More Than an Offering | Matthew 6:19-21

[Music] all right hey guys at all of our campuses man before we dive into our sermon for today we just want to take a minute and celebrate can you celebrate with me church all of our campuses 56 baptisms last week all right hey we praise god for that oh man just so many stories people coming out of a lot of things people stepping forward in obedience many of these people accepted christ in our services last week so we were just absolutely overjoyed uh with what god did y'all it was just a move of the spirit it was like a top five type of weekend over the last nine years of mercy hill existence so man we have just been uh so blessed all right to see what god has done it was so cool we had some of our elders like flying around different campuses one of our elders named ronald he's baptizing over at clifton in one service and the next thing you know he's over regional baptizing somebody else they're calling him ron the baptist from now on okay which i thought was pretty good uh but it was so cool hey another thing that was awesome this past weekend that we got to celebrate um was over 220 at the northeast campus launch can we praise god for that too man this was so cool y'all to see uh the church family come together y'all the generosity of god's people uh everybody opened their hands and man we've been able to take this facility uh to kind of do the whole renovation and then to launch something for that community that really included many of the people from the the northeast baptist church all right we had an awesome picture with many of them and it was cool to see them come in y'all the church is supposed to look like a family that means little kids all the way through grandparents uh what a cool thing hey there had not been a baptism uh at northeast baptists in over five years okay and now we have been able to see two baptisms over there last weekend including one incredible story i want you guys to see emerson okay emerson was the first baptism we've ever done at the northeast campus and this is a cool story because she's being baptized by her dad adam and adam was one of the original 30 folks that moved from raleigh durham over here to plant mercy hill church okay he was one of that original crew he was one of the 10 college students that was included in that original 30. and i just thought about that and i thought man if uh if years ago you would have asked you know you would have asked adam when he moved man would you be baptized with your daughter at the launch of a new campus you know god can see things that we can never see coming you know what i mean and i think about even some of our folks at northeast uh some of you guys made y'all hung with us man you've opened your hands in a big way and now to be able to see what the lord is doing over there it's just an incredible time guys it was a great weekend i think it's right and good for us to celebrate that and so before i dive into my sermon i'm going to go in go ahead and pray and just pray a prayer of thanksgiving for what we have seen um god do father uh in our church lord we continually praise you and pray for more uh for what you are doing god we thank you for expansion we thank you uh for new work being done we thank you from new parts of our county that we uh can reach guilford county here that can be reached and father we pray that you'll help us move in uh as time goes on uh to further into high point and more into winston and god we just pray that you'll continue to expand your reach here through this church uh father it's for your name it's for your glory um god but it's to our joy and you're allowing us to see your goodness in the land of the living and so we thank you uh for these folks from last week and we thank you for the ones we're going to see this week uh maybe come forward as well and god we thank you for the launch of the new campus so we just praise you in your mighty name we pray amen amen amen well hey guys uh man just a great weekend last weekend but we uh maybe want to jump back into our sermon series that we have been in so if you have a copy of scripture you could take it out uh you guys can turn with me to the book of matthew is where we are going to be if you haven't been with us or maybe if last week was your first time let me catch you up to sort of where we're going and what we've been talking about what we've been talking about in this series made for more uh is just this kind of idea that spiritual growth is not easy but it's also not complicated all right so sometimes we think we make things way too complicated it's like man it's not complicated saying something is simple is not the same thing as saying that it's easy but it is saying man it's not that complex spiritual growth uh really has you know there's a lot there's a lot of depth to it there's a lot of things you could say about it but man a big chunk of spiritual growth in our life happens in four steps and we've been given different examples for this i'll give you i'll give you another example for this i think about uh one thing that maybe is not easy but it's not complicated uh is strengthening your body you think about athletes you think about many of our our students and high school students and all they play ball or whatever strengthening your body gaining muscle is not it's not easy in any way all right but it's also not that complicated man you go in you you warm up you stress your muscles by lifting heavy things okay you take a little bit of rest between sets and then you try to really cool down and stretch afterward uh it's not that hard i mean it's not that easy i mean it's not that easy but it is complicated right i know it's pretty uh i know it's not complicated but i know it's also um