From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: We all know the phrase you can't take it with you. You never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul. You can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And when you rob God, you rob yourself. You want to be good to yourself? Start trusting God. Start honoring God, and you'll be a recipient of His blessings.

Larry Nobles: Well welcome to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, who will today clearly demonstrate how you can avoid forfeiting a blessing from God. And one of the main ways to do that is to avoid mishandling money and your attitude toward money. The Bible has much to say about how we can go astray by putting money on the top of our wants.

And in today's message, Pastor Jeff shares how by putting money in its rightful place in your life, you can experience the joy and the blessing of God. Now if you're doing that, don't let the devil talk you out of tuning out now. Give God's word a chance on this vital topic from Pastor Jeff's new series, God and Money: What the Bible Says About Managing Money. Open your Bible now to Malachi chapter three for part two of the lesson, When You Forfeit a Blessing. Here again is Pastor Jeff.

Here's the question to consider: how can we experience God's overflow of blessing that He promises in Malachi chapter three? If you want to be blessed, this is what the Lord says to do: three steps. Number one, and you can do this, and we can do this together: we can return to Him. We can return to Him. That's what He says in verse seven.

And there He reminds His ancient people, 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, the Lord of angel armies. Return to Me.

Now we can do this and this begins in the heart. If you're going to return to God, it starts in the heart. The prophet Samuel said this to the people in 1 Samuel chapter seven: if you return to the Lord with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtoreth from among you and direct your hearts to the Lord and serve Him alone, and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines. But you've got to return and you return with all your heart.

And so that's what the Lord was looking for. Now when you return with all your heart to the Lord, how do you know that? What's the evidence? It's evidenced by actions. James said that: faith without works is dead being by itself. You show me your faith without the works and I'll show you my faith by my works. That's how we know a person is in love with Jesus; it's by the way he or she lives—actions.

And that brings us to step two. Step one is return to Him. Step two is we can stop robbing Him. Oh you want to return? Okay. Well let's get down to brass tacks here. Will a man rob God? It's a serious sin to rob from God.

Now no doubt there are people in here today and you've had the horrible experience of somebody stealing from you. And we have this visceral reaction when someone steals from us. Well what kind of reaction does God have? Robbing God is a serious sin, very serious. And robbing God, you say well what exactly is that? It's failing to bring His tithe. The tithe is the tenth. And the tithe belongs to God.

Leviticus 27 verse 30: thus all the tithe of the land, of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord's. It is holy to the Lord. It belongs to God. And they were all doing it. They were all robbing God. He said you're cursed with a curse, the whole nation of you. Why? Because you're robbing Me and I see you doing it.

So what's the first step? We can return to Him with all our heart. Second step: we can stop robbing Him. That seems pretty obvious. Stop doing that. And the third step: we can start trusting Him. So He says in verse 10: bring the whole tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in My house. The temple had storage rooms because these people were farmers and they would bring a tithe of their grain and goods along with money so that there may be food in My house. And test Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts. If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.

Now remember this: tithing, tithes and offerings, that's a test of faith. It's a test of your faith. He says that: test Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts. It's a test of your faith. Now we hear people and we say they say 10% and they're like, I've never done this in my life. I became a Christian, perhaps you're out there and you say I became a Christian while I was 40 years old, I got a bunch of debt and you're talking about 10% and then you're saying that that's the bottom, that's the floor, and then above that?

Some pastors will tell people say hey you just start somewhere, start maybe start at 3% or 5%. I don't ever say that. It's kind of like this: it's kind of like you said to me, Jeff, I got saved and man I was a thief, I was robbing, I was knocking over liquor stores. I was knocking over 10 liquor stores a month. And that's how I lived, knocking over liquor stores. And I'm really convicted about that, and so next month I'm only going to knock over five because I'm going to work up to it. Pretty soon I'll get to where I'm only knocking over two a month and then maybe we'll get to where I'm not stealing from any of them.

