my king, you can just have it.

And David says something very interesting.

He says 23,.

He says I will give it to you, your majesty.

May the Lord, your God, accept your sacrifice.

But the king replied to Arna I don't really know how to say that no, I insist on buying it.

I can look it up, but I didn't.

No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord, my God, that have cost me nothing.

I'm not going to give God something that didn't cost me anything.

So David paid him 50 pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen.

The worth of something is demonstrated by the sacrifice we're willing to make for it.

The worth of something you guys know this the worth of something is demonstrated by the sacrifice we're willing to make for it.

The worth of something you guys know this the worth of something is demonstrated by the sacrifice you are willing to make for it.

I mean some of you.

You know this.

I don't know if it's quite as true now because you got Amazon, but when I was a kid, okay, parents would drive to 10 stores trying to get that special video game that just came out.

They'd drive 10 more stores trying to get that special video game that just came out.

They'd drive 10 more stores trying to get that ridiculous cabbage patch doll that everybody had to have.

And they would do it because they would sacrifice the gas, and they would sacrifice the time and the hassle because they love their kid.

My kid's worth this.

That's what they would say.

My wife every year she spends a day and a half prepping all this food for people, just to have a special Thanksgiving dinner.

Now, if you asked her, she'd say I don't mind doing it at all.

It is definitely a sacrifice.

It's a sacrifice of time, sacrifice of money.

It's a sacrifice of just the hassle of having to be in this kitchen all day.

And yet she doesn't mind at all because the people she's doing it for.

She wants to communicate to them you are worth this to me, by the way.

And God wants us to say God, you are worth this to me.

I'm not going to have my parents tithe for me.

That doesn't make any sense.

Hey, can somebody just tithe for me?

What?

Why would you do that?

That makes it not mean anything.

David said I'm not going to give him something that costs me nothing.

And so, when we give guys, the point is to evaluate the heart and say, jesus, just again, I'm going to review all that you've done for me, all the places we've been together, and I don't need to do this.

I know that I'm not justified because I do this, but I just want you to know you are worth absolutely this and everything else, but I'm here to demonstrate it to you, lord, because Jesus knows we cling tightly to money.

Man, okay, I can say that this is really important.

I can say, jesus, I just want whatever you want, except not this, though.

And Jesus is like well, do you trust me, though?

Because I feel like you're not trusting me, because you think you have to hold onto that and I'm not going to take care of you.

And, by the way, here's the gospel again God didn't save you with something that cost him nothing.

He saved you with the most costly thing in the universe the blood of his son.

He spared no expense.

He said yeah, I want to show them this is how much.

This is how much I love them.

This is why they're worth.

This is how worth it to me they are so faith, thanks and reverence.

We learned about giving structure, temple and the poor.

We learned about giving something of value and sincerely.

Now we learn first to God is wisdom, not law.

We're going into the book of wisdom Proverbs, proverbs.

I don't know if we've talked much about genres recently.

If you've been through the how to Study the Bible class at the Grove, you know this.

But there's different genres in the Bible.

Some of it's history, some of it's poems, some of them are letters, and it's important when we're studying the Bible to know what genre are we talking about here, because it affects how you're supposed to read it.

When we read the book of Proverbs, this is the Lord saying hey, this is wisdom, this is a principle for life, this is how the world works.

There may be an occasionally, a time, it doesn't work this way, but it's generally going to work this way and this is what he says honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.

Giving is a principle, not a law.

It predated the law and we're going to see it goes much way past the law, but the fact that it's in listen to this, it's really important, because you're going to have sometimes that you're going to argue with yourself and I get the argument.

You're going to hear other people argue with you.

Hey, man, you don't have to give now because you're not under the law.

You're absolutely not under the law.

You're totally not under the law.

You're not justified by anything you do.

You being good does not give you status with God, but it's a principle in the universe.

God says honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all you produce.

And here's why it's significant, guys, because there's not anything else in Proverbs from the law.

He's not saying, by the way, it's always wisdom to make sure your tassels are just the right length.

It's always wisdom to wear the right colors in your robe.

None of that is in Proverbs.

Proverbs is about being smart, benefiting from what God tells you to do, benefiting from God says.

This is the way the world works.

You would be wise to cooperate with it, because the same way that it goes well, it will also go bad if you ignore it.

But why?

Why does God do this?

To train our hearts.

God does this because he knows becoming is more important than what we do.

What is God trying to do?

He's trying, my friends, god's not trying to get your money.

He doesn't need your money.

What is he trying to do?

He's trying to create sons and daughters whose hearts became atrophied but now they're being renewed by the spirit, day by day, and he's trying to get them to do what Jesus would do.

What would Jesus do?

He would always be generous.

He would just always be generous.

He would know I don't disobey my father's ways in the universe.

I just cooperate with them.

God is training sons.

Check this out.

Here's another principle I just want you to see.

Principles are all over the Bible and they're not like.

It's not, it's not necessarily command for it to be a principle that God wants you to do.

