Robbing God

Did you know that the Bible talks about money and possessions more than twice as often as the topics of faith and prayer combined? Apparently, God has a lot to say about having a healthy relationship with our money and possessions.

And a key passage on this topic is found in Malachi chapter 3, one of the classic passages on money in all the Bible. From Chicago, welcome to The Moody Church Hour with Pastor Philip Miller. In a moment, a time of worship and teaching as we continue a series on tough love and tender mercies taken from the book of Malachi.

We'll learn why you don't want to face the penalty for what the Bible calls robbing God. Here now is Pastor Philip along with worship leader Tim Stafford. We're here to worship. Amen. Let's give this service to the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we come this morning and we ask that you would meet us here, that you would change us and make us new for the glory of your name. We pray this in Jesus' matchless name and all God's people said, Amen. Amen. Amen.

Jesus, I am strong. We have every reason to praise the Lord. We have every reason to praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord this morning.

He's with us. We've heard the call of Christ in us. We know what we need to do, but we're not always doing it. We see the evil out there in the world, but let's look in our hearts today. Come before the Lord, confess our sins and prepare our hearts to hear from Him. In peace we have come to pray and to seek the Lord today for salvation from His hand, for the healing of our land. Let us pray.

Let us pray. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. Lord, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy. For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. For our sin we repent, O Lord.

We believe Your holy Word. Have mercy, Lord, we pray, and take all our sins away. Here we lay, Christe. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. If you would like iniquity, O Lord, who could stand? Mercy, Lord, come take us from Your hands. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

For we have praised all our hopes in Thee. In 1973, there was a businessman named Howard Dayton who took up the challenge from one of his business partners to look into what the Bible has to say about money and possessions. And so he figured he would take his first couple hours looking into it by cataloging all the different passages that the Bible talks about money and possessions. And he realized pretty quickly as he started working himself through those passages, it was going to take way more than just a couple hours. He found in total 2,350 passages in the Bible talking about money and possessions. Isn't that remarkable?

Now we can quibble with his exact count, okay? But the point is, to put that in perspective, if you add up the passages that talk about prayer or faith in the Bible, you're going to get about 500 passages each. So the point is that God speaks about money and possessions about over twice as much as he talks about faith and prayer combined, which is shocking. Why would that be? Why would that be? I hope to show you today why it is that God invests so much time and energy into teaching us how we are to have a healthy, spiritual relationship with our money and our possessions.

Because it's dangerous. It really is. Now, to do that today, we're going to turn to Malachi chapter 3, which is one of the classic passages in the Bible about money and giving. It's probably the most well-known passage in the book of Malachi. If you've ever heard Malachi preach before, you probably heard a sermon from this section, okay?

And so it's well-known. We're going to be in Malachi chapter 3, verses 6 down to 12. You'll find today's reading on page 802 in the Pew Bible there by your knees if you'll pull that out and join us.

802 Malachi 3, verses 6 down to 12. For I, the Lord, do not change. Therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.

But you say, how shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet you're robbing me. But you say, how have we robbed you in your tithes and contributions?

You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts. If I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need, I will rebuke the destroyer for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts. Thanks be to the Lord for the reading of his word. We come now today to what is the fifth of six disputes in the book of Malachi, as the Lord and the people of God are arguing back and forth. And it's quite clear in this passage that the people of God are spiritually unwell.

They are spiritually unwell. And so what I want to do is approach this like your physician would. We're going to look at the symptoms, the disease, and the prescription this morning.

Symptoms, disease, prescription. Before we do that, let's jump in and pray. Let's ask the Lord to be our teacher.

Father, money is a touchy subject for a lot of us because it goes right to the heart. I pray that you would help us not be defensive, not to have an agenda, not to throw up a wall, but to hear your voice today. Tenderize our hearts.

Do some surgery today. We need your help. For Jesus' sake, we pray. Amen.

Amen. All right, first of all, the symptoms. What are the presenting symptoms of the problem here, the spiritual malady that's afflicting the people of God? Verse 8, jump down there.