No, if you're going to get right with God, you do it His way and you say okay Lord, I'm not going to rob You at all. Why would I want to rob the God who loves me? Why would I want to do what my friend did and steal my father's Rolex and pawn it so I can have money to do what I want to do?

People say, "Well I can't afford, you don't understand, I can't afford to tithe." Listen, here's what you don't understand: you can't afford not to because of what you're forfeiting. And the Lord is saying, "Test Me now in this," says the Lord of hosts, the Lord of angel armies. "If you do what I say—Lord, I believe for it as we sang that song—if you do what I say, what am I going to do in response? I'm going to open up the windows of heaven. And you remember the dream where you had all that stuff in the warehouse? I'm going to start loading you down with blessings because I was testing to see will you trust and obey even when it doesn't make sense."

Tithing is a test of faith. Now all of the Bible is really boiled down to one question: will you trust Me? God says will you trust Me? John 11 verse 40, as Jesus said to Martha at the tomb of Lazarus: did I not say to you, if you believe you will see the glory of God? Roll away the stone. And when they did that, when they took that step of faith, then He raised Lazarus from the dead. God will not do what you can do, and you cannot do what He can do.

So tithing is a test of your faith. Secondly, tithing is an act of worship. Now we do that because we love the Lord. We want to give to Him and give generously and give cheerfully and give gratefully and give lovingly to the Lord.

Now remember this: when the Bible talks about giving to the Lord, we don't give to the Lord to get from the Lord. This is not some plan where, oh if I do this, God's going to do that. We don't give. We give as Jesus said, give expecting nothing in return. And when you give for that purpose, then the Lord gives back to you. RG LeTourneau, who was a great giver, the philanthropist and inventor—LeTourneau University in Longview is named after him—well he was a guy that was a reverse tither. He gave 90% and lived on 10%.

He said this: if you give because it pays, it doesn't pay. But if you give because you love God, it pays in spades. See it's the motivation. And that's a problem with the prosperity gospel: you give, you sow this seed and God will give this back to you, and then you can buy your BMW and have your big car and have your boat and have all these things.

No, we give because we love the Lord. We're not giving to to get something back from Him; we're giving because it's a test of our faith and we're trusting Him with our financial issues and our problems and difficulties in life and we give to Him. And we know that He's going to provide for us. We don't know how He's going to provide; we just know that He is going to provide.

But as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said in front of King Nebuchadnezzar when he said you bow down before this image or I'll throw you in the furnace of blazing fire and I'll give you another chance—you didn't do it the first time but I'll give you another chance—and they said we don't need another chance King. Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from your furnace of blazing fire. And even if He doesn't, it doesn't matter; we're not going to bow down. We're going to serve Him. We're going to be faithful to Him and be faithful until death knowing that He will give us the crown of life.

Tithing is an act of worship. And we give freely and we give generously and we give gratefully and we give lovingly. And we're excited to give to the Lord's work because He includes us. He says, "Come join Me in building the kingdom of God," and we get to join Him.

Larry Nobles: Pastor Jeff Schreve will return in a moment to complete the message, When You Forfeit a Blessing. But first, a question you should be honest about when you answer it: where is your treasure? The Bible teaches that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.

You see, God is ultimately concerned with your heart. And it's why we are grateful for your support to From His Heart this month. It means God is working in the hearts of people around the world to support this media outreach in a big way. Pastor Jeff receives no income from this ministry; he's paid a salary by the church he pastors in Texarkana, Texas. From His Heart is a separate nonprofit organization and we take nonprofit seriously.

All you give goes to help us carry out this mission to share the good news through each and every gift you make to this ministry. You're sowing for eternity and you're practicing the very principle Jesus talked about. For your gift today to From His Heart, we'd like to say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's new series, God and Money: What the Bible Says About Managing Money. And you can get it in the format of your choice: USB flash drive, CDs, DVDs, or an immediate MP3 download. To get God and Money, call 866-40-BIBLE, 866-40-BIBLE, or go online to fromhisheart.org. Through your continued support, men and women are being transformed through radio, television, and online platforms. God bless you. Let's conclude today's lesson, part two of When You Forfeit a Blessing.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Tithing is an essential element in combating greed in your life. You have a problem with that, I have a problem with that, we have a problem with that. The 10th commandment: you shall not covet your neighbor's house, your neighbor's spouse, anything that belongs to your neighbor. And Jesus said in Luke 12:15: be on guard against every form of greed, for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.

