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Mariners Church Weekend Messages
February 2 - Does God Promise to Make Us Rich or Should Christians Be Poor? - Ed Stetzer
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Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast. Inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes. Thank you. Well, what a joy to be here. And specifically, you already heard about our outdoor worship venue. Let me just tell you, when Donna saw our outdoor worship venue, she said, we're never going into the building again, so. But here I am. Here I am. And so. But I'm so excited. So come join me and Donna at the outdoor venue every week as well. Let me encourage you to do that. It's beautiful, as always. All right, so it is good to see you. I'm gonna start with a food illustration. And I know I'm a big guy, so sometimes that can kind of kick on some of that Southern California judgy vibe, and I don't want that. So. Because I've lost £100 in the last four years, so I don't wanna. Yeah, I got a ways to go, but that's basically like losing a Backstreet Boy, so I'm gonna be good with that. But I do. I just. I need to tell you this. I love Cheez Its. Like, I love the goodness in Cheez Its all around. I see some of you are getting hungry just seeing those Cheez Its. They're just packed full of goodness. So much better than goldfish. I don't understand goldfish people. So much better. My middle daughter and I both love Cheez Its. She's. She's just like me in so many ways. Her name's Jacqueline. She's she middle child. I'm middle child, acts like me, kind of looks like me. If you slap a goatee on her, you think it's me. And so she. And she loves Jesus like I love Jesus. So one day, I'm sitting in my. My easy chair by the television, and the. The box of Cheez Its is next to me, and it is well completed. It is gone. And so she's not happy. She comes in and says, dad, you ate all the Cheez Its. And she's a little unhappy. She goes, look, there's no more cheeses. She says, dad, there's no more Cheez Its. And I'm like, you know, she's four or five. I'm like, it's no big deal. Like, it's not. I mean, her was a big deal, though. And she said, well, I want some more Cheez Its. I'm like, jacqueline, we can get more Cheez Its. And. And, you know, and she really wanted The Cheez Its. And. But I. But I bought these, like, I could. I mean, their Cheez Its are not, like, super expensive. It's not a big. She doesn't know that. She just knows there's no more. And I'm like, jacqueline, listen, we can get more Cheez Its. But she has this skeptical look. I said, jacqueline, I could fill this room with Cheez Its if I wanted to fill this room. And she still made this face. Jacqueline, I could build a house out of cheeses. Jacqueline, I am the lord of the Cheez itself. And she just looked at me, crossed her arms, and said, my Cheez Its. And this is an actual picture of her. That's my Jacqueline a few years ago. So she crosses her arms and that. Actually, I posted that online, and this became the number one Google image for Cheez It Girl. So that was my daughter. She didn't want those taken away. By the way, as a pastor, I've always sort of negotiated with my children when I use them as an example, as an illustration. So I had to pay her a dollar to reenact that scene with the 2 Cheez it box. And then she was just, you know, four or five. Well, you know, now she's in college. She's a business major. So in order to use this illustration, cost me $50 today. I want you to know that as well. And now I got this Cheez A Box. Need to get rid of this Cheez It. But who loves. Who loves Cheez Its around here? Everybody love Cheez Its around here. You love Cheez Its. Okay, here you go. Here you go. There you go. Good job. Good job. Good job. So nothing for you goldfish people? Anyway, so here's the deal, right? As a child, we don't know our parents power, in a sense, right? We don't know them as the source. And how she doesn't get any more Cheez Its without me. She doesn't know that. And we're the source of what our children have. We own the stuff. We provide for them. And so my kids had to learn that I own and I provide for my children. So Jacqueline needed to learn that then. And part of what you're gonna need to learn today, I encourage you, is, as a child of God, that God owns and provides for you as well. That's a key part of our text today. So if you don't mind, open your Bible or turn one on, you can follow along with us. We're going to First Chronicles. If you have a Bible, it's in about the first third of your Bible, First Chronicles, chapter 29. I'm gonna read some of the passage. It's actually not going to be on your screen, but. But I want you to hear it first and then we'll sort of come back to it from there. Okay, so let's take a look. And this is what this is from. First Chronicles, chapter 29, verse 10. It says this. Then David blessed the Lord in the sight of all the assembly and said, David said, may you be blessed, Lord God of our father Israel, from eternity to eternity. Yours, Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the splendor and the majesty, for everything in the heavens and earth belongs to you. Yours Lord is the kingdom and you are exalted as head over all. Okay, so that's kind