Pursuit: Trivial to Intentional - Pursuit Requires Investment with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you in.

I want to welcome everyone who's joining us online.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

I'm so glad that you guys joined us today.

We are in the seventh and final week of our pursuit series, where we have been going verse by verse through the entire letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church that he had started in Philippi almost 2,000 years ago.

We find this letter in the Christian scriptures, or what we often call the New Testament.

And the reason that we have put so many weeks and so much time into studying this letter is because we know that everyone is pursuing something with their life.

And we start with the belief that God created you to pursue things that matter, things that will bring actual meaning and fulfillment to your life, things that will help you live out your God-given purpose, because God did create you on purpose and with purpose.

In fact, the very first book of the Bible reveals that we were made in the image of God, which, as image-bearers of the divine, should tell us we have some work to do, and that work should lead to significant impact in the world around us.

At the same time, it's true in our culture today that many people spend enormous amounts of energy and effort and time pursuing things that simply don't matter.

We're calling these trivial pursuits, and trivial just means of little importance or value.

In other words, you're investing your life into building these things that bring really no success in this life, and more importantly, no success in the life to come, which is your eternal life.

And so we're looking to the letter that Paul wrote to the Philippians, and over these seven weeks, we're pulling out seven keys to proper pursuit, how to orient your life to something that really matters both now and in eternity.

We've learned a lot over the last six weeks.

If you've missed any of those weeks and you want to get caught up, you can go to youtube.com/slash metachurch this week.

We're gonna wrap up the letter to the Philippians, and we're gonna find out our last key to pursuing the life that God created us to live.

But first, would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you and we thank you for loving us.

Holy Spirit, we thank you for inspiring the words of this letter to the Philippians so many years ago and for how it is still just as applicable in our life today.

God, I ask that you would just put an umbrella of grace over this service.

That you'd prepare our hearts and our minds, that we would humble ourselves under your word.

God, I thank you for MetaCurch.

I thank you for those who are here or watching online who do not yet believe in you.

God, I pray that you would show them they belong in this movement, that they would continue coming and wrestling through these things, that they would be loved here.

We give you all of the praise and all of the glory.

We pray it all in Jesus' name, and everyone who's ready to get going say, Amen.

Amen.

Let's get to our text first.

We're in Philippians 4, we left off on verse 10.

Paul writes, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly because once again you renewed your care for me.

You were, in fact, concerned about me, but lacked the opportunity to show it.

I don't say this out of need, for I've learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself.

I know how to make do with little, and I know how to make do with a lot.

In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret to being content.

Whether well-fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need, I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.

Still, you did well by partnering with me in my hardship.

And you, Philippians, know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you alone.

For even in Thessalonica you sent gifts for my needs several times.

Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that is increasing to your account.

But I've received everything in full, I have an abundance, I'm fully supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you provided, a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.

And my God, here's a promise for you, and my God will supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Now, to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever, amen.

Greet every saint in Christ Jesus.

The brothers who are with me send your greetings.

All the saints send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar's household.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

That concludes Paul's letter to the Philippians.

I want to remind you of a little bit of context, especially for those of you who weren't here earlier in the series.

Paul went and started the church in Philippi on one of his missionary journeys, but now he is imprisoned in Rome.

He is unable to go back and visit them.

And the Philippians gathered together a large, generous financial contribution.

A man named Epaphroditus took that contribution, risked his life to bring it to Paul.

While he was with Paul, Paul wrote the words to this letter that we have in our New Testament, and Epaphroditus brought it back to the church in Philippi.

If you were here in week one, the ending of the letter sounds a lot like the very beginning of the letter.

In fact, Paul is bookending this letter with gratitude.

Let me remind you, in Philippians chapter 1, verse 3, he says, I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

Philippians 1:3

We have this letter in our Bibles, specifically because the Philippians gathered together a large financial gift and were going to do whatever it took to get that to Paul.

It's why Paul calls them partners.

It is why the entire letter from Paul overflows with his love for them.

It's why the Philippians are such a dynamic and unique church that Paul even brags about them to the other churches.

I told you this whole series, the Philippians, this powerful, dynamic group, this movement of people, they remind me of Metachurch, where every time you are challenged to take steps and take action, you respond in massive ways.

