If your ears are better than your eyes... go to this link to listen to my recent sermon on tithing. Apparently, it has caused quite a fuss!
http://www.calvaryunited.org/#/about-us/sermons
If your eyes are better than your ears, here is the manuscript version!
Malachi 3:10
“Only Way God Can Be
Tested”
Let us pray…Come Holy Spirit and bring clarity, purpose and
passion to our lives so that our hearts and our wallets reflect your great
abundance and generosity! Come Living
God, come. Amen.
Brace yourselves. We’re going to talk about money today. More specifically, we’ll talk about your
money and mine. And what we do with our
financial resources or don’t do with it. Yep.
So get yourself prepared. I know
you would rather we talked about sex, drugs or rock-n-roll in worship than
tithing. Somehow those subjects are more appealing. Apparently, Scripture and our
Triune God have other standards because money parables are the most frequently
used parables Jesus ever gave.
Doesn’t matter if you have big savings account or if your
wallet is empty; you are impacted my money and it impacts you. Everyone in this room has something to hear
from this message today. Why? Because according to the Bible what we do
with our money (however much we have) matters to God. Because giving, according to the Bible, is an
act of worship. (Hint: that is why there
is an offering every time the people of God gather to worship. You just thought it was a handy fundraising
technique! Not so. Ha!)
More specifically, tithing is an act of worship because it is
a response to God’s provision. Tithing
as extreme Bible as you can get. By
definition tithes are 10% of your yearly income: 10 cents on a $1; $10 on $100;
$100 on $1000. Tithes are to be brought
into the store house (aka the church). Tithes are paid on what you make not on
what you have left over. Abraham was the first to give a tithe… and it
continues all the way into the New Testament in Matthew 23:23.
There is a profound difference between a tithe and tip. If you are not yet giving 10% of your yearly
income you cannot technically call what you give a “tithe”… while you may be
growing it into a larger percentage of giving (which is a super and good for
you). Also, to be precise an offering is
a sacrificial gift over and above the 10% tithe. From the Bible’s point of view offerings come
from surplus.
There you have it. The
Bible asks of believers (both from OT and NT) to give a tithe and their offerings. The provocative question and the question
that makes us squirm is… are we being faithful to this God-intended standard? According to our reading from Malachi 3:10…
the people of Israel were failing in their giving of the tithe. And the prophet challenged the people to
‘test God’ or in the words of John Wesley “experiment with God” through the
tithe (from Wesley’s Notes on Malachi 3:10).
And we invite those of you who are not yet fully at a tithe of 10% or
those of you who have never tried regular proportional giving to the church… to
participate in the Great Tithing Experiment.
Tithe for March, April and May of this year and see what happens.
Be mindful we don’t ask anything of you that is impossible or
not modeled by leadership. Your two appointed ordained elders from the Indiana
Conference of UM tithe. Pastor Todd and
Becky can speak to how that is meaningful and significant to them. Eric and I would tell you how it has changed
our faith, our marriage and our understanding of what it means to be “fully
invested in the workings of God through Calvary UMC”. Eric has told our congregation how I grew
him into a tither… and then how together we’ve been challenged to deepen our
generosity through the giving of our time, talent and financial resources.
Moreover, did you know our church congregation tithes?! 10% of the income received to our operating
budget goes beyond Calvary to our Indiana Conference, our UM denomination, and
out into the world through the World Service Fun. Therefore, your pastoral leadership and
church leadership invite you to do something (i.e. tithing) that we are doing. The best leaders lead by example, don’t
they?!
But why give? What
does it matter? Why is it important?
Listen to what Dave Ramsey has to say… (show view clip) God expects us
to offer our tithes. Why? (1. Because it shows our submission to
God’s ownership of everything. (2. It
makes us realize that all we have comes from His hand, not our own cleverness
and skills. (3. Keeps us humble, we
don’t own everything! (4. It prevents us
from worshipping "things." (5. We give because we believe in the
mission of the UM church to “make disciples for the transformation of the
world”!