This is the heart of their symptoms. Will a man rob God, God asks? Yet you're robbing me. But you say, how have we robbed you in your tithes and contributions? You're cursed with a curse for you're robbing me, the whole nation of you. So there it is.

There's the symptoms. They're stingy. They're stingy in their tithes and contributions, their offerings. When they come to the temple in worship, they're not bringing what they're supposed to. Instead of wholehearted, joyous generosity toward God, they're withholding with tight-fistedness when it comes to their money. And God says, you're robbing me. And this is a fascinating word.

It's even stronger. Robbing is a strong word, but it's even stronger in Hebrew. The word literally means to pillage, like an invading horde sacking and spoiling a smaller neighboring people. It smacks of exploitation and oppression. And it's very odd to use this word with God. You're like, wait, God, you're so powerful. How could we possibly exploit and pillage you? And you can see how the accusation catches them off guard, doesn't it?

How have we robbed you? That doesn't make sense. God says, in your tithes and your contributions, you're not giving me my rightful due. And what's he talking about, tithes and contributions? Well, under the law, the Mosaic law in the Old Covenant, Old Testament, the people of Israel were required to bring a number of things to the temple. The first thing they were required to bring was a basic tithe. So they brought it to worship. It was 10% of their annual income. They were to bring in worship to the Lord. They were also to bring an additional 2% to give to the priests for their service, sort of a tip, 2%.

Now, there is some interpretive debate. Some of the priests thought it should be 10% over and again. You can understand why, but I think it was 2%. There was a second tithe that was required for you to spend in Jerusalem when you were visiting for the three annual pilgrimages that you had to make every year for the festivals. And this was kind of sort of like economic stimulus that you could kind of keep the wheels of Jerusalem going so they had lots of jobs and they could provide the infrastructure to serve the entire nation on these festival days. So you had 10% for the temple, 2% for the priests, another 10% that you had to spend in Jerusalem.

And if you couldn't make pilgrimage because you were sick or something, you still had to send that 10% to Jerusalem. Then every third and fifth year, the Jewish calendar runs on a seven-year cycle. Every third and fifth year, there were additional tithes. There was a third and a fourth tithe that was to be given specifically for the care of the poor.

But that wasn't every year, but it was every third and fifth year. So if you average all of those out into an annual amount, if you prorate it, if you will, over seven years, it comes out to about 25% of their annual income was required to be given to these four tithes. Now, mind you, this does not include the value of the sacrificial animals that you were required to offer to the Lord at those festivals, right?

So that's additional cost that you have to absorb. If you were making sin or trespass offerings, there were fees for those things and depending on how much sinning you had done, that could really add up. And additionally, the Lord required every seventh year was a Sabbath year to the Lord and the seven-year cycle. And so the seventh year you were to give all of your income to the Lord, your whole income. And so that was so onerous to wait every six years and then go, bam, just get hit that they decided to prorate it over those seven years.

And that came out to an additional 14% per year. And then of course, there was the year of Jubilee, the year of Jubilee, which was every 50 years after the 49th year, the seven-year cycle, as it kicks over, you were not allowed to farm. You had to let the land lay fallow.

You were to let the land rest, have a Sabbath for the land. And that meant no income for the year as an agrarian society. And all the debts in the nation were neutralized and repaid.

Everything went back to zero. So if you had amassed some wealth and some land and some maybe people owed you some money, all of that went away. So if you were a wealthy person, you took a pretty big hit every 50 years, once a generation, give or take. Additionally, the law required that you not farm your fields all the way to the edges, but you leave the corners for the poor to come and glean and have some food. And so you weren't to maximize your profits, but you were to build in generosity and charity at every corner, literally. They were also required before God to give to charity, to the poor. They were required also personally to take care of the widows and the orphans and the poor, the sojourner in their midst.

