Dream You – Principles of Multiplication

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Think God's got something special for us today.

In fact, let me start with this.

Today, I want to teach you the single principle that has had the greatest impact on my relationship with God.

In fact, not to oversell this, but if I literally was going to disciple you, which means if I was going to spend months with you trying to teach you how to become a fully devoted follower of Jesus, I would start with this.

Before we talk about prayer and heaven and the Bible, which are all wonderful and amazing topics, I would start with the area of giving.

And here's the reason: giving is inextricably tied to our hearts.

And God doesn't need your money.

I said this last week.

God is fine.

The stock market in heaven is fine.

God's not worried about his job security.

The price of eggs and gas have no influence on God's love for you.

You understand this, right?

He's good and he's God.

But giving has this way of connecting our heart to the recipient of our giving.

And God just wants to be that recipient.

It changes everything for us.

So today, again, I want to teach you the principle that has most revolutionized my life.

Let's pray, and then let's get after that together.

God, would you speak to us today?

God, for the next few minutes, would you sweep aside any distraction, any barrier to communication so that you can speak profoundly, clearly, and loudly to us.

God, you know I've prepared thoughts, but none of these words matter unless you show up.

So, God, on the authority of your word and by the power of your spirit, we invite you to change us.

May we lead different today because you're here.

We thank you for that, God, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's get to work.

My wife and I have three incredible kids, and nothing prepares you for being a dad.

It's like the most fun thing, but no one prepares you for it.

And a few weeks ago we were talking about having kids, and my wife serendipitously told the story about the day Joey, my firstborn son, was born.

And if you missed it, it's it was a beautiful experience.

And when I say beautiful, I mean beautiful, but not pretty at all.

And I passed out hard that day.

True story.

And anyways, but then like we bring this little baby home and he's just so fun.

And I'm always careful when I tell stories about my kids because I'm not competing with other parents.

But my kids are the best kids in the whole world, and all you other suckers are competing for second place.

Like that's that's how I feel.

And so we have this little boy, Joey, and he's incredible.

Everything about him is incredible.

He slept through the night at a ridiculously early age.

He didn't fight us on food.

In fact, he fought us for food.

Like my boy loved food.

That's how I knew it was his dad.

And he just loved him some food.

And the the truth is, he was the greatest kid ever.

Well, there was this day, um, maybe he was like 18 months old or so.

And there was a morning where my wife and I woke up almost panicked because we hadn't heard from Joey.

It was early, it was like later than he normally slept in, and we hadn't heard from him.

We didn't know what was going on.

We went into his room and he wasn't there.

And you get this like nervous, like your heart drops, and you can feel your throat in your chest.

It's just a weird, gross feeling.

I couldn't find him, and I came downstairs, and Joey, his face was completely covered in chocolate.

I can't explain this to you.

And he was standing at the coffee table with a box of cookies, and he was jumping up and down saying, I love cookies, I love cookies, I love cookies, I love cookies.

Chocolate everywhere.

It was a wonderful, incredible moment.

He loved cookies.

I'll never forget when Joey was about that age, there was this weird thing he would do.

If we gave him five animal crackers, he would take the first four and slam them down his throat so fast you wondered if he even took time to chew.

He ate them so fast.

My man loved food.

But then the last one, he would hold on to it as tightly as possible.

If this was like a giraffe animal cracker, he would lick it until the neck started slumping down over his hand, crumbs everywhere, saliva, all like his hand is dripping.

But he wouldn't just eat it.

He would just hold on to it as tightly as he possibly could.

And then it was so funny, if you pulled out one more elephant, like a little animal cracker for him and he saw it, he would take that remains of a giraffe, that giraffe carcass of a cookie, slam it down his throat, and then he would take the next one and he would hold onto it tightly until the elephant tusks are all bleeding up over his hands.

You understand this, right?

And it was weird because as his dad, I wanted him to understand, buddy, like I'm always going to take care of you.

I don't know why you're holding on so tightly to what you have.

