Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 151
TRANSCRIPT
“Give generously and generous gifts will be given back to you, shaken down to make room for more. Abundant gifts will pour out upon you with such an overflowing measure that it will run over the top! The measure of your generosity becomes the measurement of your return.” (Luke 6:38 – The Passion Translation) In this week’s podcast, we are going to continue to look at the issue of money. Last week, we discussed the poverty mindset and how it can limit our enjoyment of all that God has given us. This week, I want to look at the blessings of giving your money away.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations, and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. Money is something that we must deal with as long as we are here on planet Earth. How we handle money can have a significant impact on whether we can truly enjoy what we have been given or not. You probably know people who have been blessed with much wealth, and yet they are miserable. You also know people who are not as well off as others, who are absolutely blessed and enjoy what they have. What is the difference between the two? I believe the people who give generously are going to enjoy what they have in a greater way. As Luke 6:38 says, “Give generously and generous gifts will be given back to you”.
The idea of giving from our income was God’s idea. We see the tithe in the Old Testament in Leviticus 27:30, “Now all the tithe of the land, of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord.” Again, in Deuteronomy 14:22, it says, “You shall certainly tithe all the produce from what you sow, which comes from the field every year.” It was a very well-established practice in the Old Testament days to tithe 10% of all of your increase. Tithing was a reminder that all things belong to God.
In the New Testament, the pattern of giving changed. I am going to quote a slightly longer passage from 2 Corinthians, and then we will unpack it and apply it to our lives. This is 2 Corinthians 9:6-11, “Now I say this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows generously will also reap generously. Each one must do just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that, always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed; as it is written:
“He scattered abroad, he gave to the poor,
His righteousness endures forever.”
Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness;you will be enriched in everything for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God.”
The first thing we see in this passage is that it says that we are to give what we have decided to give in our hearts. Verse 7 says, “Each one must do just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” One of the major differences in the way God deals with people in the Old Testament versus the way He deals with us in the New Testament is that God now lives on the inside. Since God did not live on the inside of His followers in the Old Testament, He had to give them rules and standards to follow. We call some of these standards the Ten Commandments. If you wanted to be right with God, you followed the rules and standards. One of the standards of that day was to give 10% of your increase as we saw in the Old Testament verses from Leviticus and Deuteronomy. When Jesus died on the cross, God sent His Spirit to live inside His children, and I think the way we give changed as well. Now instead of just automatically giving 10% of your income, God says for you to give as you have decided to give from your heart, not out of duty or obligation, but as a cheerful giver. What does that practically mean for you? Let me give you an example. If you make $2000 per month, and I hope you make way more than that, to tithe on your income would mean you would give $200 or ten percent to God. That is a simple mathematical equation, right? To give according to a mathematical equation does not rely on a relationship with God, it is very much about the meeting standard for the day. God sent Jesus to bring us into an intimate relationship with Father God. I believe what this verse is saying is that now that we have been brought into an intimate relationship with Father God, we are to ask Him how much to give. I think there will be times when Father God will tell us to give $250 or $300 out of our $2000 income. I also think there will be other times that He will tell us to give $150, because He knows that we will need the extra money that month. The key is to ask our Father God and cheerfully give what He tells us to give. Remember in the New Testament everything is about a relationship and not about following a list of rules and standards. I also believe there are times when God leaves the amount up to us, essentially asking, ‘How much do you want to give this month?’ The key is that the amount we give is not about a mathematical formula, but we give out of relationship with God, trusting Him to guard and protect the amount that is left over.
This passage of scripture uses the imagery of planting seed and reaping a harvest. It says in verse 6, “Now I say this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows generously will also reap generously.” For the farmer to reap a large harvest, he must first sow a large amount of seeds. What we are doing by giving to the Kingdom of God is that we are sowing seeds into God’s field. The amount that we sow will determine the amount of harvest that it will yield. If we only have faith to sow a little, then according to this verse, we will only reap a small harvest. If we sow generously, then we will also reap generously. When we sow, we should not sow with the expectation of gaining a return. We don’t sow with an expectation of getting back like we would by investing in the stock market. We sow with an expectation of growth. And according to this passage, when we have a harvest, it is giving us more seed to sow back into the kingdom.
“Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness;you will be enriched in everything for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God.” Where do the seeds we sow come from? They come from God. Look at this picture. We sow our seed that He has given us. God causes a harvest to come from the seed we sow. Then He gives us more seed to continue to sow even more. This verse makes an interesting statement. It says God supplies seed to the sower and bread for food. I think this is pointing to two parts of this harvest. We don’t eat our seeds; we eat the harvest. We eat our seeds by not tithing. Tithing is giving our seed back to God. And tithing is one of the only places in the bible that God says to test Him. Malachi 3:8-10 says, “Would anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings.9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the entire nation of you! 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and put Me to the test now in this,” says the Lord of armies, “if I do not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.
The harvest is God giving back to us the fruit of our seed. Notice this verse says that God will multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. I love this. It says that God multiplies our seed and increases the harvest to enrich you in everything for all liberality. God is not a God of sacristy. He is a God of abundance. One of my favorite pictures of God’s abundance is when Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana. He could have turned several bottles of water into wine, and it might have served the purpose. Instead, he turned six water jars holding around 20-30 gallons of water into wine. That is between 120-180 gallons of wine. And it was not just average wine. He turned the water into the best wine of the banquet. God wants to do the same kind of provision for us. When we sow our seeds, He is going to first make a harvest come from the seed that we sow so that we are provided the bread that we need to eat. But He is also going to multiply our seed so that we can continue to sow generously with all liberality. “And God is able to make all grace overflow to you, so that, always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed;”
Please don’t hear me say that I am against giving 10% of your income to God. If that is where you must begin, that is wonderful. Test God and see what happens. God is going to honor your sacrifice and commitment to the Kingdom. But I would ask you to stretch out your faith and begin asking God on a monthly basis how much He would have you give. And remember, God is never going to put a gun to your head to make you give. You give out of the overflow of a cheerful heart.
I encourage you to do an internet search for a guy named R.G. LeTourneau. LeTourneau was an inventor of technologies related to earthmoving equipment. He discovered that if you put a motor on each wheel of a giant earth mover, you could move a vast amount of dirt in less time. His inventions were purchased all over the world and made LaTourneau a very wealthy man. Early in his life he made a commitment to God that he would give back 90% of his income to Kingdom purposes. He once said, “I shovel out the money to God, and God shovels in back, but God has a bigger shovel.”
I want to end this podcast with the verse we began with, Luke 6:38. “Give generously and generous gifts will be given back to you, shaken down to make room for more. Abundant gifts will pour out upon you with such an overflowing measure that it will run over the top! The measure of your generosity becomes the measurement of your return.”
PRAYER
Father God, you are a generous God. You desire for us to be generous as well. Would you show us any places where we are being held back by wrong teaching or mindsets? Would you reveal to us your plan for our giving?
If you are struggling in the area of giving, please don’t hesitate to contact an RTF minister and break off anything that might be holding you back.