If you pay attention and ponder deeply you can begin to see
that tithing is really about trust not in money, but in God! Tithing puts our trust in the One Who gives
us every good and perfect gift. I like
what our
Bishop Coyner shared, “I don’t think of tithing as a ‘rule’ but as a
‘revelation’ from God – namely that God has revealed to us that tithing is the
way our lives are best lived for a joyful and prosperous life.” As Christians, we believe that God is love
and is a generous giver of all good gifts.
We believe that God has created us to be generous givers as well.”(from
Indiana Tithing Task Force 2011).
The
ancient people of God during Malachi’s day were stealing
from God because they failed to give and worst yet, because of their scarcity
mindset they were actually losing out on God’s blessings! This is a hard concept for some people
to grasp … giving to God won’t leave you with less, in so many ways, you gain! God is always faithful to help those who obey
His ways, and giving is one of His ways! Our blessings may not appear as lottery
winnings, new leather couches, diamond earrings, or BMW’s, but God blesses in
so many intangible ways. You just can’t
lose when you give.
One day a woman said to her preacher: "Pastor, I just
don’t see how I can give 10 percent of my income to the church when I can’t
even keep on top of our bills." The pastor replied, "Jane, if I
promise to make up the difference in your bills if you should short, do you
think you could try tithing for just one month?" After a moment’s pause, Jane
responded, "Sure, if you promise to make up any shortage, I guess I could
try tithing for one month." "Now, what do you think of that, Jane
“mused the pastor. "You say you’d be willing to put your trust in a mere human
mortal like myself, who possesses so little, but you couldn’t trust your
Heavenly Father who owns the whole universe!"
Our
total income for CUMC (adding together operating budget, building need
(mortgage) and missions) is about a million dollars a year. If you take just the operating budget which
is over 787,000 a year and divide it by our resident members… we would meet our
annual operating budget if very person gave $79.75 a month or a total of
$957.00 a year. Hard to do that with
youth being part of those resident member numbers.
So
consider this…data from the 2010 census reveals that the median (average)
income per household in Hendricks County is about $64,239 a year. Now that may be high… so let’s make this easy
and say the average income for Calvary UMC families is about $60,000. If every family tithed 10% of their $60,000
income our church income or giving for the year would be $1,800,000. (Remember
we currently receive about 1 million in contributions.) That would almost
double our income as a congregation.
Think
of what God in Christ could do with another $800,000 invested in making
disciples for the transformation of the world?!! Think of how our mortgage debt
would be paid off in less than 2 years and how that would then open up an
additional $300,000 in our church budget for missions, ministries, staff, or
another amazing dream of ministry we can conjure up! Then, we’d have an
additional million to do ministry with!
Imagine the possibilities for mission and service within Hendricks
County we could do together! The lives we could change and touch! WOW! All would be possible because we are worshipping
God with a tithe of income and not a tip.
I
heard a story about our recent denominational evangelism gathering in Georgia…
where the campus pastor from Georgia State University gave the message. He congratulated the folks on their giving to
the UM church. The average age of people there was around 58. And this is the
demographic group within United Methodism who gives over 80% of the overall
contributions to our denomination. He
said, “You are to be congratulated. Well
done, good and faithful servants. You should get the kind of church and
denomination that you want or that meets with your tastes and preferences. However, you follow a savior who said, “Deny
yourself and follow me. Remember, he told them you give for the sake of others.”
Folks,
on Wednesday we enter a season of the year which prepares us spiritually,
intellectually, emotionally and financially for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
for the salvation of the world. We
follow a Savior who asks us to deny ourselves.
We are a part of a body who are committed to making disciples for the
transformation of the world.
You
may give something up this year…when you do… take the ‘cost’ of that item and
give it to God’s work in the world. Your
weekly Starbuck’s splurge will add up after 6 weeks. Others of you may consider how you want to
make a sacrificial offering to God at the end of Lent above your current tithe. Still others of you may think and pray about
what it would be like to experiment with tithing for 3 months. Test God. Try it. Watch how God provides. We offer a money back guarantee. Well, mostly, God does.
Let
us pray…