We're the same way when it comes to our money, aren't we?

In fact, I would say this to you: when it comes to money, money is more of a mindset than anything.

There are two mindsets when it comes to our money.

The first is this scarcity.

The second is abundance.

When Joey had his animal crackers, he held on tightly because he didn't know if that would be the last one that he had.

When you think about your money, which of these two words is what comes to mind?

Do you feel like you'll never have enough?

Do you feel like you'll always be lacking?

Do you feel like you'll always live paycheck to paycheck or somehow behind paycheck to paycheck and you'll never have enough?

If you live that way, you'll hold on tightly to everything you have.

But if you understand that God is our source and God is our provider, and God is the one who can bless us, you start to live a little differently.

You live with a different mindset, you live open-handedly.

And today I want to talk to you about what does it look like for us as followers of Jesus to live open-handedly.

Now, to do this, I want to take you to the Old Testament first and then we'll go to Jesus in the New Testament.

But I want to teach you a principle that revolutionized my life.

I want to give credit to where credit is due.

This comes from a book called The Blessed Life by a pastor named Robert Morris.

No teaching has ever changed my life like this, and I want to give it to you.

Let me give you two quick disclaimers.

Number one, we don't need anything from you.

This is something that I want for you.

Number two, if you never give to our church, I need you to understand this.

Your church will be fine.

There's so many people who love our church and support our church.

We've already met our budget for this month.

We don't need you to give.

I want you to experience the adventure that I have been on God for with God for like the last 20 to 30 years of my life.

Okay?

Let's go to Malachi chapter 3.

Malachi 3 · chapter mention

I love this.

Malachi 3, verse 7.

Malachi 3:7

I'm gonna I'm gonna highlight five words in these verses.

It starts with this return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty.

That's hard for us to understand.

And you might be like Malachi, and so, but you ask, how are we to return?

Like how do we return to you with everything is already yours?

And then God flexes.

I love God's statement.

Will a mere mortal rob God?

Doesn't it feel like that?

Like, will a mere man like you rob God?

Yet you rob me.

That's a strong word.

But you ask, how are we robbing you?

It's like your God, how are we robbing you?

And God responds in tithes and offerings.

And then the next verse is uncomfortable.

I'm just gonna be honest with you, but these are in the Bible.

God says, you are under a curse.

I don't like that.

Every time I say that, the room goes completely silent and someone coughs, exactly like just happened in that moment.

It always happens because nobody wants that.

Nobody likes that language, but God says you are under a curse, your whole nation, because you are robbing me.

So God says, if you're not gonna rob me, here's what it looks like.

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.

Storehouse is where you're fed spiritually, that there may be food in my house.

And then God says something audacious.

He says, Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be enough room, there would not be room enough to store it.

And then God makes it clear.

He says, I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your field will not drop their fruit before it's ripe, says the Lord Almighty.

Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty.

And I love this term for God, because he's mighty enough, strong enough to take care of you, and he's caring enough to care for you, and he's strong enough to provide everything for you.

Now, in these verses, there's five words that I want you to see, because it's so important.

It starts with this God asks this question, will you rob me?

And doesn't that feel weird to you?

Like, how do you rob God?

He's like, you know, God, how can you possibly rob the one who has everything?

How can you rob the one that the book of Revelation says the streets of heaven are paved in gold so pure that it's clear?

Like, how do you rob someone like that?

Well, I want you to imagine this with me, okay?

Before COVID, at church, when we would receive the offering, we would pass offering buckets.

And a lot of people back then would give through cash or checks.

Now, like 80 to 90% of it is digital, which I think is awesome.

But back in the day, imagine this.

Imagine you weighted tables.

So you're not like killing it financially, but you're a sacrificial giver.

And so one day, because you get your tips in cash, you bring a stack of cash with you, and when the offering box passed by, you put a huge stack of cash.

Two, three hundred dollars.

