0:00 this time to some place in the scripture that talks about what God says our attitude toward our money and our possessions ought to be that's really very easy because the Bible is as filled with information and teaching about that subject as it is about anything the Bible says considerable uh a considerable number of things about money now what we're going to do today is we're going to look at what Jesus teaches about it in Luke 11 and Luke 11: 37-42 is printed in your bulletin when Jesus had finished speaking a Pharisee invited him to eat with him so he went and reclined at the
0:47 table the Pharisee noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal was surprised then the Lord said to him now then you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish but inside you you clean the outside of the cup and dish but inside you are full of greed and wickedness you foolish people did not the one who made the outside make the inside also but give what is inside the dish to the poor and everything will be clean for you wo to you Pharisees because you give God a tenth of your mint and RW and all other kinds of garden herbs but you neglect Justice and the love of God you should have practiced the latter without leaving the former
1:33 undone this is God's word now Jesus teaching In this passage is triggered by an event and that event is the fact that the Pharisee where he was eating was upset about the fact he didn't wash his feet his food uh his hands before he ate his food now I know a lot of you say what's so upsetting about that or strange about that my mother was always that way as well but but you see the Pharisee is not thinking about hygiene in the Old Testament uh people were told that when you approach God in the temple in worship you should wash your hands you should ceremoniously and ceremonially wash with water and the ceremonial Washings of the Old Testament
2:18 were visual aids through which God got across to people the idea that uh you need to approach god with a clean heart so the ceremonial Washings of the on the external of the external of the body just represented uh a way to visualize the fact that God wants a clean heart when you go before God however the religious leaders of the day had taken the ceremonial Washings and had begun to apply them to every part of life the Pharisees washed their hands whenever they came in they washed their hands before every meal they washed their hands before going to bed and the reason was the word Pharisee means the separate ones and the Pharisees had taken the
3:05 idea of Old Testament ceremonial Washings and had appli them to the externalities of their lives the reason they were always washing was because it's possible that if you were out walking in the marketplace you might touch a gentile or you might touch something that was touched by a gentile or by somebody who didn't worship God or by a sinner or by someone who was impure in some way and so the Pharisees had learned to turn religion into a matter of externalities and that was the reason behind the washing and the reason that the Pharisee looked at Jesus was shocked here's a man that says he's religious here's the man that says he's someone who takes god seriously and yet he is not washing before he eats how does he know he didn't touch someone or
3:50 something that was ceremonially unclean now Jesus Christ takes a moment takes this opportunity to slam into the whole idea of phariseeism now we don't have time to look at everything he says In this passage but what he actually says is something really quite amazing he says look at you look at the cup the outside of the cup is clean but the inside of the cup is dirty now what he means is Imagine putting a a cup in your into your uh dishwasher let's say and after you get it out you find that on the inside of the cup though the outside is clean the inside Still's got food crud in it well you don't want to pour something in there and drink out of it
4:37 if if anything the outside of the cup is less important than the inside when it comes to cleanliness it's only food cred on the inside that could get you thick perhaps if there if it's not cleaned out on the other hand it's almost impossible to wash the inside of the cup without washing the outside and so what Jesus is saying In this passage that we're going to apply in one minute to the area of possessions is something very important on the one hand Jesus refuses to emphasize the externals of behavior over the inside of the heart because that's what legalists do but he also refuses to pit the external
5:22 Behavior against the internal heart see he says you clean the outside but you don't clean the inside he says clean both so you see on the one hand he refuses to emphasize the externals over the internals as legalistic religion does but he also refuses to pit the external against the internal the way maybe what we could call liberal religion does you know there's a kind of religion on the one hand that says oh it doesn't matter what you do it doesn't matter how you practice as long as you're you do it out of love that's pitting the external against the internal but on the other and Jesus refuses to say that the external is enough that obeying the laws and the regulations and the moral codes is
6:08 enough Jesus is neither what you might call into legalistic religion or into what may might call liberal religion he refuses to put one over the other or pit one against the other instead he says religion true religion is living externally out of an inner reality what you do on the outside should flow from and be consonant with what's on the inside that's biblical religion and that's neither legalistic or liberal in a sense now we could go into that in Greater detail but Jesus and Jesus does if you read the rest of the passage all the way to the end of this chapter he applies this principle to a number of areas but we're not going to talk about all the areas we're going to just talk