not very easy because you're talking to a guy who broke both of his arms in high school and unfortunately an unfortunate weightlifting accident that's not a joke okay my dad comes running over and says hey man you're okay and i'm like dad my arm looks like an s and uh he said we're going to the emergency room so i know that it's not the easiest thing okay um but it's also not complex trying to strengthen your body or work out or spiritual you know health uh physical health sleeping these are the things financial health these are the uh the uh examples that we have used okay spiritual health is in the same vein i can give it to you in three or four steps all right gather groups give go if we commit to gather groups give go i am not saying that that's all that there ever will be in terms of growth what i am saying is that if you commit to those things you will go far down the road but here is kind of where we're at and i want to give you a little bit of a visual with this okay because let's just think um just think about the flywheel all right you guys i've already said it once so um you know you guys aren't going to be able to read that because i can only read half of what i write but you guys can kind of you understand from your memory right gather groups give go this is the situation that the church not just mercy hill i promise you finds ourselves in okay we look back at what we see god do in acts chapter two we've read it every single week we know i'm not saying this is all that there ever is to christian growth but man if this is all that anybody ever committed to and by committed to i don't mean like put your toes in the water okay i don't mean check a little box i don't mean just kind of just kind of sort of you know trying to nod to it i'm talking about going all the way to the bottom with these things if we will do these things not only will you grow but the church will grow we're going to get into that as the series continues but here's the problem not just at mercy hill but really in any church you go to as people move around the flywheel what do you think happens what happens is this man people don't make these turns all right so i want you to imagine i want you to imagine kind of a merry-go-round right here all right a lot of people are in gather and by the time they get to groups some kind of way in this turn they got messed up and they didn't make the turn less people group than gather less people give than group and unfortunately less people go than give as we move around the merry-go-round we end up kind of losing people along the way and what i want to do in this series is try to tell you all four of these are they're not easy okay but all four of these are essential for your christian growth and if they're essential for your christian growth then what a shame that we would have more gather than group and more group than give and more give than go you see what i'm saying we need to lean into all of them so today we've talked about gathering group today we're going to talk about giving here's the big idea if we want to be serious about growing we have got to be serious about our giving okay our our giving is tied to our hearts our treasure and our heart is deeply connected too many of us um and this is kind of i know this is a little bit deep right out of the gate but here it is okay too many of us say that we want to have a heart set on heaven but we are unwilling to let go of our treasure set on earth like what we want to say is like yeah i want to grow like i want my heart i want to grow spiritually and i want to get better you know i want to i want to grow my relationship with god my heart is set on heaven but the reality is our treasure is set on earth and when our treasure is money and possessions and the next toy and the next vacation and the security that we feel from having money then what's going to happen is our heart is going to kind of be drug and it will get all wrapped up in the things that our treasure is wrapped up in if we want to be serious about christian growth and there ain't 40 steps okay we're talking about four all right not 40 but four if we want to be serious about our growth then we need to be serious about our giving as well look at what jesus says in matthew chapter six i'm gonna walk through this passage uh man we're just gonna talk about it and then i'll get towards the end and i'll give us one big application point and that'll be our time together today all right matthew chapter six do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also all right in this series we're kind of jumping around the scripture so let me try to orient you to where you are matthew chapter 6 is one of jesus christ's greatest hits okay it's the sermon on the mount it's the big one okay it's the one everybody talks about everybody remembers people been talking about this sermon for two thousand years i think the point of the sermon is probably something like hey man righteousness and holiness and what i actually want for your life is bigger than you could ever imagine okay i think that's kind of the point but part of it in matthew chapter six that we get into is this idea of trust of whose kingdom we're living for and what does jesus go after when he starts talking about what kingdom we're living for who do we trust all of that y'all he goes directly after money he goes directly after treasure okay there is something about talking about treasure that gets us to see what kingdom we're actually living for now what does he say he starts by saying in verse 19 don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth because treasures on earth can be destroyed or stolen they are temporary you could say it like this temporal wealth worldly wealth things related to this