And on top of all of that, you could at any time express your gratitude to God by bringing a free will thank offering to the Lord, just out of the goodness of your heart. And that was more animals and crops and things like that. So when you add all of this up, the law required well north of 40% of the Israelites annual income be given to the Lord. Now we have to remember this was a theocracy, which means that God was the ultimate King of Israel and the government administration and their religious devotion were all wound up together in one big inseparable hole. It's hard for us to peel all these layers apart, but some of this 40% really went toward what we would just call taxes, right?

Government administration, funding of the defense of the nation, the judiciary system, all of those things, law enforcement, et cetera. Some of what in this 40% would be in the category that we would call economic stimulus, right? So they're pouring money into Jerusalem to keep the economy flourishing and some of that we would call welfare programs, right?

It's a social safety net. It's built into some of this giving that is providing care for those who have needs. But if you strip all those government layers and you look at just the amount that you were required to give to the Lord in worship, you basically have these elements. You have the basic tithe that you were supposed to bring. You have the 2% that was given to the priests and you have the 14%, every seventh year your income went to the Lord, plus the value of your sacrifices, yes? So you add all that up, it comes out to at least 26% is what God required of his people in worship in the Old Testament.

Now, having walked through that, you may begin to understand how it is that God's people began to start cutting corners on their giving. 40% of your annual income is a lot. 26% is a lot.

40% is even more. And times were hard. The nation was small. Their power was limited.

The rains hadn't been falling very much. The crops were getting eaten by locusts. The budgets were tight and they became stingy with God. And God says, you're robbing me. There's a fascinating passage in 1 Chronicles 29 verse 14 where King David is fundraising, collecting donations for the future temple that his son Solomon will build. And all the people are giving lavishly to the temple fund. They're giving gold and silver and precious gems to the Lord.

And then David prays a prayer of dedication over all of it. And this is what he says, who are we? And what are my people that we should give these things to you? For all things come from you and we have only given you that which is from your own hand.

You see what he's saying? He's saying everything we just gave you is actually yours to begin with. It's all yours. Everything is yours.

It's all from your hand. It belongs to you. And so all these gifts we just gave to you, we're just giving you what you gave us first. It still belongs to you.

It's kind of an ironic thing that we're doing. How do you give to God when he has everything? What we're getting at here, friends, is the biblical principle that God actually owns everything. All of our wealth, all of our money, all of our stuff.

And as much as our wealth feels like it belongs to us, it does, doesn't it? It feels like it belongs to you. You worked for it. You earned it. You saved it. You invested it.

The reality is you only have that because of what God's given you. He gave you breath in your lungs. He gave you strength in your bones. He gave you talent in your persona. He gave you ingenuity in your mind.

He gave you opportunity that you stepped into. Every good and perfect gift is from above and it comes down from the Father of the heavenly lights. All the wealth that we have, friends, is ultimately from his gracious hand. It all belongs to him. And notice that even after God gives us these gifts of wealth, David says it still belongs to God. In other words, he entrusted wealth into your hands and yet he didn't relinquish ownership of it.

You notice this? He entrusted wealth into your hands but he didn't let go of his ownership of it. Which means you're a steward, not an owner. It means you're an asset manager. You're not the investor. It means you're the broker and he's the client.

And it's the job of a steward, a broker, to manage the wealth that's been entrusted into your care to manage that according to the wishes and directives of the owner. Look, if you're an asset manager downtown and all of a sudden people give you wealth to manage and all of a sudden you start using that money like it's your own and spending it on yourself, what do we call that? That's fraud. That's embezzlement. It's robbery. And don't you see, that's exactly what God is saying here.

He's accusing his people. He's saying, I entrusted my wealth into your hands as a stewardship and you are to manage it according to my wishes and directives. And I made those abundantly clear that the wealth I gave to you is for the needs and the enjoyment of your family, yes, but it is also for the strengthening of the society.

It is for the flourishing of my city. It is for the provision of the priesthood. It is for the care of the poor. It is for the mending of the tattered.

