Made To...Give Sacrificially 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.

I want to start by wishing all of the dads a very happy Father's Day.

Would you show some love to all of our fathers in the room?

If you're new with us, I'm so glad you joined us.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

I want to dive right into our key text today.

It's in Mark's Gospel.

This is one of four historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

In Mark 14, we read: while Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar, a very expensive perfume of pure nard, and she broke the jar and poured it on his head.

But some were expressing indignation to one another.

Why has this perfume been wasted?

For this perfume might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor, and they began to scold her.

And Jesus replied, Leave her alone.

Why are you bothering her?

She has done a noble thing for me.

You always have the poor with you, and you can do what is good for them whenever you want, but you do not always have me.

She has done what she could, she has anointed my body in advance for burial.

Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

I want to welcome you to week four of our Made Two series, where we are walking through the seven values that guide how we live that have helped form our movement since the very beginning of MetaCurch.

In week one, we saw that the church is not made to just be a place that needs together.

The church is the people we meet together in order to move together.

In week two, we saw the proper perspective to make sure that we are actually moving is to live with the end in mind.

Last week we saw what it really looks like to live and to love like Jesus.

You can get caught up if you've missed any of the series at youtube.com slash metachurch.

Today, we're moving on to our fourth value.

We're gonna see that we were made to give sacrificially.

We were made to give sacrificially.

One of the things I love about this series is our video team has put together a video for every week showing other members of our movement who are living out these values just like this video.

Hello, my name is Sunny, and this is my wife Paula, and we've been attending Meta for about two years now, right?

I've been to many churches where we just meet on Sundays.

Well, in Meta, it's different.

Like we meet throughout the week and we serve together.

It's amazing.

You don't have to put on your Sunday best, and you don't have to have this facade that you have it all together.

Like everybody's welcome.

We're all ordinary back-to-people, and so to me, Meta's just very option tough.

So giving is a tough topic, but it's something for me personally, it's something I'm very passionate about.

So when I look back over the years and I look at the giving, I see that there's a return that I get on the giving, and it's twofold.

Yeah, when it comes to giving, I know that it is a difficult topic, you know, and some people just think it's financial, but it's not just financial.

You give your time, your talents, and your treasures.

And I love that at Meta, not only are we challenged to give sacrificially and generously, but we're also, you know, challenged to give of our time.

Um, and it's just such an amazing feeling when you're able to bless the church or bless others and just see how God uses that.

I think giving is important first and foremost because scripture tells us to give.

Matthew 6, 19 tells us not to store up treasures here on earth in this life, but to store them up in heaven or in the eternity where they can't be destroyed.

What better investment can you find than something like that?

Yeah, y'all give it up for Paula and Sonny doing such a great job.

Uh Sonny is right, generosity is a difficult topic to address in church.

I think there's two reasons.

Uh, number one, kind of obviously, we live in a greed-saturated society.

Uh, we have more than anyone who's ever lived in human history, and even though we have more already, we want more than most people have throughout human history.

And so we stack up as much as we can, and we buy things that we can't afford with money that we don't have.

We live way above our means, which means we spend more money than we make.

That's the first reason it's difficult to talk about.

And then I think the church has to take ownership for why these feel like such difficult sermons when they're so clearly spelled out in scripture.

And it's because, and maybe this was your experience if you came up in church, giving was always talked about through the lens of force or coercion or manipulation, or God's gonna be angry with you or mad at you if you're not giving your full 10%, or maybe even your salvation was hung in the balance between you giving and not giving.

And all of that is very wrong and should be repented of.

And and uh we take a very different approach.

We start with the assumption, and meta church is a place for anyone.

So if you don't believe like we believe, you still belong here, but we do hold to the conviction that God exists here, and not just any God, the God of Scripture exists, which means he is a good God, and his preeminent value and characteristic is love, which means that all instructions that he gives us, gives us in scriptures, even the ones that are uncomfortable and even the ones we don't want to do, any instruction from a good, loving God in scripture is good for us if we are to follow it.

And the Bible talks a lot about generosity.

