MAR 1 2020 | The Offering | Cain and Abel

Sea Change Church · The Offering · "Cain and Abel" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · March 1, 2020
Genesis 27:30–38
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Let's sing that last chorus again. Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin has left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Chris. Wow. Good morning, everyone. My name's Olin Ellis, and I'm part of the worship ministry here. Been here for approximately 10 years, and my privilege to read the scripture this morning. It's taken from Genesis chapter 4, verses 1 through 9. Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.

She said, with the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man. Later, she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now, Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel in his offering. But on Cain in his offering, he did not look with favor.

So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it. Now, Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field. While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

The word of the Lord. Amen. So good at that, bro. You'll be doing this more, trust me. All right. You got a sermon ready? We're not that far yet. We're not there, but we're somewhere. We just ain't there. Everyone's got a sermon. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we want to thank you, God, for your word. How it enlivens us, it inspires us, it welcomes us into community with you. Speak to us today on where you would have us go and move and be.

In Jesus' name, amen. Starting a new series this week called The Offering. With the whole idea as we move into it, to really inspire you to see your life as an offering in everything that you do. In your human relationships that you are giving your life away as an offering. In your relationships with God, that everything you do is an offering. What is interesting, and what we're often told in society is not to live a life as an offering, but to live life as a gatherer.

To live in the gathering, which there are some things in life that we do want to gather. There's nothing wrong with gathering. But when we have a mindset of gather, as opposed to a mindset of an offering, we begin to live very inward. And it actually opens us up to things like fear, worry, doubt, as opposed to living in somewhat of an abundance mindset, in somewhat of a knowing that, hey, God's got this. No matter what is happening, I always have something that I can give, because God is the one who gives to me and fulfills me.

And, you know, one thing I've heard in the past is that if you follow the Holy Spirit, you will never be burned out. You will not be burned out. He will never lead you into burnout when you follow the Holy Spirit. We're going to look into this passage. But before we start, I want to set this entire series up. And we're going to take this series to Easter. We do have Genesis in it again. I wanted to continue with Genesis.

And I was going back and forth this week. And I saw that I could actually interweave Genesis, because we want to continue on with Genesis throughout this year. But I could interweave it into the first part of this message on offering with Cain and Abel. It was actually the next chapter. But here's the first thing I want to do. I want to inspire. I definitely want to inspire generosity in you. I want to inspire generosity in all ways.

Generosity of speech, in that we give lavish praise where it's due, that we don't hold back. Inspire generosity in relationships. Inspire generosity in your time. Inspire generosity in your treasure. That you would start to live a life that is known by its generosity. We love generous people. And generous people, one thing that's common about them, is they don't seem to be fettered by market conditions or emotional conditions.

They don't look at their surroundings. They are generous beyond. And the greatest generosity happens, perhaps, or can be measured, when you feel like there is the inability to be generous. We'll look at the widow's might within the next week or two as we look at her in her life. But the first is to inspire generosity. And there's a few reasons for this. One, I want to see you be set free. We want to be free people. Now, we have the Enneagram conference up, coming up.

And I'm an eight, I've been told. Because if anybody's ever taken the Enneagram, they love to tell you what you are. So they've told me I'm an eight. So I went and read it. And the eight supposedly says you will not be controlled by anything. And that's actually somewhat true for me. I want to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. But there's a lot of things I don't want to be controlled by. Fear, worry, doubt, all those things.

I just don't want to be controlled. I don't want to be controlled by my emotions. I want my emotions to be a tool. On and on. And so the first thing is to set you free. Generosity will set you free. And this is one of the things God knew when he inspired generosity in us. Next, generosity builds the kingdom of God on earth. Generosity has a way to release God's kingdom throughout the entire earth. So God can get about the business that he wants to collaborate with you.

What I have found in the scripture is God can do it all of his own. But he has chosen to collaborate with us. And he will oftentimes allow things not to happen. He will not allow things to happen. He will not step in in a codependent way because he wants to collaborate with you in your generosity. So he wants to build the kingdom of God on earth. And hopefully that's something you want to do. And final is personal spiritual development.