It is a sacrificial gift from you, and you put it in the bucket, and it passes down three or four people, and a lady reaches her hand in.

I don't know why I chose a lady.

I apologize about that.

But three or four people later, someone reaches their hand in and grabs that whole stack of cash that you put in, they put it in their pocket and they pass the bucket on.

What would you do?

I would be furious in this moment.

Why?

Because that money belongs to God.

Listen to me, I'm a pretty even-kill person.

You can ask the church staff who works for me.

Like I'm pretty chill, I'm pretty calm all the time, but I will lose my mind if a staff member wastes God's money.

Why?

Because it belongs to him and not us.

We are stewards over it.

So imagine you pass the bucket and someone takes it and puts it in their pocket.

You would say, that's stealing, and it's stealing from God.

You understand this, right?

Let me ask you another question.

If there was money, I don't know, like in your bank account, and it belonged to God.

But instead of bringing it back to him and giving it to him sacrificially, you just left it in your bank account.

Isn't that the same thing?

It's tough.

And nobody wants to hear that because we think the money's ours.

And we think, well, well, Jason, you don't know, but I slaved so hard working for this.

I pulled several all-nighters.

I'm working 80 hours a week.

Who gave you the breath in your lungs to do that?

Who gave you the strength?

Who gave you the ingenuity?

Who gave you the mind?

Who gave you the creativity?

It's not you.

Spoiler alert, it's God's.

It is all God's.

So he says, Bring, I want you to do this.

Don't rob me, but I want you to return.

And this word's such an important word because when we tithe, we are not giving to God.

We're returning back to him a portion that is his.

All throughout scripture.

From Genesis on, God says, Bring the tithe, bring it back to me.

Because you can't give something that doesn't belong to you.

All you can do is return it to its rightful owner.

And God says, return it to me.

And then he says, Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.

Now, tithe is an ancient word.

It's not a Bible word, it's an old Hebrew word.

And literally, tithe just means one tenth.

In Christianity, we don't believe that tithing is just giving God 10%.

We believe that it's giving God the first 10%.

And a lot of people are wonderful people with wonderful giving, gracious hearts.

And they'll give God some arbitrary amount of money,$15,$20, whatever it is, and they'll say, God, here's my tithe.

But the language of whole tithe implies that there's only one way to tithe.

And it is to bring the full 10%, the first full 10% to God.

He says, bring the whole tithe into my storehouse so that there will be food.

And then he says, This test me in this.

Now this is such interesting language because this is the only place in Scripture where God invites you to put him to the test.

A lot of people are wonderful.

Like I've counseled so many people over the years who are like, Jason, I'm just so in love.

I love this girl, she has my heart, but I'm just going to test God in this relationship.

And I want to be like you do, you, boo-boo, but that's not in the Bible.

It's not.

Not in the Bible at all.

What is in the Bible is the only place we're invited to test God is in the area of our money.

Why do you think this is?

It's because, again, there is this inextricable tie between our hearts and our bank accounts.

God wants to know that he has your heart.

So he's willing to let you put him to the test to prove that he's the provider.

And then I love the language.

He says, test me in this and see.

Like if you'll put him to the test, he'll show up and show off and show out for you.

You can see that he is good and you can see that he will open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing on you that you can't contain it.

My wife and I have three kids, but we had two boys first.

And it was so fun in those early days of just me and the boys.

We were like, we were the trio.

It was so fun.

And we went through a few fun seasons.

We went through a jello season at our house, and I don't know why, but we kept making jello.

I mean, I would go to publics and buy 10 boxes of jello.

We'd have jello every night.

And it felt like sometime after dinner, every night a different person got to call it, but all of a sudden I'd hear something like jello.

And everybody came running, and we just eat jello.

It was such a fun season.

And then we grew up.

We matured into the men we are today, and we moved from jello to cheese balls.

These are the real deal.

These are the best kind.

It's cheese with the Z.

That's how you know it's real.

Cheese balls.

And we love cheese balls.