I also love what Paula pointed out in that video that generosity, while it certainly involves your finances, is far more than that.

You know, there are only a handful of things that are in our actual control that we can use and invest in this lifetime.

Things like our time, we get to determine how we use our time, our energy, our money, and our talent, the giftings that God has placed on your life.

And the way that most of the world is using their time, energy, money, and talent is to see them as assets that can build themselves up.

So, like, how can my time make me the happiest, or how can my money satisfy me the most?

How can I leverage my talent and my energy in order to grow my influence or my wealth or my status or to build my own kind of kingdom?

And there's certainly nothing wrong with building for your future or bettering yourself or investing for yourself and your family in the future, but if all that you have to invest in this world is ultimately spent only on yourself, if these resources are the means and you are the end, ultimately it will not satisfy and it will not fulfill you.

In the last 10 or 15 years, psychologists have discovered something that scripture has been talking about for about 4,000 years.

And that is that the more you think about yourself, the more miserable you become.

And as a matter of fact, you can see neurologically, psychologically, and emotionally that focusing on yourself is like exactly the same as being miserable.

The more you think about yourself, the more lonely you become because you are isolating yourself out in your mind from the rest of your community.

The more you think about yourself, the lonelier you become, the more depressed you become, and the more anxious you become because all of your hope and energy depends on you and you alone.

And so we think about ourselves when we build for ourselves and we use these assets for ourselves, and it only leaves us more lonely, more depressed, and more anxious.

If you do believe in God, Scripture tells us that He created us for good works, not just for ourselves, but for the world around us.

In Ephesians 2 10, it says, For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

Now, let me be very clear: the good works that he prepared for you to do are not how you work your way into relationship with God.

They are not how you work your way to heaven.

As a matter of fact, uh works can't get you there at all.

We are put back in relationship with God through faith alone.

These aren't works to save you, these are works to live the fullest, most audacious, complete, impactful, purposeful life that you could possibly live.

It's not to get you to heaven, it's to live in a way where you start seeing glimpses of heaven all around you.

The Ephesians 2.10 life will unlock something inside of you.

It's your actual created purpose.

But this requires something that is kind of a foreign concept for us in our culture of instant gratification.

This requires sacrifice.

True biblical generosity, living and giving generously requires sacrifice.

Giving things up now, giving desires up now, giving gratification up now in order to have an impact later.

This is very difficult to do, but the values we're discussing in this series will lead you to it.

When you fully understand that your assignment is to move together as an ambassador for Jesus, when you live with the end goal in mind, you get a proper perspective on your life and don't just live for today.

And when you really recognize the great love that Jesus has for you, then you will be ready to give sacrificially, to live generously, just like the woman in Mark chapter 14.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we are here pursuing you.

We trust you, we love you, and we're overwhelmed by your love for us.

We're humbled by the opportunity to come and be a part of what you're doing on the earth.

And you've asked us to live generous lives.

Often that is hard for us to put into action.

I pray today you'd bring some clarity so we can do just that.

We love you, Holy Spirit.

We believe you're here, you're moving.

Your deepest desire is to speak to us.

And I pray that we would be open to that today, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to learn how to give generously, say amen.

Amen.

Mark 14, um, this is situated shortly after Jesus came to Jerusalem for his very last Passover.

This story takes place just a couple days before Jesus in his death and resurrection.

As we recap the story in verse 3, it says, While Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar, a very expensive perfume of pure nard.

She broke the jar and poured it on his head.

But some were expressing indignation to one another.

Why has this perfume been wasted?

For this perfume might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor.

And they began to scold her.

This whole scene is very wild and it's very out of context for us.

All of scripture is.

It's 2,000 years ago on the other side of the world, through an Eastern viewpoint.

We have a hard time placing ourselves in these situations.

But I can guarantee you, had you been in Simon's house that evening, you would have been extremely uncomfortable.

Like, extremely uncomfortable.

First of all, the way that the woman is interacting with Jesus is breaking every kind of social norm.

For her to even approach him really didn't happen in that culture.

Women just didn't approach strange men, especially rabbis, much less touch them.