6:54 about one he takes this principle and applies it to the issue of tithing he applies it to the issue of financial giving giving of your income giving a percentage of your income to what we might call Charity to God's work and so on and it's extremely interesting to see how he applies this wonderful uh this wonderful balance this balance between the external and the internal uh putting the internal first but keeping the external there it's interesting to see how he applies it into the area of giving and and what he teaches us here about our attitude to our possessions and to our giving is three things there are external guidelines for Christian
7:39 giving first and secondly there's also an inner compulsion that's necessary for Christian giving and then thirdly there's a spiritual Dynamic which is actually the motor and the motive for both there's an external aspect there's an internal aspect and there's a spiritual that actually energizes and drives both let's look at those three things first of all he points out that there is an external guideline for Christian generosity you see people realize that the word generous is good it's a good word we should be generous we like being generous but how do you define generous Jesus gives us a definition he says there really is a rule of thumb he
8:26 says there really is a way to decide a way for you to to to judge whether or not you are generous in biblical proportions and so here's what he says you give God a tenth of your mint and ruin all other kinds of guard NS yet you neglect Justice and the love of God you should practice the latter without leaving the former undone what's he say here this is great first of all he points out and that the uh the Pharisees are tithers the word tithe means a tent and all through the Old Testament the people of God are told to give one tenth of their annual income to the priests so for example Leviticus 27 uh
9:12 it reads a tithe of everything you take from the land whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees Belongs to the Lord it is Holy to the Lord okay a tithe of everything you take from the land now the whole idea here was that you gave that tith to the priest and the priests did Two basic things with it first of all they supported all of the of the sacrifice and the ceremonies of the temple and secondly they gave it to the poor they distributed it to the poor because the money that went to the lord always went to two basic things connecting people to God and connecting the people of God to the needs of the world H connecting people to God that's the the temple and connecting the people
9:57 of God to the needs of the world that was helping the poor and that's where the tithe went now in the Old Testament you see if you listen carefully when God gives the rationale behind the tithe you begin to see how tremendously reasonable it is how tremendously reasonable not only in its its uh conception but even in its proportions he says whenever you take anything from the land give me 10% why does he say that it's very simple you must not take land that does doesn't belong to you and farm it and take get income out of it without giving anything to the person who owns it if you would do that that would be stealing that would be embezzling that would be pillaging and so God says your income
10:44 comes out of the land where the land is mine it's not yours I created the land I own the land I'm only leasing you the land and all I ask for is 10% now you know something I've been doing a little bit of studying I talked to to a few people and I know that there's you're talking about centuries between then and now there there's all sorts of economic systems there's all sorts of cultures and yet the idea that someone would give you a piece of land and only in you for the right to use that land and to make your income you only have to give the owner 10% by almost anybody's standards that's a heck of a deal nobody in the Old Testament ever ever questioned that deal everybody said
11:30 wonderful incredible how great I can't find a king who does it that way I can't find a rich man or rich woman who does it that way absolutely not God is so generous only 10% to use it now maybe if the Bible is being written today God would say if you take your income out of farming your mind if you take your income out of farming your athletic abilities if you take your income after out of forming your artistic abilities just remember this that mind those abilities are from me you didn't earn them I loan them to you and for you to farm that land you see farm that mind Farm those abilities without giving me anything is
12:16 to steal is to embezzle and is to pillage oh he says I don't ask for much I only ask for 10% and that is what the Old Testament said now here's what's so intriguing that was the Old Testament guideline how does Jesus regard it and that's what's so Fascinating People for years have debated what is the relationship of the Old Testament to us now here we are a Christian people and we believe the Bible and yet when you go back to the Old Testament you know that there's a lot of odd things in there you find the laws where it says don't mix two kinds of of uh material in the same garment you know don't put flax and wool together in the same garment then you have another place where it says don't eat medium rare
13:02 meat and then in the same chapter it says love your neighbor as yourself so you look at it and you say you know some of this I can tell probably doesn't apply to me and some of it obviously does how do I know what it does and what doesn't it's pretty clear that there needs to be some selectivity and I'm not going to get in at all to that not I'm not going to give you any of my ideas about that not right here but I can tell you one thing that everybody's always agreed on if Jesus pulls something out of the Old Testament and tells us we have to do it we always know there's no doubt that's for us and you know if there was any place that Jesus would loosen or denounce the obligation of the