Now, this letter starts and ends with and is catalyzed by a financial offering.

And so for us to be true to the text, there is no way around the fact that we have to talk about giving.

Now, wait a second, because as soon as money gets brought up in church, all the amens dry up really, really fast, you know?

The frowns start setting in.

And so let me give a little bit of context for you.

I know there is a percentage of people, not everyone, but a percentage of people who do not like talking about money in church.

I thought I might get an amen.

That's fine.

There are a couple reasons for this.

One reason is that historically, many, many, many church leaders have abused what scripture actually teaches and have led people astray in the area of generosity.

And the two broad extremes of this would be like the fake prosperity preachers who tell you, you know, if you just sow a seed into my ministry, right here, then you'll drive the car you want, and the cancer will go away, and your kids will start behaving, and you'll live in that mansion and health, wealth, and prosperity.

Not only is that not in scripture, it is the opposite of what scripture uh actually teaches, which if you follow Jesus, you gotta pick up a cross and deny yourself, okay?

So a lot of people have been hurt by that.

On the other side of the spectrum are preachers who tell you that your salvation and your favor with God hinges or is dangling in between whether or not you give your full tithe.

And so they have used fear and they have used manipulation and they have used guilt to try and squeeze a few more dollars out of your wallet.

And you need to know that that is an abuse of scripture as well.

As a matter of fact, scripture reveals that God is love and that perfect love drives out fear.

Which means if someone is using fear to try and get generosity out of you, then they are trying to get a biblical principle out of you through unbiblical means.

You see, when you hear a true biblical call to generosity, you should not leave burdened.

You should leave excited.

You should not leave under obligation, you should leave understanding an opportunity.

There is another category, and this category would be people who have kind of just self-actualized a value that church should not talk about money.

You didn't really get it out of scripture, it's just a value that you carry.

And I want to challenge you on that, because that's not a biblical concept either.

As a matter of fact, if that's your value, you would have had a very hard time going and listening to Jesus preach any of his sermons because he often talked about money.

In fact, it's one of the topics he covers more than any other topic.

And so I'm just asking for us to engage with what the text actually says today.

And what I think it will do is it will bring clarity to what scripture actually teaches.

I think it will empower you to engage in what generosity actually means, and it will give you a new perspective on why we call for generosity in the first place.

Out of all the seven weeks, this is the week where my mind was blown the most by one verse that I cannot wait to get to.

But I'm gonna ask for you to just kind of lean in and follow me through the end on this, because every piece of the context is important, and your money's important.

And money is one of the ultimate metrics for a whole host of things in our walk with Christ.

Money is a metric for our emotional and even our spiritual health and maturity.

How we think about our money, how we use our money, how we spend or don't spend our money.

Are we healthy with our finances?

Do we trust God?

See, we live in a very affluent culture here in America, in the West more broadly.

We have more resources than any other people at any other time in human history, and our finances lead to trivial investments because we are in a consumer culture.

Where are my fellow millennials who woke up and watched Saturday morning cartoons growing up, right?

That was that was the jam, Gen Z, y'all don't know about that, you know, you just stream everything anytime you want.

We had to wake up early to get our cartoons on Saturday morning.

I don't know what kind of punishment this was, but we didn't understand as kids that what paid for those cartoons were the commercial breaks in between them.

That paid for the cartoons, which means the cartoon is a conduit to make you a consumer.

And the toys they would market at us on Saturday morning, those were million and billion dollar companies who would spend millions of dollars to bring in psychologists so they could create a commercial that would make you discontent and beg your parents until you absolutely wore them down to dust and they bought that piece of crap toy that you didn't need, but you thought you did, because you woke up to watch some cartoons, right?

And it's not like that's gotten better, it's just gotten more sophisticated.

We had one of those things the other day where we'd been talking about something, and then a few hours later we got an ad for it on Instagram.

And so we were all at lunch, me and Katie and the kids, and we were like, let's see if we can trick it, like if we can get it to give us an ad.

And so we put the phone in the middle of the table and we started talking about electric scooters.

Now we don't ride electric scooters, we don't have electric scooters, we don't even want electric scooters.