It is for the healing of the broken. It is for the glory of my name to be revealed and displayed before all the nations. You see, Israel's economy was oriented not around individual wealth generation but around worship and service and peace and justice. Israel was to be a light to the Gentiles, to the nations. This is what Shalom looks like. This is what peace on earth and good will toward men looks like. Here it is where the kingdom comes and God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

It is here that we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves. God says, I entrusted my wealth into your hands with clear directions of how you are to invest it for my glory and for your human flourishing. But you decided to keep it for yourselves.

You decided to make it all about your own agenda and you showed up to the temple with just a fraction of what I asked for. And friends, stinginess robs God of glory and us of grace. Stinginess robs God of glory and us of grace. Because when we gorge ourselves on our wealth and make it all about us, we're robbing God of glory, we're robbing our neighbors of good, we're robbing ourselves of grace. Because instead of the joy of partnering with God in the flourishing and mending of this world, we cave in upon ourselves and make it all about me, mine, mine.

There's a little golem in there if you heard it. In robbing God, friends, it turns out we're actually robbing ourselves. You see that? We're the ones missing out.

So those are the symptoms, but there's a deeper disease. The stinginess before God is actually symptomatic of an underlying problem, an underlying condition, a disease. Go back to verse 6. For I, the Lord, do not change. Therefore, O children of Jacob, you are not consumed. From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes, even I kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.

But you say, how will we return? See, the disease underneath their stinginess is that they've turned aside from the Lord, haven't they? That their hearts have wandered, their devotion has drifted, their love has grown cold. What they were doing with their money was symptomatic of a deeper disease. They were wandering away from the Lord. And that's the whole point of the tithes and offerings in the temple.

Don't you see that? When you brought your tithes and offerings to the temple, you were saying, this is where my treasure is. This is where my heart is. God, I look to you to secure my needs. God, I look to you to give me significance in life. God, I look to you to be my all satisfying joy. God, I give you my whole heart. You're my true treasure. And so I put my earthly treasures in your temple because I've got a heavenly treasure that is more valuable than anything I just let go of.

And you're the one I'm living for. That's what you were saying. But they weren't doing that. They weren't bringing all their tithes and offerings into the Lord's temple.

What's the implication? If they're not bringing their tithes and offerings into the Lord's temple, it must be in another temple. It must be in another temple. And that might be a literal temple.

Remember, they'd married wives outside of the covenant that were still worshipping foreign gods. Maybe some of their household wealth was actually in a foreign God's temple, right? But maybe their treasure wasn't in a deity's temple. Maybe it was in their own temple. Maybe their own houses were their temple where they put their treasure into building a dream home for themselves and they robbed God's temple to make it happen. Maybe comfort was their temple and they put their treasure into ease and luxury and a bespoke lifestyle and they robbed God's temple to keep up with the Joneses. Maybe savings was their temple. Maybe they put their treasure into a nest egg to protect them from all the unknowns and they robbed God's temple to secure themselves. See, they were attending God's temple but they were worshipping in another temple.

You see that? Their treasure was in another temple. It was a temple to themselves. They were living for themselves.

They were serving themselves. They were worshipping themselves. And Jesus says in Matthew 6 21, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Wherever you put your treasure, that's where you're worshipping.

That's what you're living for. And the reason their treasure wasn't in the Lord's temple is because their hearts weren't there either. You see that? Friends, our money always shows us our hearts. Our money always shows us our hearts because our hearts and our treasure are intertwined.

They're intertwined. Our hearts and our treasure are intertwined. Where you invest your treasure reveals the worship of your heart. Our bank statements show us what we're actually living for. Not what we say we're living for.

What we're actually living for. Friends, if I find it hard to donate to God's work, but I don't find it difficult to go buy some new clothes, do you realize it's showing me what's going on in my heart? That maybe I valued my own image more than the significance that God alone can provide. If I find it difficult to give to the poor, but I'm quick to book tickets on my next travel expedition vacation, it's showing me my heart.

