SPEAKER_00: Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_01: I thought we'd have a little fun this morning before we get started.
SPEAKER_01: How many of y'all love Monopoly?
SPEAKER_01: How many of y'all have gotten in a fight?
SPEAKER_01: No, we're good.
SPEAKER_01: Unless you want to get in a fight right now and illustrate that.
SPEAKER_01: How many of y'all got in a fight over Monopoly?
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
SPEAKER_01: I got it.
SPEAKER_01: I was uh I went and got when I was getting my new uh copy of Monopoly, the lady checking me out said, Oh my goodness, your house is gonna be loud.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, probably so.
SPEAKER_01: She said, That probably caused my first divorce, how we played Monopoly together.
SPEAKER_01: It was pretty funny to hear her talk about that.
SPEAKER_01: Monopoly is an icon in American life.
SPEAKER_01: It's become so ubiquitous that we even do things like we go to the bookstores up in Fayetteville and we get hog opoly with all of the things, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so it is it is so famous, everybody knows all about it.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we know, just call out some of the properties.
SPEAKER_01: Just call them out.
SPEAKER_01: Look at that.
SPEAKER_01: Here you go.
SPEAKER_01: See, everybody knows Monopoly, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so you go through that board.
SPEAKER_01: Monopoly uh actually is the second iteration of this.
SPEAKER_01: It was invented by 19, it was invented in 1903 by a lady uh who uh was a disciple of a socialist economist.
SPEAKER_01: And it actually, the property uh sort of nature of it, it was designed to teach children how terrible capitalist landlords are.
SPEAKER_01: Now, can you imagine that?
SPEAKER_01: And now we're screaming at each other over, you gotta pay my rent, you landed on my parkplace, or whatever, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so you know what it is.
SPEAKER_01: You go around the board, you roll your dice, and you have a little token that's your icon.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm a classic guy, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So if I'm playing Monopoly, uh I'm looking for the race car, or I'm looking for the top hat because I want to have a little style.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01: But younger generations have ruined the game.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that they took the flat iron out and they replaced it with a dumb cat?
SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
SPEAKER_01: They had a vote on Facebook.
SPEAKER_01: Now, see, social media is deteriorating society to such an extent, we're even ruining the tokens and monopoly, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so you know how it rolls.
SPEAKER_01: You roll your dice, right?
SPEAKER_01: And you take your uh, and you I'll be the top hat today for some style, and you go through and you land on a property, and of course, if the Lord is blessing my dice, I land on Tennessee Avenue, which is the first one that I always want to buy.
SPEAKER_01: And you buy your property, you start out with a certain amount of money, and you receive some monopoly money when you came in, right?
SPEAKER_01: You get that money, and everybody's counting their money.
SPEAKER_01: And the way we played in my house was you put your stacks of money under the edge of the board.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you didn't play in your house, you can come over, Janet, and I'll teach you how to play.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And so you're always looking at each body's board, see how much money they got.
SPEAKER_01: You're being competitive and all that.
SPEAKER_01: It stirs such a competitive nature in us.
SPEAKER_01: When the lady invented the first game to try to show how terrible landlords are, immediately everybody, it stirred that basic sort of greed and competition, and they immediately started changing the game, and they changed in different cities in different ways.
SPEAKER_01: And then there was a guy in New York, and he decided I know how to fix this game, and he turned it into what we see with the blocks and all that.
SPEAKER_01: He was making it at home, he was selling it himself, he later sold the rights of that to uh to a toy company, and as you would imagine, there have been uh uh copyright and all of that kind of infringement lawsuits, almost the entire existence of Monopoly, because the whole point is to get money, right?
SPEAKER_01: Is to win.
SPEAKER_01: The whole point is to win.
SPEAKER_01: And you go around and you get your properties, and then you end up doing things like free parking and get money, or you end up in jail and all that sort of stuff, and we're playing Monopoly.
SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the average runtime on a game of Monopoly is about four days, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, nobody ever wins.
SPEAKER_01: You finally just give up.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody's got enough piles of cash that nobody else can catch up, and you eventually just give up, right?
SPEAKER_01: And in our house, boy, we we play Combat Uno.
SPEAKER_01: We play uh Intense Monopoly when our kids were young.
SPEAKER_01: Man, you just gotta win.
SPEAKER_01: And there's something in this game that just grabs you, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: And you just gotta win.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you gotta win.
SPEAKER_01: And you get your piles of money, and sometimes you'll even do this.
SPEAKER_01: Now, come on, I know you have.
SPEAKER_01: You know you have, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so here we go, we get that money.
SPEAKER_01: It taps into something in us that relates to our culture.
SPEAKER_01: That's one reason it's become such an icon, is because it actually, life sort of functions like this, right?
SPEAKER_01: I'm looking for opportunities, stuff costs me money.
