February 15, 2004

Service Theme – "Our God Provides for Us"

Malachi 3:6-12

Who Cares? It’s All Mine!

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – One day a woman was rushing home from a doctor’s appointment. The doctor had been somewhat delayed at the hospital, and the lab work took a little longer than usual so by the time she left the clinic she was running quite a bit behind schedule. She still had to pick up her prescription, pick up the children from the baby-sitter, and get home and make supper, all in time to make it to the prayer meeting at her church that evening. As she began to circle the busy Wal-Mart parking lot, looking for a space, the windows of heaven were opened, as it says in Genesis, and a downpour began. While she wasn’t usually the type to bother God with small problems, she began to pray as she turned down the row closest to the front door. "Lord, you know what kind of a day I’ve had, and there’s still an awful lot to do. Could you please grant me a parking space right away, oh, and close to the building so I don’t get soaked." The words weren’t even completely out of her mouth when she saw the backup lights of a car come on at the end of the row. It was the best space in the whole parking lot, right next to the handicap spots and straight out from the front door. She made straight for it and as she pulled in, she said, "never mind God, something just opened up" (as cited on SermonCentral.com).
    2. Context – The woman in this story is just like us. We have a heart condition, and it is neutralizing God’s ability to bring blessing into our lives and our church. Let’s read about it in Malachi 3:6-12.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. Malachi 3:6-12 (from the New Living) – (NEW SLIDE) "I am the Lord, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already completely destroyed. 7 Ever since the days of your ancestors, you have scorned my laws and failed to obey them. Now return to me, and I will return to you," says the Lord Almighty. "But you ask, ‘How can we return when we have never gone away?’ (NEW SLIDE) 8 Should people cheat God? Yet you have cheated me!" But you ask, ‘ What do you mean? When did we ever cheat you?’ "You have cheated me of the tithes and offerings due to me. 9 You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me. (NEW SLIDE) 10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do," says the Lord Almighty, "I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! (NEW SLIDE) Try it! Let me prove it to you! 11 Your crops will be abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not shrivel before they are ripe," says the Lord Almighty. 12 "Then all nations will call you blessed, for your land will be such a delight," says the Lord Almighty.
  1. A Fatal Heart Condition
    1. The people were in bad shape. They had returned to Judah from exile in Babylon. They planted many crops and worked very hard, but got little return. Their lives were a mess, and they were always on the verge of starvation. Why? Because they had a fatal heart condition. They failed to recognize that everything belongs to God, and that they were mere stewards of the resources He had entrusted to them. They clutched onto those possessions like they were the most important things in their lives. Their spiritual heart condition was killing them off in more ways than one.
    2. We are just like those Israelites. We have a spiritual heart condition. We act like we believe that our possessions and our money are the most important things in our lives. Our spiritual condition is killing us off in more ways than one. I have to tell you that I don’t say these things lightly – I say them with a very heavy heart. You see, we will never move forward as Christians and as a church until we realize that we can’t go around nurturing that feeling in our hearts that everything we’ve got is all ours. (NEW SLIDE) We are living lives of leanness, of poverty, when God has His fullness just waiting for us!
    3. Monday while I was in a waiting room at Albany Hospital, two families with two little girls came in. I gathered that they were cousins, and one of them was clutching a little red Clifford toy with all her might. The problem was that the toy really belonged to the other little girl, and they were both carrying on about the toy being "mine." Both sets of parents had to intervene, and the toy finally made it to the right little girl. I can remember similar struggles when David and Danny were little. I heard the phrase "It’s all mine!" more times than I would care to guess! Those little kids were too immature to realize that they were settling for the leanness of fighting over one object, when all the fullness of their parents’ resources were available to them.
    4. We are like those little kids, only God is the one trying to convince us to loosen our clutches on our money and our stuff. Now I know that many times David and Danny would grab their stuff just to be mean to the other one, but I don’t believe that’s our motivation with God. I believe that we clutch onto our money and stuff so much and so hard because we haven’t figured out that we can trust God with it and that He will give us many blessings in return. We’re like little children when it comes to stewardship of God’s resources.