Even married couples usually wouldn't touch each other in public, much less a woman coming up to an unmarried rabbi and putting her hands on them.

People would have been so uncomfortable, like the most awkward moment of the office that you can imagine times 10, right?

Like this was so cringe for everybody in the moment.

And quickly, when they realize what she's doing, pouring out very expensive perfume on him, it moves from uncomfort into actual anger.

And yet, Jesus not only accepted this gesture as an offering of love, he actually protected her and defended her and then promised that her name would be famous all throughout the world, all throughout time.

And it's worth stopping to recognize that these ancient 2,000-year-old texts that we're reading right now, we are now on the other side of planet Earth in a land they didn't know existed when he wrote this, still talking about her today.

The very thing Jesus promised has actually come to pass.

And so, what can we learn from this short, kind of strange story about how to live generously in our own life?

And the first thing I think that we learn is that she gave in a way that just did not make sense.

And true biblical generosity often will not make sense to the people around you, and more than that, it often will not make sense even to yourself.

It says that she came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume.

Very expensive perfume.

So uh what are we talking about?

Are we talking like aqua de geol, you know?

Are we talking burberry?

Chanel number five.

I hope y'all appreciate how hard I work on these sermons.

I had to Google all of those, okay?

I'm not a cologne wearer.

Like, did she put down a couple Benjamins for this?

What's 300 denari, you know?

I'm trying to compute that.

It's really cool the fact that we have four gospels, these four accounts of the life of Jesus, because you'll see the different perspectives on the same stories.

And one of the other gospel writers, he kind of gives us a little bit of a clue.

He says that the jar of perfume was worth a year's wages.

An annual salary.

In San Antonio, the average annual salary is fifty, thousand dollars.

See, a lot of times we read the stories in scripture and we're very quick to try to put ourselves in the hero role, you know?

Like we would have been the woman, or we would have been Jesus, or we would have been the one disciple that like got mad at the other disciples for being mad at the woman.

But then you hear that she had a$50,000 jar of perfume and dumped all of it out on one guy in one moment.

And you're like, honestly, I kind of get it.

I understand their frustration.

Now, assuming they actually had good intentions and really wanted to give that money to the poor, which we know isn't true because in John's gospel it says that Judas was actually greedy and had already been stealing from the offerings that people were giving to Jesus, right?

So that wasn't really, but assuming, best intention, they wanted that 50 grand to go to the food bank and feed 350,000 families.

Even if that was their intention, like you kind of get it.

There's this visceral reaction we have to people wasting money.

Uh Conan O'Brien, back when he had the Tonight Show, uh, he kind of played on this very visceral reaction that people had.

He had been fired famously, they were bringing Jay Leno back in.

And so his last week of having this show, he did a recurring segment, and the segment was NBC fired me, so I'm gonna try to spend all of their money.

Like that was the whole joke of the segment.

So they did crazy things like they bought a Bugatti and then glued giant mouse ears and whiskers to it.

Uh they like rented the winner of the Kentucky Derby, not the jockey, the actual horse, and had him watch restricted Super Bowl footage, all these like hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Then the biggest one he did is he bought a massive skeleton from the Smithsonian Institution.

He had it holding a water hose that was spraying out beluga caviar, the most expensive food in the world, onto an original Picasso painting.

Sixty-five million dollar gag.

And everyone watched it and didn't know if they should laugh or cry, you know.

It's just this reaction.

It's the same thing.

If you remember in the dark night, the Jokery stole a mountain of money just to call people in and light it all on fire.

We just have this reaction to a waste of money.

And that was how the disciples were feeling.

They just couldn't really understand it.

It's like, who would do this?

50,000.

No telling what this woman had to sell.

Mortgage her house, give up from her future.

$50,000.

Who would do this?

And the answer is not very many people.

And at the same time, how many people were promised by Jesus himself that their story would be famous all around the world?

And the answer to that as well is not very many people.

And so perhaps there is this correlation that we should pay attention to.

Maybe this story is trying to point to something inside of us that blocks our generosity from actually expressing itself in a world that so desperately needs the people and the movement of Jesus to live generously.