Okay, give, and it will be given to you.

Luke 6, 38, given it will be given to you A good measure.

Press down, shaken together, running over and poured into your lap.

The measure you use.

It will be measured back to you.

Meaning God is saying hey, whatever size bucket you give out, I'm going to fill that thing, I'm going to smash it down more and pour more in.

You guys have had you probably opened up a bag of chips and there's like a quarter of chips left in there.

The rest was air.

God says I don't like that.

I'm not trying to choose you, baby.

I will pour more and more chips in until the chips are running over you give.

I'm going to give so much more back to you, but that's a principle of the universe.

That's how the universe works.

I made it this way.

Here's another one.

Remember this 2 Corinthians 9, 6.

Remember this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.

That's a principle.

Yo, he's just saying this is my planet, this is how it works in my kingdom.

This is how I treat my people, and whoever sows will also reap generously.

For each of you should give what you've decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

God loves a cheerful giver, but you shouldn't give reluctantly.

What does that mean?

It means, first and foremost, the church shouldn't hammer you.

You should never be in a church where they're hammering giving all the time.

You should never feel bad about it.

That is never my heart for you to feel bad.

At the same time, we should grow in our cheer about giving to our Heavenly Father, who loves us and does so much for us.

When I was a kid, if I had a little bad attitude, my mom would say, hey, cheer up.

She didn't say hey, be authentically complaining, be mad that mom's telling you what to do.

No, she said, hey, chin up, dude.

Come on, what are you doing?

You got to decide to cheer up.

Carter and guys, let's hear from God.

Yeah, I don't want you to give under compulsion, but cheer up, because I like when you give with a good attitude, not like someone's forcing you to do something you don't want to do, it would be wisdom.

To live like.

This is how the world works.

Here's some more things that are working in the world that I'm sorry.

There's nothing you can do about it.

You can't change it.

Okay, heat rises, it just does, I'm sorry.

Now, if you get to the point this winter and you're upstairs and you're like, oh, why is the heat rising this time?

And it's going to be kind of a silly question.

Really, bro, it always rises.

That's how it works here.

Heat rises.

Why are you thinking it's going to behave differently now?

It's always done that.

Here's another one you can't please everybody.

Now we hear that we're like we instantly know that's true.

Yeah, that's right, you can't.

You can't please everybody, and yet as soon as you start to believe well, maybe this time, though, I can actually please everybody what are you doing?

You're not cooperating with the way God built the world.

It just doesn't work that way.

And when we say I'm going to withhold, but still expect God to bless more and more my friends, I'm sorry, I don't care what you do, I'm just telling you it's not going to work, any more than heat's going to just not rise.

It's just not going to work.

And the fact that it's in Proverbs is the clue.

This is not just a law, this is a principle for all wise people.

And if it is a principle, it's not even just what Abraham did.

It's not even just what Noah did.

It's not just like wow, that was pretty cool.

I'm going to give God a hand clap and I'm going to offer him something.

No, it's God first.

What did he say?

That's what it said Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all you produce.

That means you put God in first, and that's radical.

That means I'm saying, okay, I've got all this stuff.

And most people, this is what they do.

I'm going to wait and see what's left over and if God's been good to me, then I'll give him whatever's left over and that's how I'll know that he was good, that there's leftover stuff.

No, that's not what the Proverbs are saying.

Anyway, in this, god is revealing to us put God first and then see what he can do with the rest.

That's what God asks us to do.

My friend, I love you exactly where you are.

I don't really care where you are spiritually.

You're on your own doggone journey.

I'm just here to teach you what God's word says.

That's what it says.

You are free.

You're free to do whatever you want.

Here's the fifth era.

Okay, we said faith, thanks and reverence.

That's appropriate for giving.

We're to consider structure, temple and the poor.

That's appropriate for giving Something of value.

Sincerely, yes, absolutely.

First to God is wisdom, not law.

Awesome, generous thing you taught us Jesus, thank you.

Here's the final one.

All to God is proof of love.

All to God is proof of love, and I'm going to show you that in scriptures.

God is proof of love and I'm going to show you that in scriptures In the New Testament era.

This is the time after Jesus, we see more fully what God is after.

He's after mature sons and daughters.

That means believers that act like grown-up believers, not baby believers.

And they act like grown-up believers by doing what?

By taking care of other people.

A sign in my house that you've really grown up is when I put you in charge of taking care of other people.

A sign in my house that you've really grown up is when I put you in charge of taking care of other family members.

When a kid is that age, you're gonna watch them.

I'm putting a lot more weight on them and saying I trust you.

You've demonstrated maturity and what you get to do with that maturity is you get to take care of other people.

You don't just get more gadgets, you don't just get more privileges.

You get to take care of other people.

You don't just get more gadgets, you don't just get more privileges.

You get more responsibilities, because you're mine.

You get to take care of other people.

But since you excel in everything in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in, you see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

Paul is talking to the Corinthians.

He's saying hey, these Macedonian Christians whole other story but they're really poor, they're poorer than you and they gave to this special offering.

