From His Heart

Guest (Male): Now wouldn't it be horrible to have the experience of passing away and you go to heaven and St. Peter shows you a big warehouse? He takes you into this warehouse and he takes you to an area and you see all these wonderful gifts and packages, and they all have your name on it. And you say, "What is this?" And Peter says, "Well, these are all the blessings that God had for you, the special things that God wanted to give to you, but he couldn't because you didn't trust him. You didn't obey him and you missed out."

Are you trusting and honoring God with your money? In other words, are you storing up treasure in heaven? This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, and thank you for joining us today for a message entitled When You Forfeit a Blessing. It's from Pastor Jeff's new three-lesson series, God and Money: What the Bible Says About Managing Money.

In it, he's going to share how you can experience the joy and the blessing of God by putting money in its rightful place in your life. By the way, this series is also our gift of thanks to you for your support to From His Heart this month of any amount. You can make that gift and get this series in the format of your choice when you go to fromhisheart.org. Now though, if you can, open your copy of God's Word to the last book in the Old Testament, the book of Malachi. Go to chapter three, and let's learn what we often do to forfeit a blessing.

Jeff Schreve: This is what the Lord says, beginning in verse seven of Malachi chapter three. 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?" Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, "How have we robbed you?" In tithes and offerings.

You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, 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.

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. All the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land, says the Lord of hosts.

Here is 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.

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 that, and this begins in the heart. If you're going to return to God, it starts in the heart. All of us, as the song so aptly says, all of us have a tendency to wander from God. "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love."

Revelation 2:4, the Lord says to the church in Ephesus, which was a great church, that's where Paul was for a good while, that's where Timothy was the pastor: I have this against you. You're doing a lot of good things, but I have this against you. You have left your first love. And so when you leave your first love, the Lord says, he doesn't write you off. He says, return to me and I will return to you.

It begins in the heart. Christianity is all about heart. As I shared with you before, Matthew 15, where Jesus said of the religious leaders: this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me, but in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.

God is looking for people who will have a heart for him. 2 Chronicles 16:9: for the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his. 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 Ashtaroth 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 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. You can say, "Well, my heart is wholly devoted to the Lord. I had wandered away from him, but now I've returned to him." Well, how do we know that?

God knows, God sees. Man doesn't see as God sees. Man sees the outward appearance. The Lord looks at the heart. How do people know that you've returned with all your heart? By your 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 the one key action has to do with money, has to do with giving. Because there is a connection. Jesus made the connection between a person's money and their heart. These two are connected together. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 6:21: where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

And we could flip that and say, well also, where your heart is, there will your treasure be. Because those two are connected. And so the Lord is going to tell them, okay, you want to return. They ask the question: well, okay, Lord, you're saying that we should return to you. How shall we return? 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? Let that sink in for a minute. Would a man actually rob God, steal from God? Of course not. Who would be that foolish, that arrogant, that reckless, to rob the great eternal God? Will a man rob God? Well, the obvious answer would be no, no man would do that. He says: yet you are robbing me. But you say: how have we robbed you? In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.

I think we'd agree that robbing God is a very serious sin. Robbing anybody is a bad sin. The eighth commandment says: you shall not steal. And that word "steal" in the Hebrew means to steal by stealth. You're going to pick somebody's pocket. You're going to steal from them, but you're going to steal from them, as most thieves want to do, without that person knowing that you stole from them. To steal by stealth. You shall not steal, the eighth commandment.

But when you steal from God, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good. Well, he sees everything you do. Now the poster child for stealing from God is in Joshua chapter seven, Achan. A man named Achan, he was part of the tribe of Judah. And if you will remember, when they went into the Promised Land, the first city that they conquered was Jericho.

Jericho was a fortified city, had the high walls. And the inhabitants of Jericho said, you know, they didn't feel any threat from the Israelites because they were behind this high, impenetrable wall. And remember, God had them march around, and then he had them shout on the seventh day. And they shouted and the walls came tumbling down. Well, God had told Joshua, and Joshua told the people: everything in Jericho belongs to God.

The term is used: it's under the ban. It is God's, and it is set for destruction as an offering to God. It's all going to be destroyed and burned. Don't take anything in Jericho. But a man named Achan, when he went into Jericho as the Israelites went in and wiped out the inhabitants, he saw a Babylonian coat that he really wanted.

And he said, "Well, I mean, God doesn't need all this." There's this coat. Nobody sees, nobody's around. And he grabbed this coat and put it in his cloak, no doubt. And then he saw some silver, 200 shekels worth of silver, and he grabbed that. And then he saw a bar of gold worth 50 shekels, and he took that.