SPEAKER_01: I run into, you know, I gotta pay maintenance on this thing, or whatever card you pull out when you pull out these things, and you know, there is stuff that gets in the way, and money comes out of that, and there's a greed element to us, and man, I gotta get another property, and everybody wants boardwalk because you can bury everybody else with boardwalk, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
SPEAKER_01: And so we just got this thing going, and it's intense, and you feel that pull, and and it taps into something at life that we're doing.
SPEAKER_01: We want to win in our jobs and have a house and a car, and we're doing all that.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just really, it's amazing how it captured American culture.
SPEAKER_01: It exploded in the 30s in the Great Depression and moving forward.
SPEAKER_01: It tapped into something where people wanted to win that way, and then when the economy turned and it was great, and then you had the baby boom and the explosion, and everybody's playing these games and it's popular, and we're in a time where our economy was flourishing and everybody was buying houses and all of that, and man, it just fit in our psyche.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows how to play Monopoly.
SPEAKER_01: There's even an online app version of Monopoly now.
SPEAKER_01: I went to Target the other day and I counted six different versions of Monopoly, and that doesn't even include stuff like Powder Puff Girls and Hogopoly and all of that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I wanted to bring the Star Wars version because everything is cooler with Star Wars, but I just didn't want to stress you out too much.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to cause envy that we have that cool game, right?
SPEAKER_01: So here we go, we're playing all this, but here's the lesson that we should be learning from Monopoly.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the lesson that should come out of this.
SPEAKER_01: Now we learn about things like investing, and we learn about property and rent, we learn about competition, we learn about the flow of money as it goes back and forth across the board and for people and how investments make a difference and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: We learn about risk, we learn about being conservative and when to do all that and all that.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the most important lesson that we should learn from Monopoly.
SPEAKER_01: You know, games, when they began, were designed to teach life lessons to children.
SPEAKER_01: They were designed to reinforce those lessons, which is why in that culture that woman invented the game, the first permutation of it, in that way.
SPEAKER_01: But as we play these games, we do learn and we redo rehearse these things, and the most important thing that we have to learn from this game is not purchasing real estate, not having more houses and hotels, it's not stockpiling money.
SPEAKER_01: Most important lesson that we learn in this game is when the game is over.
SPEAKER_01: When life is over, whatever we've accumulated, it does not go with us.
SPEAKER_01: It all just goes back into a box.
SPEAKER_01: As we go into our faith forward time over the next three weeks, this is a time for us that I believe is not a money time.
SPEAKER_01: It's a spiritual time.
SPEAKER_01: It's a time when we learn lessons like this.
SPEAKER_01: See, giving is not something that we do so we can build this or do that.
SPEAKER_01: This is not fundraising, it's not all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Giving is a spiritual discipline that is taught by Jesus that directly impacts our relationship with the Lord and how we view him in spiritual matters.
SPEAKER_01: And as we go over the next three weeks, what I want to do is unpack sort of a basic theology of money and stewardship for us.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what will happen is for the next three weeks, we'll be studying this anchor passage of Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: So turn with me in your Bibles there to Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to let you know that this is going to be the theme over the next few weeks.
SPEAKER_01: Investing in eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Investment in eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Because things here in life may go back in the box, but the investments that we make in heaven, the investments that we make as we are serving the Lord, Jesus is going to teach us that we are literally making an investment in heaven that lasts forever.
SPEAKER_01: Forever.
SPEAKER_01: And so this first week, what I want to start off with is just a basic theology of money and giving.
SPEAKER_01: What is it, and why does the Bible have us do that?
SPEAKER_01: So you hear in Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 19, I want you to read with me.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what I want you to get the context of this.
SPEAKER_01: This is, uh most scholars often refer to this as the greatest sermon ever preached.
SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus preaching, he's unpacking life.
SPEAKER_01: And in this message, what he's doing is he is trying to grab an understanding of the human heart and the plan of the gospel that God has to draw us to understand our sin, recognize that Jesus came to be our Savior and to forgive our sins by paying the price for them on the cross and to call us to a faith walk with Him through the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And so here's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: He opens up this passage of Scripture, and here he is in chapter 5 and chapter 6, he begins with the most basic of spiritual disciplines.
SPEAKER_01: He starts with the beatitudes that teach us what our heart is and what our heart needs to respond to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And then he goes into the basic disciplines of the Christian life that help us respond to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And he starts with prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_01: So when you start reading about this money right here, it literally is in the context with prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_01: You can't get a more basic level of spiritual discipline and walk than prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_01: I'm grateful for Jared and his message last week and calling us to fast this week as a church, and I hope that you met with the Lord and you heard him meet with that.
SPEAKER_01: And I've been praying over God's response to us fasting as a church.
SPEAKER_01: In the very same context of prayer and fasting, Jesus now goes into money because money is a spiritual matter that relates directly to our relationship with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Look what Jesus says, beginning in verse 19.