We just picked something random that none of us would have searched for before, and we held the phone there, and we tried to like make sure Siri or whoever was listening to us, you know, and and we just said like the word electric scooter like 30 times, right?

And then we waited a few minutes, and then we opened the phone and we started scrolling.

No electric scooters, and I was a little bit disappointed.

Well, right before that, when the phone was still in my pocket, we were watching boxing at the restaurant, and all of a sudden, when my son had said, Oh yeah, bet if I get some boxing gloves on, I can take all y'all out.

There were boxing gloves being sold to me on Instagram.

It almost knew that I was trying to trick it and hurt me when it was still in my pocket.

They're coming for your neck, is what I am saying.

And it works.

It works.

It's why people spend millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars on this kind of advertising to drive discontentment so you will invest more and more of your resources into things that are trivial.

No importance, no value, they're not building anything in this life, they're not building the kingdom of God, they're not storing up treasure in heaven, they're actually diverting resources away from the unique purpose that God has placed on your life.

The problem is that soon our desire for trivial things puts us in such a financial bind that we are incapable of spending our time or energy to invest in a life lived on purpose and with purpose.

And this is why Paul starts where he starts.

He's gonna talk to them about the offering that they gave, but first he needs them to know exactly how he feels about it.

So in verse 10, he says, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly because once again you renewed your care for me.

You were in fact concerned about me, but lacked the opportunity to show it.

He's acknowledging you gave me this very generous financial offering for Paul, even in prison, to continue building the ministry and spreading the good news of Jesus.

But then he says this, I don't say this out of need.

For I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself.

I know how to make do with little and I know how to make do with a lot.

In any and all circumstances, I've learned the secret of being content, whether well-fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need.

Paul is gonna directly address the money they sent him, but first, he needs them to know that his love for them and his service to them and his heart for their lives and his ministry of the gospel is not contingent on what they give.

And so I need you to hear me off script, very clearly, very directly.

I'm gonna lay out what Philippians says about investing financially in the movement of Jesus.

I'm going to ask you to challenge yourself to participate in that as a part of this movement.

But before I do that, hear me clearly.

Anyone can come to Metachurch and be fed for free.

You need to know that.

You do not have to give to come here, you do not have to give to serve here, you do not have to give for us to place you on a life team that will change your life, you don't have to give to get baptized here, you don't have to give to get a meeting with a pastor here, you don't have to give to spiritually develop here, you don't have to give to do anything here.

You can come and be fed for free.

This is not a message of your obligations, and there are no rights or duties attached to it.

This is not a country club.

We will not kick you out of the club and revoke your membership if you do not pay your dues, okay?

This is the movement of Jesus on the earth.

We have a big vision that's going to require some financial investment, but there have been people for five and a half years now who have been sowing seeds into this ministry.

We've baptized 500 people in this ministry.

Marriages are being healed in this ministry.

And if you're just showing up and wrestling with God and don't even know what you believe, and the one thing that would keep you from coming is whether or not you were giving, don't give, keep coming.

You can be fed for free here.

If I've made that point, say, we get it.

Okay, good, I can move on then.

Paul knows how to be content with whatever God provides.

He says, I know how to make do with little, and I know how to make do with a lot.

This is so powerful.

And he's pointing at contentment.

And every single marketing strategy that you're being marketed to every moment you're awake, every marketing strategy has one thing in common, and that is to get you a feeling of discontent.

There was a pivotal moment in my own ministry, and it happened during COVID.

It started a little bit before the pandemic and when we had to shut down services for a while.

But I remember when I became the lead pastor and we planted Metachurch.

And if you don't know, we were meeting in the 151 saloon.

We were meeting in a bar.

And I would walk in every Sunday, we just rented it on Sundays and be like, this is awesome.

Doing Sunday service in a bar.

Praise God, man.

He he gave us this lease, you know, this is so cool.

We were growing so fast, really outgrowing the bar.

Then we did outgrow the bar, but we were still in the bar.

And I became deeply discontent.

And I would walk in the bar that like 18 months earlier, I was like, praise God from whom all blessings flow, you know.

And I would walk in like I hate this place.

I hate the smell, I hate the sticky floors, I hate the parking, I hate the kids' spaces too small.