We went through hundreds and probably thousands of cheese balls back in my day.

And I'll never forget a moment.

My son Gavin was maybe two, two and a half years old, and we were in this cheese ball phase of life.

And Gavin had gotten a hold of the little can football was on.

And I said to him, Gav, you got the cheese balls?

He's like, Yeah.

I said, Can I have some?

And he literally took it and hid it from me.

He turned his body away from me and he said, No, it's mine.

It's mine.

Now I was his dad.

I said, hold up.

What do you mean it's yours?

He's like, it's mine.

I got it.

I said, no, no, no.

You didn't get it.

It's mine, actually.

I bought it.

I went to the store.

I used my money.

It's not yours.

It's mine.

I want you to have a lot of it.

I just want you to share with me.

He said, no, it's mine.

Aren't we the same way when it comes to our money?

Aren't we?

It's mine.

It's mine.

Now let me say this to you.

In this moment, as his father, I wanted to teach him a lesson.

Like I wanted him to understand that yes, you get to have these for now.

All I'm looking for is a little bit back from you.

But here's what I really want you to understand.

I provided this for you.

And look, I'm not rich.

I'm not here to flex on anybody, but I am cheese ball rich.

And if I wanted to, I could take Gavin and I could pour out so many cheese balls on him.

I could fill his room with cheese balls.

I could give him so many that he could never eat a cheese ball again without getting sick.

I could take care, I could give him so many, I could fill his room from the floor to the ceiling with cheese balls if I wanted to.

Why?

Because I'm his dad.

Because I'm his provider.

And I wonder how many of us we hold on so tightly to the limited amount of money in our bank account because we think to ourselves, it's mine, I earned it, it's mine.

When God's saying, No, you don't understand.

If I want to, I can open the windows of heaven and pour out so much on you that you can't contain it all.

Are you understanding this, everybody?

We are to return to God, bring the whole tithe and test him and see if he won't pour out the blessings of heaven on us.

Let me teach you a principle about your God.

God is a multiplier.

What do you mean?

From the beginning of creation, God could have created earth with one type of flower and one type of beetle and one type of dog, but God, in all of his wisdom, he showed off.

He created solar systems and planets farther than we'll ever see.

He created those weird fish at the bottom of the ocean that are so creepy to look at.

He made all of it.

And what is one of his first commands?

Be fruitful and multiply.

God is a multiplier.

Let me say this to you about yourself.

If you worked a second job, if you got a side hustle, if you worked a third job, if you worked 120 hours a week, at best all you can do is add to your life.

But God, the multiplier, can multiply what you can't.

So God in the Old Testament speaks through Malachi.

And he says, bring the whole tithe.

Now I want to take you to Jesus and I want to teach you a principle that revolutionized my whole life.

If you're a church person, if you grew up around church, this is one of the most famous stories in the whole Bible.

This is the story that usually in the headlines above the stories it'll say Jesus feeds the 5,000.

Here's the story, Luke chapter 9.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

Late in the afternoon, the twelve came to him and said, Send the crowd away so they can go into the surrounding villages in the countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.

Jesus says something weird.

He says, You give them something to eat.

And they answered, We have only five loaves of bread and two fish, and unless we go and buy food for all of this crowd, it says about five thousand men were there.

Let's pause here for just a moment.

This story is recounted in the book of Luke, but it's also recounted in the book of Matthew.

And here's what I need you to understand.

This is a really, really big miracle.

If you know the end of the story, Jesus is going to feed these 5,000 people.

But it's a much bigger miracle than that.

In the ancient Jewish world, the way they would count crowds is by counting the men in the crowd.

But here's what we know the average family had three to five children in Jesus' day.

In fact, we know this is true in the book of Matthew.

His recount says this.

Are you getting this?

And so to try to contextualize this, I was thinking, like, how can I show this?

This is probably 20,000 or more people.

To give you some context, the Amway Center in Orlando, where the Orlando Magic play seats 20,000 people.

Get your minds around this.