SPEAKER_01: Do not collect for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rusts destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, stuff that goes back in the box.
SPEAKER_01: But collect for yourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is an imperative command if you look at the language and grammar of this.
SPEAKER_01: Collect for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don't break in and steal.
SPEAKER_01: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: And then he gives us this illustration to understand what our perspective, our spiritual perspective of God is as it's revealed through how we handle our finances.
SPEAKER_01: The eye is the lamp of the body.
SPEAKER_01: If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
SPEAKER_01: And that eye illustration is what is your focus?
SPEAKER_01: What is are you looking on?
SPEAKER_01: Where your treasure is, the eye, what are you treasuring?
SPEAKER_01: What are you focused on, or what are you pursuing?
SPEAKER_01: The eye is the lamp of the body.
SPEAKER_01: If the eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
SPEAKER_01: But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
SPEAKER_01: So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness?
SPEAKER_01: And then he brings the point home.
SPEAKER_01: No one can be a slave of two masters.
SPEAKER_01: You'll either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot be slaves of God and of money.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he puts it squarely in our relationship with the Lord, and it is a spiritual discipline in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: He says, This is why I tell you, verse 25, don't worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?
SPEAKER_01: Look at the birds of the sky.
SPEAKER_01: They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them.
SPEAKER_01: Aren't you worth more than they are?
SPEAKER_01: Can you add a single cubit to his height by worrying?
SPEAKER_01: And why do you worry about clothes?
SPEAKER_01: Learn how the wild flowers of the field grow.
SPEAKER_01: They don't labor or spin thread.
SPEAKER_01: Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these.
SPEAKER_01: If that's how God closes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you?
SPEAKER_01: And then he challenges them.
SPEAKER_01: You have little faith.
SPEAKER_01: If you're worrying about those things, if you're depending on money to provide those things and not in the Lord, he says, Listen, that is a lack of faith.
SPEAKER_01: So verse 31, he says, So don't worry, saying, What will we eat, what will we drink, what will we wear?
SPEAKER_01: For these, the idolaters, eagerly seek all these things.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, people who have decided that money or things or whatever are their God and not God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: They have set their hearts, and he calls them idolaters, because the very first commandment is this love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_01: And if you love anything else that reduces the amount of love and treasure that you have for the person of God, then that becomes an idol and it becomes sin because it reduces our love and worship of Him as God.
SPEAKER_01: Your Father knows you need these things.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what's awesome in this.
SPEAKER_01: God does all of that.
SPEAKER_01: And then he comes and he says, Don't even worry about it.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's kind of amazing when you put those two things together.
SPEAKER_01: But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
SPEAKER_01: Don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself.
SPEAKER_01: Each day has enough trouble of its own.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus teaches us there about money.
SPEAKER_01: So let's define a few terms so that we know what we're talking about with them, okay?
SPEAKER_01: First is, I think it's good to go back and set a base definition of what money is.
SPEAKER_01: Money is a medium of exchange with an accepted measure of value that is used to purchase goods and services.
SPEAKER_01: That's all it is.
SPEAKER_01: It's just a thing.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a hammer or a screwdriver or a toaster.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a tire or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: It's just a thing.
SPEAKER_01: It is just a way that we assign value to something so that we can buy goods and services.
SPEAKER_01: So it is just a medium for us.
SPEAKER_01: Which is why it's such a good spiritual thermometer.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus uses it and talks about it so much because he understands it's not about the money, it's about what I'm doing with it.
SPEAKER_01: If it is the medium of exchange, then what I am pursuing, I am getting that to do that with.
SPEAKER_01: If I want to build wealth, then I am using money as a medium of exchange to do that.
SPEAKER_01: If I want cars and I want houses and I want cool clothes or I want whatever, then I am capturing that money and I am expending it, I am exchanging it for those things, and it is revealing what my desires are.
SPEAKER_01: Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: You can't serve God and money.
SPEAKER_01: It is just reflecting what our priorities and desires are.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing wrong with money.
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord for money.
SPEAKER_01: I knew a guy used to say all the time, God's everywhere, go where the money is.
SPEAKER_01: But it's just a thing.
SPEAKER_01: But the thing reflects by what we do with it.
SPEAKER_01: Now in church life, we talk, we use this term, tithe.
SPEAKER_01: What is a tithe?
SPEAKER_01: It is a gift that is calculated as one-tenth of the value of income or property.
SPEAKER_01: That's all a tithe means.
SPEAKER_01: In the Old Testament, they tithed and they would tithe on a tenth of the value of their property.
SPEAKER_01: They would tithe on a tenth of the value of the crops and livestock that grew that year, income.
SPEAKER_01: It simply means one-tenth.
SPEAKER_01: It's just one-tenth of value.
SPEAKER_01: So we use that term tithe.
SPEAKER_01: And then we use the term offering in church.
