God's Path to Prosperity

Well, it is November and we are now at Missions Month, which comes around every year at this time. And of course, if you've been with us for any length of time, you're very familiar with both the missions emphasis during November and also the appeal to consider your part in Faith Promise Missions Giving, a matter of financial stewardship, which we always consider during this time as well. We began this church, God began this church in 1973, and on the very first Sunday when we gathered together for our first meeting, before we'd even organized formally as a church, we committed ourselves at that time to giving 10% of whatever came into the offerings to missions. And we even went ahead, I think, on that first Sunday and adopted a list of five missionaries that we were going to begin supporting from day one. We've always had a strong emphasis upon missions, and God has faithfully and generously blessed that commitment and enabled us to carry it forward. After six or seven years of operating in that fashion, we had a desire to expand the amount of money we were giving to missions, and yet our own general fund budget was very tight. We didn't have any wiggle room in there, believe me.

Some of you who were there in those early years know about some of those tight, tight days. But we had heard about this program called Faith Promise Missions, and we decided to present it to our church, and that was to allow people, to encourage people, to make a commitment directly to missions above their regular giving to the church. And our people embraced that enthusiastically, and we began to enlarge the amount of money that we were giving to the cause of worldwide evangelism. And today, and actually for the last two or three decades probably, approximately 33% of all of our disbursements go either to gospel work in what we call missions, or in benevolence, but those two categories make up a full third of the money that is expended to enable our church to function. And that has not been to our leanness, that has been to our bounty.

I'm confident of that. We have seen that over the years. In other words, what I'm saying is the money that God has supplied for the operation of our home ministry is larger, I'm convinced, today because of our commitment to extra giving to the cause of missions. God has blessed that abundantly. But what I gradually realized as we entered into this program for over a number of years was that this is about more than just raising money for missions. This whole faith promise concept is really a way to encourage us, myself and our congregation, to grow in the grace of giving, to grow in our stewardship of financial resources for the Lord, until I actually see that as the primary purpose and missions dollars as the secondary reason for our faith promise giving. It has been a wonderful tool to focus us upon the promises of God and the plan of God and the stewardship that God has entrusted to us and to help us learn how to be good stewards of that which God has entrusted us with. And so the faith promise program, which we learned mirrors remarkably the special project offering that the apostle Paul took up for the Gentile churches first introduced in 1 Corinthians 16 and then expanded upon in 2 Corinthians chapters 7 and 8.

We have employed that very same concept in our own giving and we have seen God bless it even as he did the churches of Macedonia and the other churches that Paul makes reference to in the scriptures. And we have many testimonies to God's blessing. I can still remember one man who came to me many years ago, he's now with the Lord, and he said, you said that if we would trust God with additional giving that we would receive more in return, and he said, I wasn't sure about that but I tried it and you know what, that's exactly what happened.

And I've had more than one person tell me that. I launched out tenuously by faith and said well let's trust God in this matter and see what happens and God has done exactly what his word indicates he will do. That slogan that many of us have heard that says you cannot out give God really is demonstrated in what I'm talking about here. When we say you cannot out give God what we mean by that is if you give to God with a right heart motive and this is critical.

And what I'm talking about today to some people is going to sound very much like some of the health and wealth shysters that you hear on television. But I assure you I'm not telling you give to me so I can buy another jet. And I'm not misusing and mishandling the scriptures that talk about God's promised blessing upon those who give generously to him but we really cannot out give God. If we give to him with a right heart motive, God always returns to us as much or more.

So we are never the loser and most of the time we are actually better off financially for having given away more of our finances than we would have been if we have kept them. I promise you that's what the word teaches. I promise you that many have tested and found that to be true. I promise you that sounds impossible but of course we're not talking about logic. We're not talking about human reasoning or human ways of operating. We're talking about the promises of Almighty God who with one word created the universe and he's able to fulfill the promises that he has made in this very area. We truly cannot out give God. It is therefore my desire that all of God's people learn these principles.

Many of you have, some of you still need to and you'll be blessed if you do. Now today we're going to look at an Old Testament passage in Leviticus chapter 25 that has to do with the commanded sabbatical year for the people of Israel. It's in the Bible.

It's not a well known passage. I promise you some of you maybe have never really even thought of, maybe never even heard of this sabbatical year that God commanded the people of Israel. But it's found in the closing portion of the book of Leviticus. Some of the final words that God gave to Moses when the people of Israel were camped around Mount Sinai and receiving all of the details of the old covenant law.