You see that? I may be finding satisfaction, not in God, but in all the adventures that this world can provide. If I struggle to be generous toward others, but I find it really easy to save and invest for myself, that shows me my heart. That maybe I'm finding security in my assets rather than my God. As Jesus says in Mark chapter 6 verse 24, no one can serve two masters.

Either he'll hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. See that's the disease underneath all the symptoms.

So symptoms, disease, now prescription. Dr. Jesus, what do we need here? Verse 10, look at what the Lord says, bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts. If I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down on you a blessing until there is no more need, I will rebuke the destroyer for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all the nations will call you blessed for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts. Bring the full tithe, he says, into the storehouse.

Another word for the temple because that's where the poor would go to get food from the storehouse there in the temple. Bring it all in, test me, the Lord says, isn't this interesting? Test me. Try me.

Try me. I'll prove myself to you. Just obey me and watch what happens. I'll throw open the windows of heaven. I'll send nourishing rain for your crops. I'll pour down blessing until there's no more need. That drought you're having, it'll be gone. I'll rebuke the devourer, those locusts.

You won't see them again. The vines will bear fruit. The nations will call you blessed and you will be a land of delight. Now these covenant blessings, these blessings that are enumerated here are clearly flowing out of the old covenant. This is the covenant that God made with the people in the Old Testament through Moses and the basic stipulations of the covenant were covenant obedience leads to covenant blessing, covenant disobedience leads to covenant curse. So the reality is we are not under this covenant and therefore we cannot claim these promises directly for ourselves or for our nation.

So don't go there. It's a bad hermeneutic. But there is a principle here that I think we shouldn't miss and that is that God always blesses obedience. God always blesses obedience. Now that blessing is not guaranteed to be material or financial. This is not a deal where you tithe and God gives you a Ferrari, right?

If anyone tells you that, they're lying. That does not work that way. But what it does mean is that God loves to give good gifts to His children. And when we love Him and we walk in obedience with Him, He finds great delight in giving good gifts to His children, especially the gift of Himself. For He will never leave us and will never forsake us. And if you have God, you can get through anything, right?

Now, but isn't this interesting? God says, return to me, I'll return to you. And they say, how do we return to you?

And what is the first thing God gives them to do? Give. Open your wallets and give. Why?

Why? Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Not only does our treasure reveal our hearts, our treasure can lead our hearts.

Do you see that? Our treasure can lead our hearts. When we invest our resources, our money into something, we begin to care about it. Our affections grow and we become attached to it. Our hearts follow our treasure. So God says, pre-fund your heart in the right direction.

Start giving. A few years ago, a friend of ours had a flat tire and I don't do this very much, but the Lord just sort of prompted me and said, you know, go, go get her a new tire. So I got, I gave her some money to get the new tire. It wasn't expensive. It felt like the right thing to do.

But here's what I found over the next couple of weeks. I started paying attention to her family and the kids and their needs and the gifts that they had and the good things that God was doing in their life. And I, I started growing in love because of a flat tire. Because I put, you see, I just, I put a few dollars in the direction of caring for this situation and it pulled my heart right along with it. Do you want to grow in your love for God?

So you love Him more and more. You want to grow in your love for your neighbor so you begin to love them as you love yourself. You want to share in God's heart for the nations to come and know Him. Do you want to delight in the flourishing of God's people? Do you want to have a heart that beats for the glory of God and the good of His church? Then lead your heart with faith-filled, joyous, proportionate, lavish generosity. Lead your heart with faith-filled, joyous, proportionate, lavish generosity.

Lead your heart for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Friends, the grace of giving is essential to our spiritual transformation. It's essential. I don't know how we could ever grow into the people God wants us to be unless we open our wallets and give.

I don't know how we do it. Every word in that sentence is important. Faith-filled, trusting in God and His promises, His provision. Joyous, because God loves a cheerful giver. Proportionate, we are to give as God has prospered us. Lavish, we are to be eager above and beyond givers just like God. Generosity, we give generously because God first gave generously to us, right? Friends, see the reason God cares so much about giving is because He cares so much about you. He cares about who you're becoming.

