Tithing

Tithing

I bet most all of you in here have seen kids fuss and fight before haven’t you. What gets me is how my two little blonde headed girls are.

One of them can have a favorite toy. It can be sitting out in the middle of the living room and nobody is playing with it, nobody wants to have anything to do with it. Then the sister will come in and reach for the toy and oh boy, a fight is under way.

What really gets me is the fact that they aren’t arguing over who the toy belongs to. They get money for birthdays or other things and they buy their own toys. But, when they are arguing one of them will say… Its mine.. it belongs to me.. I bought it… and there is no argument there. But then the other one says… Yea, but I had it first…

I had it first…..

Do you ever see that?

Well, we want our kids to learn how to share and since they were not playing with the toy anyway, we tell them to let the other child play with it a while.

Boy, it is like a death grip they have on that toy. They didn’t even want to play with it but then they feel like they are being forced to give it up, they just cannot seem to do it.

Transition…. Well, I want you to know today that many Christians act the same way when it comes to certain things.

They feel like they are being FORCED to give up something, and they hang on to it just like that child fighting over their toy.

Many of you have heard my testimony.. and some of you have not. But during my testimony I usually talk about the first time I had gone to Church in years.

I was sitting in Church and the pastor started preaching............. And I got mad.

I had gone to Church to feel good, you see, I was not a Christian at the time,

I had gone to Church to feel good and this man was preaching about something that I felt like he had no business preaching about..

I believe that I tuned out real fast. I am sure that I never finished listening to his message. And many people do that same thing today….

Please don’t tune out to fast on me this morning.

You let a pastor preach every Sunday in his Church and never discuss how the Church should spend their time in duty to the Kingdom of God, and the pastor is considered to be falling down on the Job.

You let a pastor preach every Sunday in his Church and never discuss how we should all use our spiritual gifts to help the Church function properly, and he is derelict in his duties.

But you let a pastor discuss stewardship; you let him discuss money, a subject that was highly discussed by Jesus Christ,

Let him discuss these matters,

And many people in many Churches say, “well, he is only out to get our money.”

Many people do not realize it, but, Jesus Christ talked about money quite often.

In the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in the Synoptic Gospels approximately one out of every six verses… One out of every six verses..... relates to money.

I said a minute ago that many people feel like the preacher is always out to get their money.

And I have in the past felt the exact same way, but that is because I had listened to someone who did not know for sure what they were talking about.

We have all seen poor examples of the way some ministries handle their money.

I get so tired of seeing these people preaching on the health, wealth and prosperity movement.

They are in their adorned churches, and there is nothing wrong with a beautiful church, but they are there beside their gold plated this and their silver plated that, and they are telling the poorest of the poor in our country that to become rich they need to send all of their money to this ministry.

I heard one minister say one time that they promised, if a person would send them ten dollars, they assured people that God would send them back one hundred dollars.

Folks, if it worked like that, that ministry would be sending every person in America ten dollars so they could get back one hundred for every ten.

That would be a mighty good return wouldn’t it.

But it does not work like that.

God is not a moneychanger.

But I will tell you one thing; you will never be able to out give God.

I am going to discuss the stewardship of giving today.