The mosaic law that came to the people of God through the lips of Moses having been delivered to him by God. And in this God tells his people to observe a sabbatical year. Most of us of course are well familiar with the sabbatical day of the week. The seventh day is a Sabbath of rest unto the Lord and that's actually one of the Ten Commandments as you know. That is well known to the people of God though they may not always be clear understanding of how that applies to us under the new covenant.

But nevertheless that's a well known concept. Six days you are to work, the seventh day you are to rest and give that day in worship and thoughts and activities that relate to God and to his interests first. But there was also a sabbatical year and I just read it to you a few moments ago in Leviticus chapter 25 and that's where we're going today.

It's an old covenant matter, an old covenant command, but I'm confident that it also has some very appropriate new covenant applications as we shall see. So my plan today is first of all exposition, what does the text say? Secondly, observations, what did the text mean to the people of God in Moses day? And then thirdly, applications, what does this text indicate for us today? First of all, exposition. And by way of introduction in the book of Leviticus I learned that the book of Leviticus was the first book in the scriptures that Jewish children were taught.

That's not the first one most of us would go to. All these regulations about priests and sacrifices and so forth, sometimes we find it difficult to even read through it. Let's get through this so we can get to something that's not quite so tedious, but it is actually, it was to the old covenant people of God a very, very important book. And testimony to that is given by the fact that it is either quoted or clearly referred to 40 times in the New Testament.

You probably didn't notice that either, but that in fact is the case. But in the text before us in Leviticus 25, let's begin with revelation. All of this that is spoken we must be reminded comes from God. Verse 1, and the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai saying, simply to remind us that this word comes from God. It was delivered to Moses. It was delivered at Mount Sinai, that very place where God met with Moses, where fire came down from heaven upon the mountain, where the mountain smoked with flames and fire, where God gave the law to his people.

This is part of all of that. God gave this word to his old covenant people. It is a revelation, a divine revelation. But in verses 2 through 7, we're going to look at the requirement involved in this particular revelation from God. And the requirement is to observe a Sabbath year for the land. Verse 2, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, when you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit. But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap.

That is, there will not be a formal in-gathering, a formal harvesting of this, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. For it is a year of rest for the land, and the Sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you. For you, your male and female servants, your hired man and the stranger who dwells with you, for your livestock and the beasts that are in the land, all its produce shall be for food.

So what are the requirements? They are, number one, to observe a Sabbath year for the land, and number two, to trust God during that sabbatical year. That's the command of God. Observe a Sabbath year of your land and trust God to supply your needs in that seventh year of rest when you are not cultivating your land. A Sabbath, a land Sabbath. Sabbath means rest.

The seventh day is a day of rest, as well as worship unto the Lord, but a cessation of your normal labor, the labor of your six days, in order to be able to slow down, to stop, to take some time, to rest your body for sure, and to focus your mind upon things eternal because you're not occupied with the affairs of life on the other six days. Well, the land, God says, is to enjoy a Sabbath. Six years it shall be cultivated, six years you shall sow, six years you shall cultivate, six years you shall reap, you shall harvest, six years you shall gather into barns, six years you shall sell your produce, but on the seventh year, no sowing, no cultivating, no formal harvest, no gathering into barns, no selling of your produce. The land is to rest. It is to have its Sabbath rest on that seventh year. Six years of agricultural production, the seventh year of cessation, the seventh year of rest. Six years of, we might say, utilizing the land for your own needs and blessings and purposes, so it might seem, even those six years ought to be seen as being managed for God and for His instructions for your life, but that reminder every seventh year, everything stops to remind you that this land belongs to God, not to you.

That's the important, one of the important lessons from this. Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, when you come into the land which I give you, it comes from God, I give it to you, but you need to see it as a trust, not a personal possession. It is given to you as a trust from God to be managed according to His instructions, and this seventh year land rest is a constant reminder of that to you. No sowing, cultivation, harvesting, storing, or selling. No reaping the aftergrowth. This amazed me when I read that in agricultural parts of the world, or parts of the world where agriculture is carried on in the same fashion that it was in Bible days, in other words without machinery, but sowing by hand and reaping by hand, that leaving the land, leaving a field, fallow one year, there's enough grain that has been scattered in that field through the processes of normal harvesting without the careful manicuring the machinery allows us to do to take more of the grain, that a field like that will likely produce about 50% of the produce in an uncultivated year as it will in a cultivated year.