We don't fully know this woman's backstory.

Most people do believe this is Mary, the sister of both Martha and Lazarus.

What we do know is that she experienced the love and the power of Jesus, and it moved her heart in a way that absolutely could not be stopped.

As believers, we are called to live in spirit and in truth.

And that means something like a careful balance between our heart and our head.

However, we live in a day that prioritizes reason, logic, and rationalization above all else.

Perhaps the first lesson we can take away is that the head's calculations often get in the way of the heart's convictions.

The head's calculations often get in the way of our heart's convictions.

Starting really around the enlightenment, the role of our emotions, the role certainly of the spirit, it was downplayed and degraded.

The people who were seen as the elites and the important people in society were people who knew how to use logic and reasoning and rationalization, all of this other stuff about your feelings.

You could put all of that aside because now we are enlightened.

Now we can put everything, all of our decisions and the way we navigate our life into a large equation and make it all make sense.

And so often God moves our hearts and our minds step into the way.

And we use our logic and we use our reason to keep ourselves from action.

Perhaps God has prompted your heart to serve Him in a certain way here at Metachurch.

God has really moved you and you felt it, man.

Like, you know, I should get involved in Medikids.

I should get in there.

What will it hurt?

I could volunteer, raise up the next generation of God-fearing leaders in the world.

I could do that.

And like the second you have that thought, your head just walks down to your heart and is like, really?

You're going to help in Medicaids.

You.

You know, you're not an educator.

You know nothing about kids.

You've been a Christian for four seconds.

The kids probably know more Bible verses than you.

You're going to help in Medikids.

And you're like, you know, you're probably right.

You get a prompting on your heart because there's a person at work and you know they're hurting and you know they're going through it.

And it's just a simple prompting.

Like, for you to give generously of your time and energy to go and to be a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on, someone who shows that they care.

It's like the second that prompting hits your heart, your head just kicks in the door.

Like, listen, uh, they don't want to be bothered, obviously.

You've been working with them for four years, you've never said a word to them, like you don't have any equity with them.

Just mind your own business.

God prompts your heart to start giving consistently to God through your church.

And immediately your mind is activated.

Like, I mean, we are going to Cancun next year, right?

So you gotta say, like, you're gonna give how how much?

Every you know, and our minds are so good, they're so good at rationalizing us out of the very things that God is calling us to do.

Like, no, I mean that's cool.

I mean, you you can give that money, heart.

If you want to, you just drive that 2006 hoop dee forever, I guess.

I don't know.

I mean, it's up to you, really.

So often God speaks to our hearts.

And to live in spirit and truth, I think often where we get this wrong as modern Western Christians is we see that as a competition between our hearts and our heads.

Like our mind and our spirit is in this grudge match, and so often in our world that values logic and reason, our minds win.

And what we're called to do as followers of Jesus is to have our minds and our hearts working in concert with one another, working in balance with one another.

When Paul is coming to this grand conclusion in the book of Romans about how to actually live the Christian life, he says to set your mind on things above, to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And when your mind is renewed, Paul says, you can discern.

And discernment is your mind and your heart working in concert with one another to know what the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God is.

What we see a lot in modern Western Christianity is you know, you come to a service and you get under the music, or maybe you get under the sermon, or in a great conversation, or you read a great book, or you open scripture and your heart is moved.

But our minds are set on the things of this earth.

And our minds often end up winning out.

Out over our hearts.

You know, they test personality, and one of the first things that they test is kind of this uh this line between thinkers and feelers.

That's one of the main things that you break down into personality-wise.

So who in here like knows that they're a feeler on the personality side?

Yeah.

Now, I I asked you, I already know, you're the only ones who cry ever during my sermons.

I already, and and then the ones who know that they're thinkers, you know, like you know, you know.

Um I'm a thinker.

Um I'm a pragmatist, actually.

I value logic and reason at an unhealthily high level.

And as I reflect back on my life, there are countless times that I have missed divine promptings because my logic and my reason have been gatekeepers holding me back from action that God has inspired my heart to.