Generosity is one of the things that will actually tangibly build your spiritual development. It will be a tangible thing that you can actually see and actually feel in your life. When you give your life away, there is all types of emotional benefits. There's also spiritual benefits and promises, as we'll see, that God speaks about. Now, one of the things I want to be careful about is when we speak about generosity, I think it's very easy to manipulate people with guilt or different things in order to get them to a quid pro quo with God, so to speak.

And I want to be very careful not to do that. Actually, if you are a member of a church, you actually want your leaders to speak about generosity to further the organization and the kingdom which you call home. You want us to come up and do it, but you don't want us to do it in a way that binds you in guilt. This is what the Pharisees were doing. In a way that uses manipulation or tools like that. But rather, you want to be in agreement with these things.

And when the church comes together in agreement, powerful things can happen. So three things. We want to set you free. And perhaps you don't feel set free. Perhaps you feel bound up by the different things that are happening. You want to build God's kingdom, but you also want to have personal spiritual development. Let's read through this. Chapter 4, verse 1. And Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.

And she said, with the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man. We talked about that in the earlier series about women being able to bring life. And eventually, women will bring Christ into the world. And so we see that women are the bringer of life. And the scripture does point to the fact that it is through women that salvation comes. It is through the birth of Jesus and their ability to bring life into the world.

And we see that there. This is an homage to that. Verse 2. Later, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel kept flocks while Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought, and I want you to circle this. It's highlighted some of the fruits of the soil as an offering. You can circle the word some. It's important. It shows a lot about where his heart was and where his mind was in regard to doing what maybe he considered as a duty as opposed to an offering to God.

And I will say that God has removed the duty. As we will talk about that, he has removed the duty from the offering so that now after Christ, if you give, you can do it as a free will. Everything is a free will offering. There is no more duty. There is no more compulsion, as we'll see in a moment. Some of the fruits of the soil. And Abel also brought offering fat portions of some of the, what's the word there? Firstborn.

Big, big difference in regard to what you were surrendering as an offering between some of what you have and the first of what you have. Big difference in between to how that they gave offering to the Lord. Of his firstborn, the Lord looked with favor. You can circle that word favor on Abel and his offering. Favor is a big deal in the Bible. And if you are in Christ and if you've made a decision to follow Christ and you've asked him to rule your life and have lordship, then you are walking in God's favor.

But obedience releases other levers of God's favor on your life. You are in God's favor. But God also says if you want to release more favor, and it's kind of interesting to talk about because once you're in Christ's favor, you have the favor of eternity and you will have favor once we reach glory with Christ. All of the favor of the heavens and the earth will be there. But it's not all there yet. And if you want to taste more of those first fruits now, the Bible says there's a bunch of if statements in the Bible.

If you do this, if you're obedient here, if you do these things, you will release favor on your life. And so you can pre-release favor by the way in which we respond to some of God's commands, even though Jesus has already filled the commands and many of them are no longer compulsory. But you can release favor. And so circle that word favor. But Cain in his offering, he did not look with favor. And so Cain was very angry and his face was downcast.

Then the Lord said to Cain, and this is when God was still just speaking audibly, it seems like, to mankind. Now, at some point, he stops doing that. And the Bible doesn't tell us he stopped doing it. But at some point he did. And now he speaks just to the Holy Spirit. But we still see an audible transmission with Cain. He goes directly to Cain and says, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right.

There's that key pesky word. If. If is such a pesky word. But it is a word that releases so many of the levers of blessing. If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. Wow. That is a powerful, powerful image. That sin is right there. It's not in the house, but it's crouching at the door and it's waiting to join you on your day if you allow it. It said, it desires to have you.

Sin has a desire. That's really interesting. Anthropomorphic. Sin has a desire and it wants you. But you must do what? Rule over it. Now, this is interesting because remember in our last series that man and woman were called to rule over what? All of creation. And God gave them the ability to rule over creation. Just because they made a decision which launched them into a sinful existence with sinful flesh, they did not lose the ability to rule and to take mastery over.