Jesus is standing hillside so that nature can help to project his voice, and he's teaching all of these people.

And the story goes on.

But he said to his disciples, have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.

The disciples did so, and everyone sat down, taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven.

They all ate and were satisfied.

And the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

Jesus does this incredible miracle, but here's what I want you to do today.

Now you know the end of the story, but I want you to try to imagine with me that you're in the story.

Imagine that you're one of Jesus' twelve disciples.

Twenty thousand or more people are there to hear Jesus teach.

And he started at 10:30.

So Sunday morning, the worship team led a couple songs and it was awesome.

And then Jesus starts preaching and he's going long.

Like I preach for like 30, 35 minutes.

Imagine for Jesus, Jesus gets to the stage, its service starts at 10:30, Jesus starts around 11, and 11 goes to 12 o'clock.

12 o'clock to 1, 1 o'clock to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4.

If you're a football person, you've missed the first game by now.

Like it's going long, right?

And Jesus' disciples are all there and they're like, we've got to do something.

This is going long.

Someone needs to stop because there's all these people.

Oh, I got it.

Here's what we'll do.

And they select you out of the disciples and they say to you, um, why don't you go talk to Jesus and tell Jesus that because he loves the people so much that he should send them out to get some food.

He should go ahead and land the plane, wrap up the sermon, send everyone to get to the restaurants before everything closes.

And so they elect you and you go up to Jesus.

Jesus, excuse me, sorry, sorry, everybody, just give me one second.

Jesus, this is wonderful.

I've loved it.

I could listen to you all night long.

I love it.

You're doing so good.

Um, Jesus, look, um, the guys and I were talking over here, and we thought maybe, because you love all these people so much, maybe what we should do, maybe we should dismiss them so they can go find something to eat.

And Jesus says to you, you really care about them?

Yes, it's not about me.

I could listen, I can I gotta go all night, but but it's for them.

Jesus goes, well, if you really care about them, you give them something to eat.

Huh?

And now you gotta go back and report to the guys.

So Jesus starts teaching again, and you go back to the guys and they're like, Hey, did you tell them the thing about the people?

And he's like, Yeah, I did that, I got you.

Uh, what did Jesus say?

Well, he's uh he told us to give him something to eat.

And you look around, and there's 20 something thousand people, and you think, How are we gonna do this?

And then a little boy who somehow snuck into town and went to Long John Silvers comes walking by and you say, Give me this, and you take his bag and you look in the bag, and he got The two-piece fish meal with extra rolls.

Are you with me?

And one of the guys has this idea.

What we should do is we should go to Jesus and say, we want to feed everybody, but this is all the food we have, and then he'll be forced to dismiss everybody.

And so you get this, and you're looking at it like this is all.

And Peter reaches his hand in and grabs it, takes a bite of one of the rolls.

You're like, stop it, stop it.

And you go back to Jesus with this little lunch and you say, Jesus, look, again, we we love it.

You told us to feed everybody.

We don't have enough food.

In fact, the only food here is this two-piece fish meal from Long John Silvers, and Jesus says, perfect.

Have them sit down in groups of 50.

Now you've got to go back to the committee one more time.

Well, he's gonna dismiss right Noel, um, kind of.

He actually told us to have them sit in groups of fifty.

How does this make any sense?

And I think maybe for one of the disciples it clicked for them.

In the Old Testament, in the book of 2 Kings, Elisha has a moment where God miraculously multiplies a few loaves of bread and it feeds a hundred soldiers.

He had them sit in groups of fifty.

Maybe just possibly Jesus was going to do what Elisha did.

Jesus is the greater Elisha.

That's what's going to happen in this moment.

And so they do this.

They have everyone sit in groups of 50.

They bring Jesus the little boy's lunch, and I want you to see what happens.

I think a lot of us have a wrong picture of the story.

It says Jesus takes it, he lifts it to heaven, he gives thanks for it, he breaks it, and he gives the disciples back less than what they had.