That was surprising. So you can see there is quite a supply that comes up even in this year that you don't sow, and that's what God says. It's going to produce in that seventh year food for you.

Isn't that what He said? Food for you and your servants and your animals that will come to you in that seventh year. The seventh year, verse 6, the Sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you, for you and your servants and aliens in the land, strangers, immigrants who are in the land, for your livestock and so forth, there will be food in that land uncultivated to be able to feed you and all of these others, and it must be made available to them. In other words, you don't say, whoa, stay off of this field. That belongs to me. During this year, it's hands off, and anybody who desires can come and gather whatever spontaneously grows.

It's available to everybody. And this, by the way, is good agricultural practice. There are farmers today who follow something similar to this in that they will cultivate a field for several years, and then they'll just leave it alone for at least a year or more, let it lie fallow, and then come back and plow it and cultivate it again, and they find that the land actually becomes enriched during that year. It produces better in the following years than it would if you insist upon squeezing everything you can out of that land year after year after year without giving it any rest.

But the point is to trust God during the sabbatical year. The gleanings will provide sufficient food. It may not be quite as bountiful. You may not be quite as satisfied as you will during a harvest year if all you have is the outgrowth, the extra growth, the spontaneous growth of that field when it hasn't been cultivated. But you will have enough to keep you alive and to supply you.

But there's more, and I'll get to that in a moment. But I want to read this passage from Exodus 23 that also addresses the same command. It says, six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat.

In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. But we've seen the revelation. This comes from God. We've seen the requirement, what God requires of them.

And then we see the reassurances in verses 18 through 22. Verse 18, so you shall observe my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them, and you will dwell in the land in safety. This will be the result of your obeying this.

Safety, security. Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell there in safety. God is indicating that there will be enough produce in this seventh year to meet your needs.

But there's more. Verse 20, and if you shall say, what shall we eat in the seventh year since we shall not sow nor gather in our produce? Verse 21, then I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, and it will bring forth produce enough for three years. And you shall sow in the eighth year and eat old produce until the ninth year, until its produce comes in, you shall eat of the old harvest. So in that sixth year, in preparation for the Sabbath year, God says, I will cause your agricultural productivity to increase three times. Three times.

Three times the amount that you would normally reap in a regular year. Now, you think about that. Why three? Well, because in the seventh year, you are not going to have a normal harvest. So that will take up one of the times of the extra produce. And in the eighth year, you're not going to have anything until you've been able to sow and reap your first harvest.

So there's going to be several months there, maybe not a whole year. But you're going to need some extra for the one year that you don't cultivate, and then the eighth year until the first harvest comes in. So yeah, in the sixth year, three times the first time would be the normal amount that you would need or would gather in the sixth year. The second extra amount would be for extra food for the seventh year when it's lying fallow. And the third extra amount would be for the portion of the eighth year until you get to a harvest time.

But think about it. Because you will get some harvest in the eighth year. You're not going to go the whole year without it. But you are going to receive a full extra amount from the sixth year because you're practicing this.

There's extra. In other words, this is not going to make you more lean. It's actually going to make you more prosperous. Plus, don't forget, just that fallow land is going to produce maybe as much as half what you normally would have in a year.

So you figure all that up. You've got three times the produce from the sixth year. You've got half a produce from the fallow year. And you're able to eat. And your last year, the eighth year, you're going to be able to reap maybe somewhere long after the eighth month or so.

So you've got an extra four months to figure all that up. And what I'm saying is it's clear that what you're going to end up with is not less, but more. For having obeyed the Lord and let the land have its rest. Not to mention the greater richness of the land and how it's going to produce more going forward if you follow this practice. So the reassurances of verses 18 through 22 are, if you obey me, peace and prosperity will come to you. Safety, security, I'll keep the enemies away. That's what destroys so much of our well-being materially. Look what's going on in Gaza. Look what's going on in Ukraine where war has entered, destroying everything around it. So I'll protect you from that. I'll keep you secure and safe. And I'm going to let you have more food than ever.

Divine provision, miraculously divine provision. You say, wait a minute, wait a minute, whoever heard of fields producing X number of results in years one, two, three, four, and five. You can pretty much calculate what it's going to be.

And then come year six and it'll be three times as much. Whoever heard of that? How can that happen? I don't believe that.

You're a loser if you don't believe it. God's able to do that. We're talking about God here. This is God's word. This is what God's able to do. This is what God promised to do. If he said it, he'll do it.