It is oftentimes the enemy's plan to try to convince you that you have no power over your choices, over your sin. You're a victim to your choices. You're a victim to your DNA. Scripture does not say that. Scripture is true because we believe that God has all power, that you must rule over it. Now, Cain said to his brother, right after God gives him this command, Cain goes on and does the opposite. To his brother Abel, let's go out to the field.

And while they're in the field, Cain attacked his brother and killed him. It says in the scripture, in 2 Chronicles 31.12, I think this is in your footnote. It says, I just want to quickly just give a difference. And we'll talk more about this between tithes and offering. The word tithe, actually in the Greek, I think it's masaiar, but I'm probably, some of you Greek scholars can tell me actually how to pronounce it correctly.

But actually means a tenth. A tithe is different than an offering. And we'll talk about that. They had things called free will offerings. Now, there was a compulsory reason. We'll talk about that in a moment. Where God, in the beginning, after the false, he implemented a mandatory compulsory tithe with a negative consequence if you did not do what you were commanded to do. But he also wanted to allow, besides just having something that's compulsory, God wanted to allow the opportunity for you just to give to God because you love him.

Those were done in offerings. And that is why we have a difference between tithes and offerings. And so God required a tithe pre-Christ. God does not require a tithe post-Christ. If any pastor, if any religious leader ever tells you that God is requiring a tithe and if you are, they go to the Malachi passage, which we are speaking about at the end of this, and say to you that you are robbing God if you do not tithe. That is not true.

Because Christ has paid every single debt. Christ has paid for everything that has been done. He has paid your debt. There is no longer any reason to have to make up for or to give a compulsory to a debt. You see, the tithe spoke to a debt that was formed by sin. And Christ, God, in order to show, to give us a reason, because there's a reason behind everything God did, said there must be a tithe because now you're in debt.

And this symbolizes the debt. And so a tithe, the Hebrew word one-tenth, must be given to me as a tithe. And then at the same time, he also doesn't want everything to be a tithe. Imagine if you're in a relationship with somebody. And every time they get you flowers, or every time they get you a gift, or every time they do something like that, they're like, hey, there's this mandatory thing. I've got to do it. And so I got you these flowers, and I just have to, because if I don't, I'm going to get in trouble.

That is a bummer. Actually, God never wanted us as believers to ever live in that kind of system. You never want to have a relationship based on compulsion. You always want to have a relationship based on free will and the desire to have generosity. And so as soon as God could destroy to fulfill, that's a better word because Christ did not come to destroy, but as soon as Christ could, excuse me, to fulfill the tithe requirement, the better.

Because God wants to be in a place where now if you decide to tithe, and you decide to pull that lever because he doesn't remove the blessing from the tithe. Christ didn't come to destroy the law. So the blessings are still there, but the compulsion is not. And so the whole purpose of Christ's coming was to pay the debt. There is no longer a debt. Thus, if you are a believer, and you never give one penny to God, you are still going to be in God's favor.

You are still going to go to heaven. But let me say, you are probably going to miss out on a lot of those blessings that God gives from doing those things. And that's your choice. But there is no longer compulsion. It is different now. This is why God had the offering system along with the tithe. Because he wanted to give a way for people to express their love, their joy, and to say, you know what, I know that there's this requirement, but I just want to go above and beyond.

God, I love you so much. And so he gave this lever that you could give an offering unto God that was not perhaps required so you could give it. Now we live in a system, after Christ has died on the cross, having paid all the debt, where when you give, you completely do it as a free will offering. You can decide if you want to. You can decide if you don't want to. But God has embedded principles, and he's also embedded blessing in the life of generosity.

He's embedded it. And he's actually made promises based on his own name, on his own worth, that says if you fulfill these things, even though you are not required to do it by the law, Jesus talks a lot about this, you will still reap the harvest of blessing. All of the blessings that God gave with commandments, because if you follow the commandments, they will lead to a blessing. Because God implemented them to be basically the course book or the rule book, the life book for living.