This woman was inspired by Jesus.

It gripped her heart.

Her mind was set on things above, and nothing would stop her from moving.

There was a time where we were raising money to buy this building.

Uh, we were in a very precarious situation.

We rented our space, and uh, you know, we we don't often tell this story.

You guys knew that we were looking for a new building.

Um, during that process, that building uh kind of off the market was for sale.

Any day we could have been homeless.

I mean, the tension was high, buildings weren't working out for us, and and we were fundraising, you know, and we were asking people to make pledges, believing in God.

And I can promise you this: the moment that you set your heart towards doing something generous that God has asked for you to do, the enemies of God will throw every obstacle in your way that you can possibly imagine.

We were in that same season selling our house, and uh we had quite a bit of equity in it.

It was a very exciting season because uh what our realtor told us we were gonna make off the house, we were gonna finally pay off some of those two-day loans that have been killing us.

Uh, we were gonna have a little bit of money to put towards kids' colleges, and our hearts were prompted to give towards the building campaign just an amount that there's probably no other time in our life we'd be able to give.

It was so exciting.

I mean, driving to the closing.

I mean, we were excited, we were excited to get out of debt, we were excited about all these things, and it's like we're gonna be able to really, in faith, give this this amount.

And we got to the closing table, and as we're signing papers, they hand us the amount that we're about to get paid.

And it is nowhere close to what we were told.

I'm not even gonna lie, we cried in front of strangers.

Like it was such a difference.

Um, if we had known that was the amount, this is this is no lie.

We wouldn't have sold the house.

And a million things run through your mind.

But I can guarantee you one thing this check that had not been yet written to a future building that we had no promise of, uh, my head had some conversations with my heart that kicked into gear, you know?

I mean, no one's gonna blame you, bro.

I mean, you didn't give them anything that you're not sure we're gonna get.

And you know, you could lower it, you could give it like a fraction of a fraction, maybe of what every great thing about my life, and I really mean this.

I I don't think this is an exaggeration.

Every great thing about my life has come from my head not being able to talk my heart out of a prompting that got placed there.

It was over 13 years ago that I met Katie, and I I was a traveling musician, which just basically means I was broke.

I was still in college, I had no experience with kids.

Um I met Katie and her sons.

And when I tell you that, it wasn't just or even primarily my head that was like, bro, you you're just not dad material.

You're too young, you're too broke.

It wasn't just that.

Uh my disciples that were my friends, my every like my closest friends were like, bro, bad idea, you know?

When we were first married, we were in about the worst, you know, financial situation you could be in.

I was a new dad of two kids.

God prompted our hearts to adopt.

I don't know if you know this, adopting is like incredibly expensive, time consuming, stressful.

I was uh working at a very large church, a megachurch.

Uh, had a pretty cushy job, was next in line.

You know, I just had to kind of wait my turn.

When God prompted my heart to go do something different that would result in meta church, people sat me down.

They had really, really good, logical, rational reasons to just stay put.

It's like, bro, you've got fifty thousand dollars of perfume.

Like five out of every eight churches, church plants, fails in the first three years.

Don't do this.

Every great thing about my life, every impact I've had has been from allowing in these just moments for my head and the logic and reason that I value so highly to not stop me from moving with the promptings that God put on my heart.

I've got three kids, I didn't make any of them, but I get three cards on Father's Day because I didn't stop when my headset stop, and God told my heart, go.

Metachurch has been the greatest blessing of my ministry and one of the greatest blessings of my life.

And we gave what we had promised God that we were gonna give.

And because I'm the lead pastor, I sat at the table trying to buy this building.

And for every one of you who had every reason to hold back and not give or give less and gave anyway, uh, it's not that it took every single dollar that was given to get this building, it took every single penny that was given for us to be able to sign the papers and to move into this building.

You have no idea how God wants to move in your life.

If you can step out of always having a competition between the things of this world and the things that God is placing on your heart.

If God is calling you or prompting you, guiding or leading you to do something generous or give something generous with your time, energy, money, and talents.