13:48 tithe that would be here he points you see he points out that the tithe is done by the Pharisees the Pharisees you know the Pharisees are about the only people that Jesus really yells at and the Bible have you notice that he doesn't yell at prostitutes he doesn't yell at pimps he doesn't yell at at Tax Collectors as some of you do he doesn't yell at anybody but Pharisees because the fact that they turn the law into a bunch of regulations and the fact that they believe that you could be saved by obeying those regulations that's spiritual death to believe that they were spreading poison Around Jesus continually denounces them he calls them Vipers calls them terrible things you Brut of vipers who told you
14:33 to flee for the Wrath that is to come so if there would be one place where Jesus would have a great opportunity to loosen the tithe that would be here these men were so legalistic that if they had a garden in their backyard where they had mint leaves that they would pull off in order to put into their drinks they would pull one mint leave off out of every 10 and send it to the temple I mean these are legalistic people you tithe mint and you tithe R and every Garden herb every herb from your garden this would be the place but what does Jesus do does Jesus say ah you know you're legalist ah this whole idea of a tithe it belongs to an abreg body of regulations it's oppressive no what does he say he says it's not
15:18 enough he says you tithe great do not leave that undone you see that he says you tithe but you neglect the love and Justice of God you must do the latter and don't neglect the former you know there's one place where you expect God to knock down the whole idea Jesus to knock the idea of tithing down surely here surely here with these men who have Twisted the whole idea of tithing around but instead he says Oh no you're absolutely right you must not leave that undone and so you see what Jesus has done is he first of all gives us an external guideline how do you know you're generous a lot of people like to think they're you know how you know you're generous there's a guideline
16:03 Jesus says test yourself do you give your money away in these proportions do you give at least 10% of your money away you know something if Jesus hadn't said this Common Sense would tell you we are more blessed than the people in the Old Testament we are we owe God more than the people in the Old Testament to it would be common sense even without this incident they would tell us that as Christians we would know that a minimum of 10% % of our income given away would be a Biblical proportion and a biblical definition of generosity but if there's anybody staggering here anybody feeling like oh my gosh I can't believe this person believed this I can't believe I'm being taught this how unreasonable Jesus has got you on the rast but he's not done with you yet
16:51 you've only got his left way do you get his right he says that the these who tithe are not doing enough he says you should tithe it's good that you tithe I'm glad you tithe he says and yet if all you do is tithe without doing the other thing that I demand you're condemned woe to you whoh real life conversations and potent reasoning this book will challenge you to gain a deeper understanding of the Christian faith whether you're a Believer seeking reassurance or you're reading it with a friend who is searching for answers when you give to gospel in life during the month of May we'll send you two copies of the reason for God one for you and one to give give we also encourage you to check out our
17:38 short podcast series questioning Christianity for people exploring the claims of the Christian faith to listen to this short series or share it with a friend visit gospel on life.com questioning that's gospel and life.com questioning your gift helps the message of Christ's love go out all over the world so thank you for partnering with us because is the gospel truly changes [Music] everything obviously tithing isn't enough he demands not less than tithing he demands more what does he demand secondly he gives you see the first um the first way to understand whether you are giving in biblical proportions is look at the tithe secondly Jesus says that's not enough there also has to be an inner compulsion to give there has to be a joy
18:25 in giving your inner self has to be involved in it that's that's why he says down here in in verse 42 you neglect Justice in the love of God he says you Hypocrites give what's on the inside of the cup as well put your whole inner self into it now when he talks about neglecting the justice and the love of God he's probably thinking of passages like Zechariah in Zechariah 7: 8 9 and 10 this is what the Lord Almighty says administer Justice show mercy and compassion to one another do not oppress the Widow the fatherless The Immigrant or the poor in your hearts do not think evil of one another now do you see what Jesus is saying pretty simple but it's pretty
19:11 devastating he says for you to tithe and yet on the inside not be people who have this inner compulsion to give to tithe on the outside without having a radically generous heart is anasa H here's what he's saying he's saying do you have a heart of compassion put it this way if you tithe but you're not generous with your home and your things if you tithe but you don't pay your employees well if you tithe but you are not you're so private you're not open to letting hurting people come to see you if you tithe but you're not approachable and and compassionate you see what's going on here if you tithe and you and in fact you don't make
19:58 vulnerable to hurting and broken people if you tithe and you do it strictly out of a sense of Duty woe to you it's a curse he says you Hypocrites give the poor that's what's interesting they gave to the poor they gave to the poor they tithe he says give the poor what's on the inside of the cup and then it will all be clean to you you see what he's saying he says you give and you don't care about people you give and your heart's not involved with people you just say where should I send my check and your lives aren't involved with hurting people and your hearts aren't open and your your homes aren't open and your schedule's not open and you don't have this inner joy