world temporal wealth is temporary wealth as it relates to this world all of our wealth all of our treasure all of our possessions they have an hourglass to them okay they are running out there is a stop watch that is counting down okay there there is something about the wealth now what's interesting is he doesn't say that wealth is bad okay and because it's not he doesn't say that treasures are bad because they're not what he's saying is be careful where you store them if you want them to last okay i think about this if you've ever gardened before i don't know if any of you guys ever gardened before um but if you garden it one one cool thing about potatoes is that potatoes don't need any type of refrigeration potatoes don't need any type of real uh preservation if you take potatoes and you put them in a pantry or something the bottom floor of a pantry where it's pretty cool and it's it's dark and it's not damp they'll stay there for months could could be even years okay without any kind of uh preservation now the the thing about the potato is if you take it out of something like that and put it in something like i don't know uh you know a bag that's all sealed up where there's no air and you stick it in a car where it's really hot and the sun's beating down on it or whatever it'll spoil uh kind of like that all right the idea is this treasure stored in this life will spoil very very quickly you got to put treasure in the right place if you want it to last treasure put in the wrong place is begging to be destroyed treasure put in the wrong place will diminish it will not be very durable it will not last now christian this we just got to stop for one minute and we just got to acknowledge that jesus christ has taken maybe the single greatest driver in western culture i mean the philosophical thought and he has said hey i put it under attack it's absolutely wrong and backwards because what do we think many times man the world says lay up treasure here and jesus is saying lay up treasure there all right the world says consume man get as much as you can i mean we live in a society y'all we live in the wealthiest nation on the face of the planet that is also the most credit card indebted how can that even happen i want you to think about it well we do i read an article this week 71 of people uh in america say man they would like to give more but they can't because of how much debt they are in i want you to think about that now you know what the point of this sermon is about giving the whole point is going to be man if we give we end up storing up treasure in heaven rather than on earth right but what people are saying is i can't give store of treasure in heaven because i'm too indebted on this earth we've taken everything that we have that wasn't enough so we went and borrowed to double down on trying to get the treasure in possession here and experiences and all that things that money can buy here a lot of times we live in a culture that has doubled down and you and i man we're in this culture we breathe this culture it's such a consumer culture talking about money thinking about money going to bed at night wondering how much money we can make the next day man the worries about am i going to have enough money flooding our life on the other side so many people that have so much money a glut of money that they end up kind of being consumed with what they're gonna buy for themselves next with the money that they have we think about something all the time what is jesus saying to us here he's saying man we can consume so much of our life with something that is so evidently perishable it is perishing before our very eyes and yet we can have so much of our life consumed by it the world says man store it here and jesus is saying no send it on store it somewhere else you know evidently people buy into this so much maybe even in the church we buy into it as well we see jesus here saying something very radical and that is man i hope it shakes us a little bit i think maybe some questions are man hey are you accumulating wealth in this world like it will last it will not last man is that what we're after so that's the first part of this okay he tells us in classic jesus fashion all right not this we're going to do this so he says not this right not this don't store it where it can't last and then he says in matthew chapter 6 verse 20 let's talk about where we should store it lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal what jesus is doing he does this a lot he said man not this way but we're going to do it this way what is jesus getting at all right he's saying this lasting treasure isn't found on earth many times and we do this every weekend okay i want you to hear this man many times at mercy hill we tie the impetus for uh giving and and that kind of idea of our generosity to the mission which is great okay we if you listen to our offering every single week we have an offering moment every week and we do something like this every single week we say hey uh ma'am let's talk about vision let's celebrate something let's say man we launched a new campus right and we say hey man we got two baptisms at the campus couple hundred new people a lot of new faces 14 first-time guests at the new campus this weekend and then what do we say every week you guys hear it we say hey it wouldn't happen without your generosity because that's true the generosity of the church takes a vision about as far as it's going to go we say that every week then we do something called the vision gap and what that is is we say hey look what happened now let's all imagine together if we had more resources what else could we do how many more campuses how many more churches how many more missionaries we do that every single week