of the introductory text. That's David kind of explaining blessing the Lord in the slight of the assembly. And then it says this. Then we get to the key text and here it is. And we're going to start right at verse 12. It says this. It says riches and honor. It's on your screen. Riches and honor come from you, and you are ruler of everything. Power and might are in your hand, and it is in your hand to make great and give strength to all. Now therefore, our God, we give you thanks and praise your glorious name. But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to give as generously as this? For everything comes from you and be given, and we have been given only what comes from your own hand. For we are aliens and temporary residents in your presence, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow without hope. Lord, our God, all this wealth that we've provided for building you a house where your holy name comes from your hand. Everything belongs to you. You see, the last four words on the screen are key for everything we're going to say today. So I'd like you to read them out loud with me. Last four wor. Read it together. Everything belongs to you. One more time. Everything belongs to you. Now, you can't teach the Bible without talking about money, but I know that makes some of you uncomfortable. I get it. So I have a plan to make it easy for us to have this conversation. So stay with me. We're going to get to that in just a little bit. This passage is all about an offering, but that offering is actually passed by the time we get to our section. It's not the focus of our section. The focus of our passage is not on the giving, but on the giver. And because the giving has already taken place. And I think focusing on God is really key to understanding that. It's not about prosperity or poverty, but we're going to see it's about generosity and proportionality, right? So in the passage verses 6 through 9, really focus in on the giving with some really great detail. Like it goes through and tells you in verses six to nine what was given, how much was given. And then after that, it moves from the focus on giving to actually something that's more like. It's indented, so it's kind of more like a song now. So. So this is something they would have sung. But the singing is not about the gift, it's more about the giver. And I think David does this because, remember, this is a very historic, big, big offering in the Old Testament. Very historic, big moment in the Old Testament. But I think David has this big, glorious reminder of God's ownership. Because on this glorious day, it's not about the giving, but about the giver. On this glorious day, he reminds us that we serve a glorious God for all our days. So we already had the offering, right? So he was acknowledging God's ownership. The offering, just so you're aware, was to build the temple which David would start and Solomon, his son, would finish. And David uses some great words here. I love the words David uses. He talks about power and glory and splendor and majesty and honor and might and. And strength. And it's glorious and I love it. And it's all reminding us that it's not about prosperity or poverty, but it's about generosity and proportionality and what's on the table today. Nowhere in the series called on the Table, what's on the table today is some false teachings called the Prosperity Gospel and the Poverty Gospel. Now, in this short message, I'm not going to address everything on all of these topics, but I want us to see that the Prosperity Gospel undermines a rightful view of God and his own ownership. Because in the prosperity gospel, God is a cosmic vending machine. God is sort of like. Like we kind of come to him and. And God's blessings are like guaranteed finances. And. And this is really a central part of the belief that if you love God and give, you'll get back and you'll be rich, you'll be prosperous. You can see it on TV sometimes. And actually you could see it on TV a lot. Now, not every TV evangelist holds this or teaches this, but. But they'll tell you, man, send in your money and you'll be blessed. And you'll get rich. And often the only person who actually get rich is the person telling you to send in the money. And that's a big part. Now we're going to go into this more, but that's a big part of what's called the prosperity gospel. And you know, I serve at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. And so we have all these great theologians and we have a big theological word to describe the prosperity Gospel. Here's what it is. It's baloney is what it actually is. Baloney. We're going to have more on that later. About the prosperity Gospel, on the other hand, some people seem to think that. That having too much is a sign of sin, that if you have more than them or more than anyone, or if you're rich, certainly that. That somehow that's a sinful thing, something has gone wrong, that holiness comes from poverty. And sometimes they're quick to judge people who have anything. And I think in both cases, money has taken the wrong place. It's almost like it's become the goal, getting more of it or pushing it away. But. But money makes a better tool. It's a good tool. God can use it, you can use it, but it makes a really bad goal. And. But that's my point. Both the prosperity gospel and the poverty gospel make money too much of the focus. It's an attitudinal issue. Matter of fact, let's look at a couple of passages that might help us understand both the prosperity and the poverty gospel as well. You've heard of First Timothy 6:10, the money is the root of all evil. That's not really what it says, is it? But you've heard it quoted that way. I have, and it actually says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And by craving it, I love the CSB translation there. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. So when you're pursuing money, maybe the prosperity gospel, you want just going, God's going to magically make it appear, or you're just craven and driven by the pursuit of money. It actually can pierce yourselves with a lot of grief. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. On the other hand, that's the prosperity side. What about the poverty side? Well, we see that maybe in the attitude of the Pharisee in Luke, chapter 18, verses 11 and 12. Here's what says the Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you. And I'm not like other people. It's a great beginning of a prayer, isn't it? Robbers, evildoers, adulterers, even like this tax collector actually points at a person. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all I get, even brings up the finances. That attitude that I'm better than you, that holiness comes from poverty. So that's also an unbiblical teaching. Now we'll get to more about that because God might call you to give it all up and we'll talk about that. Just to sell it all. And he could. We'll talk about that. But the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And the hatred of money can be the root of all kinds of pride. And seeing God as the owner of all things addresses both of these issues. It really, it really helps us to see and to have a right sized view of money and possessions. I want you not to miss this. We need to have a right sized view of money and possessions. And loving it too much and hating it too much actually makes it loom large, right? It becomes the big thing in our eye, in our mind's eye. It's, it's. That's the big thing and that's ultimately there. So. So love and hate make it loom large. Seeing it as God's possessions help us to change our view. So, so I know. Okay, so. So you think, you know, we make money, we make money big. It looms large. It becomes. It becomes almost an idol for us. It's like a giant dollar sign. It's like a tower of currency. It's like a. It's like a stack of valuables. Are you ready to show me, to show you how money becomes an idol? You ready? Are you? I need to know, Are you? How it looms too large. How it takes our gaze from our stuff, right? Our Savior. Let's unveil what it looks like when we're driven by a different kind of currency. And this is all that we care about. You didn't expect that, did you? You didn't. That's right. That's right. I told you I wanted to make it easy for you to talk about money today, so I want to make it easy for you. So we made our currency something else, right? If I put a big dollar bill up there right now, somebody. You already taken pictures of this, and this is the only thing you'll remember from the whole sermon. They try to remember the rest of it. This is a symbol or stand in for something else. But if I put a big dollar sign up here, I'd end up on a picture, someone put it on the Internet, everybody be yelling and Right. And. But this makes it less threatening, right? And actually, in the Old Testament, sometimes the offering was food, right? So our currency here today is delicious little squares made from all natural wheat flour, vegetable oil, cheese, skim milk, salt and spices in a beautiful package of goodness. Right? Goldfish people, you're dead to me. But is it. Here's not. I don't want you to miss this, right? But you think, right, if you think of this as currency, you just don't want it to loom too large. So in the prosperity gospel, receiving is a is the sign of God's blessing. And in the poverty gospel, pushing it away is the sign of Christian faithfulness. But neither are biblical. So let's talk about how we can have instead a right view of money. Again, we need to right size our view of money. We need to right size that we hold our stuff loosely and our Savior tightly. When your stuff looms too large, your Savior looks too little. So I want us to right size our view of money. To do that, we're going to look at three things today, three ways to do that, all three from the text. We're going to walk through the text together. So. So to right size our view of money, number one, we've got to acknowledge God's ownership. Would you say those three words with me? They're on the screen. Acknowledge God's ownership. Again, acknowledge God's ownership. Let's take a look at 1st Chronicles, chapter 29, beginning at verse 12. We're going to come back to this more than once. It says riches and honor come from you. Okay. This is to God. Riches are come from you, and you are the ruler of everything. Power and might are in your hand, and it's in your hand to make great and give strength to all. Now therefore, our God, we give you thanks and praise your glorious name. Right? We saw it