I just I became very discontent.

And if you were around back then, uh, we were working towards getting a permanent location, and we needed to, we had outgrown the bar, and my discontent with where I was put undue pressure on where we were going.

And I remember this discontent.

You know what it feels like to really be discontent, the emotions that it brings, and laying awake at night and being frustrated and wanting things to change.

And I remember the Holy Spirit really impressing on my heart what if it doesn't change?

What if you're in the bar for the next 20 years?

What if you can't get a building?

And that caused a reckoning in my spirit.

It brought me back to the mission.

Like, what are we actually doing?

What is the church?

What do I believe about that?

What do I believe about the gospel?

And I had to repent.

I had to let the staff know that I'd been thinking about this wrong.

It had been driving negative emotions, and I'm sure that had seeped into the staff culture.

I let them know if God has us in this bar for the next 20, 30, or 40 years, then we're just going to praise God for what He's given us.

We're gonna learn what to do with little so that God can maybe someday trust us with a lot.

And it wasn't long after that that this building we had put so much time and energy and effort into fell apart.

And I mean, really fell apart.

And if God hadn't allowed for this dynamic shift from discontent to content, I think it would have wrecked me.

But instead, we kept our tens up and we kept looking.

And very soon after, this building came up.

And God delivered us this building miraculously.

And I think, I think I could have missed the miracle if I would have stayed discontent.

Here's what he says.

He says, I know how to make do with little, I know how to make do with a lot.

In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being content.

Whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need, I've learned the secret of being content.

Let me tell you something.

If you learn this secret and you apply it to your life, nothing can stop you from pursuing the life that God created you to live.

Every trivial investment that you make, every way you waste your money, every way you waste your time, all the waste of energy trying to keep up with other people, impulse purchases, purchases to numb the pain, uh, buying things, this is like the oldest saying, you know?

It's like we buy stuff we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't even like, right?

We do that all the time.

It's it's the definition of trivial, and it's driven by discontentment.

What if we could learn the secret of being content?

He tells us what it is in verse 13.

I've learned the secret of being content.

You ready for it?

I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.

This confuses us because we do this thing sometimes in Christian culture where we pull a verse out of its context and then we give it its own meaning.

Philippians 4.13 is one of the most famous verses, probably in the West.

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

Famously, Steph Curry put this on his early apparel and his early shoes.

Philippians 4.13, I can do all things.

And I hate to put Steph Curry on blast, I really do hate to do that, but he actually copied that from me.

So I did that first.

I hate to do him like that, but I'm older.

Him, and I had that on my high school letterman jacket, okay?

I had Philippians 4 13 on my letterman jacket, and here's what I thought it meant.

Bet I can drop 20 a game through Christ who gives me strength.

Bet I can squat 405 through him who strengthens me, you know?

We have pulled this out of scripture and we have turned it into a self-help mantra.

Bet I can make my first million through him who gives me strength.

Watch me pull these baddies through him who gives me strength.

Like, we have isolated this from its actual context, and we think it means that we can succeed in massive ways in life because Christ will give us the strength to do so.

That's not what it means.

Philippians 4.13 is the answer to what is the secret of contentment.

Philippians 4.13 isn't a self-help mantra to get you to your next milestone climbing the ladder of success.

Philippians 4.13 is what you need when you are hungry.

It's what you need when you're in the drought of life, in the valleys of life.

It's not just a proclamation when you hold up the championship trophy.

It's when you don't win a single game and can still be content with the life that God gave you.

It's not just something to announce on your happiest day when you get married.

It's what you need a year and a half later when you're thinking about divorce.

The secret to being content is fully trusting not in your own strength, but in the strength of Christ.

The secret to contentment, which is the secret to using your resources to proper pursuit, which is the secret to living a life on purpose and with purpose, is full, unfiltered, unflinching faith that Jesus will take care of you no matter what.

And when you believe that, and when you apply that to your life, and when you pray, like we talked about last week, you pray and you petition, but not to get your way, you don't pray to try to change God, you pray so that God can begin to change you because you trust him that much, then whether you have little or whether you have plenty, you will be content.

And Paul needed them to know this.

