Online Sunday Service "Get Rich, or Die Trying?" - Ps Renee Bennett

hello and welcome to public church online we're so glad that you've joined us here's a little bit about what's coming up in the life of public church if you are new to the life of our church and you really want to get connected in why don't you go and hit the description box right now and there is a link that will say new to church so just click on that if you are believing for something if there's an area of your life that you need prayer for why don't you click the description box as well because there is a whole pastoral care team who would love to pray with you right now so you can click the link submit your prayer request and we will definitely be praying for you look church thank you so much for your constant and consistent generosity there is a new way to give in the life of our church so check this video out right now hi church introducing a new way to give text to give through tightly simply text the word give to either your brisbane or gold coast location and you'll be taken to a simple setup page follow the prompts and simply put in your details and you'll receive a confirmation that you're all ready to go now that you're all set up simply text the amount that you'd like to give you'll get a reply text with a confirmation as well as an email with your receipt if you made a mistake simply text the word refund and you'll be refunded immediately we want to thank you so much for your generosity as we continue to make a difference in so many people's lives across public church [Music] we are coming around our message part of this service so why don't you find your bibles and your pens and we really pray that this message blesses you right now but today i want to talk about two things just at the start i just want to touch on our relationship with money but then i want to move on to our responsibility and what does the bible say about money so let me ask you this you don't have to answer it but how do you feel when money is mentioned how do you feel what kind of feelings does it conjure up in you when we talk about money because it conjures up different feelings in all of us like i know my dad has my dad doesn't go to church and he always said to me the church just wants to take your money that was my dad's cynical view and then i grew up with my mum who was like the complete opposite but it really depends on our personal experience with money um so you know last week cameron shared about how in the scriptures faith is spoken about 215 times salvation is talked about 218 times but money and possessions is talked about 2018 times so i think jesus has something to say god has something to say to us about money and possessions it means something he cared very much about it and so therefore we have a responsibility to talk about it and to learn about it so i grew up as you know in a single parent home and so my mom when my sister and i would go to the shop she would always say girls don't ask for anything because we knew that my mum didn't have very much so i grew up and always like i knew and never ever to ask my mum for anything that i saw in the shop and then what we would do is at the end of our shopping she would take us to a cafe and she would have a coffee and then i don't know if this is an adelaide thing but do you guys know what i'm talking about if i talk about a kitchenette bun okay you guys are so uncultured here ma and kathy where are you do you know what i mean when i say a kitchenette bun kitchener or kitchenette kitchen a bun i wasn't born in 1980 no i actually i was formerly before 1980. okay okay it's a renee bennett childhood thing all right it's not an adelaide thing is this cathy would love it is this delicious like like think of a huge donut cut in half with like jam and a whole heap of cream and then like cinnamon and sugar on the outside right but we didn't get one each my sister and i would share one and so what you'd do is you'd break it apart and then you'd smoosh it back together and do this so you get a little bit of cream a little bit of jam on both and then you pull it back apart and i always wanted the top half and she would get the bottom half i just remember that that was like a treat you guys need to have one of those in your life or on christmas and birthdays my mum didn't have a lot of money and so my sister and i would um only ever get one or two gifts but i never thought that i missed out ever as a child i was always taught to be so incredibly grateful but one thing that i always saw my mum do no matter how much we didn't have because my mom was on the single parent income because my dad worked for himself and and very rarely paid child support but i remember every time my mum would get paid she would get out an envelope and she would put her tithe in the envelope and then she would give my sister and i 20 cents and i know that doesn't sound like much but when you're born pre-8 1980 thank you very much matt 20 cents is a lot like that could buy you a bag of lollies for goodness sakes right but i remember we would go to church and mum would always put her tithe in and my sister and i would always give him the offering and so my relationship with money is that even though we didn't have a lot of it and i'm probably to be honest very different to cameron who's got an incredible gift of faith when it comes to money which i think he very much learned from his dad but for me i very much have grown up that we never had a lot extra but the one thing i will always always know is number one we always tithe because that's just what we did and the second thing i grew up always knowing is god would always look after us because i never went without and in fact i did see god do a few miracles in our life like when i okay another admission i played the organ growing up not the keyboard the organ because i am coordinated so i could do my pedals and my right hand and my left hand i think cameron would have had trouble with the organ with his coordination but i remember i really wanted an organ and i prayed for one and my uncle who was not a christian bought me an organ and i remember this makes me tear up still i remember it coming to my house and i would have been eight and i remember thinking god bought me an organ and that's my relationship with money i just trust god and i tithe because that's what i've seen and