there. God owns everything. So David actually starts out in this, in the midst of a lot of giving. And it says, is God who matters. It is God who matters. Now, just kind of rapid fire. There are several verses that point to this over and over again that the importance of acknowledging God's ownership. Let's look at Psalm chapter 24, verses 1 and 2. It says, the earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants belong to the Lord, for he laid its foundation on the seas and established it on the rivers. Everything belongs to him. We acknowledge God's ownership. Or Haggai, chapter 2, verse 8, says, the silver and gold belong to me. This is the declaration, Lord of the hosts, right? He owns it all. We acknowledge God's ownership, or a very famous One is Psalm 50, verse 10, particularly the second part. It says, for every animal of the forest is mine. The cattle. I own the cattle on a thousand hills. Maybe now we're going to think of it as the. The cheez. It boxes on a thousand hills. I don't know. See, but when we don't think that way, when we think it's ours, that's what Jacqueline thought. That's immature thinking. When Jacqueline was four or five years old, she thought that that was hers, that somehow it was gone. But maybe that's how you think in an immature spiritual thinking. You end up then thinking, well, it's all mine and what am I gonna do with it? I need more of it. And so I wanna begin with a very fundamental shift and a very important theological truth and I think will shape everything that you think about your finances and more and your whole life, really. You have to think of a few things. First, you could say that I own it all. I own it all. I earned it, I worked hard for it. I own it all. Maybe I give God a little bit now and then. That's one option. Another option is that God owns a part. Maybe you heard somewhere along the way that God owns a tenth. And so you think, well, God owns 10%. And you kind of like, that's God's ownership, and that's an option. And the third option is, I think the biblical option is God owns it all. All. God owns it all. So we have to acknowledge God's ownership, right? So that. And that when we do that, it's not about. It's not about prosperity or poverty. It's about generosity and proportionality. So to. To right sides, our view of money, we first acknowledge God's ownership and then we see God as the source. Would you say that out loud with me? It's on your screen. See God as the source. One more time. See God as the source. Okay, right back to 1 Chronicles. Riches and honor come from you. It says he's the source. They come from you. You are the ruler of everything. Power and might are in your hand, and it's in your hand to make great and give strength to all. So God, if you're a follower of Jesus, right, if you're part of God's people, God owns all your stuff. God owns it. And in a sense, he just loans it. He owns it. He owns. He loans it. He owns it. You have possession of it you are to steward what he owns. Now, I really think you have to see him as the source and give up your rights and to see ultimately him as that source. Otherwise, your possessions become very, very driven in your life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way. He said, earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Doesn't that sound a lot like Southern California? And says, yet all the time they are the very source of that anxiety. So maybe you've heard your kids say, well, that's mine, that's mine. And it's really such a bizarre statement. We buy them everything when they're little, right? But they think they own whatever currently they have in their possession. And there's a difference between having a possession, which is what I currently hold in my hand, and ownership, what's true, truly mine. So sometimes we can act like little children spiritually, who gets a blessing from the parent and says, it's mine. But we have to recognize the knowledge that God owns our stuff. Now, here's the thing. This is where it gets a little tricky, because I get that you're saying right now, maybe you're saying to yourself, man, I worked hard for this, and you did, and I'm thankful for hard work. The Bible affirms hard work. And you say, well, my ability made this possible, right? And you say, you might think, well, maybe nobody's ever asked that before. You know, I'm up here telling you that God owns all your stuff if you're a follower of Jesus. But are you saying other things to yourself? Well, here's the great thing. Listen to. Listen to what the Bible says here in Deuteronomy. You may say to yourself, my power and my own ability have gained this wealth for me, right? I mean, it's literally what's going through some of our minds a minute ago. And maybe you say, well, my. My smarts made all of this possible. And I'm all for smarts, right? I'm all for hard work. We have a church with a lot of high achievers in it. I'm all for hard work and smarts and all, but I want you not to miss this. If you have smarts and you've been successful in your life and you've been whatever through, whatever you might perceive as luck or chance or whatever you might perceive it to be, whatever it may be, if you have it, God still gave you the smarts and the opportunity, and God still wants you to