I think in a lot of our minds the story is Jesus multiplies the food and it happens in Jesus' hand.

But Jesus gives the disciples back the food after he's blessed it and broken it.

He gives it back to his disciples and he says, Here you feed them.

Now just imagine this.

You've got this food in your hand, and you're like, I have no idea how this is going to work.

And you go to the first person, you say, Take the littlest piece.

Like, don't take very much.

Take the tiny piece, and you keep going down the line.

And as people are pulling some for themselves, a miracle happens in your hand.

And the food miraculously multiplies.

I want you to notice something.

The miracle doesn't happen in the master's hand.

It doesn't happen in Jesus' hand.

The miracle happens in the disciples' hands.

If you have your message notes, I want you to write down two things.

Principle number one is this it has to be blessed before it can multiply.

It has to be blessed before it can multiply.

They bring the food to Jesus.

Jesus blesses it, gives thanks for it, he breaks it.

This is what happens when we tithe.

We're saying to Jesus, You've blessed me with everything.

I'm bringing back to you a portion of what you've already given me.

Scripture says, in fact, we just read it in Malachi.

When we put God first in that first 10%, the rest is blessed.

That's where the miracle can happen.

It has to be blessed before it can multiply.

But here's the second principle that a lot of people miss.

Principle two is it has to be given away before it can multiply.

Imagine Jesus takes the food, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it back to them, and the 12 disciples eat the lunch.

What happens?

They eat the miracle, they miss the miracle altogether.

It's in the act of giving it away that the food begins to multiply.

Okay, listen to me.

The same is true in your finances.

When you make the decision to honor God by bringing him the first, according to Scripture, the rest is blessed.

Why then would you hold on to all of it tightly for yourself when you serve the God of multiplication?

Let me show it to you like this.

I believe as you look through scripture, there's four levels of giving.

The first one is just giving.

A few weeks ago I was online, and a pastor friend of mine was teaching on giving, and in my opinion, it was a really manipulative message.

And in it, he shamed people who weren't giving a full 10% in tithing.

I don't want to do that.

I want to say this to you.

I applaud your courage because everyone has to start somewhere.

It's hard.

That jump between giving and tithing is massive for so many of us.

For some people, you look at how much a tithe is and you think, I can't possibly give that much.

And so everybody starts somewhere.

My challenge to all of us today is to turn the dial.

In fact, I would say this to you: the jump between giving and tithing is the hardest jump.

A lot of people will give God something, and I applaud you having the courage to trust, and they'll call it the tithe, but it's only tithing when that amount is our first 10%.

When we honor God in this way.

In fact, let me tell you how I do this.

I've literally oriented my life around this principle.

I literally have moved bills that are due on the first of the month, like my mortgage payment.

There's a five-day grace period.

I pay it on the second of every month.

Why?

Because I want to honor God.

I want Him to be first.

Before I know if there's going to be any surprise bills, any unexpected medical bills, any car accidents, before I know anything else, I'm declaring with my actions that God, the first 10% belongs to you.

I trust that you're my provider, not me.

This is hard for so many of us, but here's what I want you to understand.

If you look at your bank account, you'll see where your heart is.

What do you mean?

Well, you got a mortgage payment or a car payment or a rent payment or an electric bill, and all those things are perfectly fine to have.

But I just want to say to you, none of those things can bless you.

It's the reason this is the hardest jump from giving to tithing is because it takes an audacious amount of faith to trust God.

But here's what I want you to understand.

When we trust him and when we tithe, the next two levels are actually easy.

Why?

Because he has your heart and because he's going to bless you.

So many people, their whole life, they've they've been tithers.

They were taught as a kid, whenever I get a dollar, God gets a dime.

That's he's first, the first 10% belongs to him.

Let me say something to those of you who are like that.

Uh, there's there's almost no area of my life that I act the same as an adult that I did as a kid.

I started tithing when I was young.

As an adult, when God blesses me, I understand the principle that Jesus taught.