I so appreciate your offerings, but this is the movement of Jesus, and anyone can be fed for free.

I need you to know that.

If one person doesn't come back to Metachurch because I'm gonna ask you to give financially, the only conclusion I can come to is you forgot my rant five minutes ago.

Because we want you here, there will be no shade, there will be no guilt, you belong here.

And so that is the perspective.

And now Paul is going to give a new truth about investment.

What does it really mean?

What does it really look like?

What does it really do?

So he goes on in verse 14, he says, Still, you did well by partnering with me in my hardship.

After all that, look, I don't need it, I'm not desiring it, I know how to be content no matter what.

If the money didn't come in, I'd be okay, because I've got God, I'm relying on his strength, but still, you did well by partnering with me in my hardship.

And you Philippians know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you alone.

Even in Thessalonica, you sent gifts for my need several times.

We're starting to see why Paul has so much love for the Philippians.

At one point, out of all the churches that Paul had started, they were the only ones contributing to the spread of the gospel.

The only ones.

See, there's power in one person deciding to invest in the things of God.

I've said all series long, this is my opinion, but I do believe that Paul is the most impactful human in history other than Jesus.

And the Philippians were solely funding his work.

Which practically means that the normal, everyday, ordinary, jacked up people in the Philippian church, people just like me and you in this church today, are also some of the most impactful people in human history because they were giving the means for Paul to do the mission.

That's not what I think, that's what Paul goes on to say.

This verse changes things for how we view generosity.

He says this not that I seek the gift, but I seek the prophet.

In other words, I don't actually care about the money.

The goal is not to get 10K in the offering plate each week.

The money itself is not the goal.

The gift is only as good as the outcome that it is used for.

If Paul took all that money from the Philippians and walked over to the ocean and dumped all of it into the water, it would literally be worthless.

It's not the money itself, it's what comes out of it.

You see, it says, I don't seek the gift, I seek the profit.

That Greek word also means the fruit of it or the produce of it.

It's not just what you sow into the ministry, it is the harvest that accumulates and those willing to go out and do the work to reap that harvest.

It is about the outcome, and you need to know this about MetaCurch.

We are not trying to grow a bottom line here, okay?

This is not a financial investment firm, all right?

There are churches sitting with millions and millions of dollars, and they have most of those millions in money markets, and those millions are making millions, and they don't have any conviction of what to do with it.

At MetaCurch, I can be kind of hard to work with in this sense, because I do steward, I lead us to steward well, because you never know, and there could be a rainy day, and and you know, all those wise principles of scripture.

Other than that, my goal when you give is to turn that money around as quickly and dynamically as humanly possible to reach more and more people for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is our goal here.

Churches should be stewarding the money that is given as if Jesus could actually come back tomorrow, because he could.

Jesus told a parable about a guy.

He made all kinds of money out of nowhere.

And what he did with it, instead of being generous towards God, is he just built bigger barns to hold his resources.

And the Lord came to him that night and said, Even tonight your life will end.

And all he has to show for it is sacks of money that will go to no one and will help nothing.

He says, I don't seek the gift, I seek the profit, the fruit, the produce.

And we're seeing it at Meta.

Five years and almost 500 baptisms, 498, if you want the number, in five years.

God is moving here.

We took 56th through 12th graders to camp this summer, where they experience God in a real and meaningful way.

We have dozens of those youth here every single Sunday night.

The world is after your children and they're here on Sunday evenings connecting with God.

Things are happening here.

I looked it up right before I came on stage.

We're eight weeks away from Metachurch Hilotus.

Eight weeks away.

That's the fruit.

Everyone who's ever given a dime here, that's the fruit.

That's the produce, that's the profit.

But somehow it even gets better.

Look at the rest of verse 17.

He says, Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that is increasing to your account.

If you don't have an eternal perspective, you don't even know how to read this verse.

This verse doesn't even make a lot of sense.

We understand this in investing.

You put into your 401k, you put into your mutual funds, and you hope to see a return to your account.

But the Philippians just gathered all their money up and sent it halfway across the known world and gave it to Paul, and they'll never never see a cent of that ever again.

And still he says, this is accruing to, I seek the prophet.

Paul says, not for my account, for yours.