acknowledge he owns it all. Staying with me so because maybe you're like, well, but Ed, I work so hard. Well, let's look at Deuteronomy 8:18. It says, but remember that the Lord your God gives you the power to gain wealth. And I'm of the view that if you don't acknowledge God's ownership, if God does not own your money, your money will increasingly just own you. That's why financial decisions are actually spiritual decisions all over. Now this is, it's an interesting thing because there's a. You know, I don't know, most people don't carry cash anymore. But if you had a dollar bill on you and took it out right now, I'm not saying you should, but if you did, there's a lot of weirdness on the back of that dollar bill. I mean, it's a bucket of crazy on the back of that dollar bill. I mean, there's symbols and slogans and you could take an hour just googling and learning what's on the back of your dollar bill. And then people debate it and more. But here's one phrase. On the back of the dollar bill, it says, in God we trust. Right? In God we trust. So it says right in the back of your dollar bill, which I think is kind of an ironic motto because for many people, the closest they come to trusting God with their money is seeing it on their money. And I'm actually calling you to trust God with your money because it's not about prosperity or poverty. It's about generosity and proportionality. Okay? So to right size, our view of money, we, number one, acknowledge God's ownership. Number two, we see God as the source. And number three, we live thankfully and generously. Once you say that out loud with me, would you live thankfully and generously one more time? Live thankfully and generously. Now we go down to verse 13 and 14, and here's what it says. It says, now therefore, our God, we give you thanks and. And praise. We give you thanks. You saw that? We give you thanks thankfully and generously and praise your glorious name. But who am I, David? And who are my people, the people of Israel, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Generously. Any wondering, what's the tie between generosity and proportionality compared to prosperity and poverty? I'm going to get to that in just a minute. But part of it just has to do with us coming back to over and over again living thankfully and generously. And I want you to know I have not always been able to thank God for everything in my life and maybe that started with my cars. Cars are an interesting emblem of our lives, and I often had difficulty thanking God for my cars. And I'm gonna share a story about that journey. So maybe it started when I was in high school, freshman in high school. We didn't have a lot. We were on public assistance at times. My dad would drop me off at school in a car that was about 14, 15 years old. That was. My dad was a construction worker, and he kind of worked on our car. It had holes in the floorboard. It had Bondo holding it together, and it coughed out smoke as he drove. And I was off the bus route, so my dad would take me to school. And I will tell you, there is nothing that a teenager wants more than to have your dad drop you off in front of high school with a car that leaves a trail of black smoke. So I said to my dad, dad, would you mind? You know, there's a place just around the back of the school, some dumpsters back there, but it's closer to my classroom. You could drop me off there. And he never let on that he knew why I wanted to. We talked about it later, but I started off pretty embarrassed by cars. But I had recently become a Christian and really began more and more to see and try to be thankful for what I had. And eventually, I got myself my first car. My first car was a 1971 Buick Skylark. Now, I got it in 1986, so it, too, is about 15 years old. But it didn't matter because my attitude had changed. This was the Lord's goodness to me. It was my car. And if it's my car, it was God's car. And I was dating this amazing girl, this really sweet girl. And we would get in the car together, and it had a bench seat in the front. You have to be old enough to remember that. And so I would put my arm around her, and I'd have one hand on the wheel, and if you looked in the back windshield, looked like one teenager with two heads. And we were just driving down the road, and we were just loving Jesus and just, you know, just trying to trust the Lord. And that sweet girlfriend I'd now been married to 38 years. So that was, yeah, super fun. So. But we deeply love the Lord and want to be thankful for everything he had. We thank God for. For that car. It was God's car. We were thankful for it. And then we went off to Buffalo, New York, to plant a church. To plant a church among the urban poor. And we got there, and we actually Sold our possessions to go there. I'll talk about more of that in just a minute. Cause God called us to. And we moved to Buffalo. And Donna got eventually a pretty good job. She's a teacher. She has a master's degree in special education. She got a teaching job. And I planted this church. And church began to actually have some financial support. And I was able to take a modest salary there as well. And. And soon we. When we were there, at first, you know, Donna would take the bus. Cause we had one car. We didn't have