Do you believe him? You can't out give God. This is a way of giving to God. I'm going to give to God this year a potential produce and I'm going to trust him.

And guess what? You get more as a result of that than if you say I can't do that. I can't afford to do that.

I'm not sure that that'll really, really work. I'm going to have to go ahead and do the regular agriculture in the seventh year or I might starve. God said you wouldn't. God said he'd provide. God said he'd take care of you.

But if you won't believe him, then you're going to be the loser. But if you will obey him, you are going to be better off in every way. You're going to be better off materially. Because you've been obedient and believing and tender hearted to God.

It'll be good for you in every way. Alright, observations. I've got to make a few observations or I won't get done here. I've actually selected seven observations of what this meant to Israel and I will go through them quickly. Number one, this teaches Israel that God is to be honored in all of life.

That's the point. The land doesn't belong to you, it belongs to me. Do you know that even in Israel today, it's my understanding, that nobody owns the land.

Technically. They still observe this principle. The land belongs to God. People lease it for 99 years.

Who are they leasing it from? Well, they lease it from the government, I guess, that's standing in for God. But it's a reminder, the land doesn't belong to you, it belongs to God. And if they last for 99 years, I'm sure they'll renew the lease. They've only been there in the land in this manner since 1948.

So 100 years hasn't passed yet. But the land belongs to God. They get that much out of their Old Testament scriptures.

They're following that. So God is to be honored in all of life. Everything belongs to him.

The land which I shall give you. In other words, God is telling Israel that what you have materially is a gift from God. It came from God, it belongs to God, it's granted to you. But God must be acknowledged in it. God must be acknowledged in every area of our life. Not just in our prayer life, not just in our devotional life, not just in our Bible reading life, but in our everyday jobs and farming operation. God must be acknowledged in all of it. God is to be honored in all of life, number two. Number two, diligent labor is God's requirement.

You're familiar with the fourth commandment. Six days, not may you labor and do all your work. The seventh is a Sabbath of rest unto the Lord. Six days, what's it say? Shall you labor. In other words, the command to work diligently for six days is just as much God's word as the command to not labor on the seventh day. And the same thing is true here.

What is it? Six years, verse three, you not may sow your field. Six years, you shall sow your field. And six years, you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit.

And Exodus included olive trees in that. You are commanded to work even as you are commanded to rest. And being the foible human beings that we are, we've always got people on either side of the road in the ditch. There's some people who try to get out of working, and that's displeasing to God. Six years, shall you labor. Six years, shall you sow your field.

Six years, shall you work. And then, of course, you've got people in the other ditch. They're not willing to stop when they're supposed to stop. They're not willing to obey the Lord and have a day of rest, and in this case, a year of rest, a sabbatical year. But that's God's command. He commands us to work, and He commands us to rest.

And He tells us what proportion He wants us to do each. Diligent labor is God's requirement. Number three, God's bounty is to be shared. That's what this teaches Israel.

God's bounty is to be shared. Does the Bible teach capitalism or socialism? Well, the reason why you can find some elements of each in the Bible, we've got socialists who look to the Bible to support their position, and capitalists who look to the Bible to support their position, the reason that that's possible is because actually there are some elements of each in the Bible. Now, capitalists don't like to acknowledge that, but here it is in front of you. And socialists don't like to acknowledge this either, but here it is in front of you.

So let's think about it. And I will give you my summary, my observation from the Bible. The Bible is basically and strongly capitalistic, but not unregulated capitalism. You are to work this land as if it is your own. There's an ownership concept here. What you receive will be proportionate to how hard you work, how diligent you are. You're going to reap according to your efforts to your labor. It's a basic capitalistic system, but here are some requirements and safeguards.

You've also got to do some things for the benefit of the poor. When you leave your landfellow on the seventh year, anybody who wants to can come in and take what he can for his needs. Nobody can come in and take a bunch of it and store it in his barn. Nobody can come in and take a bunch of it and sell it. They can't do that with it. But anybody who is hungry and needy can come into your field and take what they can carry away for their needs, immediate needs. Anybody can do that. You can't say, whoa, whoa, that's my field. You don't have permission to come here.

Yes, I do. Who said? God.

It belongs to him. We saw the same thing in the command. I didn't read it to you, but the command where they were supposed to leave the corners of their field unharvested, you know that? They were commanded to do that for the poor. You read about that in the book of Ruth.