If I am continually, as the Lord blesses me, giving that back to Him—and like I said the tithe is the ground floor and then above that is the offering—and I'm not looking at the ground floor as much as I'm looking to grow in my offering, in my giving to the Lord. And if I do that, it helps to break that grip of greed because I recognize hey I'm not the Dead Sea here where everything flows into me and then stops. I'm to be a conduit of God's blessings. And as God blesses me, I want to bless others.

That's what RG LeTourneau said. He said, "Hey I'm a reverse tither because as God blesses me I give more of it away and more of it away and more of it away." And even giving 90% away and living on 10%, he was very, very wealthy. And somebody asked him, "How does that work?" He says, "Well I shovel it out and God shovels it back to me, and God has a bigger shovel."

Give, it says, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, they will pour into your lap. Nobody can outgive God and God's not going to let you outgive Him. And God is a good God and we can trust Him. And it's an essential element if you want to combat greed in your life.

Tithing is God's vehicle to bless you and to use you. That's how God set it up. I set up this mechanism where you get involved in the ministry and you give the tithe and the offering and you give and then because of your faith, I'm going to use that to bless your life. So He says He'll open up the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.

And then He says in verse 11: then I will rebuke the devourer for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground, nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes, says the Lord of hosts. He keeps repeating that He's the Lord of hosts. That's the Lord of angel armies. God is a God to be feared. His name is great. And the God of angel armies is somebody we need to fear, not to be afraid of Him, but to give Him the utmost respect and reverence.

All the nations will call you blessed, verse 12, for you shall be a delightful land, says the Lord of hosts. God uses tithes and offerings to be the vehicle that He blesses His children with. You know, don't ever get the idea that God's month-to-month in heaven. And if your $200 gift doesn't come through, if that check is late, and God's—I don't know what He's going to do, there's going to be a power outage in heaven.

All the silver, all the gold belongs to God. And God doesn't care about your money; He cares about you and He knows that money can really wrap its tentacles around your heart and pull you away. And so He says the way you break that is by putting Me first in your finances. And if you put Me first in your finances, this is what you can expect: I will bless you and I will use you to be a blessing to other people.

Now if you're cursed with a curse, the whole nation of you, because you're robbing Me, you're not much of a blessing. You're not receiving a blessing, you're not a blessing to other people, you're not a blessing to the nations. But you start obeying God and then all of a sudden and you become a conduit of His blessings and God gives to you and you give to others so that they can be blessed. You become a delightful land.

What happens if you don't? What happens if you just say well I'm not going to do that? Because no doubt there are a lot of people in here and you're listening to this and you say I don't believe that. I don't want to do that. I'm not going to do that. That's fine. You can do whatever you want. You can believe whatever you want, you can do whatever you want. But one day you're going to have to answer to God.

And I'm telling you what He says in His word and I'd much rather have me stand before God one day and God said, "Jeff, you took My word too literally" than to have God say to me, "Jeff, you explained it away too easily." But what happens when we as believers when we steal from Dad? Haggai chapter one. Haggai was a prophet who came to Israel or came to Judah in 520 BC, began to preach.

You know, if you know about the history, Judah was put in subjection by Babylon and carried off to Babylon in 605 BC, then 597 BC, and then 586 BC. All of Jerusalem was destroyed and all these captives came to Babylon—Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, those guys—along with thousands and thousands of others. Well when Cyrus the Great took over, Babylon was defeated by the Persians and Cyrus the Great was King.

Well he let the Jews go back. And Zerubbabel led 50,000 of them back and they were coming back to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which has been totally destroyed, and they came back to rebuild the temple. That was the very first thing on their minds. We have to have a temple. We rebuild the temple. Solomon's temple was destroyed; we're going to rebuild it. They come back in 538 BC. It's 520 BC. Still no temple.