enough. But then we got enough money and we said, okay, let's buy a second car. And the bank kept telling us, man, we could spend more. Matter of fact, I kept getting these things from credit card companies telling us we could borrow more and from the bank that we could borrow more. And we did. And I will tell you that we moved out of generosity, thankfulness and proportionality. And we got caught up in our possessions. They became a very much a driving force for. Because what we did right. Eventually we got to the place where we were crushed financially. We were just. We were just young, we're in our 20s, but we had enough credit that the bank kept loaning to us. And it wasn't the bank's fault, it's my fault. And we got to the point where we didn't have gratitude and dependence. We had entitlement and credit card applications. And we actually sat across the table once crying because we didn't know what we were gonna do. We were discussing whether we should declare bankruptcy and just start over. Just in our 20s, had about had tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Two cars that we loaned for, we were swapping credit card offers. Every time we get behind on one, someone other credit card would say, listen, we'll give you a check. You can pay off your other credit card. And I got into the trap and I lost my thankfulness and my generosity. We started believing it was all ours and we had to make a change. We had to go back to believing it was all gods. And we got focused again. And we actually went down to one car. We had to get out of debt. We didn't decided to declare bankruptcy, but we had to move away from this attitude into an attitude of gratitude and dependence. So we've not always lived up to everything, but we knew that it was God's. And we had to get back to that posture that may be where you are today. You might have said, well, I just got too much caught up and now I need to get back to a life of gratitude and dependence and give God ownership. Now, we said right at the beginning, right, it says everything comes from you, everything belongs to you. You can be thankful. You can be thankful and depend on God. And if God calls you to sell it all and move, we did that. We did that. When God called us to a missionary role, we sold our possessions and went to plant a church, and we did that. And if the Lord calls us to do that again, we'll do that with joy. So don't want you to miss that. We're not anti those things. But here's the thing with the prosperity gospel. Let me just say God does not promise to give you money. He promises to give you the kingdom. The prosperity gospel does not focus on God giving you the kingdom. It says he gives you the money. And this is one of the most dangerous false teachings around. And be honest, American preachers have exported this false teaching around the world. When I travel around the world, I hear this so often, it's all over television. But it's a false teaching. It's called the prosperity gospel. I'm offended that someone puts the word gospel next to prosperity, because that's not what the gospel is all about. So I want you to hear that. Never at Mariners Church will somebody stand in front of this church and tell you, if you give more money to this church, God's going to give you a Lamborghini with a sunroof. And you're never going to hear us promise that, okay? Because that just feeds into this sense that, well, God is this cosmic vending machine. But listen, when it's your stuff, it's never enough. When God owns your stuff, he is enough. And some of us experience financial opportunity and some of us might struggle, but in all those cases, we can live. This passage in Hebrews 13:5, keep your life, whether you have a little or a lot, keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have. For he himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. I want you to miss that, right? Because when we make it about our stuff, we get sidetracked. Okay? We make it about our stuff. God makes it about our Savior. Now, this interesting verse is not on your screen, but you've heard people quote it, I can do all things through Christ who's strengthens me. I saw it at the gym and it was there at the gym. And, and. And as if people have taken this verse so out of context that they believe they're going to be able to bench press more through Christ who Strengthens them. It's not what that verse is about. You know what that verse is actually about? It's actually about finances. It's in the context of finances. And you might say, ed, I can't imagine giving all this back to the Lord and trusting him. I want you to say, you can do all things things through Christ who strengthens you. So we're going to get super practical. I'm going to give you the details, but none of this will matter until you're willing to give it all over to God. Now, I mentioned generosity, and you see proportionality a little earlier in the text and throughout the Old Testament, but it's also in The New Testament, 1st Chronicles 16, 2 says, on the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside to save in keeping with how he's prospering, how he much he or she is making. So no collections, no offering will need to be made when I come. So people are giving in proportion to their income. So