If you were here in week two, we learned that pursuit requires an eternal perspective.

The daily recognition that this world is not your home, that you are living for the eternal kingdom of God, and that when this life ends, we will stand before Jesus and we'll give an account for the life that we've lived.

And maybe you've wondered what exactly that will look like as you review your life.

What verse 17 tells us is it will be more than just your direct action.

It will be more than your direct ministry involvement.

See, the power of financial generosity is every penny that you sow into the kingdom of God, whatever results from that, comes back to your account.

And someday you're gonna stand with Jesus and He's gonna show you.

And you won't even know the impact you have had on the earth until that moment.

That's how he designed it.

And so anyone who's given one penny to this movement here, when we open Helotus in eight weeks, life will be changed there.

People will be saved there, and they will be baptized there, and marriages will be healed there, and kids will find their confidence there, and addictions will be broken there.

And someday you'll stand in eternity and see that even though you didn't go to Helotus, and even though you weren't there in that meeting, and even though you weren't the one who directly shared the gospel with them, that that is credited to your account.

I seek not the gift, I seek the profit that is coming on your account, not temporarily here in this world, but reward that will last forever and ever because of your investment into the things of God.

That's how this works.

That's how God's economy functions, and that is not obligation on your head or guilt on your head.

It should be seen as incredible opportunity for making the most of your life.

This is how things actually function in the kingdom of God.

See, this brings us to our key, which is pursuit requires investment.

And pursuing building the kingdom of God through the local church requires our investment of our time, energy, and our finances.

But this is true across the board.

If you want to excel in your career, you're going to have to invest into the skill sets that you need.

If you're going to try to have the healthiest life that you can, you're going to have to invest into diet and exercise.

If you want a great marriage, you have to invest into time loving your spouse and learning how to interact with them.

Proper pursuit requires investment.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to step out of Philippians for just a second because I know there is tremendous hurt along the area of church giving.

And we've talked a little bit about where some of this might be rooted, but I want to pull back the proverbial curtain and show you the why behind the abuse of scripture that happens so frequently in the Western church.

I want to actually show you where this comes from.

And it starts with a misunderstanding of scripture.

What does the Bible actually say about giving?

Well, one of the earliest indicators that we were going on the wrong path in how we talked about giving was a misunderstanding of the tithe.

Now, a lot of you didn't grow up in church at all, but for those of you who did, you probably were taught that you give your tithe.

Every month, without missing, you give your tithe.

If you don't know what that is, tithe literally means tenth, which means every month you give one tenth or 10% of what you earn and you give it to God through the local church.

The majority of churches teach on the tithe, and they are incorrect.

If you actually look at what scripture says about biblical giving in the church, there is not one single time the church starts in Acts from Acts to Revelation.

And we have mostly letters from church leaders to their church.

No one is ever asked to give 10% to the church.

It does not happen in the New Testament.

Those of you who have been through the Academy, you have learned that the Old Testament and New Testament have real distinctions.

The Old Testament is written to a people, it's written to the nation of Israel.

The New Testament is primarily written to the church.

That's us.

That's a big distinction, which is why when anyone teaches on the tithe, they have to teach from the Old Testament.

And one of the most famous verses says this in Malachi 3, bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so there may be food in my house.

Test me in this way, says the Lord, and see if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out blessings for you without measure.

This is where prosperity teachers say, if you sow your tithe, then God will pour out so many blessings on you, you will not be able to contain it.

It will be like Oprah Show.

Everyone gets a car.

Like, you're not gonna be able to stop the flow of God's mercy, but you gotta give your 10%.

Now that's the prosperity side.

The guilt and damnation side comes in the verses before this.

The verses right before this say, Will a man rob God?

You rob God every time you do not bring the full tithe, and therefore you live under a curse.

Malachi is a book in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is written to the nation of Israel.

The nation of Israel did not have a representative democracy like we have in the United States.

It had a theocratic government, government by God.

All you have to do is read the Old Testament and you learn about the system of tithes.

You may be interested to know that the full tithe is not one tithe, it's three.

If you're good at math, you're up to 30% now.

It's actually not that cut and dry.

The first tithe was to fund the government.