Do not let your head shout down your heart.

This woman followed her heart's prompting, and I think there's a case to be made that it was not her heart in competition with her head because we see her do something quite strategic.

Again, in verse 3, the woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive$50,000 perfume, and she broke the jar and poured it on his head.

She broke the jar.

Why?

$50,000, they probably put that in a nice jar, you know?

There was a way to open it without smashing it to bits.

Typically, there would be some kind of seal and there'd be some kind of lid.

Why break it?

She could just open it and pour it.

I think the lesson is that sacrifice requires commitment.

Sometimes you have to be willing to break the jar.

The woman had already followed God's pull on her heart, but now she was going to ensure that her head could not talk her heart out of this.

This sacrifice was for Jesus, and she meant all of it for Jesus.

And she has to know there's some human compulsion with our minds that are constantly struggling to focus on things above and not on this earth, that if she had just unsealed it and opened it carefully, as she's pouring it, all of a sudden there's a competition for resources.

Like when she gets an eighth of the way through it, that's pretty good.

A quarter of the way through it, she could pour half of it.

It's a$25,000 offering.

She should be able to feel pretty good about that.

She could cap it back up, keep it for herself, invest it a little bit, see if she can get some money out of it.

I mean, this is like a lifetime worth of perfume.

Strategically, she broke the jar.

It's a way of saying no turning back.

And it's a way of ensuring that her sacrifice was for Jesus, that her generosity was for Jesus and only for Jesus.

And we are called to live generous lives, but the end of our generosity is always meant to focus on Jesus.

When you serve in your local church, uh when you run the slides like Brian here in the back, or other volunteers in the back, um, he's he's having to keep up, and uh, I'll admit, I've been told I can be hard to follow.

You know, I don't really follow the script all that well all the time.

He's not back there just trying to keep up with me, just making sure you can sing along.

He is being used by the Spirit of God, giving a sacrifice to Jesus, allowing the people of Jesus to worship at a deeper level than they might have if he were not there.

The end goal is Jesus.

The band, ooh, we got a good band.

They're not singing to you.

They're leading you, their singing is a sacrifice straight into the ears of Jesus.

When I get my sermons correct, I'm not preaching to you.

My sermons are a sacrifice to Jesus.

And you know, sometimes, if you've been here long enough, we'll cover like a controversial topic, and it never fails.

People will come up, like, man, I can't believe that you talked about that.

I wonder what people think.

And it's like, man, if I was preaching to you, that would matter.

It's not about what you think, it's about what Jesus thinks about my sermons.

Everything you do, the end goal of it is Jesus, our life, a living sacrifice to our Savior.

And when we talk about financial giving here at Metachurch, we talk about it very technically.

We say your offerings you are giving to Jesus through the church.

And I do think that's accurate.

You're not just giving to the church, you're giving to Jesus through the church.

And this matters, and it matters greatly, because if the end goal is anything less than Jesus, our generosity ultimately will not satisfy us.

Sometimes we have to commit.

To commit means breaking the jars.

And some of you grew up with piggy banks, you know.

Uh, I don't know, kids now y'all got Bitcoin or something.

I don't know what the kids get now.

Um, but a lot of us grew up with piggy banks.

And uh a lot of the piggy banks we grew up with, there was one way in and there was no way out, you know.

And so if you if you needed to buy an ice cream cone, you had to like pray, you know, that you got a quarter somehow in between all the dollars.

You had to shake it out, you know.

And when you when you're young, you get kind of attached to things like this.

It's almost like another one a year.

You would name it, you know, kids are really good at naming things like piggy or pinky or oinky, really good, really creative names, and you would grow kind of attached, which made it hard because as you got enough money and found something you really wanted to buy, um, there was only one way of accessing uh your money, and it required a very special tool.

And so when the day came, if you wanted to buy something that required the money in your bank, you had to break it.

And I cannot believe the judgmental looks I'm getting right now about smashing this pig.

Y'all had half a pound of bacon for breakfast and are mad at me about smashing a porcelain pig right now.

But that's how it went.