It has to be given away for it to be blessed.

I believe God's gonna give some of you opportunities as you tithe.

He's gonna bless you.

And when you understand that you're blessed, not to increase your standard of living, but to increase your standard of giving.

When you begin to understand that all the extra isn't just for your consumption, but it's given to you so you can be a blessing.

It's really fun to give over and above.

This can happen through your church.

This can happen through blessing people who are in need.

This can happen to giving to charities and nonprofits and missionaries.

I love all of this.

But God invites all of us to do this, and here's the principle that I want you to understand.

If you'll be faithful in these, there's gonna be a day when God shows up and he asks a question that's audacious.

But it's will you trust me with everything?

But will you give extravagantly?

One of the most famous stories in the Bible is of King David's son Solomon.

Solomon was king.

And the night of his coronation as king, God shows up to him in a dream and he says, Solomon, I'll give you anything you want.

Imagine God showed up to you and said, I'll give you anything you want, just ask.

What would you ask for?

Wealth, health, success, career.

Like what would you ask God for?

And Solomon could have asked for anything, but he asks God for wisdom, and then God gives him everything as well.

What would cause God to show up to a person like Solomon and ask that?

I would submit to you, I believe it's because he trusted Solomon.

Well, that happened at night.

You can literally go to scripture, 1 Kings 10 or 11.

The day of Solomon's coronation, he did something extravagant.

It was common practice for an incoming king on the day of his coronation to sacrifice a bull to God.

That was a very expensive sacrifice.

And Solomon didn't give a bowl.

He didn't sacrifice ten, that would have been extravagant.

He didn't sacrifice a hundred, that would have been extravagant.

He sacrificed a thousand.

So extravagant.

What message does it send to God?

You have my everything.

If you have my everything, that means you have my heart.

Of course, God trusts.

If we had an hour, I could tell you story after story after story of the giving adventure I've been on with God.

Ridiculous.

Wonderful.

Incredible.

I'll start with the little one.

Um, in the early days of this company that I started, we didn't have a lot of extra.

I was working around the clock trying to keep food on the table and keep our lights on.

We just didn't have much of anything.

And we were at lunch with this family that we love, and um, I just kind of knew, I observed that they didn't have like any extra at all.

And so we picked a relatively inexpensive restaurant, just knowing that.

And we get in line, and my wife told me what she wanted, and she went and sat down, and I could hear the couple just a few feet behind me whispering, we can't do this.

Let's split a kid's meal.

This doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

But I wanted to step in, I wanted to be generous and give just to kind of bless these people.

And so I was, I just I didn't make it about them.

I said, guys, this is on me and Liz.

We love you.

I said, get whatever you want.

I said to the husband, You're a growing boy, eat whatever you want.

Please get a big meal.

You need something big.

You could see the relief wash over their face.

Well, I sat down grateful.

Thank you, God, that I got to do this.

And while I was waiting for my food, I refreshed my email.

And in my email was an order for the company I had just recently started.

I looked at it and when I eyeballed it, I thought, it's actually kind of strange.

I kind of knew my profit margin, I knew about how much it would be.

I kept the receipt from the meal, and when I got home, my suspicions were confirmed to be true.

When I added up the profit, literally every penny that it cost me, when I added up how much was left over, and I went back to the bill and I took that family's meal plus the tax that it cost.

God returned to me 10 times to the penny the amount that I'd given to them.

And that's insignificant.

Like that's not that big of a deal.

You could say, oh, it's coincidental, whatever.

You will never convince me it's coincidental.

I I've had that story over and over and over again, times 10, times a hundred, times a thousand.

God has blessed me supernaturally in ways that I can't even begin to describe to you.

I I have given cars, I've been blessed with vehicles, I have given sacrificially.

Here's a fun story.

Um, several years ago, um, we were doing a series on giving, and I wanted to give away the book that I referenced earlier called The Blessed Life.

And we had maybe a thousand people at our church at that time, and I thought, we'll give it away.