20:45 and inner gladness to give your money as part of giving your life to people instead you spend all of your time playing games doing Recreation thinking about how you can trade up to a bigger apartment thinking about how you're going to feather your own nest and you give money because you know it's your job because you want to think of yourself as a generous person no he says give the poor what's on the inside as well as what's on the outside it's a pretty astonishing statement and it's a it's a it's a it's a compelling statement you see let me let me give you three kind of real easy ways to tell whether or not you are giving the inside of the cup as well the way you can tell you give the inside of the cup is when you think of the tithe
21:31 it doesn't seem too much that's one you look at it and you say well fine of course that's not so much another way you can tell whether you're giving the inside of the cup is that you give with joy you don't want to be like whoppy Goldberg remember in uh in in ghost remember that where she has to write out that check for $4 million and Patrick ssy the ghost makes her give it to the nuns remember and she gives it to the nuns and she can't let go of it remember that no there's a joy you find that as you give there's a joy so here's another test you give creatively you don't just say where's the check you put your heart and your mind into the things that
22:16 you're giving to you get involved yourself in the Ministries that you're giving to you pray for the people that you're giving to you volunteer you get on this you get on the boards of the things that you're giving to don't you see get the inside of the cup you put yourself out you let yourself be taken advantage of of course because you don't belong to yourself anymore you give with joy you give with creativity and you can't wait to give more when you think about making more money you immediately look at your money with a Ministry mindset you say oh I wish I could make more money because then we could help this then we could get this started and we could invest in this and you know what's so interesting if you go on further in the passage
23:02 which wasn't printed Jesus goes on to continue to give woes and and and curses and he says woe to you Pharisees because you give God a tenth of your mint and yet you neglect Justice and the love of God you Hypocrites give the inside of the cup as well but then he goes on and he says wo to you Pharisees because you love the important seats in this synagogue wo to you because you buil tombs for the prophets and it was your forefathers who killed them so you testify you approve of what their forefathers did because of this God says I will send them prophets and apostles therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of the prophets and the apostles you will be buried in unmarked Graves you know what Jesus tried to say is when you put your money into yourself
23:50 ironically you become less and less of the significant person when you put your money into people when you put money into God's cause you find instead of dying in an unmarked grave you become a more significant person you see yourself making a difference it's it's kind it's it's it's a strange irony what Jesus is saying put your money in the houses houses will burn up put your money into cars cars will burn up it doesn't matter what you believe if you believe in God it'll burn up in the last judgment if you don't believe in God it'll burn up when the Sun finally dies you see and all of this civilization is burned up it doesn't matter you put money into houses you put money into cars you put money into clothes you put money into things they burn up you put money into people
24:35 and into the word of God and into the kingdom of God and into the cause of God and things get created through that that will never end the more you put your money into yourself the more shriveled and insignificant you become the more you put your money into God's things and into people the greater you become and you see a person who has that inner compulsion knows that he or she knows what really lasts he or she knows what really counts and therefore you give not just the external but you give with inside the cup too you give with joy you give with creativity you give with that inner compulsion all right now lastly we see that Jesus Christ has taught us number one that there really is an
25:21 external guideline to tell whether or not you're a generous person to tithe but number two he says there's also it's absolutely necessary and he curses people that don't have this as well there needs to be an inner compulsion a gladness in giving a personal investment in giving the inner self involved in giving a joy and an ease in giving now where do those you can ask yourself right now is that true of you do you can you do you give a 10% of your income and then secondly on the other hand do do you give with that kind of gladness do you give that with that kind of ease well somebody's got to be sitting out there saying no to
26:07 either in fact somebody's out there probably thinking even if I did just decide kind of mechanically to give 10% this year I would consider it burdensome I would be I would I would do it begrudgingly and of course Jesus doesn't want you to do that he just said so he doesn't want that he wants you to give both the outer outside and the inside of the cup well how can we do that and the answer is L to you scribes and Pharisees you tithe mint and every Garden herb and you neglect the justice and the love of God the love of God some people have interpreted that as meaning Jesus is saying don't give me your money just love God don't give money love that's
26:52 not what it's saying obviously because you see what it's saying is don't just give money give the love of God as you receive the love of God so you'll be able to give you don't give Pharisees out of the love of God or put it this way Jesus is saying you can keep your tithe if you have not experience the love of God in such a way that giving in these proportions and with this kind of gladness doesn't come naturally to you hey there's a place where where Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8 he says you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ though he was rich he became poor so that by his poverty you might become