SPEAKER_01: This is an offering that we're going to be taking on our Faith Forward deal.
SPEAKER_01: And it is just a free will gift.
SPEAKER_01: There's no dollar amount attached to it.
SPEAKER_01: There's no, you gotta give this much or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: A free will gift made of one's own volition and choice.
SPEAKER_01: You pick, you pray about it, you determine what it is, and you give it as an honor to the Lord and as an act of worship.
SPEAKER_01: That's what an offering is.
SPEAKER_01: So in the Old Testament, the tithe actually predated the law.
SPEAKER_01: There are multiple stories in the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: There are stories in the book of Job, which is actually, scholars tell, the oldest book of Scripture, where they are giving tithes to the Lord to honor him and worship him.
SPEAKER_01: Abram wins a great victory, and he goes to a high priest of the Lord, and he gives him a tithe.
SPEAKER_01: Jacob, as he works through what his life is going to look like with the Lord, and as he reaches this arrangement where he acknowledges that God is God and he is going to provide for him and Jacob is going to serve him, he commits a tenth of all that he will make to the end of his life.
SPEAKER_01: That's long before the twelve tribes of Israel and the law shows up and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: Then when you get into the law, there's the tithe and all of that, but there are also offerings, and those are offerings that just people give because they just love the Lord, they want to worship, and they give.
SPEAKER_01: And you see those all throughout Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: So it's important to know what those things are and to define those as we go.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as you look at this passage of Scripture from Jesus, he teaches us four principles that are taught all throughout Scripture that relate to giving to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to use that term this week giving.
SPEAKER_01: Next week, I'm going to spend a little bit more time on unpacking what a tithe is and an offering is.
SPEAKER_01: But right now, in just whatever nomenclature you give giving, we're going to talk about what biblical giving is.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to show you these four principles and then show you how throughout Scripture these four principles are always the foundation of giving.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why Jesus says, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, because heaven is where God is, that's where Jesus is, that's where our future is for all of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Leading up to Easter, we talked about hell, we talked about heaven, and then on Easter we talked about the resurrection, and how as believers we should be living in light of the resurrection and what that means for us.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Colossians chapter 3 says, set your mind on things above where Jesus is in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is saying, what you do is you build up for yourselves, invest in eternity, collect for yourselves treasures in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Now here's what he also says: collect for yourselves treasures in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Did you catch that?
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: He knows we're collectors going to collect something.
SPEAKER_01: So he says, don't collect here, because that's just gonna all go back in the box in some form or fashion.
SPEAKER_01: But if you will collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: That means that when I'm investing by giving to the Lord, honoring him with what I have, what I earn, what he provides, however you want to say that, what I am literally doing is making an investment in eternity that will be credited to me as obedience, and it will last forever.
SPEAKER_01: In Philippians chapter 4, Paul is thanking the church and Philippi for investing in him as a church planner and providing for his needs.
SPEAKER_01: And he literally says in chapter 4, I want to thank you for your giving to me as a missionary.
SPEAKER_01: Not that I want your money, but I want you to have accounted to your accounts in eternity credit for investing in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: He literally says that in chapter 4 of Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01: We are investing there, being obedient in a way that God rewards for eternity the investments that we're making for Him.
SPEAKER_01: Now, these are the four principles or motivations for that.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, you are giving a gift that you give, whether it's an offering or what's your tithes on a weekly basis, is given to God as an act of worship because he is Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: He is God and we are not.
SPEAKER_01: He is the creator, he is the sovereign God of the universe, and as a result, he deserves to be honored, he demands to be honored, and he is God and we are not, and we are to worship him as God.
SPEAKER_01: Another principle that's in giving, that we give to God as a recognition that as creator, he also owns all things.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture says the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
SPEAKER_01: It is all his, and so anything that we have in our lives, we have because he provided it to us.
SPEAKER_01: And when we are giving to him, not only are we surrendering him as God, but we are saying thank you for your provision for us.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus describes that provision.
SPEAKER_01: Why are you worried about your clothes and your food and all of that?
SPEAKER_01: God loves you and he's your heavenly father and he knows what you need, and if you will seek him, he will bless you and provide.
SPEAKER_01: Next two Sovereign God, provider of what we have, we give in obedience to the command to participate in his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean for us?
SPEAKER_01: That means when I invest in missions, when I invest in the mission of the church, when I am meeting the needs of people in our community that create open doors to have the gospel, when we build a building that allows us to have more people, or we go out to chaffe and we plant a church to reach more people, or whatever it is, all the things that we do, when we give to that, we are saying to the Lord, I know that you have called me to be a part of the advance of the gospel, and I am being a servant to that, and I am being obedient to the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what happens when we give.
SPEAKER_01: And then finally we give because God promises to provide for and bless those who honor Him with their wealth.
SPEAKER_01: Proverbs chapter 3, verse 9 says this.