That's why He cares. So how much should we give, huh? This is a question you're all wondering, right?

How much? How do we apply these Old Testament standards of giving to the New Testament people of God? That's a good question. Do we have to do the whole 40%?

Let me rephrase that. Do we get to do the whole 40%? Well, I would suggest that that 40% doesn't transfer over real well to our scenario today because a lot of that was going toward government taxes, welfare, and things like that that we pay our government for, right?

In your taxes. So don't worry about the 40% thing. You're welcome.

You're welcome. How about the 26% that the people of Israel were to bring to the temple? This was the pure amount that was actually going to God, 26%. And there are Bible scholars who will suggest that this is actually the best guideline to bring forward into the New Testament because this is what people gave God in the Old Covenant. Now, I do think there's one important distinction we need to point out between the Old Covenant and the New, and that is that they had one temple to service the entire nation, all the people. So they didn't have local churches in every community that divided up the need and cared for different things.

So I'm not sure the parallel is exact between the church today and the temple in the Old Testament. So I'm not entirely convinced by that, but I think we should take that under advisement and consideration, 26%. What about the tithe, the 10%? And it was really 12% once the priests got their tip, right?

12%. Is that a good standard? I want to suggest to you that it's a good baseline.

I mean, don't be legalistic about it. You can do more than that, but this is a good baseline because, listen, it helps you know where your heart's at. It helps you know where your heart's at. 10% is just high enough to make you confront the idols you're worshiping and come to terms with whether God has your wholehearted devotion. It's just high enough to make you think hard about where your heart's at because here's the reality. The Bible also tells us that money is blinding.

It blinds us. There's a passage in Luke 12, 15 where Jesus says, watch out for all the various forms of greed. Watch out. They'll sneak up on you because no one feels like they're greedy. Have you ever met someone who's like, yeah, that's me, I'm greedy?

No. Because, listen, there's always people around you who are spending way more on their lifestyle than you are, so you always feel middle class and frugal. You always will.

And so the reality is no one thinks they're greedy, but if God spends so much time talking about money and possessions, it must be a problem that most of us have. So how do you know if you have the problem? If it blinds you and you can't actually see it when you have it. How do you know? Well, it gives you a line in the sand. 10%. Just give me 10%.

And if you gulp, you have the big gulp, like. Let that do the work. Let that do the work in your heart.

Let it help you see where your heart's really at. Now, some of you I know are thinking, well, the tithe is an Old Testament thing. It's not a New Testament thing. We're under grace in the Spirit. That was the law. Why do we carry it over?

Listen to me for just one second. The Spirit in the New Covenant always outdoes what the law required. So in the Old Covenant, it was don't commit adultery. In the New Covenant, it's don't lust. In the Old Covenant, it was don't murder. In the New Covenant, it's don't even be angry. In the Old Covenant, it was give God a percentage. In the New Testament, it's give God your everything.

The Spirit always outdoes what the law required. It makes no sense for the New Testament people of God, having received the fullness of the grace of the cross of Jesus Christ, to come up more stingy on their giving than the Old Testament people did. It makes no sense. If you can explain that to me, come after the service and explain it to me.

It makes no sense. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9, says this. He's encouraging the church to give generously. This is what he says.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. Do you see what he's doing in this passage? He's not playing to your will. He's not like, I'm an apostle and you've got to do it. No, he doesn't do that. He's not manipulating their emotions. He's not playing them videos of orphans with big little puppy dog eyes. He's not doing that.

What is he doing? He's pointing them to the gospel. The gospel. Look at Jesus. Look at all the riches of heaven that he set aside when he became poor for your sake to rescue and redeem you. Look at how he gave up all the treasures of heaven to make you his treasure so that by his poverty you might become rich. You might become a child of God, adopted in his forever family, an inheritor of the kingdom, a co-heir with Christ who will sit in glory with him. You want to know how much you should give, Paul says.

Don't sit down with a calculator. Sit down with the cross. Look at Jesus and how he gave everything for you and then determine in your heart what you're going to give. What will you give to the one who gave everything for you?