let's drill in here for a second, right? Fear leads to greed. So Jacqueline's like, I'm afraid I don't have it. I got to have it. Greed leads to idolatry. I'd say it becomes very big in my eyes, very big in my mind's eye, that this becomes my currency, becomes my focus. And idolatry leads to bondage. I got to keep getting more and more, end up in a prison of finances. Maybe I should have built a cheese at prison. I don't know. What breaks that down is generosity and proportionality. So you might think, am I willing to give it all up for God? Actually, you don't have to think that he actually has asked you to give it all up for him, doesn't mean he's asked you to sell it all if he does do that. But ultimately, to say he is the owner. And one way that helps to change your attitude, to remind you that God owns it all, is through generosity and proportionality. Okay, so let me illustrate, because some people think God owns one tenth. Does God own one tenth? Or what does exactly God own? So I've actually prepared an example that you're not surprised what it is. So what does God own of our possessions? He owns 10 out of 10 of our possessions. Now, some Christians have heard, well, God owns a tenth, and maybe they're tithing or have heard about tithing. And what I want you to say is that's, that's. I understand where that comes from, but that's not taking into account the full teaching of the Scriptures, which is that God owns it all. And so. So we early on started to tithe. And because it's commanded in the Old Testament, it's commended. Commended in the New Testament. It's a good practice. Many Christians do. So we started the tithe. I want you to know, when you tithe, you're giving proportionally. 10% is a proportion, right? So God owns it all. Because he owns it all. I get to live generously, and I'm going to do it proportionally. Now, let me tell you, when it comes to the proportion of the tithe, if you're making $100 a week and you give $10 a week, you can feel that. And it reminds you when you feel that, that God owns it all. So God doesn't ask you generally, normally to give everything away if he does do that. But if you're now saying, I'm gonna tithe, it's enough. It hurts enough that you can feel that God owns it all. But it's not so much. I mean, you're still living off of 9/10 of your income. So you. That's proportionality. Now, over time, Don and I have had the privilege to increase our generosity, be blessed to be able to say we can give more and do that. But we had to start with this understanding that God owns it all. God doesn't own 10%. God owns it all. And then from generosity and proportionality, we have the privilege to give. So we've been blessed to seek to give more, right? The privilege of raising the proportion that we can give. So it's not about prosperity or poverty, it's about generosity and proportionality. When it's your stuff, it's never enough. But when it's God's stuff, God is enough. There's a song we sing, you are worthy of it all. It goes like this. For from you are all things and to you are all things, you are worthy of it all. When you learn to live this way, that he's worthy of all your possessions, you will see your finances differently. So I want to invite you today to a different kind of life. One that sees money and possessions as a tool, not a goal. One that sees money and possessions as something that belongs to God. He owns and loans it to us, to steward. And we have the privilege to live in generosity and proportionality because we've been blessed to do so. You say, ed, that's so hard. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. Let's pray together and yield it back to the Lord. Lord, we acknowledge that it all belongs to you, we acknowledge. As David said, riches and honor come from you and you are the ruler of everything. Just with for just a moment with your head bowed just between you and the Lord, can you think of your possessions and all that you own and just say, lord, those are yours, you are worthy of it all. For from you are all things and to you are all things. Lord, you are worthy of it all. Give it to you. And may our life not be driven by prosperity or poverty so it looms so large in our mind. But as you're blessed, may we live lives of generosity and proportionality as we yield ourselves, all of us, including all of our possessions, to you. You are worthy of it all, for it's in Jesus name and for his sake we pray. Amen. All right, Extend your hands please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you are gentle and approachable and that you love them. Cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week. Thanks for tuning in to the Mariners Weekend Message Podcast to support the ministry of Mariners Church. You can click the link in the Show Notes or download the Mariners App at your favorite app store. If you've been navigating God's wisdom with us through this year's annual read and would like to hear personal reflections from pastors in your community, check out the Gospel Every Day podcast. Imagine feeding your heart, mind and soul with the kind of practical wisdom that will change your life. If you haven't picked up the annual read yet, visit MarinersChurch.org or download the Mariners App for more information on where to find it.