i think it's good i think it's right we tie this stuff to the mission but here's what i want you guys to see here okay while it's good and right to think about kingdom dollars and kingdom investment and see the return on that just like we see with northeast and planting churches and all this kind of stuff there is another couple of motivations here for our giving this is weird to say in a church they are way more you centered okay it's way more about you and your spiritual life this is a little bit counter-intuitive man one of the best the most popular christian books that ever was the purpose-driven life the first sentence it's not about you what's funny is jesus gives us a motivation about giving and it's absolutely about you it's about your joy it's about the best life that you can live it it's a it's about his glory and your joy being all wrapped up together it is about you so we we tie it to the mission a lot which is good but there's another couple of motivations here here's the first one okay there is an account for the next life that is being funded by our generosity in this life now somebody said hey i want you to write a position paper on this and totally explain it i absolutely couldn't okay and the reason that i couldn't is because there are illusions to this in the scriptures but there's not a real systematic theology of this in the scriptures okay so we see what jesus said here he said hey man don't store wealth here store it there the implication is there's some kind of connection between what we do here and the heavenly bank account there right i'll give you another example of this in uh first timothy so here's what he says in first timothy as for the rich in this present age charge them not to be hottie nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but on god who richly provides us with everything to enjoy i know i've lost some of you guys because you think oh this is written to the rich you got to realize man a lot of the world lives on two dollars a day okay so i mean i mean for most of us here i mean we're sort of falling under this look what he says in verse 18. they are to be up there to do good to be rich in good works to be generous and ready to share listen thus storing up treasure for themselves storing it up where man this is very similar to what jesus says storing up treasure for them as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life it is clear as day doing good rich in good work something about generosity is interwoven with our heavenly wealth there is a sense in which jesus in this passage is trying to get us to see it is in our own self-interest that we would not hoard like the world says but yet we would want to give the idea is that we can't take it anyway it's not good for us anyway it's going to diminish it's not going to be durable we should see something here that is really for us you know the the the uh you know the the theological way to say this is christian hedonism okay um hedonism is a lot of times is thought about with pleasures like man we're just like chasing pleasure in the world or whatever man christian hedonism is this idea of hey what is actually going to be the deepest joy you can have in life and chase that with everything that you can man your deepest joy in life is directly connected to god's glory god's glory his plan for your life and your deepest joy are very connected so in a sense it's kind of weird to hear this in a sermon man go seek what is the very best thing for you now many times that takes denying ourselves from picking up our cross okay uh you got but but seeking what is very best for you is throwing yourself into god's glory meant his plans for your life and one of the things we see in this past is this his plans for your life entail you storing up treasure in a place where it never rusts or molds or is stolen you can say it like this y'all you can't take it with you randy alcorn says but you can send it on ahead so if you can't send it on ahead then seek what is best for your heavenly bank account jim elliott the the famous martyr that died to reach the wadani um you know in south america man what was his famous quote he said he was no fool who gives up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose and that's all that jesus is kind of getting at here he's saying hey man you store it here rust stolen moth eaten destroyed it's not durable it diminishes all right but if you send it on ahead man it will be there for all eternity now look at verse 21 for where your treasure is there your heart will be also okay where your treasure is there your heart will be also there i told you man the leveraging your life for the mission kingdom investment the way we think about our offering spotlight hey man here's the mission don't you want to be a part all great all good awesome okay but in this passage there's two really kind of you centered for your own best interest man go after it and give big the first one is just what we've been talking about y'all man wouldn't you want to store wealth uh if you're gonna have treasure man don't have a diminishing treasure have a durable treasure okay that's the first thing but the second thing is a little more like this man giving for the kingdom is for the heart not just from the heart okay the second thing is man that your christian life grows more when your heart is tied to the mission when your heart gets tied into the mission then you will begin to grow in a way that you never thought the flywheel right this is where we get into the flywheel it's like man gather for growth group for growth give i think we naturally think to ourselves yeah we give for the mission of course you actually think that what do we say all the time we say man your generosity fuels the