SPEAKER_01: Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest, then your barns will be completely filled, and your vats will overflow with new wine.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're not trying to teach, and we'll talk about that some more as we go through this study, that prosperity gospel and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: We're not doing that.
SPEAKER_01: God is not a slot machine, he's not a CD that you put it in and you get a return on investment.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what he's teaching.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus makes it clear to us that God loves us and he loves us deeply.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why he uses that illustration of look, the fields are beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: When you see a field of flowers, you literally stop and look at it.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's so beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: And if God arrayed the flowers with that kind of beauty and he loves you more, he loves you so much that Jesus died for your sins on the cross, don't you think he's going to take care of you?
SPEAKER_01: Malachi 3.10 says this.
SPEAKER_01: He has just challenged the children of Israel about stealing from him by not providing what he demands as God.
SPEAKER_01: First principle, he is God.
SPEAKER_01: And he literally says, Why are you robbing me from my tithes and offerings?
SPEAKER_01: And then he says this bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be meat in my house.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he has purposes and he's using us to meet his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: Bring all the tithes in the storehouse that there may be meat in my house.
SPEAKER_01: And prove me now or test me now in this, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: If I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing to you, that you don't even have room to receive it.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot step away from the truth that God loves us and provides.
SPEAKER_01: He provides in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_01: He provides in all kinds of different ways.
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I have figured this out.
SPEAKER_01: We have been tithing our entire married life and giving offerings on top of the tithe because we believe in the tithe.
SPEAKER_01: And so we give our tithes every two weeks or whatever it is, and then we give offerings like the Faith Forward offering when we move forward.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what we've learned.
SPEAKER_01: We'll get a check in the mail, or we'll get a distribution from an insurance policy, or we'll get something, and it always comes in.
SPEAKER_01: And we have learned now that when that check comes in, put in the bank because something bad's about to happen.
SPEAKER_01: But praise the Lord, God sent us the money before it happened.
SPEAKER_01: And we have learned that God provides.
SPEAKER_01: There's so many ways God provides.
SPEAKER_01: Now let me go back and unpack these just a little bit for us as we go.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at that first principle.
SPEAKER_01: Giving is an act of worship, acknowledging God is Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: So when you come and you bring your faith-forward offering, when you bring your tithes during the week, here's what happens: you are saying you are God.
SPEAKER_01: You are the God of our church, you're the God of our family, you're the God of a checkbook, you're the God of my heart.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: He makes it very clear in this.
SPEAKER_01: I am challenging your perspective in life.
SPEAKER_01: When he talks about eternity and investing in eternity and collecting for yourselves treasures there, he says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: Literally.
SPEAKER_01: If you are investing in heaven, if you are investing in the ministry of the church, if you are acknowledging that God is God and you are giving because you worship him, then your heart is a heart of worship.
SPEAKER_01: If you are not, then where is your heart focused?
SPEAKER_01: This is a common argument in church.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Pastor, do you believe that tithing is an Old Testament thing, or do you believe that tithing is something that New Testament Christians are supposed to do?
SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the biggest thing I've learned, having grown up in church my entire life.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the biggest thing I've learned, having been a pastor for more than 20 plus years.
SPEAKER_01: Every time somebody asks me that, for the most part, they are trying to find a way to give less to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And I understand some people love those esoteric arguments in Scripture and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: But most of the time, what somebody's trying to do is they're trying to say, I'm going to check the box and I'm going to get it as small as I can get it to get there.
SPEAKER_01: And giving all throughout Scripture is exactly the opposite of that.
SPEAKER_01: God is God, and I am not, and I am going to surrender my life to Him, and that means every aspect of my life, including that.
SPEAKER_01: You just take a quick survey through Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: You take the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: In the Garden of Eden, God provided everything, and he told Adam, listen, you can eat of all these trees, and it is lavish, and it is beautiful, and you're going to go work and farm, and it's going to be fruitful and multiply, and it's only going to keep getting better, but there is one tree that you are not allowed to eat from.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to set this rule because I'm going to make you make a choice to love me and honor me as the creator God.
SPEAKER_01: And so in the Garden of Eden, we are faced with that choice, and we are required to make the choice to choose to worship God or to choose to want to do things our way for us.
SPEAKER_01: And then as that unpacks all the way through Scripture, God never backs away from the requirement that He demands us to make a choice.
SPEAKER_01: You are God and I am not.
SPEAKER_01: So here you can have it back.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, No, sir.
SPEAKER_01: I made an oath to the God of the universe, and he is God, and you will accept this.
SPEAKER_01: When they you get into Jewish law and they codify the tithe, listen what it says in Leviticus chapter 27.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to read this to you because it's just profound when you hear it from Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: He is explaining all the different giving and all the different offering and all that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And scholars calculate that really Jewish people were giving at least 30% of their income when you put all the offerings and the tithes and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: But listen to what he says at the end when he describes it.