The second tithe, second 10% that you gave every year, was to fund the national celebrations, a huge part of their culture.

The third tithe you gave every three years, and this was the social safety net.

It was to be used for the impoverished and the widows.

Which means if you do that math, every year, as a citizen of Israel, you would give 23 and one-third percent of your income to the government.

What does that sound like?

Taxes.

The tithe was the Old Testament system of taxes.

It played the same purpose, and that was the expectation.

Nowhere in the New Testament, the New Testament went from Israel out to the Gentile nations, non-Jewish.

They had their own government, they paid their own taxes, most of them to Rome.

And they were never, ever asked to give a tithe.

Let's rewind.

You have a curse if you don't give your tithe, you have immeasurable blessing if you do give your tithe.

This gives ammunition for people to use guilt, fear, and manipulation in your giving, as well as false promises of prosperity in your giving.

And all of it is a misuse of scripture, which has led to untold harm.

So if we're not mandated to give a tithe, 10%, like most of us, myself included, I grew up being taught that.

We're prescribed a posture.

It's not about what we give, it's about how we give.

Let me give you an example from the life of Jesus.

It says that Jesus looked up and he saw the rich dropping their offerings into the temple treasury.

He also saw a poor widow dropping in two tiny coins.

Truly I tell you, he said, this poor widow has put in more than all of them.

For all these people have put in gifts out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, has put in all she had to live on.

I'm telling you, God's economy works very different than any economic system you are aware of.

In God's economy, every penny that you sow into his movement will come back, however many lice it touch, whatever it leads to, whatever fruit, whatever it produces, it comes back to your account when it matters most on your entry into your eternal life.

In God's economy, if you are willing to give a sacrifice, even if it's small, you putting in three dollars truly out of sacrifice, God can do more with than people out of guilt, fear, or manipulation giving their full 10%.

There are all kinds of church consultants and they write all kinds of blogs and they make all kinds of YouTube videos, and they're you know wrong about most things.

But one thing they are right about, they did a huge survey, and what they found is that churches who teach the tithe and who pass an offering basket have significantly higher budgets per capita.

Significantly.

And that shouldn't be news to you because the most powerful way to get people to take action is fear.

And so it's convenient to teach on the tithe, and it's actually better for your bottom line.

And we teach against the tithe, not because we think it's necessarily the most effective strategy.

I really don't give a crap about that.

We teach against the tithe because I trust that if we do the right thing and believe the right thing and trust God for the right thing, He's going to give us everything we need and more.

So I want to walk you through, looking holistically at Scripture, some postures that we see.

And this is how we encourage you to think about your giving.

Okay, it's not an amount, it's a posture.

We say three things.

At Metachurch, we seek to give first.

And I mean that quite literally, because your money, Jesus said, where your treasure is, that's where your heart is.

Which means your money is a measurement of your priorities.

And so when I say first, and this is a discipline that Katie and I practice, when money comes in, when blessing comes in, the first thing we contribute to is the work of God through the local church.

Before we pay a bill, before we go out to eat, before we hit the movie theater, before we plan a vacation, the very first thing we're going to do is set God as a priority in our finances.

And so once you've decided what you can give, you give it first.

This is a practice that could be revolutionary for you.

We live in a world consumed with greed, and generosity is the antidote to greed.

You choose generosity as the first thing you do with your blessing.

We give first, we give sacrificially.

I can't tell you an amount because I don't know you.

10% may be the exact right amount for you, that's great, as long as you know it's not an obligation.

For some of you, you're very stressed financially.

You're right out of college, you've got lots of student loans.

We ask for you to give a sacrifice because sacrifice is scalable.

This is how I define it.

You're not gonna find this in a dictionary.

This is the Clayton Tyner definition.

I say a sacrifice is giving what you're comfortable giving, and then a little bit more.

And the little bit more will like cost you a few morning runs to Starbucks, or maybe a couple times eating out, or it's okay for it to cost us.

We are following a savior who sacrificed everything for us.

It's why we do it in the first place.

We give first and we give sacrificially, and last we give automatically.

We give in a way that the ministry can rely on it.

And so your sacrifice will determine your amount, and sacrifice is scalable.