You found a uh a scooter or a bike, or you know, you found a new record player, you know, dating, dating all.

You found something you really, really wanted, and there was only one way out.

You wanted your money, you had to a visible awe.

Yup.

So it's four dollars on Amazon, y'all like.

There's one way out.

You wanted your money, you had to commit.

We often lack commitment because our hearts are moved, I mean, inspired, into it, wanting it, but our heads are there as the gatekeeper to our action.

The life of generosity that would not only change your life into a more fulfilling, impactful, purposeful life, but will actually begin to change the lives of the people who are around you.

For this woman, there was no turning back.

This was audacious.

This wasn't a$4 Amazon piggy bank.

$50,000 bottle of perfume.

She gave it all.

It wasn't a share, it was all for Jesus.

You know, when it comes to our financial giving, it's very instructive what was done by the woman with the bottle of perfume.

Uh it's broadly believed this was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

She gave it all, and she broke the jar, and I think there are ways for us to break the jar on our financial giving to Jesus through the church.

The way that we teach giving at Metachurch, we don't talk about how much to give.

If you came up in church, odds are you were taught to tithe, and tithe means a tenth.

And this is commonly taught, it's just not great theology.

Uh, the tithe was a part of the theocratic government of Israel, which was a command in the Old Testament of the Bible that was never transferred into the New Testament of the church.

There's no place in the instructions to the church that tells you how much or what percentage.

So it's not how much, but it does tell us how.

We teach three things.

We teach to give first.

And what this means is exactly what it says.

When money comes in, the very first thing you do with it is give to Jesus through your church.

You give first.

Before you pay the bills, before you go out to eat, but before you buy groceries, before you do anything, you set Jesus as the priority of your finances by giving to him and to him first, and you give sacrificially.

Everyone can give a sacrifice because sacrifice is scalable.

A sacrifice means you give what you can give, what you can comfortably give, and then you give a little bit more.

You give in a way that costs you.

Everyone can do that, and we give automatically.

This isn't something inconsistent or when the feeling hits us or when we're in a good season.

We do it and we always do it.

We always give a sacrifice first.

And this is a way to break the jar.

Just giving first and automatically alone.

It breaks the jar.

It says, I'm going to decide an amount that is a sacrifice to me.

I'm gonna decide maybe a percentage if you have consistent income that is a sacrifice to me, and I'm always gonna give it, and I'm always gonna give it first.

And the reason that that matters so much is because it is prioritizing your money around your calling, not prioritizing your calling or your generosity around your money.

We are not a rich church.

You guys know this.

We are a movement full of very ordinary folks making very ordinary amounts of money.

And you know, I've got pastor friends in town who have churches around our size, and man, most of their budgets dwarf ours.

They're two times, three times, four times the size of our budget.

And there's a reason for that.

It's because metachurch exists for people who are not church people.

They don't understand what giving means, they don't understand biblical generosity, because maybe they don't even believe in God when they start coming to metachurch.

And I'll tell you right now, I will take a quarter of the budget and ten times the impact all day, every day for the rest of my life.

That is how we're gonna roll at MetaCurch.

At the same time, I'm not convinced that we could not have a budget like that or even beyond, if we understood what it meant to break the jar on our generosity.

And here is how the majority of Christians give to their church.

They get paid, and then they use their money in every way they need, bills, mortgages, insurance.

Then they spend their money in every way that they want.

Meals out, movie theaters, trips, vacations.

And then whatever is left over, they give a percentage of that to Jesus through the church.

And if that's you, this is not meant to shame you.

You're doing what everyone does.

I just don't think MetaCurch typically does what everyone does.

It would be like the picture of the woman getting 50 G's and perfume and going and you know, sharing with everyone who she wanted to share with and keeping a bunch for herself and maybe investing some of it, trying to get a return on it, and whatever was left going and you know, putting a splash on Jesus.

The picture is she gave first.

She gave first because she broke the jar.

When you commit to giving first, sacrificially and automatically, what you're doing is you're saying, I'm not gonna make my generosity contingent on my circumstances.

I'm gonna make my money get in line with my generosity.