That when we follow those things, we do it. So this is just one of those. It is no longer compulsory. It is now elective. And so the question is, how much do you want to elect in your own life in regard to generosity? We're going to talk about generosity of your speech in this series before we get to Easter. How do you hold back praise? Do you, do you not, are you not as effusive? Are you not as, is it hard for you? Do you find when you compliment somebody or compliment your spouse, you find that it's difficult?

There's a wall. There's a barrier to say something kind or good. But it is elective of how much you want to give. And words, the scripture says, have the power of life and death. And so we see in this passage here that Abel brought an offering to the Lord. It was not a tithe. Maybe this was before the tithe system. This was before the law was given to Abraham. So maybe it's just an offering system. And Abel does it. And then Cain sees it and does the same thing.

But he does so with a different attitude. Now, my question is, going into this, is why does God require an offering when God has everything? Well, I told you a moment ago that there was a debt that had to be paid. But why else does he require an offering? It's like you're finding, you know, the person at Christmas, like you just don't know what to give them because they have everything. They're really hard to shop for.

Or I'm finding that I'm just asking for less and less gifts because I find out that I just actually want less and less. Our whole family has actually gone to a system of about maybe the kids get two gifts from us. And we each get two. I mean, we literally were done with the whole present thing in 30 minutes. Where when they were little, we were in a completely different mindset. It was about just lavish as much as we could go.

One time we did about three and a half hours of gift opening with family. I had a big family over and the whole thing. But I was so miserable. I felt like I was running a marathon by the end of it. I was so miserable. Toys were all over the ground. Certain ones, you know, they get lost immediately. All of a sudden I realized that excess didn't speak to the quality of the hearts that we had of love for one another. And so why does God have the tithe and the offering system?

Well, the first I would say is, like I said last week, is I don't know anything that God doesn't offer without a cost. Everything that God offers has a cost. If you want to question that, we can go back and listen next week. Everything the enemy offers you for the most part is free up front. No money down. Everything's free up front. You get the mattress for, you know, 100 days. You get to sleep on it for 100 days. You get, you know, sexuality without commitment, without cost.

You can have it all. It's all free. You'll pay later. But right now it's all free. What I have found with Christ is even grace, and the Bible says that grace is a free gift from God, cost you something. Because Jesus says, I want to give you my grace. Well, what does it cost? Well, pick up your cross and follow me to my death. And perhaps be, as Galatians says, crucified yourself. You see, Christ has a cost up front because he realized that with the pain, with the suffering, not trying to create pain or suffering, that it builds and strengthens the relationship.

We talked about this with women having pain in childbirth. Remember, one of the punishments after the fall was he says, I will give you pain in childbirth? No. He says, I will increase your pain in childbirth. Well, the question is, why is there pain in childbirth in the garden? Because God knows something about when you are able to make it through conflict. When you are able to make it through pain, it strengthens relationships.

I have said that I rarely, if ever, trust a relationship to its deepest levels until I have gone through conflict with somebody. I don't look for conflict. I don't try to create it. But you will not travel with anyone very long without having some conflict or another. And when you can make it through, I have found, and maybe think about this for yourselves, your strongest relationships, are they perhaps, maybe they're not, but are they perhaps with the people, not just who you've had conflict with.

I'm not talking about just having, you can have conflict with people and never have resolution. But that you've had conflict and resolution. Where you've had that conflict, where you've had a little bit of skin in the game, when you've had resolution after a suffering, it's those relationships that you value the most. It's like, that person, they're upset with me. I don't like everything they do, but they would take a bullet for me.

You know, I have a lot of people in friendships where I'm just like, you know, we're not the same. We're very different. But I trust them. And I know that maybe they don't want to hang out with me all the time. And I know certain people who don't want to hang out with me all the time. But if I were to call them and said, hey, I'm in New York City, and I had this bad thing going on, can you wire me a thousand bucks or come out and get me?