    5. Look at verse six. God starts out with the declaration of who He is, so that the readers will know that He gave the message and no one else. Then He makes a very profound statement – "I do not change." In other words, He’s saying, "Look, I know you’ve broken the covenant, but I never will." That’s why He didn’t just blast the Israelites out of existence. (NEW SLIDE) God never changes, and He will always keep His word. That’s a profound truth for us, because we’ve got to realize that God will always keep His word to take care of us if we will trust Him to do it. And that has a huge bearing on how we handle the money and other resources He has entrusted to us.
    6. Then in verse seven, God points to His people’s continual refusal to obey Him, but still gives them a call to repent and return so that His presence could be with them. That’s powerful stuff! (NEW SLIDE) God is saying that what’s in the past is in the past. We’ve got a terrible track record of obeying Him over the years, but it’s still not too late! His arms are still open wide, just waiting for us to trust Him to be who He says He is, our Provider. But then He points out our problem – not only are our hearts in spiritually poor shape, we are in denial. We ask Him, "Since we’ve never moved away from You, God, how can we come back?" We fail to see the truth about ourselves, and that failure is killing us.
    7. In verses eight and nine, God cuts to the chase. He tells us that we’re cheating Him, and no matter how many times we protest our innocence, the truth remains that we’re cheating Him. And so instead of a blessing we get a curse. How are we cheating Him? By refusing to pay our tithes and offerings, that’s how. Now I know that some folks are going to begin to turn me off right about now. We don’t like anybody telling us what to do, especially when it comes to money. (NEW SLIDE) And yet Jesus taught more about money than He did any other single subject! Why? Because in our spiritual disease and poverty, we fail to recognize His provision. And so, since we’re walking in disobedience, He has no choice than to withhold His blessings from us.
    8. I do not believe in prosperity theology. I do not believe that God will make us rich if we obey Him and claim His promises. He doesn’t promise to do that – what He promises to do is to meet our needs. We would so much like to try other areas of obedience first, but when concern about money occupies our hearts and minds to the point that it takes the place of God, He’s got to deal with that idol first. Money is an idol to many of us. We don’t intentionally make it an idol, but money has a habit of sneaking up on us. Satan knows how powerful a hold it can have on us. He knows how susceptible we are to becoming very insecure about our finances and begin to spend only on what benefits us immediately. We all struggle with that temptation. The temptation to pay for our groceries and barely enough other bills to keep a roof over our heads and the lights and heat on. The temptation to go out and spend on new vehicles all the time because we don’t know what we would do if we ever got stranded. The temptation to buy the latest entertainment equipment because we need a way to escape the ever-increasing pressures of daily life. The temptation to buy our children nothing but the best because we were deprived of what the other kids on the block had when we were growing up. Maybe even the temptation to hoard because we never know what will be ahead, and we need a good sized nest egg stashed away just in case. (NEW SLIDE) Saving up, paying bills, buying cars and other stuff – none of these are bad in and of themselves, they become idols when they interfere with God’s commands about how He wants us to steward the money and stuff He has entrusted to us. These things are idols if they keep us from bringing the tithes and offerings that are due to God into His storehouse, the church.
    9. "Aha!" some of you might be thinking, "Now I know what Pastor Brian is doing. He’s trying to fundraise for the church!" I’d be lying if I said that the money and lack thereof that comes into the church isn’t a concern to me, but it’s not my primary concern. My primary concern is your spiritual benefit and welfare. That’s why I am a pastor – because I care about where you are at spiritually. (NEW SLIDE) And you will never experience the joy of knowing that God is taking care of you until and unless you obey God in the matter of stewardship of the money and resources He has entrusted to you. I know this is a struggle. My family while I was growing up did not tithe. In fact, I don’t know if they ever gave anything. So this was an area of struggle for me for years, especially when Kim first started teaching in Wamic. I was unemployed, rent was higher than I had anticipated, and money was extremely tight, and part of that was because we’d been extremely stupid in the use of credit. If we tithed, then the only other thing we could afford to do was to pay bills and eat. That was it. On the other hand, if we didn’t tithe we could have a little fun, or buy something we needed (like tires for the car). What still amazes me to this day is that the months that I did not write that tithe check, an unexpected bill or expense would come up that would take almost the exact amount of what the tithe should have been. And when I did write that tithe check and put it in the offering, those unexpected things never happened. God was showing me the difference between being under His provision and out from under His provision. He was showing me how smart it is for me to tithe. I can’t say that things have been a bed of roses since then, especially since it took us a long time to learn the credit lesson. And while we’re doing okay now I can’t say that there haven’t been a few months when I’ve thought about what we could do with those tithes and offerings. We could take that money that we’re tithing and using to support missionaries and sponsor children and make payments on a car. Or we could use it to save up for a nice vacation. But I know in my heart that Kim and I have to obey God in this, we have to stay under His provision and protection, we have to follow Him or we’re dead meat.