They ran into some problems and difficulties and then they just lost their mojo for building rebuilding the temple. So God sends Haggai. And Haggai says this: thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of angel armies. This people says the time has not come, even the time for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt. Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet saying, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: consider your ways.

You have sown much but harvest little. You eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied. You drink, but there is not enough to become drunk. You put on clothing, but no one is warm enough. And he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts: consider your ways. Go up to the mountains, bring wood and rebuild the temple that I may be pleased with it and be glorified, says the Lord.

You look for much but behold it comes to little. When you bring it home, I blow it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. Therefore because of you, the sky has withheld its dew and the earth has withheld its produce.

God says, "Hey you're a child of Mine and you're going to rob Me? Guess what's going to happen to you? I'm going to take what you're holding on to that belongs to Me—I'm going to blow it away." You can bring the tithe that belongs to God or He will extract it because that belongs to God.

God's not playing around. This is important stuff because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, and where your heart is, there will your treasure be also. And no one can serve two masters. And the Lord, if you're going to start serving money, you're going to go down the drain. And you have to constantly watch your heart and guard your heart and put the Lord first in your finances. And God says when you do that, I will bless you.

Test Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts, and I will meet your needs. Philippians 4:19 is a great verse: and my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. That's a verse that Paul gave to the Philippians because the Philippians were givers. And because they were givers, he said you can count on the fact that God will meet your needs. He'll provide for your needs.

Listen, we all know the phrase you can't take it with you. You never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul. You can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And when you rob God, you rob yourself. You want to be good to yourself? Start trusting God. Start honoring God, and you'll be a recipient of His blessings.

This life doesn't last very long. If you live to be 100 or you collect social security till you're 120, it doesn't last very long, right? But you're going to spend forever in heaven. And that's why Jesus said don't lay up for yourselves treasures upon the earth where moth destroys and thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths don't destroy and where thieves can't break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there where your heart be also. And that will last for all eternity.

Hey you want to get in on a blessing? Or do you want to forfeit a blessing? And it's not a little blessing; it's a big blessing. And it's not always in financial; it's in meeting your needs, but it's in the the blessings of God on your life—the love and the joy and the peace and to go to bed at night and know that your heart is right with God and there's nothing that you're stealing from Him about or doing things that disobey Him. And you're showing it up in the most important area, the area that tends to define so many of us with money.

And you're putting Him first. And you're getting money in its rightful place. God is the master, money is the servant. And you're practicing that on a regular basis. God says if you do that, I will bless you so big that it will overflow in your life and then you'll be able to bless others as you become a conduit of My blessings. If you rob God, will you start trusting God and start today?

Larry Nobles: Are you willing to put money in its rightful place in your life today? We hope these have been thought-provoking insights for you. If you'd like a copy of this message to listen to again or to share with a friend, go to fromhisheart.org, click the Listen link, and you can download a free MP3 of this or any broadcast and send it to a friend along with the sermon notes and outlines from Pastor Jeff. It's all free; just click the Listen link at fromhisheart.org.

Today's message was the second of three in Pastor Jeff's new series, God and Money: What God Says About Managing Money. It's our gift of thanks to you for your support this month of any amount. And you can find out more about that when you go to fromhisheart.org or call 866-40-BIBLE to make your gift and request the series in the format of your choice.

Thank you for joining us. I'm Larry Nobles, reminding you that From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Schreve, whose calling from God is to speak the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. And he'll do that again tomorrow with the last message of the God and Money series called Managing God's Money. Here's just a bit of what's to come.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: One of the things that is very obvious that we require of money managers when we're going to turn over a lump sum of money for them to manage is that that person be honest and faithful and trustworthy and work for our best interests. So a big question: how are you doing in your money management of the Lord's resources that He's entrusted to you? Whether you have a lot or whether you have a little, it still belongs to God and He has put you in charge of those resources. That's Friday right here on From His Heart.