so i want us to think about you know how do you feel about money because where your heart is your treasure goes my heart is very much with god i love god my heart is with the house of god and so it's not difficult for me to tithe but i want to look at from a biblical perspective today of what is the responsibility that we have so i want to take you mostly through the old testament i won't have time to although i will touch on the new testament but let's have a look at deuteronomy 28 verse 11 to 13 and what i want to teach us today are five quick principles about the principle of first everyone say the principle of first so let's look at deuteronomy 28 and the lord will grant you plenty of goods we love this part in the fruit of your body and the increase of your livestock and in the produce of your ground in the land of which the lord swatter your fathers to give you the lord will open to you his good treasure the heavens to give you the reign to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand you shall lend to many nations that you shall not borrow and the lord will make you the head and not the tale you shall be above only and not beneath if you heed the commandments of the lord your god which i command you today and care and are careful to observe them we just leave that up for a moment what a promise right and i know that you know we're very quick to go yes god thank you you're the god of plenty you're the god of increase we are the head and not the tail and we can pray over our finances and we can pray over different things in our life but then sometimes we kind of forget about that last little bit that says if if you heed the commands if you're careful to observe them so what are the commands what is our responsibility when it comes to money and this is where we come into the principle of first number one is this all first things belong to god all first things belong to god let's look at exodus 13 verse 2. consecrate to me every firstborn male the first offspring of every womb among the israelites belongs to me whether human or animal so tithing comes from this principle and i'll explain that as we go that all first things belong to god so the first portion of everything belongs to him so let's look a little bit further in exodus 13 and jump to verse 12 to 13. you are to give over to the lord the first offspring of every womb at the firstborn males of your livestock belong to the lord sorry all the firstborn now i didn't write this bit for those of you that are about to be disturbed by the next spirit redeem with the lamb every firstborn donkey but if you do not redeem it break its neck i know it's a bit harsh right redeem every firstborn among your sons now let me explain to you old testament law the firstborn was always to be either sacrificed or redeemed how do we know the difference if the firstborn was clean then it was to be sacrificed but if the firstborn was unclean then it was to be redeemed in other words it was to be replaced and another clean animal was to become was to become the sacrifice in its place okay so either either way the first born belonged to god now how do you know whether clean or unclean if you really want to get into that i won't go through it but you can go to leviticus chapter 11 where the bible talks about what what makes a clean animal what's an unclean animal but god is really clear here that there's a principle of sacrifice and redemption okay giving remember the first one if it's clean is the sacrifice if it's not clean that one has to be redeemed with another can you see a parallel here to the gospel the whole principle the whole basis of the gospel is set out right here the principle of sacrifice and redeeming now let's have a look at jump to the new testament john 1 29 when john saw jesus coming look at what he said the next day he saw jesus coming toward him and he said behold the lamb of god some versions say the spotless lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world so here you've got the principle of the old testament coming into the principle of the new testament why because god is so serious about the principle of the first belonging to him that he did the same thing and he sacrificed his first born son he was the clean lamb he was the spotless one that's why he was sacrificed for who for us why because we're born unclean and we needed redeeming so you can see that the principle of of god wanting our first comes into the entire gospel so the first belongs to god so we've talked about the firstborn but then the scripture in the old testament goes on to look at the first fruits now the first fruits was like a um a celebration where everyone would come together and they would give to the temple the first portion and they would offer the first portion which was just a sheaf of grain and that was offered to god in thanksgiving before the rest of the harvest happened so let's look at proverbs chapter 3 verse 9 to 10. honor the lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine so again we've got the principle of first first born first fruits it's the principle of first all the way through the scriptures now number two what else does god say about first well if we're going to be really like take god right to the letter of the law of what he says in the old testament he tells us to give our first of our first so not only to give our first but to give the first of the first what does that mean well that means that everyone would bring the first bit of grain and give it to god as a sacrifice before they would go and harvest the rest what does that mean for you and me it actually means god means that god wants us to give the first part of our income before we even know or before we even spend any of it see there are some people who are like i'll pay my bills and i'll spend everything i'll do what i have to do and then if i've got some left over i'll give it then to god but god is telling us here that's not that's not who god is god is a generous god god is a god that is testing and stretching our faith and he said right through the old testament no i want you to give your thirst i want you to give the first of your sheath of grain before you know what's coming i want you to give the first of your lambs before you know how many more are going to be born he didn't say well give let's see how many lambs you have and then give me the tenth