mission that's right that's good but there's another aspect here man we give because in our giving our heart is tied into what god is doing and as our heart is tied into what god is doing y'all we get so invested have you ever wondered why like i stand up and i say hey man we saw 56 baptisms and there are some people that gut level from their heart shout and praise and clap and say amen do you know why they do that from their heart because their heart has been tied to the mission many times because of their treasure they've given they've invested skin in the game changes the game okay like when we're in it changes the way we view everything about the church that's why there are many people that can gather and group but the problem is they're still thinking to themself what's in it for me you know what what what what i i'm kind of i'm i'm a little bit loose here man they don't do the things that i want them to do there and people kind of can bounce around and float when people begin to give it ties their heart into the mission in a way that it never was and they begin to grow all right so it's it's a little bit different okay you know i think when we read this we think man where your treasure is it says there your heart will be also a lot of times it's let a lot of times our heart leads our giving right and that's not bad but sometimes that can be a little warm fuzzies you know i remember when i was in third grade they brought in to adopt a manatee program okay did they do that north carolina they do it in florida okay and you know you know it is very sad oh i mean they're doing the whole thing it's always the arms of the angels song you know what i mean you know what i'm talking about and it's like and you're really you're and it's like oh man you feel real sad and you you want to you know adopt a manatee and all that stuff i remember in third grade i was still analytic way too analytical and i started firing a bunch of questions then about how i could go see my manatee and all that they couldn't answer them i figured it was a fraud okay but uh so i didn't do it but i'm just saying you guys have all been there right where it's like man you know you you kind of you see something your heart's a little bit man warm fuzzies can lead us into some giving i understand that this is a little bit of a different deal okay this is not warm fuzzies leading us into giving what he's getting at here is that our giving doesn't lead us into warm fuzzies it leads us into further connection it leads us into deep spiritual commitment you know i've said this before it's like man a lot of people say well i'm not gonna you know i'm not gonna worship until i really feel like i want to worship well a lot of times the best way to begin to feel like you want to worship is to stick your hands in the air and sing at the top of your lungs it's funny how sometimes our actions lead our feelings a little more than our feelings lead our actions like we can be led to the throne like we can obey our way into our heart being warmed now god's got to do the work i understand that but man there is obedience things here and god has them man all of these spiritual disciplines are a fruit on one side but they are a tether on the other they keep our hearts tied in to what god is doing you've heard me say this before you know you know who you know the people in the world that love to run you know what they're called they're called runners okay they they love it i mean you know i love to run too if i'm being chased by like a bear or something i i'm fine with running but like get up in the morning my wife will get up in the morning wednesday mornings her thing is and she's kind of super warm and i know but five in the morning she's out the door going to a track workout where they're running miles and all this stuff and i'm just like why you know it's very hard to understand but she loves to run you know how somebody gets in a place where they love to run they go running a lot and the first time that they ever went running they probably didn't love it you know the for the second time they probably didn't love it there's probably even times if they get out of the habit that they're like man i don't really want to get up early and go do that that doesn't sound like a lot of fun but as they continue to do it it sort of ties their heart into it giving what he says here is the same way he says man it's not about warm fuzzies when i feel the mood i'll tip god it's this idea of hey where your treasure is your heart will be tied and you will begin to grow so big application point this weekend y'all is grow by giving people say you know that spiritual growth is not one size fits all i've heard that man people say man there's there's absolutely no formula to spiritual growth i think i told you guys before man that's not right that's not there is a formula i'm not saying that gather groups give go is all there ever is that you ever need in your christian life i am saying that if we commit wholeheartedly and get all the way in on these man then we will move and one of them that has listen less people group than gather okay and less people give than group so some kind of way right in here there's a turn that happens and some people go flying off you know the merry-go-round and it's like what i'm calling out to you to do is to say man hang on right here and see what god does in your life now how do you do that that's the question right well as everything at mercy hill is man let's be motivated by grace not fear i want us to think about the gospel deeply for a minute and think to ourselves man let's ask the question you know i'm calling you today i'm i'm challenging myself calling you hey let's store up our treasure in heaven all right well let's think