What was Ruth doing? She was gleaning the corners of the field that God commanded people to leave so that the poor could come and harvest what they needed. That was God's provision for the poor. And so capitalism, yes, but not unregulated capitalism. Capitalism, yes, but not overly greedy, this is all mine style of capitalism.

There are some restraints on capitalism. But socialism, no, this isn't socialism. This isn't the government taking from you by force of taxation and redistributing it to others, not at all. But it is a wise provision for the poor. It's God's old covenant welfare program. Provision was made for the poor, and notice this element of it. For them to benefit from it, they had to go and work for it.

The requirement wasn't you take the produce from your field and go distribute it to the poor. It was you leave it for them to come and gather. Gather the corners of your field.

Gather the overgrowth in the seventh year. There's a lot here I don't have time to get into, but if we would just learn what the Bible says. Again, people on either side of the road in the ditch, some people have hard hearts and they don't want to help anybody. It's all mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. I'm not going to give to anybody. Shame on you. God will deal with you.

It's his, his, his, his, not yours, yours, yours, yours, yours. Learn that and act accordingly. Then there are people who want to help the poor just by giving, giving, giving without any requirement, and they just build up a mindset that is very detrimental to people. People need to do what they can. They may not have a field to till, but they need to be able to go lean like Ruth did, and if they can't do that physically, and there are always people who can't, then surely somebody, friend, neighbor, relative, somebody in their family can go do that.

This is a work requirement. The old saying, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish, you can feed him forever. That's getting at this principle, but the problem is some people don't want to learn how to fish. They want you to just keep giving them a fish for a day, and this principle says, folks, if you are in need, you better get in a learning mindset.

You better get in a working mindset. Provision is made, but not to just hand everything to you. Isn't it interesting how the Bible balances all this out so beautifully? I think there's wisdom in this book, don't you?

Let's learn what it says. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Diligent labor is God's requirement. God's bounty is to be shared with others. Observation four, obedience produces prosperity.

That tells us that. If you'll do this, you're going to prosper more than you would otherwise. But number five, obedience requires faith. You've got to believe God. You've got to believe he'll do what he said, if you're going to benefit from this. Number six, obedience results in miraculous provision because God promised it. That's why we know this is true.

You can trust him for it. And observation number seven, people struggle to believe and obey God. It's our fallen nature, our Adamic nature. We struggle to believe and obey God. Question, did Israel obey the Sabbath year commandment? We have no record that they ever observed this.

Why not? Well, the Bible doesn't tell us why, but I'd say probably it falls into two categories. Number one, doubt.

They didn't believe that God would do what he said. And number two, greed. When it came right up to it, boy, I've had a nice harvest for six years.

You mean I'm just going to turn my back on my field and my potential here and let it go? No, I'm going to get some more. I need some more.

I need some more. And doubt and greed, no doubt, is the answer. Do you know that Israel's going into Babylonian captivity was at least in part, and I would say probably a large part, because they failed to observe the Sabbath year? Listen to 2 Chronicles 36, 21.

This is about God sending Babylon, the Chaldeans, to judge Israel for their disobedience. And it says in verse 21, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed her Sabbath. As long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. How long was Israel in Babylonian captivity? Seventy years. How many land Sabbaths did that add up to? About the amount that they should have had over 490 years.

Seventy times seven. About 500 years. Up until that time, it looked like God wasn't going to do anything about this. I ignored God's command and look here.

Nothing bad happened to me. God is extremely patient. God is extremely long suffering. But God will keep his word both in the promised blessings as well as in the promised judgments. You say, I thought Israel went into captivity because of their idolatry.

Right. And what do you think it is when you're worshipping money more than God? That's a form of idolatry. This is part of the idolatry.

And this is the evidence of their idolatry. They didn't obey the land Sabbath requirement. And they spent 70 years in captivity as a consequence of their disobedience, their covetous materialistic idolatry.

We do have record, not in the Bible, but in Josephus, the Jewish historian, that upon their return from Babylon, they meticulously kept the Sabbath year. Even as we know that following their Babylonian captivity, there were no more incidents of their worshipping graven images. They seemed to have gotten cured of that in the Babylonian captivity, and they seemed to have gotten cured of disobeying the land Sabbath in the Babylonian captivity. But how much poorer they were on the other side of the Babylonian captivity than they were prior to it.

They never became as strong and prosperous again. So obedience produces prosperity. Obedience requires faith. Obedience results in miraculous provision, but people struggle to believe and obey God.