I'm gonna make my money get in line with my purpose, not hesitate on my purpose because of where my money might go.

And, you know, we've created like a digital jar breaking.

The reason the people who do our back end of our giving, we chose them specifically because they offer recurring giving.

And this is a way for you to set your sacrifice, to put it the day that you get paid, and to ensure that God gets priority in your giving.

This is a way for you to digitally break the jar on your financial generosity.

And meta church, the plans that God has for this movement are worth us getting our heads in line with our hearts and breaking the jars on our generosity.

I want to make one final point out of this very bold woman's story.

Let's read on.

It says somewhere expressing indignation to one another.

Why has this perfume been wasted?

For this perfume might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor.

And they began to scold her.

And Jesus replied, Leave her alone.

Why are you bothering her?

She has done a noble thing for me.

You always have the poor with you, and you can do what is good for them, whatever you want, but you do not always have me.

But she has done what she could.

She has anointed my body in advance for burial.

No one in that room knew that Jesus was a matter of hours from being executed on a Roman cross.

You see, when you're executed as a criminal, you're not allowed a proper burial.

The only reason Jesus wasn't thrown into a mass grave is because one of his wealthy followers came and collected his body.

When you die as a criminal, you don't get all of the rights that most people get.

If you remember, when the women found the tomb empty, they were going to the tomb with oils and spices to retroactively anoint his body for burial.

Nobody knew.

And yet, this woman came with a prompting on her heart an outrageous sum for perfumed oil.

Jesus said, She's not just blessing me or showing me her love, she's preparing me.

You know, you've heard the Easter story, undoubtedly, hundreds of times.

Maybe you've never realized that the woman in Mark 14 is an essential part of the Easter story.

She's the one who prepared him for the tomb.

And this is what happens when you begin exercising generosity, truly, biblical, living it out, giving it out.

You become a part of the story that Jesus is telling throughout history.

I do not believe the woman knew that's what she was doing.

There's no indication in the text.

I don't think she went to the market and they were like, You want how much perfume?

And she was like, Listen, uh, Jesus is gonna die.

I know he's really popular right now, he's gonna die, and he's not gonna get a proper burial.

And so I'm fine.

I'm gonna anoint him, everyone's gonna be mad, but it's fine.

I'm gonna anoint him.

She didn't know that's what she was doing.

And I think that makes my point even more.

Whatever a sacrifice is to you, one of the reasons a lot of people won't give it is because they have bought the false narrative that swirls around in their head.

Man, what's your$150 a month gonna do?

What's your time gonna do?

What's your service here gonna do?

And the answer is your generosity, your sacrifice in the hands of Jesus can do more than you could possibly imagine.

This woman gave$50,000 of perfume to prepare his body for burial.

Just a little while earlier, Jesus was at the temple and people were giving their offerings, and a widow gave two pennies.

And Jesus said, She's given more than anyone else.

Heaven's math works differently than it works here on earth.

You might not feel like you have a lot to offer, but when God prompts your heart and you are willing to be generous with your time, energy, money, and talents, you can make an impact on this world that you simply can't imagine.

Here's what Jesus said in verse 9.

Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, in San Antonio, Texas, 2,000 years later, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

Jesus sees your generosity.

What you actually have control over is quite limited.

Your time, your energy, your money, your talent.

Will you waste it trying to build your own kingdom, your own power, your own status that will be gone in the blink of an eye someday?

Or will you invest it generously in the things of God and in eternity that lasts forever and ever?

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, uh, we love you.

We thank you for even the opportunity to be a part of what you're doing.

I just believe with like every fiber of my being that you are prompting the hearts of your people all of the time.

Every day there are opportunities for us to be your hands and feet, generously giving our lives away to the people around us.

And I just pray we'd pay attention to that.

You would soften our hearts to that.

That we would not rely so much on our logic and reasoning that we talk ourselves out of the very callings that you're bringing us into.

I thank you for MetaCurch.

I think you for every person that makes up this movement, the powerful, purposeful lives you've given them.

We look forward to what you're going to do through this generous movement.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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.