The Test

Intro

Good Morning GC! I’m so excited to be here this morning. If you are joining as part of our E-Family, we appreciate ya’ll tuning in! For those who don’t know me I am Drew Terhune i get to serve as the Youth Pastor here at GC

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Overview

Week 1 pastor Stephen talked about Giving starts with the heart. Weeks 2 through 4 Pastor Jesse got us asking the question am I generous? He also talked about Faith over Figures last week Pastor Jesse brought a word about The Blessing in giving. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to any of these messages you need to do yourself a favor and go binge watch them on our facebook page! You don’t have to have a facebook profile to watch. Just google generations church and it will come up.

The Test

The title of my sermon today is The Test.

I want everybody to close your eyes and think back to your High School Chemistry Class. You’ve walked in and got your safety glasses on because safety first! You have walked to the back of the class where all the desks with the beakers and the bunson burners.

Your teacher has asked you to mix 2 chemicals together to make a gaseous release. As you and your partner are trying to figure out how to make this happen the 2 class clowns have turned the bunson burner on and is lighting ethanol and magnesium on fire at the same time. Maybe the 2 class clowns we just me and my partner. Have you ever seen Magnesium and Ethanol go up in flame together? Well it’s impressive. it also gets you banned from the ethanol and the magnesium.

After all the experiments here comes the test. You have to go back to your desk and write down what you experienced. Why the chemicals reacted in the way that they did, all while showing your teacher that you have understood the content that you were just experiencing.

Who knows that we as christians who learning to be generous also have test that we take. we take this test every other week. some every week. others once a month. I’m sure all of you are trying to figure out what test it is that we take. that test is whom are you going to thank for your income? in other words who are you going to worship?The answer to your test comes from what you do with the first 10% of that paycheck. I will let you in on a little secret. Visa, amex, Capital1, and MasterCard aren’t going to bless your finances. They just gonna keep taking it from you. Now you invest that tithe into Savior1 and somethings gonna happen.

If you would turn with me to Malachi 3:6

Malachi 3:6-12 ““For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’

Before we get to verse 8 I want to emphasize that i am not saying this. No person bringing the word ever except one man said this next statement.

Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.”

This brings us to our first point.

Tithing is a principle.

the word principle means a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief.

in other words because christ is my Fundamental truth; so should tithing.

We as children of God should make tithing an ordinary practice.

It helps us remember that God is the one who provided that income.

As i’ve grown up i’ve moved to being a transparent person. So I’m going to be transparent with you this morning.

Last week one of my leads at my job came up to me and said hey just an FYI i’ve put in for a different position if i get it there will be a lead position open up. I was like sweet! a promotion is a good thing! especially with 2 kids and a wife and trying to be a real grown up and buy a house i was excited because 1. He’s a shoe in for the position he was applying for. Which mean I was a shoe in for the lead position. I have the experience they are looking for and i know all the requirements for the job that is expected out of a lead position. I’m sure all of you know where this is leading too. I get to work Monday morning they announce that they are looking for a new lead position. i’m all smiles. I’m thinking it’s going to be a great day! I get to my supervisors office and he begins to tell me that there is a better candidate for the position. I was crushed. I walked away from his office trying to figure out why in the world did I get passed up. I have a great attitude, i do my job plus some, and i don’t make mistakes very often. Then i turned on God. I was asking how am I supposed to be generous if your not being generous towards me.

Let me start out by don’t turn things towards God and try to blame him for things. He will spiritually smack you in the mouth and you will fell even worse than you did before.

For the last hour of work I was ready to quit. I was like guess I need to be like the other guys and have bad attitudes and treat people like they do then maybe i’ll get the promotion next time.

ya’ll i was not in a good spot on Monday afternoon or evening. You can ask my wife.

Then the Lord Reminded me that it’s all his anyways.

The job it’s his. The income it’s his. He just allows me to be the steward of them.

I told that story because in the moments of when i thought how am i supposed to be generous now it reminded me that i should already be generous.

Lets look back to Malachi 3:8-9 “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.”

In this scripture God is speaking and laid down the law and said your stealing from me. of course they were like uh how did we steal from you God.