That's the question. It's between you and the Lord. It's an issue of the heart that giving is about your relationship with God. And so here's the invitation from the Lord. Return to me and I will return to you.

You want the Lord? Give him your heart. Give him your treasure. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Here's the reality. When it comes to giving, most of us have very complicated financial worlds and it's really hard to get started. If you think, I've got to go from 0 to 10%, you'll never do it, right? You think of it like rungs on a ladder, okay?

And there are just some basic categories and I'd like you to think about where are you at and where would you like to go? The first category is initial givers. These are people who are taking their very first step of faith in God and his promises by giving. If you've never given to the Lord and you've heard this message and you're like, I think I really should do something. It's a bold and courageous thing to start giving.

It really is. And God says, test me, test me. See if I won't respond with blessings you couldn't even imagine. The second rung of the ladder is intentional giving. This is where you realize I can't quite get to like an actual tithe, but because of my financial picture, I've got some debts to pay, but as raises and cost of living come in each year, I've got a plan and I'm working that plan to grow my giving percentage as I grow in grace. So I'm going to be deliberate over the next two to three, four or five years, however long it takes to take baby steps to get to obedience with God in this area of my life.

Do you have a plan? Are you an intentional giver? The third rung is what we might call faithful giving.

These are people who say I choose to give my first and best to God as a tithe in obedience and faith. What God says, I'm going to do it. I may not like it, but I'm going to do it and I'm trusting him, right?

I'm trusting his goodness. Missional is the fourth rung on the ladder here. Missional giving is where the standard, it actually moves from the outside to the inside. So in faithful giving, I'm meeting a standard on the outside. In missional giving, it becomes an internal motivation that I want to actually do.

I'm eagerly motivated to invest above and beyond for kingdom impact. I love giving. I love looking for opportunities to pour myself out generously, just like God poured himself out for me. Missional giving, it's part of the mission of my life. And then finally, the fifth rung here is what we might call legacy givers. People who have made audacious generosity a top priority of their life and their estate. These are some of the most beautiful people you've ever not heard about, who have decided that their life is going to be about the generosity of God. They're going to pour themselves out for the healing and mending of this world and they're going to be quietly generous. Some people have even put an extra kid in their will called giving. They just split their estate and they say, I'm giving this. I'm going to amplify the work of God long before I breathe my last breath.

This is amazing stuff. So where are you at? Where do you want to be? What are the barriers and what is the Lord calling you to do? Can I ask you to just pray about it with your spouse and your family? Just have an honest conversation with the Lord. Don't leave and do nothing. Do something. And I'm telling you friends, this is an adventure living by faith with your generous gifts and God will show up and you don't want to miss it.

You don't want to miss it. Let's pray. Oh Father, we give you ourselves. We hold nothing back. All that we have is from your hand and we only give what is yours to begin with.

And so would you take our lives, all that we are, we want to give ourselves to you. In Christ's name, amen. Our benediction today is from Romans chapter 11 verses 33 to 36. Oh the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments, how unscrewdable are His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Who has been His counselor? Who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever and ever. And all God's people said, amen, amen.

Remember you're loved more than you know, so now go and be the church. On today's Moody Church Hour we heard Pastor Philip Miller telling us about robbing God taken from Malachi chapter 3. Malachi details a series of disputes between God and His people Israel. God has been pouring out His heart telling the people to test me in this so that He would pour out His blessing. Next time on The Moody Church Hour we'll see the people respond in two very different ways. One group said it's time we take God at His word, repent and return to Him.

Others said what's the point? These people double down on their faltering faith. Don't miss our next teaching in this series. The Moody Church Hour is a listener supported ministry. We count on the ongoing financial support of listeners like you. Together we share solid biblical teaching that transforms lives across America and around the world. You can call us at 1-800-215-5001.

That's 1-800-215-5001. Online you'll find us at moodychurchhour.com. That's moodychurchhour.com. Or write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.