I'm in jail. I don't know why I'd be in jail. Bad analogy for the pastor. But nonetheless, I've been falsely accused like Christ. There we go. Way to redeem it. Way to redeem it. What happens in New York City stays in New York City. Just playing. But if I call them, I know they're coming. I know they're coming. And so God understands that when we are sacrificial in our life with God, it creates relationship. God doesn't need anything.

He doesn't need anything. But he chooses to live in a collaborative lifestyle with us. And so one is that relationship. The second is freedom. Generosity is antithetical to fear. It is completely antithetical to fear. Generosity is completely antithetical to a fear-based and lack mindset. There's not enough to go around. We won't survive. Generosity breaks the fetters of fear. There's nowhere in the Bible where God says, hey, I want to tithe unless it's a bad crop year.

Then, you know what? Knock it down to 2%. We're all good. I totally get it. God never does. Because he is not based on that. And our, and I hate to use the word because it's been so destroyed in Christianity. But I will use it. Our prosperity, God's abundance on our life, is not dependent upon market conditions or crop conditions. This week, as I watched the market have a great week, it was awesome. And all the things.

I remember when I was like 20-something years old and I had the meeting with the HR director. And they're like, let's start a little 401k. And so I said, okay, I'll put my four shekels in there every single week. And I'm 50 now, right? So it's had a little bit of time. And I just watched it just get it, just explode this week. And it's amazing how long it takes for something to grow, but how quickly it can die on fear.

Fear, man, it was just so fun. And it was a great week to be doing this message thing. I just, my little, we're back to four shekels. You know what I thought as I wrote, I thought about this? I thought, write a check. Write a check, dude. I called my, I talked to my wife. Called my wife in the room. I said, you know what? Let's write a check. Figure out how much you want to give to somebody. Let's figure it out. Let's go write a check.

That isn't to try to manipulate or control you. I'm just saying for my own self. Because day two into it, I was like, oh, ah, ah. You know, I'm still like, I don't know, 15, 20 years from retiring. I don't know. I'm a ways off, you know. But it's like, oh, the world's ending. Ah, get a mask. The world's ending. Sorry. I just thought, I'm going to go the opposite direction. You know what? Because I do not want my life to be dependent upon the world's barking calls to my life.

So I don't know what we're going to do yet. But I said to my wife, who has never disagreed with me on anything to do with financial giving, ever. She's always actually taking it to the next level. She's, okay, I'll pray. Let's figure it out. It's like, boom. You know, I'm going the other direction. To heck with this. I will not be controlled by fear. I will not let anything control me except, hopefully, the Holy Spirit.

So how are we to give? Because we see this difference between first fruits and some fruit. Let me look in verse 3. In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. Man, that is such a difference. There is such a difference when we give. You know, God doesn't need anything. But what he desires is our hearts.

What he desires is our attitudes. What he desires is the spirit of which we do something. This is the spirit of the law. You see, the law will actually, many times, if you try to, it says the law, if you just try to live according to the law, it will lead to death. But there is a spirit that God creates to undergird the law. And so the law, when you live according to the spirit of the law, it brings life. You know, so many people think that God was just up there with the Holy Spirit at the beginning.

Like, hey, what laws do you want to do? I don't know. Don't, you know, don't let him let a camel fall into a hole on a Sunday. Put that one in there. That would be hilarious. Let's do that one. Okay. Where God is just making up arbitrary laws. No. God, when he made laws, thought about it from the ground up. I want to inspire love. I want to inspire hope. I want to inspire generosity. I want to inspire relationship. Now, this law has a spirit that undergirds it.

And when we live according to the spirit of the law and fulfill the law as best we can, which we can't do. That's why we needed Christ. He fulfilled the law, but did not destroy the law. We all of a sudden, the law starts to bring us life. It is a life of generosity. And so the spirit of the law is to bring God your best. Bring God your best words. I can't wait to speak on that one. To just master your tongue. To have a, you know, something that is life-giving.

This is something I'm really, really working at. I think one of the things people tend to tell me they appreciated me is authenticity. And you know where you stand with me. There's no hidden, you know, I said this, but I really think this. You're not going to get that with me if you know me long. That's an eight, by the way. So if you go to the Enneagram, that's an eight, whatever that means. But nonetheless, that I'm really working on delivery.