Lets break this down on how God says we are stealing from him. God has given us our income. This is where you will here all of the GC OGs say it’s all his anyways. He gives us our income and we are supposed to steward that income. So he has given us an income and he reserves 10% of that for himself to see what our answer to the test will be. so if you keep that 10% you are stealing from God.

When i walk into Cabelas I don’t go the Hunting department and start putting hunting jackets on and rods and reels and shotguns and rifles and walk out. Why? Because the police will be there in moments and throw you in jail. If we have sentencing for laws broken that man made just think about the consequences of laws that we break with our heavenly father.

I know that God saying you’ve stolen from is heavy. That is why it is so important to be tithing. Jesus doesn’t want to put us under a curse, but we are volunteering ourselves to be under a curse.

2. Tithing is a test

God is testing our hearts. we heard about that week 1 with Pastor Stephen.

God is testing our hearts. Again he is seeing who we thank for our income.

I want to pose a question.

Why would someone argue with God about tithing?

God gave his one and only son for us and people are arguing about 10%.

When you put it in a perspective like that it makes you want to give 100%. Lord forgive us!

to continue talking about tithe we need to know what tithe means.

Tithe in Hebrew is ha-maaser (HAW-MASHRA)

which means tenth part. (Exodus 18:26)

God is so amazing in the things that he did. What we see is that even in tithing god made it fair. He made it fair by making it a percentage. It doesn’t matter if you make 5,000 or if you make 5 million it’s a penny on every dime.

As you study your bible you will see the number 10 throughout the bible you will see a test with it. so lets take a test.

How many plagues where there in Egypt?

answer: 10

How many commandments are there?

answer: 10

you might see a pattern here.

How many times did God test Israel in the wilderness?

Answer: 10

How many times were Jacob’s wages changed?

Answer: 10

How many days ways Daniel tested?

Answer: 10

How many virigins were tested in Matthew 25?

Answer: 10

How many days of testing are mentioned in Revelation?

Answer: 10 and it’s revelation not revelations. that s means multiple and i don’t want to see that more than once.

How many Disciples where there?

Nope there was 12. Just testing you . trying to keep you on your toes, see if your still awake.

So tithing is a test.

3. Tithing is a 2-way test.

This is the only place in Scripture where God allows you to test him!

He says test me because just like we test precious metals to see if they are pure. He’s saying the same thing! Test me to see if I’m pure.

He wants to open up the windows of heaven to us. He wants to Bless us in ways he never has before. Are you going to thank him and worship him and walk in faith.

Do you believe with every fiber of your being that 90 percent with God’s blessing will go further than a 100% without. I know I do.

4. Tithing is Biblical

Genesis 14:18–20 ESV

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

So 500 years before the law we see a tenth or a tithe.

Genesis 28:22 ESV

and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.”

we see all throughout the old testament talking about a tenth or a tithe.

Leviticus 27:30

Deuteronomy 26:1-2; 13-15

I want you this week to look through the old testament and see where else you can find where a tenth or a tithe was talked about.

5. Tithing is a blessing

I had a mentor in my life tell me that he could not afford to not tithe. Ya’ll I have never heard anyone explain it like that to me before and it changed my life!

This man runs a million dollar company and he has paid cash for everything that he owns for the company, and no it’s not Dave Ramsey.

I always wondered why his business and his life ran as smooth as it did. were there issues yes, he had to employ humans who are sinful at their nature so it wasn’t always perfect. But i watched for 2 years and this man never struggled with a payment of any sort. I was amazed.

When we operate in the things that our of Jesus his blessings pour out on us.

I want God to bless me. If all it takes is giving 10% of my income to him for that to happen i’m in.

When you begin to tithe you will start to see something happen in your life. You will see your Godly relationships grow, you will watch your ungodly relationships decrease. You will watch God do things in your life that you’ve never seen before. You will have an attitude change. I’m sure all of us could use an attitude adjustment every once in a while.

As your life becomes blessed the next question is what do we do next.

6. Tithing needs to be taught.

This may sound redundant but we have an obligation to teach on Tithing. Tithing should be a common house hold word in your home.