about who ultimately paid the price to lay his treasure in heaven who is the one that ultimately and generosity came down to move i mean think about it before we're ever called to put our treasure in heaven jesus christ died to put us in heaven we were his treasure man we we were his joy i mean think about this hebrews 12 therefore i'm actually gonna go to verse two look what it says looking to jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith listen who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross man it was hard for him to be generous with his life but as he was generous with his life there was something that was joyous why i say it was hard for him to be generous with his life you don't think the cross is hard and you don't think you don't think calvary is hard it's very hard man but but there is a deep joy and you and i were the joy and the joy that was set before him the joy of reconciling humanity to the father man the joy of canceling our sin death man the joy of giving us an opportunity to walk in the newness of life man this is a deep joy and jesus has come and exhibited incredible amounts of generosity for us and now it gives us the opportunity to generate incredible amounts of generosity in our life so my question is this like man if we see what jesus has done for us we were his treasure he stored us up in heaven man do we at least want to store our treasure up in heaven this very weekend and begin to do that man i hope that you do all right i want to introduce you guys to a tool that we use here at mercy hill it's called the generosity pathway all right and you guys see the generosity pathway and the idea here and i want you i want to make sure this is very clear okay the idea here is in the middle you see that thing that says tithe man we teach on the tithe here at mercy hill first fruits giving man 10 of our income this is the floor not the ceiling okay so be very clear at mercy hill when we're talking about what god is calling us to he is calling us to the tithe as as a starting place all right now that doesn't mean that's where everybody can take their first step i mean i would call you to do that but i think some people might just look at that and just go man i could never do that or whatever well then i'm going to call you maybe in another way to say well you need to at least take some kind of stuff today even if you can't go there so let me talk to a few different groups of people and this will be our time together okay number one for some of you that are here today man you are absolutely fueling the mission and fueling your christian growth god is doing it because you're leaning in to gather groups and give and i just want to call out to you and i just want to say man keep on long obedience in the same direction keep leaning in you know if that's where you are and you're like man we think about generosity like we think about it as something we want to increase we think about it as being a big part of our life if you're like me about every two years i write a 10-year plan for myself okay i'm like man i want to see where do i want to be in 10 years you know and maybe some of you guys do that and one of the boxes on that 10-year plan every single time is how much do we want to have given away man what what number can we hit some of you are are like that and if you are your heart is tied up in the mission here and you're experiencing that joy and i would call out to you today and i would just say brother or sister man keep on keeping on man i know sometimes it can it can feel like like a journey it can feel like a long race it is a long race long obedience in the same direction man experience the joy that comes with having your heart tied to the mission of god in this way second group of people okay there's another group of people here that are like man i am brand new to this i mean i literally was baptized last weekend or maybe over the summer you know man praise god uh we've already hit we wanted to double the amount of baptisms that we saw in 2020 you know the year of the great shutdowns and all that kind of stuff and by god's grace over this past weekend we've already doubled the amount of baptisms we had in 2020 we're praising god for that you may have been in that number you may be new to this whole thing and your posture today is like man i want to lean into whatever these are because i want to grow spiritually man i want to get you just signed up for a group hey the next step for you is to lean into giving okay get on the generosity pathway some kind of way then you can get on the generosity pathway by signing up to give a 20 gift once a month reoccurring 10 get whatever it is it opens up a bunch of discipleship opportunity for you like when you when you sow in and say man i'm in and that way man you begin to get vision quarterly man you begin to get other resources your heart will start getting tied up i promise you if you begin to give in a regular way at mercy hill the next time you see something like a student center launch or a baptism or whatever it is you're going to celebrate in a new way you're going to celebrate in a different way because you've got skin in the game and skin in the game changes the game hey others of you in here i've got four groups there's a third group all right others of you in here or maybe at clifton or at high point or northeast today what you're thinking to yourself is man i want to do that i can't do that you're like dude no one has ever discipled us in this stuff man our finances are a mess we don't know what's coming or going i mean we get into you know you maybe you're married and you're thinking to yourself today like man we just i mean every couple of weeks we're getting into you know arguments and fights