Delivery, because I think delivery actually matters, because words have life and death. And so we all have things with generosity. But the spirit of the law, how are you generous with your words? How are you generous with your finance? How are you generous with all the things that we need? And do we have a life of offering or one of gathering? We see that one of these men was living according to the spirit of the law.

And one was living according to, perhaps, the law hadn't been given yet. But just the law. And we see that it mattered to God. Finally, as we come in for a landing, generosity, as I said, inspires God's favor. You are already favored by Christ. If you have asked Christ to rule your life, you have stepped out of the consequences of sin, of the curse. And you have stepped into the favor of God, which will be fully known in heaven.

But until then, as close as you want to get to that fulfillment, you can get closer to it by the decisions you make. You can make decisions that get you closer to the kingdom when you enter. Now, it's going to be an eternal kingdom. So it's an eternity. And you think, well, it's going to be an eternity anyways. I can't get to the end of eternity, so why does it matter? But there is something to be said for spiritual disciplines that take us closer to the door of eternity, that actually bless our life in this if generation, in this idea of living with these ifs in our lives, what we do.

The ifs unleash God's favor. I want to live in God's favor. God gave me a verse a couple weeks before I took this church over. I was reading. I was terrified. I was reading. And it said, you will lead these people with unity and favor. And I was like so encouraged by that. I want, I know I live in God's favor. I know God cares for me. But there are levers of favor that come with how I use my language, that come with how I use my body and what I do with my body, with how I use my finance, of all these things that release more favor.

I want unlimited favor, but I want more of it now. I want more of it now in every single day. And the question is, do you want it? It is active versus latent favor. You see, these things, generosity, releases God's favor upon your life. I have never, ever met a person who lives according to God's financial laws, even though they're not bound by them, who has not been incredibly blessed in their life. Now, preachers know that this works, and God is, he keeps his word.

And so they lean too heavy into this in a manipulative way. And I think they manipulate poor communities, they manipulate rich communities, and they do this whole thing. I'm not saying that, but I do want to put before you a test that you will test God in these things. And look, if you don't want to do it with your finances, don't. Do it with your tongue. Sometimes that's even harder. Do it with your time. Where you are just giving your life away over and over.

It will set you free. Generosity inspires God's favor. Verse 4b and 5. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering. But on Cain he did not look with favor. Favor is such a massive word. Do a word study. Do verses. Go to Google and put word study on verses in the Bible about favor or some kind of search like that. But begin to look at favor. You want God to look at favor. I mean, he really, with favor. He looked at Cain's offering.

He's like, meh. It's good. Thanks. I don't really need, you know, grain offerings. You know, we'll talk more about that. But what I want is your heart, and you don't really want to give it to me. You want to keep it for yourself. So he's like, meh. But then he looks upon Abel, and he's like, favor. The favor of God is nuclear. The favor of God is spiritually nuclear and will get you far further than you will ever get in a lifetime.

The favor of God can take you further in a day than you can get in 10 lifetimes. You see, do you want to release God's favor? This is especially true with finance. I'm not saying you have to give here. Hopefully you believe in this church and this organization, and you feel like, I just want to bless that thing. I was really excited this week. I had two different people in the congregation come to me and talk to me about how they want to bless kingdom things in their life, about all the missionaries they're supporting.

I was so inspired because sometimes as a pastor, it's easy to feel like I'm the only one up here beating this drum and no one agrees with me. It is so nice to have people in the congregation, and you guys are super faithful, to come, and we're going to have some testimonies from people because I think you need to hear from each other more than you just need to hear from me. We're about done here. Final thing is this.

It says, favor is a bulwark of protection and sustenance. This is true. Psalm 8411. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. Now, it's not a grain. It's cosmological. But what does the sun do? The sun causes things to grow. The sun gives light. You wouldn't want to constantly live in the darkness. The sun is amazing of what it can do. It says, Psalm, For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor.