27:38 rich he's talking about Jesus on the cross and then he turns around and says I would like money from you Corinthian Christians for the poor Believers in Macedonia but I am not commanding you now think of this for a second so I'm not commanding you to give you know the grace of Christ listen carefully if you give out of obedience you're disobeying if you give only out of obedience you're disobeying God commands a generosity that cannot be commanded God commands a generosity that cannot be commanded Paul says I'm asking you to give but I refuse to command you you know what Paul's saying he says you know the grace of Christ you don't command a lover to
28:25 kiss her lover or his lover you don't don't command someone who's in love to kiss you don't say now listen if you want this relationship to continue to increase you probably need to show some physical affection now if they're in love you don't have to tell them that and Paul says I refuse to command you well somebody says I think the idea of the tithe is onerous I think it's oppressive and I don't feel that gladness but I know that Jesus died for me and Paul says no Then you don't until you think about the extravagance of what Jesus Christ did you will not become extravagant think about it you see if you think about what Jesus
29:13 has done that cut the umbilical cord to money that we've all got we all have an umbilical cord the Bible says we all love money too much we love it too much in poor amongst the poor the Love of Money creates crime amongst the middle class the Love of Money creates workaholism and worry and amongst the rich the Love of Money creates superficiality because you're just so absorbed in your homes and so absorbed in your games that you can play that nobody else can afford to play that you're not serving anybody but it's the same thing it's materialism it's greed he says on the outside you're tithing but on the inside you're full of greed and any class of people can have it
29:58 if you're poor the greed leads you to Crime if you're middle class the greed leads you to worry and if you're rich the greed leads you to superficiality and therefore the money is controlling you it's controlling you is there anybody here who thinks that giving away 10% of your income to God's work to charity to whatever is too much the money's controlling you it's got you under its thumb you're not controlling it it's got you you there's an inordinate love there and the only way to break it the only way for you to grow up and cut the umbilical cord and get out from under the thumb of it is to look at Jesus Christ being robbed for you on the cross
30:45 being stripped for you on the cross losing his shirt on the cross becoming poor for you on the cross okay let's conclude this way some of you think that the whole idea of tithing is too much I say to you your money has you by the throat grow up it's got you have dominion over it don't let it continue to have dominion over you think about the grace of Jesus Christ and what it's done for you until that happens imagine you're a person and all the money you have in the world is stuffed in a cookie jar in your apartment you know what when you think of that cookie jar it gives you comfort but on the other hand when you think of that cookie jar it makes you worried maybe somebody will find it but if somebody would put a billion dollars in
31:31 a Swiss account for you suddenly the cookie jar no longer can either comfort you or worry you if you know what Jesus Christ has done for you if you see the riches you have in him you're adopted into his family you're Justified freely by his grace you have his holy power living in your life if you see how rich you are then even a billion dollars in a Swiss bank account is just a cookie jar to you it no longer comforts you nor no longer worries you you're free finally free you middle class people who worry you poor people who scheme you rich people who play be free the only way to be free is to give both the inside and the
32:17 outside of the cup oh there's a few people here I better comfort you and you say you know what I don't like is I hate these kinds of things I'm unemployed I'm underemployed I can barely pay my rent I wish I had the money to give I'd love to give it then this this passage should encourage you tremendously because Jesus says the most important thing is the inside of the cover be comforted do you want to give are you giving of your time is your attitude toward money the right thing are you just rich in Jesus do you celebrate his grace don't you see Jesus is saying it's the inside of the cup that counts when you get the money then you can give the outside too this is a great comt God says in Malachi he says put me to
33:03 the test bring in the tithe and where do you see what I pour into your life it's astonishing that he would say such a thing it's so rare God almost never says put me to the test he usually God says don't put me to the test but when it comes to tithing when it comes to finances he says put me to the test nobody's going to know whether you handle that test but me but but you know not me because I'm pastor and you're not going to give all your tithes to the Redeemer even if you're a member of Redeemer I don't expect you to give it all here nobody's going to be able to know what you do with your money don't you see some of you shouldn't be giving here at all this isn't your church but I tell you if you would put God to the test if we would start doing this our lives would overflow our churches would
33:49 overflow our communities would overlow put them to the test change your life let's pray Our Father we thank you that your son has given us such a clear teaching give us now the streng [Music]
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