and all this kind of stuff about like man we no one has ever taught us any of these things if we had margin we would give then let's let us help you be discipled into margin all right man the proverbs is so clear only a fool devours all that they have like we all are called to live with margin okay now we can help with that i'll give you a good uh resource for this okay finance 101 is a good opportunity you guys can go and find this uh right here there's a class that's going to start at the end of september taught by the elders of our church taught by our stewardship team and all of that i want you to think dave ramsey financial peace university in about four weeks i want you to think it's that but light okay we're gonna launch financial peace again in january this is a good bridge for us uh man sign up for this if you're a young married couple you need to be in this if you've never done anything like this okay so that you can be able uh to give and have your heart tied to the mission hey but fourth and final group all right some of you guys here today i've already mentioned this you're like man we're sort of on the fence like we're not really bought in man we've bounced around look we've been let's just be honest we've bounced around churches you know we keep trying to get in and we start some things here maybe our students go a little bit or maybe we tried a small group whatever but we're just we're just never in we can't ever get all the way in and then i hear this all the time it comes up man we feel like we're not being fed or we feel like we're not there's a lot of things pastors here okay and and a lot of times it's just like man we just don't feel like we're all the way in now this this is a paradigm shift okay because for some of you if that's where you are and you're at mercy hill and you're still trying to give it a shot then what i want you to hear is this some of you think man we're not we're not in we can't get in and so if i were to ask you hey are you going to give a tithe i mean are you going to work toward tithing giving to mercy hill here's what you might say you might say well no we're not going to do that because i just told you we're not really that committed here's what you think what you think is if we were more committed we would begin to give church what if you aren't committed because you don't give does that make sense like we look at it and what we think is if i was committed then of course i would give and it's like man what if the bible is trying to flip that thing on its head and show you no no that's backwards it's like you're trying to do the commitment before the giving that's not how it works spiritual growth is like the giving will tie your heart and commit you in a way maybe that you've never seen because he said where your treasure is there your heart will be also church today i want you to know this man from the bottom of my heart some of you don't know me all you gotta do is make a judgment whether whether i'm uh whether i'm you know legit and real or not but i'm just gonna tell you this is not about the bottom line today it's not about a sound bite it's not about guilt it's not about shame it's not about my lifestyle changing a bit because it won't it's not about any of those things i promise you that that's all i can say you do trust it or don't what it's about is your spiritual growth because as you grow then we will all begin to grow our church can grow but not if the individuals aren't growing man the giving is about you growing giving grows you by tying your heart to the mission of god okay so my call to you today and i crunched a bunch of numbers this week i mean we crunched numbers i had our stewardship team looking at this all that i think there's if the spirit of god would move like he did last week stand up draw the line and say hey look either we're going to play around or we're not i don't know about you guys but for me man this whole thing of the last 18 months with kovid has told me like man the time is short there's no time for playing around so the spirit will move this week like it did like he did last week okay now what i think should happen i think about 200 singles and families should step over the line in our church and give maybe for the very first time and maybe maybe maybe you've given before man man i'm throwing a 20 in the plate in cash or whatever no i'm talking about getting online i'm talking about going online and and signing up hey say i'm going to do a reoccurring commitment for 10 whatever it is i don't care if it's 10 a month 10 20 a month whatever it is it's like man i'm gonna go in and i'm gonna i'm gonna sign up because i'm to tie my heart to the mission i think there ought to be about 200 new families and singles that go that route i'm talking about college students man do one dollar do five dollars tie your heart to the mission of god and some of our high school students pastor gary said it like this hey if you get paid you should give it's like if it doesn't matter if you're 10 years old 20 years old whatever it is it's like it ties your heart to the mission of god so i think that's what we ought to see today man it's not about changing the budget or it's not about it's not about those things today y'all it's about the body of christ i mean i want you guys to to kind of think about this it's like um and you think about the you think about the budget all right somebody if somebody signed up to give a hundred dollars a year or ten dollars a month 120 a year or whatever y'all the budget's seven million dollars okay i it's not i'm not i'm not calling you to to give something because it's gonna boost what i'm saying is man it's not about changing the budget it's about changing the body it's about changing all of