one or the ninth one he said give me your thirst god honors that act of obedience and faith when we give like my mom would put that money straight away in the tithing into the envelope before she knew if we had enough and you know what we often didn't have enough if she would calculate in the natural but we serve a supernatural god who asks something of us more than what makes sense to us in the natural and that includes with our income romans 5 verse 8 says this but god demonstrates his own love for us in that while we were still sinners christ died for us see again in the new testament the principle of first god gave us jesus before we believed he didn't say oh i'll see if they believe in him i'll see if they're going to be faithful to him and then i'll sacrifice him for their sins no he gave first he goes i'm going to give you my best before i even know if you're going to say yes it means giving before we know if we have enough it means giving our tithe before we pay our bills and spend our money you know if we think about it even abraham sacrifice was willing to sacrifice his first son he didn't know how many more sons he was going to have he didn't know if god's promises were going to come true that he was going to be the father of many nations and yet he was willing to sacrifice his first you know i remember when cameron and i were getting married and um we so you know weddings are expensive like my gosh they're so expensive and cameron and i at the time i remember we felt really challenged to give a really large portion to uh to someone it was a pastor in our church but he also had like a healing ministry and an evangelistic ministry and cameron said to me i really feel that we need to give some money and i agreed i said yes i i think we need to do that as well but i remember feeling i remember feeling almost sick to my gut like and it was it was a substantial amount of money i remember just thinking how are we going to afford our wedding if we give this but you know what we wanted our lives to always be an act of obedience and to just jump off the cliff and go god you look after us and so cameron and i we took this large sum of money out i remember we put it in an envelope and i remember we went together up to the offices in our church and we slipped it under the door to this day he never knows that we gave it to him i don't know if we cried as we walked away but if we did it wasn't out of fear it was out of you know it does something to your heart when you're obedient to god and when you give and it affects your lifestyle it's like god we're just putting ourself out there we love you and you've told us to do this and we're going to be obedient now we did not do that so that god could give back to us or bless us but when we look back that very same person who had no idea we gave he gave us his wedding cards his cars as our wedding cars on the day of our wedding for free not only that but they cleaned them spotlessly for us and then later on after we came back from um after the wedding cameron's dad and we had no idea at the time but he goes we're going to pay your reception for you you know and that was way above that would have been i reckon 10 times the amount that we gave that we got back but we never did it for that reason that's the important thing it's about your heart it's about our heart number three the thirst redeems the rest this is a really exciting principle when it comes to tithe that the first redeems the rest there's a very big principle at work here see jesus the firstborn the first sacrifice redeemed the rest of us there's something when we give that first part in faith that god says now i can bless and i will protect the rest of what you have you know romans 11 16 says for if the first fruit is holy okay so if that first little bit is holy and set apart for god then the rest the lump is also holy and if the root is holy so are the branches so what's god saying is if you give that portion and you give the first of the first and you sacrifice that and you put it in as an offering to me there's a principle at work here that god will redeem and protect the rest you know robert morris who has written the blessed life an amazing book i think maybe a couple of living rooms are going to do it i've chatted with a couple of people but you know he said that without exception tithers say i'm blessed or god has blessed me and they all give testimony that god is blessing them but in contrast every non-tither i have ever spoken with gives this testimony i can't afford to tithe interesting isn't it and i would say that's a pattern that i've seen over the years and when i look at my own life and i look at my mom and we did not have very much but yet we always gave that first and we gave that tithe and i can honestly look back and say and the scripture says in psalms i have never seen the righteous forsaken or the seed begging bread and i remember sitting on my hospital bed after we had georgia and i had the bigger income at the time because i was teaching and cameron was like part-time working for church and getting pittance and i remember being so worried and thinking how are we going to afford we just built this brand new tiny little cottage we had no driveway we had no landscaping no garden and i'm like god what are we going to do and i opened up my bible and god spoke to me because rene have i ever forsaken you never never and this is so close to my heart because i'm like i'm not someone that has a natural big gift of faith when it comes to giving but i do understand living the way that god has called us to live and how god promises he will look after us if we do that so let's quickly just go over those number one all first things belong to god number two give the first of the first number three the first redeems the rest um oh let me just quickly finish on that one malachi 3 verse 8 to 9 says will a mere mortal rob god yet you rob me but you ask how are we robbing you in tithes and offerings you are under a curse your whole nation because you are robbing me so throughout the bible again the bi the tithe either brings blessing or curse it blesses or it redeems number four the first where is it meant to go the bible is specific it's meant to go to the church so exodus 23 19 says bring the best of your first fruits of your soil to the house of the lord your god and other scriptures talk about the