SPEAKER_01: Every tenth, this is the tithe that we would think of as a tithe, every tenth of the land's produce, grain from the soil or fruit from the trees belongs to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It is holy to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So what he says is, you don't even have a hundred percent, and then you give 10% to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: He literally says, you only have 90%.
SPEAKER_01: The first 10% is automatically God's.
SPEAKER_01: And then listen to what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Every tenth animal from the herd or the flock which passes under the shepherd's rod will be holy to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You are not to inspect the animal to determine if it is even, bad, or good, and you are not to make a substitution for that animal.
SPEAKER_01: They cannot be redeemed.
SPEAKER_01: So you're a shepherd or you're a cattle herder, and they come by, and here they come, and you think, that is my prize bull, number one in line.
SPEAKER_01: And you think, man, that's gonna hurt me, and I'm not gonna be able to give as much in the future as I would give now because that bull is supposed to make all that.
SPEAKER_01: God says, I don't care.
SPEAKER_01: The first one through the gate is mine.
SPEAKER_01: You don't even get to look at it because there is no temptation whatsoever that you are gonna walk away from what is mine because I am God and is holy to me.
SPEAKER_01: You get to the New Testament when Jesus teaches, and he says, Listen, you cannot serve God and man.
SPEAKER_01: This is an act of submission.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot serve God in money.
SPEAKER_01: Where your treasures, your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Listen, our heart, when we treasure something, it's like a compass.
SPEAKER_01: A compass does two things.
SPEAKER_01: It tells me where I am right now, and a compass also tells me where to go.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, what you are doing with your money when you are choosing to invest in eternity and you are giving that to the Lord and you are seeking righteousness in that part of your life, it is reflecting whether you are honoring God as God or not.
SPEAKER_01: You get to the book of Acts, and you get in the beginning of Acts, and what happens is all these people get saved, the gospel is unpacked, the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit's moving, they're preaching the gospel, thousands of people are getting saved, and they were doing the disciplines that Jesus describes here.
SPEAKER_01: They were eating together, they were praying together, they were fasting together, they were studying the word of God together, and what else does it include in the list?
SPEAKER_01: They literally took everything they had, they sold it, and they put it in a big pot, and all the people in the church lived out of all that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it tells us a story that sets up for church about a man named Barnabas who sells a piece of land, and he brings the land and he gives the entire proceeds to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And then there he gets praise for that and encouraged for that, and there's a model for that, and so there's another family, a couple, and they go, hey, let's do the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: So they sell a piece of land, and let's say they sell it for$1,000, and they come to the church and they go, hey, man, we sold this piece of land for$800, and here's the$800.
SPEAKER_01: And nobody would know the difference, but God knows.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says that God literally struck them dead for lying to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because this first motivation and principle is that I'm giving myself to the Lord, and he is God, and I am not, and when I give, it is literally an act of worship where I'm acknowledging him as God.
SPEAKER_01: You get to 2 Corinthians chapter 8, chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: They're taking a huge offering for the church that's struggling back in Jerusalem around the world.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says that one church in the middle of a bad economy came to Paul and he said, Listen, we want to give anyway.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says they gave themselves to the Lord, and then they participated.
SPEAKER_01: He is God, and when we give, we give motivated by He is God, and I am not, and I am honoring Him as Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: Principle number two, you see the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: Let's unpack that one a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Giving is an act of worship, acknowledging God as your provider.
SPEAKER_01: Again, Jesus makes it very clear.
SPEAKER_01: What he says is, why are we worrying about those things?
SPEAKER_01: It is a lack of faith.
SPEAKER_01: It is a lack of trust in him.
SPEAKER_01: And so you have to have faith that the person of God loves you, you have to have faith in the plan of God that he loves you, you have to have faith that heaven is real and eternity, and I am giving to that because that's where my treasure is, and I've acknowledged him as God, and I am stepping out in faith to trust that God is going to provide.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why he says, Why are you worrying about these things?
SPEAKER_01: You can't make yourself taller, you can't make yourself skinnier, you can't make yourself smarter.
SPEAKER_01: Now, my mom is a worrier by nature.
SPEAKER_01: My dad firmly believed that mom thought she could change the world by worrying.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he used to say all the time, if your mom doesn't know what to worry about, then she worries about what she doesn't know that she should be worrying about.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: And some people just have that personality.
SPEAKER_01: But what he's saying is, listen, we are to, we are to invest faith that God provides and trusts him.
SPEAKER_01: Again, in Philippians, what the Bible says is that is that Paul grapples with the church and he tells the church, listen, I have learned whatever state I'm in to be content.
SPEAKER_01: I can have a lot, I can have a little, it doesn't matter because I'm trusting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But thank you for giving, because you are learning a spiritual lesson.