I love that. Favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. No good thing. God's like, I got a good thing. I can't withhold it. Boom. Boom. More good things. It says that he cannot withhold giving good things unto you. The Bible even talks about this with laughter. God has physiologically created us that if you are an optimist, have you ever met Bev Adler in our church? She has some of the most horrific health consequences on her whole life.

Should not be walking. Has MS. I mean, should not be living the life she's living. But she told me the other day, I don't believe in cancer. I'm like, because she's had it so many times. She goes, I just don't believe in it. And I'm like, what? What do you mean you don't believe in cancer? She goes, I don't believe in it. Fair enough. There you are. Still here. She goes, you know, they tell me I should walk with a cane.

That's just going to make me weaker. I don't believe in the canes. I'm just going to walk like this. And so she's walking. If you've met somebody, the Bible even talks about how God will withhold no good things. Positive attitude matters. The world understands that on and on. The Lord God is a sun and a shield and bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. And finally, the most famous verse in prosperity gospel preaching.

I have to use it. Malachi 3.10. It says, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. That means the church. So that there may be food in my house. God ties sustenance for the work of the kingdom within an organization. Which he, you know, if God wanted, he could just fill the things with grain if he wanted to. He could just boom, boom, boom. But he chose not to. He chooses to withhold that so that he might grow in relationship with us.

He says, so that there may be food in the storehouse. Test me in this, he says. And see if I will not throw open the floodgates. That word there is important because you'll see in the footnote. That's the same word that was used when the flood came upon Noah. Does that put it in perspective a little bit? See if I will not open up the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room for it.

One of the interesting things is when the plagues came upon Egypt, it did not affect the Jews. They lived in a place called Goshen. And in Goshen, the plagues never hit. It's interesting. The Bible speaks about, even in this, in the tribulation, it speaks about everything. That God tends to protect his people from plagues. He tends to protect himself. And I see Christians all the time. They see a plague and they're like, oh my God, there's going to be a plague.

You know, ah! Not that we're not wise. But they have the same mindset as if they're not people of God. There's a difference between seeing yourself as a child of God, and obviously, bad things happen to good people. Obviously. But it's a mindset issue. Do you believe that you're a child of God and that he cares for you and that you are not going to base your life on plagues? I'm definitely not going to be controlled by plagues or fear.

Primary reason here, though, is sustenance in his house. He wants to grow his kingdom. And so I want to inspire you to generosity. I want to inspire you, one, to generosity to the fellowship that you call home. If this is not your church and you have someplace else that you go, I want to inspire you to generosity in that place. Generosity of your time, your treasure, and your talent. And then this is what I want you to do.

I want you to track it. I want you to actually get a journal, and I want you to track it and see what God does. We often miss out what God is doing. And we want to test God in these things. Because can you imagine what this church would look like if it exploded with generosity? generosity. We're close, but we want to go more. Amen? Chris has a new song we're going to play, and then we're going to close up. Now, if you stand, one of the things we'd love to do here if you're new is I want to bless you.

We live in a world of curses, fear, worry, concern, plague mentality. We want to live in blessing. We want to bless you here with hope and faith. And when you leave, you have practical tools to live in life today. You can choose life or death. So if you feel comfortable, extend your hands. I want to bless you. Lord Jesus, we bless these people, God, with life. More of you. We want more of your touch, God. More of your grace.

More of your health. More of your peace. More of your wisdom, Lord Jesus. And God, we just cover your people, Jesus. With your heart. With your love. With your grace. And so surrender unto them, God. A wisdom and understanding that they might have wisdom, Lord, before you. They would not live in fear, Lord Jesus. And they would be antithetical and go against the grain of their flesh, Lord God. And to live in your spirit.

To be blessed by you. So we send them out here as a consolation of your love. As an army of your consolation, God. To bless their homes. To bless their spouses. To bless their children. To bless their friends. To bless their businesses. To bless their work. To bless the very world. Which needs hope. And so, God, we send them out now, God. With the new spirit. Free. Break every chain. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.