    10. I’m not saying this to toot my own horn. I’m trying to encourage some of you who are struggling in this area to give God a chance, to find the life and provision that He has for us when we obey Him. After all, nothing is really ours – it’s all God’s. We’re just stewards or managers of His stuff. Kim and I tithe and give over and above the tithe, not because we’re great people, but because we paid a high price to learn that obedience is so much better.
    11. We almost forgot about verses ten through twelve. (NEW SLIDE) They tell us that, when we bring the tithes and offerings into the church, not only does the church have enough money to do the ministry that God has planned for it, but He will provide for our needs. Food was the most basic and important concern for the Israelites, because they were an agriculturally based nation. They didn’t have a lot of bucks to buy food, so they had to grow their own and hope there was enough to eat, for seed for the next year, and to sell to buy necessities. God told them, "If you bring the tithes and offerings to my storehouse, I will provide for those needs. Not only that, but when the neighboring nations see that you are taken care of, they will call you a delight."
    12. I want to be taken care of by God. That’s a pretty good reason for me to tithe and give offerings over and above that. I want our church to be taken care of by God, and for that to happen all of us need to bring our tithes and offerings into the church. I want all of us to hear God’s voice say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" I want God’s blessing on every person in this room. I want God's blessing on our church. I want us to grow up to be the stewards of God’s resources He has called us to be so that we can have the impact on our world He has called us to have. Will we trust Him enough to believe Him and to act on that belief?
    13. I heard a pastor giving a presentation share about something that happened at a church he pastored. They were a pretty good sized church, seemed to be doing everything God called them to do, striving to walk in obedience and yet they were going in the hole roughly twenty thousand dollars a month. So this pastor did a lot of soul-searching, and shared his heart with the church board. The Spirit of God came on that place, and one by one leaders came forward and shared that they had not been truly tithing. Those who came forward repented and asked for God’s forgiveness. They started tithing. Then the repentance spread to other groups of leaders in the church. They began to tithe. The congregation started giving. The deficit disappeared, and that church even brought in a million-and-a-half dollars, well over their budget, in one month! I’m not looking for a million-and-a-half. But I know how much our ministries here are hampered by lack of funding. And I know that God has been holding back an outpouring of His Spirit in part because we have not obeyed Him in tithing.
    14. You may think, "I’m not a leader, so that doesn’t apply to me." We’re all leaders in some sphere of influence in our lives, so this story applies to all of us. If you are a leader in this church and you are not tithing, you are helping to withhold God’s blessing from our church. If you have a family and you are not tithing, you are withholding God’s blessing from your family. If you are a single person and you are not tithing, you are withholding God’s blessing from your witness. (NEW SLIDE) If any of us aren’t tithing we are withholding God’s blessing in some area of our lives. God has said, "Trust Me in your finances and I will provide for you!" Will we believe Him? Will we trust Him?
  1. Conclusion
    1. Please bow your heads and close your eyes. Do you tithe? And do you give over and above that ten-percent of your gross income? Let’s spend a few moments of quiet listening to the Holy Spirit speak to our hearts.
    2. What has God been saying to you about your giving? What has God been speaking to your heart these past four weeks about any area of stewardship in your life? If you need to take care of some business with God, to repent, to ask forgiveness, to obey Him, then do so right now. You can either pray in your seats or come up front to the altars and pray. Your choice. But we’re going to spend some more quiet moments sharing our hearts with God. Let’s pray together.
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