SPEAKER_01: And as Jesus said, you are investing in eternity, you are laying up for treasures in heaven, and I want that to go to your account and you to hear the Lord say, Well done, good and faithful servant.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Listen, and then he says, My God will supply all your needs through his riches in glory.
SPEAKER_01: You see, we learn to trust him when we're giving.
SPEAKER_01: When you make that commitment to give, or you make a pledge, or you decide, man, I'm not giving enough and I'm going to tithe more, and I begin to step into that and step out in faith.
SPEAKER_01: God wants us to understand, you can trust me with that.
SPEAKER_01: That's why that scripture I quoted in Malachi 3.10.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, God doesn't ever say, test me.
SPEAKER_01: But right there he says, test me.
SPEAKER_01: Bring me your tithe, give it, because I've asked you to give it, and you watch if I don't show you how much I love you and how much I'm going to open up the windows of heaven and bless you because of what you've done.
SPEAKER_01: And some of us in the giving process, we are learning to trust that God will provide.
SPEAKER_01: And we're not trusting in our nest egg and what we build and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, listen to what Paul tells Timothy as a young pastor.
SPEAKER_01: Those who want to be rich fall into a temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction.
SPEAKER_01: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and perceived themselves and pierced themselves with many pains.
SPEAKER_01: Now, listen to what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of their wealth, but on God who richly provides us with all things.
SPEAKER_01: Instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good reserve for the age to come, or as what Jesus said, storing up yourselves treasures in heaven so that they may take hold of life that is real.
SPEAKER_01: He says, listen, you tell people, like in an American middle class society, in a middle class upper white-collar church where we do things like plan for retirement and have 401ks and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: We have investments and we do all that and we put it aside and we trust all that.
SPEAKER_01: And believe me, you should be prudent, okay?
SPEAKER_01: But listen, one illness is gone.
SPEAKER_01: Stock market is gone.
SPEAKER_01: One business turn is gone.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot depend on that.
SPEAKER_01: The fact that we invest and prepare for retirement is a matter of being prudent and obedient, even to being wise, but it is not there for you to be proud of what you've accumulated or there for you to depend on that to take care of you in your retirement.
SPEAKER_01: Instruct those not to be arrogant or set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we give and we give sacrificially in a way that it is making a change in our lives, we are saying, This is gone, and I can't do anything with this, and I'm going to have to depend on the Lord to provide.
SPEAKER_01: Which is exactly what Jesus tells us to do.
SPEAKER_01: It's an act of obedience, principle number three, to participate in his work.
SPEAKER_01: In every letter, Paul thanks people for giving to support their mission work.
SPEAKER_01: In 1 Corinthians chapter 16, he tells the church in Corinth, in verse 1 and verse 2, every week you set aside an amount of money based on your income and to put it in the church.
SPEAKER_01: So when we come to collect the offering, it's already there.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we give, we are participating and being a part of that.
SPEAKER_01: We are stepping into the ministry of the church.
SPEAKER_01: Our giving is not a vote.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not affirming things in the church.
SPEAKER_01: I don't hold back because I don't like this or that in the church.
SPEAKER_01: My giving is a God-centered act in response to what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: And that's how we do that.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's a little difficult.
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I, we give, and then I look at all the budgets, and I approve POs, and I watch what staff people are doing, and they're doing this strategy and that strategy and all that.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I'm thinking, really?
SPEAKER_01: You gonna use my tie dollars for that?
SPEAKER_01: I don't even understand that.
SPEAKER_01: You how much food are y'all buying?
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes as a staff person, you see all that and you have to think, wow, I wouldn't do it that way.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, sometimes people say pastors are in charge.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, I have less power than anybody in the whole church.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody asks for permission more than I do.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you it is uh if I was doing church, it would look a lot different.
SPEAKER_01: All right?
SPEAKER_01: If I was doing church the first week.
SPEAKER_01: What we'd do is rock and roll church.
SPEAKER_01: And the second week, what we'd do is cowboy church.
SPEAKER_01: And then the third week, we'd all wear suits and ties, because I love my cufflinks and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: And we'd have big choir and the orchestra and the organ and all of that.
SPEAKER_01: And then the fourth week, we would have African American gospel choir music and we'd bring them in and we'd have church.
SPEAKER_01: And we'd do that every month.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we would do if I was in charge.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we'd do.
SPEAKER_01: Some of y'all are thinking I'm coming second and third week.
SPEAKER_01: Some of y'all are thinking I'm coming first and fourth week.
SPEAKER_01: And some of y'all are thinking, Keith, can we follow you to Grand Avenue?
SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of things I do differently.
SPEAKER_01: It is not my opinion that matters.
SPEAKER_01: It is not my church.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus died for the church.
SPEAKER_01: It is his plan.
SPEAKER_01: We pray over those things.
SPEAKER_01: We have leaders that pray over those things, deacons that pray over those things, committees that pray over those things, staff pray over those things.