When I talked to our executive pastor, we just, the church didn't have enough margin financially at that season to do it.

And I didn't want to put our church in a bad spot.

You need to hear this.

I'll never manipulate you when it comes to money.

I'll never put us in a spot financially where I have to preach needing that offering, because then that gets manipulative and ugly.

So I didn't, but we wanted to give the book away, so I went home and talked to Liz, and we were like, well, let's just do it.

We had some extra from that season in our life.

Let's do it.

We bought like over a thousand copies of this book personally.

We gave it away the first week, we gave it away the second week.

On the third week, I said, if you don't have one yet, go to Amazon.com because your boy is broke, right?

That's where we were.

The day after, I go to my mailbox, kid you not.

In the mail is a letter from one of the vendors that my side company uses.

And it said, Congratulations, Jason, you're one of our top 10 customers.

We're gonna start a rebate program next year, but we're demoing it with our top 10 customers.

Here's the check for two and a half percent of your sales from last quarter.

When I looked at the check, I knew in my heart exactly what it was.

I went back inside and again my suspicions were confirmed to be true.

I pulled the email up with the receipt from the thousand plus books that we had ordered, and listen to me, it was to the penny, the exact amount that we had spent buying these books for our church.

And I've got a thousand stories like that.

I've been on a giving adventure with God.

I've given my whole salary from the church back five years in a row.

Like money has no hold on my heart.

This is an area that I promise you I don't want something from you.

I want you to experience this adventure that I've been on with God.

But let me end with this.

The promise of God is that when we tithe, when the first 10% comes to him, he blesses everything else.

There is no promise of God that he's gonna fill your bank account.

That reduces God in all of his power to nothing more than the heavenly slot machine.

Promises that he blesses us.

Last night, I experienced it again.

I just finished dinner, the family, and my son Joey comes up to me with his debit card.

Joey's 15, he just got his first job ever at Publix.

I've been calling him Pub Sub.

I love it.

And without me prompting or asking, he came up to me with his debit card and he said, Dad, will you show me how to give online?

I didn't ask him to.

Who wouldn't want that?

This isn't the prosperity gospel.

Prosperity gospel is we give to get from God.

This teaching is the opposite of that.

We give to honor God, we give to worship God.

That's the point of it.

But you can't read scripture and divorce yourself from the facts that when we honor God in the area of tithing, he pours out blessing in ways we can't even get our minds around.

So here's how I want to end today.

I don't want to manipulate you.

I'm gonna ask you to do two things.

I'm gonna ask you to ask the Holy Spirit, what are you saying to me through this message?

Then I will invite you to go home and do an audit of your finances.

And ask God, am I being obedient?

Am I showing myself to be trustworthy?

And then make the decision to turn the dial.

For those of you who are givers, maybe make the jump to tithing.

Some of you have been tithers your whole life and you tithe down to the penny.

That's fine.

But like, what if you make the decision, got them all in?

God, whenever you ask me for something, I'll give it.

And even if it's extravagant, God, if you have my heart, you have all of me.

So instead of living like this, instead of living like Gavin with the cheese balls or Joey with the messed up animal cracker, I'm living this way.

Open-handed.

God, whatever you have for me, you can have from me.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room?

So, Holy Spirit, would you speak to us now?

Reveal to us the areas where we trust you more.

God, I thank you that when we tithe, we're honoring you.

Hebrews 7 says that when we tithe, it's we're giving it straight to Jesus.

So, Jesus, that's what we want.

We want you to have all of us.

Not just to have our heart, not just to have our emotions, not just to have our strength.

We want you to have all of us.

So, God, give us the courage to go home and do the hard work of looking at our finances and asking ourselves the question, do you really have it all?

Some of us need to make some changes, but may we be the kinds of people who honor you, who put you first.

And as a result, God, I pray you pour out your blessing in ways we can't even get our minds around.

We love you.

We thank you for that, God, now.

In Jesus' name.