And, guys, I want to see you, paul says, as their coach, as their pastor.

He's saying I want to see you guys live up to the occasion.

Man, they were begging to give more and they can't.

You could still give more.

And I'm asking you to listen to what he says.

I'm not commanding you.

I love it.

I'm not commanding you.

Is it new Testamental?

Yes, I'm not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others.

It's not a command, but it is a test.

It's not a command, but it is a test.

He's not saying look you, corinthians, this is exactly how much you have to do.

He says, guys, I want you to give everything you got earnestly.

I want you to excel.

You're great Christians in these areas.

Like you're all grown up, except this giving area.

You're like Peter Pan was giving what's going on there?

It's time to grow up.

I want you to grow up, and growing up means taking care of others.

And and then he gives the why.

The why is, for you know, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you, through his poverty, might become rich he's after.

I want you to look like Jesus when you do stuff on earth, because that was God's whole point of ever commanding you to give anything was so that you would be more like the generous one Jesus, who always gives everything, even his last drop of blood.

I want you to look like what you're supposed to look like, and that's not him being hard on us In the fall.

Often my family and I go to apple holler.

We go, we walk around, pick apples.

Let's pretend that you're at apple holler and you come up to a tree and they say it's an apple tree but there's no apples on it.

And you ask one of the people there hey, what about this tree?

It doesn't seem to have any apples.

They're like yeah, I don't know why it's an apple tree but it doesn't give any apples.

It never has.

I don't think it ever will.

Hopefully, you'd probably be a little confused.

You'd be like that's weird.

Are you sure that's an apple tree for us, if we're followers of Christ, is he wants to say, are you sure they're a follower of me?

Because Jesus is generous.

Jesus doesn't mind thanking God, he doesn't mind reverencing God, he doesn't mind doing things with structure, in order.

He doesn't mind telling God you are worth this.

That's what little baby Jesus's are supposed to do.

That's what I'm hoping you do.

And, guys, god didn't get you just so you could lay eggs.

He didn't get you just so you would be generous.

He came after you because he loves you, but part of one of his end ideas was and they will become little mini Jesuses everywhere on my planet, doing what the son of God would do, my planet doing what the son of God would do.

The fullest expression of giving is voluntary, generous, sacrificial.

I'm going to do it because God asks me to, not because I'm arm wrestled into it.

Jesus gave everything for you personally and for me personally, to give you everything that he has in heaven.

What does he want us to remember?

You are not all that there is and what you have is not from you.

Others matter.

It matters that other people can find me.

Listen to the spirit of God.

It matters that other people can find me.

It matters that you support what I'm doing on planet earth.

You can't trust your heart to not just be mechanical and give out of a habit, but not be drifting in your heart away from him.

So occasionally you got to do something that you've never done for Christ before just to keep it fresh.

He says I care more about who you're becoming to what you do on any particular day.

And the mark of a mature Christian mark of an apple tree is apples, and the mark of a mature Christian is they're generous.

That's who they are and that's who they're becoming.

I don't know where this hits for you guys.

I hope whatever it does, it draws you into personal seeking of Jesus and you say Jesus, my life is yours, I am yours.

Whatever you want me to do next, I'm down.

In fact, I'm even asking you to give me a heart to do it, if you will.

I got one more application for you and then we're gonna pray.

Some of you know this so well and you're afraid if you say anything about it.

You're gonna look like you're boasting because you know that, like this giving thing is real, that thing in Proverbs that is real.

You've seen it Absolutely.

And you're with people sometimes and it comes up and you're like I'm afraid I'm going to lose my reward if I say anything about this.

Can I just encourage you I think you're good here.

I'm encouraging you to say something because it helps people grow up.

We know you're not saying because you're all that and a bag of chips.

You're saying it because it's good to testify to people.

Hey, just so you know.

I know you're thinking about this.

I know that you mentioned that was hard for you.

We were in the group the other night.

I just want you to know.

I'm telling you, I've seen this happen.

Let me tell you some of the stories.

I would encourage you to take that responsibility as an older brother or sister to help them not only be blessed more but become more of who they're supposed to be.

Let's pray Jesus.

What could we ever give?

Nothing, there's nothing we could bring you that you didn't give us.

There's nothing we could bring you that is worth, worthy of you.

And yet we just bring you what we have.

We bring you our lives.

We commit ourselves to you and we say God, you can have the whole thing.

Whatever you want is for you.

You gave it all for us.

We give all of us back to you.

Lord.

In the midst of that, we know that it's not what we give to you that makes us right with you.

We know it is only the blood of Jesus.

It is your mercy to cover us when we could not cover ourselves.

God, I pray for this team of Christians in this room and watching online and listening later on.

We pray that you'd pump up the generosity.

We pray that you'd put it in our spirit.

We pray that you'd sanctify us to the place where we are experiencing radical blessing of God, because we are realizing it actually is more blessed Just like you said, it's more blessed to give than to receive.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.

If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out Fierce Church.

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