And the result of disobedience is oftentimes initially greater prosperity. I ignored this. I sowed in the seventh year, and I've got more. See how much more I have? Well, you don't know how much you would have had if you'd obeyed God.

It might have been more than the more you've got. But you think you have prospered. You've ignored God and got by with it. Until God says, Day of Reckoning, then you don't get by with it.

In long range, it produces not only less productive fields because they aren't getting their rest that enriches them, which makes you have to work harder for less because the fields are not as productive as they were before. But the worst loss is your soul's hardness against God, your hard-heartedness toward God, and the leanness of your soul, and the Babylonian captivity that wiped out so many things that you never got back again, even in the return. So Israel, which is better, God's way or your way? But third, and quickly, applications for us today. And these overlap a good bit, but what are they?

Let me make them quickly. Number one, God is to be honored in all of life today, just like he was to be honored in all of life in Moses' day and beyond. And the ways that we demonstrate honoring God have changed from Old Covenant to New Covenant. God doesn't forbid you to grow your garden on the seventh year.

Go ahead and help yourself. We're not living under the Old Covenant. The ways that we honor God in all of life have changed, but the basic principles remain the same. Another application for today, as in Moses' day, is that obedience produces prosperity. When we operate with the things that God gives us, as if we are stewards, not owners, we actually become more prosperous as a result thereof.

We hold these things lightly. We acknowledge they belong to God. We give them to God. We follow his instructions and don't consider ourselves owners and don't make material gain our goal in life, but rather honoring God, our goal in life.

And guess what? We end up more prosperous that way than we would working like greedy grubbers all the time to get a hold of every little thing that we can, every little scrap that we can hold on to. God is the owner of everything that I consider my possession. I'm his steward.

I manage it for his glory. And when I put him first, I will reap rewards of obedience, and when I fail to do that, I will be the loser in some ways. That requires faith that God will do what he promises. That requires faith not to be afraid, but I'm afraid.

I won't have enough for my retirement, for my old age, and so forth and so on. Trust God. Manifest your faith by trusting God. Now, I will give three New Testament promises of God in regard to material things to close this out. Let's take this one from Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount. What does he say in Matthew 633? But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

What are all these things? He's been talking about food. He's been talking about clothes. He's been talking about the normal needs of life. And he says if you'll put God first, all those things will be granted to you. You're not going to be poorer by putting God first and seeking his kingdom first.

You're going to be better off. God's going to take care of all these needs he promises to. Do you believe that? Seek God first, and these things will be added to you. God will give them to you in more than ample supply.

Okay? Philippians 4 19. And my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. That's one of the two statements of Philippians chapter 4 that is often bent out of context and misunderstood and misapplied. The other one is, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. If I have enough faith, I can jump over this building in one leap by Christ who strengthens me.

No, you can't, you idiot. Take it in context. Take it in context.

What is Paul talking about? He said, I have learned both how to be to abound and to be abased, to suffer want and to have plenty. I can live either way contentedly.

How? Because I have, my God, what is it again? Because God, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. I can be content with less.

I can be materialistic with more. I can be God honoring either in scarcity or in bounty because God enables me to do that. That's the context. It's not that you can become the world's greatest pianist if you put your mind to it with Jesus' help. That's not the promise.

I know, I tried, and I never did get that. That's out of context. And finally, 2 Corinthians 9, and here I'm going to read several verses. But this I say, he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly. He's talking about giving. This whole chapter is about giving. He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver and God is able to make all grace abound toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may have an abundance for every good work. As it is written, he has dispersed abroad, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. Now may he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness while you are enriched in everything for all liberality which causes thanksgiving through us to God. I don't have time to break all that down, but another wonderful promise about God's rewarding those who give to him with the right heart motive.

We need these reminders. We're still battling our Adamic frailty. We're still struggling with things, money. But this is God's way to prosperity.

He can make less go farther if we'll obey him and be generous in our giving or he can make more shrink. He talks in Haggai about you have bags with holes in it. You put your gold in the bag and where'd it go? Where'd it go? I thought I had it but it's gone.

Where'd it go? It went away because you hoarded it for yourself and didn't honor God with it and now you have less. But if you had honored God with it, God can sew up the hole and put more gold in your bag.

God's able to do that. May we learn these lessons of God honoring stewardship. Shall we pray? Father, how we thank you for your word and how it speaks to where we live so clearly. Help us, Lord, to trust you and to honor you as we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.