Your Money Is Loaned - Not Owned Series

A 6th grade class Sunday School class teacher brought a pan of brownies to class and set the pan on a small desk. Then, she gave each child a slip of paper marked with a household expense: house payment; phone bill' credit card bill; car payment; entertainment, and so on. Then she picked up the tray of fresh brownies and began to call out the expenses named on those papers. As the children gave her their expense slips, she would redeem each slip with a brownie from the pan. Finally, the LAST brownie was gone, but there was one boy (named Donald) who still held an unredeemed slip. Then the teacher called out: “God!” And Donald came forward, hoping the teacher had one more brownie hidden somewhere. Instead, the teacher took a butter knife and scraped the crumbs from the bottom of the pan onto Donald’s napkin…. and you could see the disappointment on the boy’s face as she did so.

ALL HE GOT WERE CRUMBS.

Then the teacher explained “The brownies represent our money. If we don’t give God His share right away, He probably won’t get anything at all except maybe the crumbs.”

In our text today God makes an intriguing comment: “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is HE WHO GIVES YOU POWER TO GET WEALTH, that he may confirm his covenant that He swore to your fathers….”

Last week, we talked about the fact, that people divide their time into MY TIME and GOD’S TIME. And there are people who think the same way about their money. There’s MY MONEY, and then there’s GOD’S MONEY. But here in Deuteronomy 18, God was saying here: IT’S ALL MY MONEY. I gave you your money. What you have, came from Me. And you need to remember that. You need to remember Me in your money.

"Remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth." IT’S ALL GOD’S MONEY!

As one preacher noted: The money you have is loaned, not owned. (Tony Evans) Your money has been loaned to you by God. You don’t own it. In fact, our U.S. currency has a reminder of that truth: “In God We Trust” is found on every bill and every coin in the USA.

Now, how do we DO that? How do we acknowledge that God has given us our wealth? Well, we give some of it back to Him. Proverbs 3:9-10 tells us “Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.

Notice, God challenges us to give Him our first-fruits. Before we spend money on anything else we need to give our gift to HIM first. We need to plan ahead about what we’re going to give to God. Our opening illustration pointed out that – if we don’t plan ahead - if we don’t set aside a gift for God first - God often gets our crumbs.

Today, we’re going to talk about Tithing. The idea of tithing is that I give 10% of my income to God. So, if I make $500 in a week, I give God $50 in my offering. And if I make $1000 in a week – I give God $100. I can give more… but I’ve decided to give at least a 10th to God. The math is easy, but the giving of that money can be difficult because people tend to think of their money as THEIR money.

Now at this church, we don’t DEMAND that you give a tithe. But we encourage it.

ILLUS: Years ago, there was a couple who started attending here. They had left the church they had attended because that church had sent them a letter demanding they give a 10th of their income or they’d lose their membership. That upset them, and they didn’t think that was right. They had given a tithe every week, but there was no record of it because they gave their offering in… cash. I explained to them that the reason that church had dunned them for their giving was because they were part of a denomination where there was a central organization overseeing several congregations in their district. Now, that central organization had a staff and other expenses that had to be paid, so each congregation was charged a fee that was based upon the number of members in that specific church. Since this couple were “members”, and since they hadn’t declared they were tithing, the church was cutting them off so the church didn’t have to pay the extra fee.