And he hiked them back to his tent and he buried them in his tent, and he put the bedroll over it. And he said: nobody saw. And obviously his wife and kids were privy to this. This is what Dad did. This is our little secret. Don't say a word. But the Lord saw.

And because he stole that which belonged to God, the next battle when they fought Ai, the little town of Ai. Ai was like the seventh-grade B team. It's like, we don't even need to send everybody to Ai, just send a few thousand soldiers. We'll mop them up. They got routed, and 36 people lost their lives.

And Joshua didn't understand. And he said, "Lord, what is it? You told us to go fight and take the land." And he said: Israel has sinned. They've taken that which was under the ban. They took that which belonged to me. And as they began to search things out, God showed them it was Achan. And Achan said, "This is what I did. I coveted and I took. I stole from God." 36 men died because of Achan's sin. Achan and his wife and his kids were all stoned to death because of his sin. 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 there's just something about it. There's a violation that you feel in your heart when someone steals from you. They steal your identity. They steal money from your account. They steal your car. They steal whatever it might be.

And we have this visceral reaction when someone steals from us. Well, what kind of reaction does God have? Well, he has anger and he has tremendous sadness. Bringing sadness to God should be the last thing we want to do, because he sacrificed everything for us.

Pastor Jeff will be back in just a moment to continue the lesson When You Forfeit a Blessing. Now this month we're featuring Pastor Jeff's new series, God and Money: What the Bible Says About Managing Money. Did you know that we simply can't escape the grip that money has on our lives until God is in command of our lives? When that happens, the anxiety about having enough fades, and we begin to experience the overflow of blessing that God promises to those who will trust him.

In Malachi chapter 3 verse 10, God actually invites us to test him in this matter of giving: bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, 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. We hope and pray that this series is or will be impacting your attitude toward money.

It's our special gift of thanks to you for your support to From His Heart this month of any amount. And in this new series, God and Money: What the Bible Says About Managing Money, all three messages are available on a USB flash drive, on CDs, you can watch it on DVDs, or in an immediate MP3 digital download, all for your gift of any amount today. To get your copy, then includes today's lesson, When You Forfeit a Blessing, call 866-40-BIBLE, 866-40-BIBLE, or go online to fromhisheart.org.

We believe with all of our hearts, God wants to set you free from the stress and worry of your finances. Not so you can have more stuff, but so that you can have more peace and more joy and more purpose and more eternal rewards. Being content with Jesus in your life. Thank you for helping us share that message to the world with your gift today. Now back to part one of the lesson, When You Forfeit a Blessing.

I had a friend when I got out of college that I used to play basketball with and hang around and do fun stuff with. His name was David. David was a fun guy. His dad was very well-to-do. And David was telling me, before he got his life right with the Lord, he said, "I used to do cocaine."

And he said, "I loved to do cocaine because with cocaine I could party really hard and I could still play sports and I had all this energy and it was just, man, it just did something to me." But he said, "The problem with cocaine was it's expensive. And so then I couldn't afford cocaine."

And he said, "One day I went into my dad's bedroom and I stole his Rolex watch. And I took it to the pawn shop and I pawned it so I could get the money to buy the cocaine." I said, "Oh, man." I said, "Did your dad find out?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Your dad found out that you stole his watch and pawned his watch to buy drugs?" He said, "Yes." I said, "What did your dad do?" He said, "He cried. My own son stealing from me."

Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say: how have we robbed you? In tithes and offerings. 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, because you are robbing me.

See what is common in the church today is people robbing God just like it was common in the Old Testament times. It's failing to bring his tithe. Now we talk about the tenth. The tithe is the tenth, and there are tithes and there are offerings. The tithe is the tenth that belongs to God. That's his. And the offering is above the tithe. That's what we bring as an offering to the Lord. You don't give the tithe, because that belongs to God. You bring the tithe and you give the offering.

And when it belongs to God and you don't give it, well that's robbery. Now some will say when you start talking about tithing from the book of Malachi, they say, "Wait a minute, time out. This is Old Testament, Jeff. I don't know if they taught you that in seminary, but you have Old Testament and New Testament. You have Old Testament, they were under the law. This is the last book of the Old Testament. And then we get into the New Testament. And in the New Testament, there's nothing said about tithing. And so we don't have to tithe anymore. We're free from the tithe because that, you know, it's impossible for a New Testament Christian to rob God because there's no requirement on tithing."

Well, robbing God is not confined to the Old Testament. We tend to think like that. And typically it's people that don't want to give that are promoting this idea that the tithe doesn't matter anymore. Well, it does matter.