SPEAKER_01: It is not my job to determine whether that is being done the way I would do it or not.
SPEAKER_01: When Janet and I give, it goes to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And it is his in heaven forever.
SPEAKER_01: And it is gone.
SPEAKER_01: And my opinion of it is gone.
SPEAKER_01: And it is his.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus says our focus is treasuring, being obedient to the Lord, and investing in eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm grateful for our people because I think our people do an incredible job.
SPEAKER_01: Our finance committee is incredible.
SPEAKER_01: You would be blessed if you could sit through their meetings.
SPEAKER_01: Our deacon's meetings, we have one this afternoon, all of that.
SPEAKER_01: So please understand my illustration.
SPEAKER_01: My illustration, we do our best to make sure you're proud of everything that we do.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the deal ultimately, it's God's.
SPEAKER_01: And I've honored you.
SPEAKER_01: And finally, next week, we'll talk about principle four.
SPEAKER_01: How God provides.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to ask you as we lead in the invitation now that next week you begin to pray how your family is going to honor the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So here's what we do faith forward.
SPEAKER_01: Many of you are new members, you've not done this yet.
SPEAKER_01: It's the second year we've done this.
SPEAKER_01: We do this every spring.
SPEAKER_01: This is an investment that we're making that moves the church forward.
SPEAKER_01: The renovations that we did this year, as we've talked about, it's going to help us plant a chaffey campus as God opens all the doors in the way we talked about.
SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is above your tithe, we operate the church on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_01: We pay the light bills.
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: We pay for air conditioning as we move in the summer.
SPEAKER_01: All that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: We buy goldfish for all the kids in the nursery, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: We do that from the weekly tithes, right?
SPEAKER_01: The Faith Forward offering is an offering that goes each year towards that focus that we step out in faith and it moves us forward.
SPEAKER_01: We'll actually take the offering on April the 28th.
SPEAKER_01: You will have in the pew, there you see in front of you an envelope and a card.
SPEAKER_01: There are three ways you can do that.
SPEAKER_01: You can give a cash offering, you can pledge to give over the course of months, or you can do a combination.
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I often do a combination because it just helps us and makes us, it helps us to work that way.
SPEAKER_01: However, you want to is fine.
SPEAKER_01: You can do that online, or you can, there's a provision for that if you go to the website, or you can do it in that service.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to give yours early, we've had a few people already give theirs.
SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
SPEAKER_01: We'll take them anytime.
SPEAKER_01: But that's how that offering is going to go.
SPEAKER_01: But over the next few weeks, we're going to be talking about how what we do financially is a spiritual decision.
SPEAKER_01: And it begins with a decision acknowledging that God is God and I'm not.
SPEAKER_01: That's the first choice that you make when you choose to accept Jesus as your Savior.
SPEAKER_01: He is God and I am not.
SPEAKER_01: He is holy and I am not.
SPEAKER_01: He is allowed to make the rules as the Creator.
SPEAKER_01: I am not.
SPEAKER_01: When I violate his rules, I violated the rules of God Almighty, and the Bible calls that sin, and that sin must be judged.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus loved us so much he stepped out of heaven and he went to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: He never broke God's rules.
SPEAKER_01: He lived a holy, sinless life, but he went to the cross and died there so that his death could be a substitute payment for ours.
SPEAKER_01: He rose again, conquering death and sin.
SPEAKER_01: And when you come and you give your life to Jesus, you make that faith choice to follow him and to honor him as God, what happens is you are trusting his death and you are giving your life to him, and he pays the price for your sins.
SPEAKER_01: And in a spiritual exchange, he gives you his righteousness, and you are born again, and you become a child adopted by our Heavenly Father, never to be disinherited.
SPEAKER_01: And you have the ability to serve him and walk with him, to know you'll be with him in eternity and invest in that eternity.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to bow your heads as we close.
SPEAKER_01: In a moment, I'm going to pray.
SPEAKER_01: God's people are going to stand and sing.
SPEAKER_01: Keith's going to lead us in the congregation.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to trust Christ as your Savior, I'm going to invite you to come.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we love you and we thank you.
SPEAKER_01: And we thank you for the testimony of baptism this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And that precious sister in Christ, as she shared in the joy in her life and the desire to tell people that just naturally came out of her.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for the testimony of that.
SPEAKER_01: And I pray that that testimony will speak to hearts.
SPEAKER_01: And if there's someone who needs to be saved, they'll come.
SPEAKER_01: They've been saved, never baptized.
SPEAKER_01: They'll come and want to be baptized.
SPEAKER_01: If they need a church family where they can serve and be obedient to your purposes of expanding the gospel, I pray you'll give them the freedom to come.
SPEAKER_01: This is your time, and we come to you now as Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: It is in the saving name of Jesus we pray, and all God's people said.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to chapter and first the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith at the First Baptist Church.