I’m gonna say something that could be taken as harsh but it needs to be said. It is not the responsibility of Pastor Steven, Pastor Jessie, Pastor Tabitha, or myself to teach your kids about tithing.

We should be able to say the word and our children be like oh yeah we do that all the time.

I’m not saying that all our students here at GC doesn’t know what that is because most of them do. Across the church as a whole we have children who have never been taught to be generous at a young age.

I have some statistics that i want to share with you

1. 5% of churchgoers tithe

2. out of 247 million U.S. citizens identifying as christians, 1.5 million people tithe.

3. 77% of tithers give more than 10%

4. IF every christian tithe 10% faith orginizations would have an extra $139 Billion each year.

Could you imagine how effectively we could spread the word if we had $139 Billion to spread around to the different churches.

I did the math. there are approximately 380,000 churches in the United States. that means every church if all christians would tithe every church would have an extra $385,789.47.

Did you know that here at Generations Church we are praying that the Lord would bring us $500,000 through your giving so we could be a blessing to our community? With that 385 thousand we would be extremely close to our goal. Something to think about.

I wanted you to see what things could look like. I really want you to search within yourselves and ask what would Generations Church look like if everyone who called Generations Church home tithed. We would be able to change our community. and in turn God would be blessing your life so much that you could never again afford to not tithe.

7. Tithing deals with your heart

I have to start this out by saying that God doesn’t need your money. Psalm 50:10 tells us that. It’s not like God’s checkbook started to look like it was going to bounce and he needs your paycheck to get him back into the black.

The reason that Jesus is testing us in tithing is to see if we will be obedient

obedience is the foundation for a heart of a tither. As we begin to be more and more obedient God does bigger and better things.

when we become obedient to what God has in store for us it becomes second nature. It becomes something that we long for. We catch ourselves talking with Jesus differently. Instead of asking God what can you give me we start asking Holy Spirit what can I give you.

We begin to see a heart transplant. The heart that we had was greedy, self-centered, broken, gross.

The new heart that we get is Generous, unselfish, self-forgetful, whole, and beautiful.

In closing

worship team comes up

Today Holy Spirit is stirring up your obedience. Holy Spirit has been asking you to be obedient for some time now and because of the condition of your heart, you haven’t been obedient.

The Holy Spirit has been giving you a test and you haven’t passed it yet. The great thing about the Holy Spirit is that his tests aren’t always a pass, fail test.

This means that the Holy Spirit will continue to let you take the test until you get it. The even better part the Holy Spirit doesn’t come up and say finally! you got it! I didn’t think you’d ever get it. He gently says I always knew you could do it.

This also doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit won’t move on and let someone else take the test. There has been times in my life that Holy Spirit said to go do something but out of my fear or whatever it may have been holding me back someone else answered the test question correctly and they received the blessing.

He stirs up in our souls and he says are you ready for the next test. The Holy Spirit doesn’t ever want us to remain comfortable where we are. How can we ever be trusted with much if we just stay where we are comfortable.

Like Pastor Steven said in week one, here at Generations Church we are not after your wallet. If you never gave anything to this ministry we would still love you like we do everybody else who calls Generations Church home.

What we want to see is God grab a hold of your heart and do things that you never thought would be possible. We just have to be willing to let the Holy Spirit do a little bit of restoration.

As a car guy when i hear the word restoration it gets me excited. Typically it means that this car, truck, motorcycle whatever it may be has a story. It came from a vehicle that may have looked a little something like this. Somebody saw something in the car that nobody else saw. It took hard work, it took time, it took talent, and it took resources.

In the end it ended up looking like this. it had worth but it needed to have some work done to be worth something

That is what needs to happen to our hearts. Today our altar team gets to lead you an opportunity to start the process of restoring your heart.

This restoration is not an overnight process. It will take some time, but you need to take the first step.

I want everybody to take a moment and really do a check on your heart. Is your heart in a place that you would pass the test. the first time. Please don’t lose out on your blessing because you weren’t willing to self-evaluate where you are.

God is doing great and mighty things in our church, our community and in our lives. As we all begin to answer the test question God is going to open up a floodgate of Blessings on our lives.

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