And when you start to research the history of tithing, the first person who ever tithed and the first time it's ever mentioned is in Genesis 14. And it's mentioned with Abraham. Abraham paid tithes to this guy named Melchizedek, who was king of Salem and priest of the most high God. He was a king and a priest.

The only person in scripture who's a king and a priest. Melchizedek is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. We read about him again in depth in the book of Hebrews. And Jesus is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Abraham was returning from the slaughter of the kings, and Melchizedek met him and he blessed him, and Abraham gave Melchizedek a tenth of all.

He tithed. That was way before the law, 400 years before the law. And then you read in Genesis chapter 28, and Abraham's grandson, Jacob, well he has an encounter with the Lord. Jacob's dream, and he sees this ladder and the angels of God ascending and descending on the ladder. And he says: how awesome is this place. And he names this place, you know, the encounter with the Lord. And then he says: since the Lord is my God, I will give him a tenth of all. That's Jacob.

And then 400 years later, you have Moses who comes along, and Moses commands it in the book of the law about giving a tenth to God. The tithe is the Lord's. And then you have Malachi that reconfirms what they were to do.

And then in the New Testament, you have Jesus. And Jesus said this in Matthew 23:23: woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. But these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.

So here is the progression. Abraham, as it relates to tithing: Abraham commenced it. Jacob continued it. Moses commanded it. Malachi confirmed it. And Jesus commended it. So who are we to cancel it? Who are we to say this doesn't apply anymore? And where in scripture do you find where Jesus comes on the scene and lowers the bar?

You read on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: you've heard it said you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you, any man who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. He raised the bar on that. All of a sudden those guys are feeling pretty good, well I've never committed adultery. He said: you ever done it in your heart? Oh, yeah, I've done that. Well you're guilty then.

He says: you've heard it said you shall not commit murder, but I say to you that anyone who's angry with his brother, who says to his brother "you empty-head," he is guilty before the court and guilty enough to go into the fires of hell. Jesus always raised the bar. So it doesn't make sense to think when it comes to something like money, all of a sudden he lowers the bar for the Christian.

Adrian Rogers used to say this. He said, "God forbid that a Jew under law would out-give a Christian under grace." You know, when we have received so much from the Lord, and we say: oh, I want to be stingy with the Lord. That doesn't make sense at all. You want to be a New Testament giver? Some people say, "Well, I don't want to follow the Old Testament. I'm going to be a New Testament giver." Great!

Do what Zacchaeus did when he got saved. He said, "Lord, half my possessions I give to the poor." I mean, he wasn't thinking about tithing. He goes five times over the tithe. And if I've defrauded anyone of anything, I'll pay them back four times as much. And Jesus said: today salvation has come to this house. How did everybody know Zacchaeus was saved? Because he was in love with money, he meets Jesus, everything changes, and now he becomes a giver.

Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And where your heart is, there will your treasure be also. And his heart was all in for Jesus and he wanted to give. Or how about the widow who gave the two small copper coins? And Jesus said: this widow's given more than any other because she gave all she had to live on.

So we have these two examples. You want to be a New Testament giver, not an Old Testament giver, because we're not under the Old Testament law, we're under grace. Okay, great! Well give like Zacchaeus did. And if you don't like that one, then give like the widow did who gave everything. Let's go back to Malachi. Let's go back to that 10% one.

But here's the thing. When the Lord saves you, when he pours out his grace upon you and lifts you, as we sing that song: lifted me from the miry clay and set me free. When he pulls me: I was sinking deep in sin far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within sinking to rise no more, but the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry and from the waters lifted me, now safe am I.

Doesn't that do something to your heart where you say to the Lord, as the Gadarene demoniac did: please let me go with you. I will follow you wherever you go. I want to be with you. You're my Master. You're my King. You're my Savior. And everything that I have is yours because I love you. You know, it is really true: you can give without loving, but you can't love without giving.

And when God has so changed your heart, you want to give. Because God's a giver. For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The Lord says, "Hey, you're cursed with a curse, the whole nation of you." Why? Because you're robbing me. And I see you do 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. The third step: we can start trusting him.

Well, this has certainly been an eye-opening study on how to put money in its right place in our lives. Thank you for joining us today for From His Heart, the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Schreve, whose driving ambition is to speak the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. Next time, Pastor Jeff will share part two of this second message from the God and Money series called How to Forfeit a Blessing.

Join Pastor Jeff on Thursday as he speaks truth, love, and hope to a lost and a hurting world. And remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more at fromhisheart.org.