You're gonna give it first, but automatically means that it always comes out, you're becoming a generous person, and you can actually automate it if you give online by making it recurring.

And then you know you're giving first, and you know you're giving a sacrifice.

Some people don't give to the church because they think all I can give is maybe 50 bucks a month.

I can stretch and give 50 bucks a month.

That's a drop in the bucket.

What is 50 bucks a month gonna do?

If 200 of the thousand people at MetaCurch start giving$50 a month, it's$10,000 a month.

This is why you're not alone.

This is why you're a part of a movement.

And let me tell you something anyone can participate.

If you can start your job.

Of generosity with a dollar a month, start.

That dollar is the gift that will produce the profit that comes back to your account.

We give first, we give sacrificially, and we give automatically.

My oldest son is about to be 20, lanes off at college at Texas AM, and he's a very bright kid, started a couple businesses already, and he's starting to make real money.

And so this summer we sat down and I helped him put a budget together.

And I focused on investment because he's at a stage where he can really prioritize that, and pursuit requires investment.

My ultimate goal as a dad is for my kids to live a life on purpose and with purpose.

So he's not quite 20, but we're opening his retirement account.

And he's not gonna be able to put much in it, but it will accrue interest to his account over time.

And even more importantly, we lined out what is a sacrifice for him to give back to the Lord.

Because more than anything, our success as parents will be having kids who can stand before Jesus and give a proper account of their life someday.

Pursuit requires investment, and your life was made for something great.

And here's a promise that Paul ends with.

He says, I've received everything in full, I have an abundance, I'm fully supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you provided, a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.

And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

In almost two decades of ministry, I have never met anyone who regretted their generosity towards the Lord.

It bonds you with him in a new and unique way, and it stores up treasure for you in heaven, where it matters the most.

God has done so much here at MetaCurch, and he has not done.

But if God calls you to generosity, no matter what a sacrifice looks like to you, I would encourage you to take that step, to begin giving first and sacrificially and automatically.

At the beginning of the years, we challenge ourselves to give an increase, to set a vision for our life because God has given us such a dynamic vision as a movement.

And I think together we will look back five years from now and ten years from now in awe of what God has done with a church that is not a wealthy church, but decided to be a generous movement.

Would you guys pray with me?

Right where you're at, you can bow your head and close your eyes.

There's nothing magic about that.

We just like to take some time at the end of service for reflection.

And I wonder where you're at in your journey of generosity.

I wonder what you are investing your time and energy and resources into, and if they are things that are trivial, are things that matter.

I wonder if there are areas in your life where you have grown discontent.

You simply are not fully trusting in the strength of the Lord, instead, relying on your own strength.

Maybe even in this still moment.

Ask him for a new perspective, to bring contentment to your life, to show you the path to investing in the things that will lead to a life on purpose and with purpose.

Before we close, and with everyone's heads bowed, I want to remind you that we follow the lead of Jesus.

Our goal is to be formed more and more into his image.

And Jesus showed us what ultimate sacrifice looks like.

If you're here today or you're watching online and you've never had a moment in time where you have put your faith in Jesus, what that means is you have yet to take the first step to proper pursuit.

If our goal as creation is to live out the purpose that God, our creator, placed inside of us, it starts with relationship with Him.

And scripture is crystal clear.

Relationship with God comes through faith in Jesus, believing that he is who he says he is, God in human flesh.

That he did what he said that he did.

And so if you're here and you've never taken that first step, putting your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you, right where you are in this moment of courage, to just lift your hand up.

By raising your hand, you are saying, Today I choose to believe in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Praise God.

Listen, for those who raised a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees and accepts your faith, which means your sins are forgiven.

Scripture says you are born again into God's family, and you've been given eternal life, which no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

I want to help you acknowledge that decision today through a simple prayer.

If you raised your hand, I want to ask you to pray this with me, and I'm gonna ask the believers in the room to pray this as well.

Let's pray this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you died for my sins, and that you rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and for giving my sins.

Let me pray over you, Jesus.

We give this all to you.

We thank you for new life coming into the room, for what you continue to do here at MetaCurch, and I pray we would invest our lives into things that matter because you've given us lives that matter.

We love you, we give you all the glory in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen, amen.

Give the Lord a hand.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.