us there will be a palpable level of excitement and energy and growth in this place as more people begin to step in because that's how god has designed it the more people that gather the more people that group the more people that give their heart is tied to the mission in a brand new way excitement will begin to grow that's what we're after right we're after growth why because we were made for more let's pray father god we come before you and lord we pray right now god that you would move father i do pray lord that we would have family discussions around tables where we just look at each other and say no shame or guilt god move in our church allow fathers to sit down with their family god allow college students to confess to one another no shame or guilt not looking back we need to take a step in this direction we need to drive a stake in the ground either we're in or out and if we're in it looks like gather groups give go so what are we going to do god i pray that that discussion lord would move in our church hundreds of times over and father i pray that we would see hundreds of families go from the sideline to the front line as they step in to give in christ's name we pray amen amen well hey guys i'm going to set up a video real quick hey next week gather groups give next week is go all right hey for the first time ever we're planting a church next year in the state of north carolina we are so excited about this i want you guys to check out this video sure is it okay to joke on this or no yeah [Laughter] we're the medfords and we're going to be planting a church in 2022 we served overseas in italy for about two and a half years and one of the things that honestly we love the most about being abroad was when we had volunteer teams come from the states to help serve with us for a week or two weeks our team members would comment after groups left like how much we kind of came to life during those moments of serving people and shepherding people and teaching people and bringing them alongside what we were doing and helping to give them kind of the same vision for the work that's there a lot of people ask you know why planted church versus being sent out to go serve overseas what it came back to for me was just being called to go do this some of the people closest to us over there they start to tell us like you know what if you have been called to pastor what if you have been called to shepherd what if you have been called to to do this with people in the states uh with america i just thought that was so encouraging to me because i had been feeling that too but the conviction is one thing but to have the commendation of other people just makes it so much more whole and that's really what it means to be called when we were living in europe we were working with refugees from close countries and ultimately our desire was for them to come to know the lord and then to take the gospel back to their homeland because who better to reach those people than someone who already knows the culture and already knows the language so we always hope that for them god just started working in my heart too and he started pitching that question to me what if i have been raising you up to go back to your hometown [Music] and for me that's going back to waynesville north carolina waynesville north carolina is about 25 minutes outside of asheville and about 25 minutes from western carolina university we feel like the location is actually a really strategic one to be able to reach college students and also people moving to the western part of the state when you're thinking around this idea of like well could we be a church that sends people everywhere a small town is one of the best places to go do that i would say like half of my graduating class from high school no longer lives in waynesville and if people are already going to do that if that's already part of the culture people who are leaving these small towns to go pursue a career to go pursue their dreams or to go to these big cities what if they're coming in already equipped to live and to work for jesus i think there's this cool intersection in the integration of faith and the integration of work if you could think about well i don't want the majority of my life that's meant to be at work to be all about me i want to use that in such a way that it glorifies christ that it magnifies christ not me faith and work are not at odds but they're together we decided on the name gateway church because we are being sent out from the gate city here in greensboro waynesville is considered the gateway to the smoky mountains and we also want the church to be a gateway for people to both come to know the lord and then also go out and share the gospel [Music] if god is really calling us to go and plant a church then he's also calling other people to send us we're looking for your prayers none of this would be possible without your prayers we're looking for your partnership there's so many things that go into fueling the start of the church and we want to be able to start well and do that successfully we would ask you to consider partnering with us financially and third we hope too that we're not going to be going alone if god is moving in you in such a way that you're thinking well what if he's been raising me up to go then come talk to us

Channel: Mercy Hill Church

Views: 241

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Jesus, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, Scriptures, Mercy Hill, Mercy Hill Church, Andrew Hopper, online church, giving, tithing, spiritual disciplines, spiritual health, Christian growth, wealth, treasure, generosity, generous

Id: qG9miFB1UJA

Length: 43min 46sec (2626 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021