storehouse and what's the storehouse that's the place where we get fed so you know it doesn't say he didn't say to give it to another ministry although that's really important and that's giving above and beyond he doesn't say to give it to a missionary although that's important and close to god's heart he very specifically says it belongs to the house of the lord number five tithe is a now principle it's not an old testament old principle now some people argue that it's an old testament principle and therefore it's not relevant and that the principle of tithing is no longer active but that same chapter of malachi that i just read to you if you if you look at a couple of verses before in verse 6 he says i am the lord i do not change so the tithe the firstborn the firstfruits all belong to god it's an unchanging principle established by an unchanging god and if god does not change well then when does this supposedly change let me give another example so adultery for example was forbidden in the old testament it was forbidden in the law does that suddenly become acceptable then in the new testament because now we're under grace no in fact not only is it not acceptable guess what jesus does he doubles down he says in matthew not only is adultery unacceptable but if you even lay eyes lustfully upon a woman then you've committed adultery in your heart so what jesus does is he goes if you think that was hardcore in the old testament i'm going to double down on the ethics here and he goes a step further you know jesus words let me just touch on the new testament here jesus words are very brief in the new testament about tithe write these down i haven't got them up here but if you want to go and look at these after matthew 23 23 and luke 11 42 jesus and paul both teach on the principle of tithe now where we mostly see it tucked away is in luke 21 verse 1 to 4. and you all know the story where jesus is observing the rich man and the poor widow bringing their gifts into the treasury and the woman gives everything that she had which was of course not very much but the rich men gave out of their surplus which was much more but jesus said she was the one that gave the most because she gave all that she had why because she gave out of her poverty the rich people gave out of their surplus so jesus is teaching a principle here he's actually doubling down on the old testament he might not say the word tithe very much and he might not say exactly how much that is but be careful with the argument that oh it's not a principle anymore because if you really want to live by the new testament guess what you'll actually give more because in the new testament both paul and jesus talked about generosity and in this scripture here jesus is doubling down and he's saying i'm not going to make a rule that you have to bring 10 percent but what i am going to do is set up a principle that instead you should give in such a way that it makes a difference to your lifestyle see what i'm saying so that woman gave everything that she had and it made a difference she felt it that day the rich people gave physically more but they never felt it and jesus is saying you know what i want you to give in such a way that it makes a difference that maybe it hurts your hip pocket a little bit so for people that want to sit back in the old testament that's fine if you sorry that want to sit in the new testament because more will be required number five oh let me do you want a little bit of research here i thought this was fascinating you with me you're doing so good i promise at the end we will have a dance off with cameron and isaiah just to make everything lighten up i really want to see that come on come on a week won't help all right into it what we could do we could do like a big circle and you could do it in the middle like a like a hoopa preach the word all right in 2016 mccrindle their australian researchers did research on the tithing habits of australian churchgoers have a listen to this over 73 percent of top income earning church attenders give less than 0.6 of their income the average church goer in australia gives 0.7 of their income and to quote the article this is what they said our love or worship of money may have the upper hand right now now i was thinking about it if everyone at public church and i know we've got students who don't work very much but then we've got full-time income workers and we've got business owners if everyone at public earned say on average 500 um and we all gave a baseline of 10 we've actually got the capacity as a church to raise 25 000 every week that's incredible and if you look at that over a year that's 1.3 million so i'm like next time someone says to me when are we getting a building maybe i'll go okay and while we're typing just getting real right like it's like people go where do we get a building when we get a building i'm like everybody tired we're good but it's true but you know what this is a principle of god it's not it's not something that we're saying and then people say oh but i don't trust where my money's going do you know what that's not our problem our responsibility is to do what god has asked us to do and god will hold the people who are dealing with the money responsible and and if if i can just say this about cameron i've never said i've lived with him for like 23 years and even though he can't dance he's got incredible integrity you know when we took over youth alive youth alive was in 120 000 debt and we came up here with thinking we had a full-time job and within a week we were told we don't have a full-time job and and we were in that much debt cameron is so good with his budgets that within how long to 18 months within 18 months the debt the debt was cleared and that was with him also giving generously to some of the like tithing on you know um youth to live money etc but you can just see when you when you when you do things god's way okay number five and i love this one no number six sorry this is the last one the first is to be passed down to the generations i love this because we are a church that believes in the young generation and one of the quotes on instagram this week was establish the whole reason we're talking about finances well one of the reasons is to establish a financial foundation for future generations you know it started in exodus 13 12 to 13 where we that's where we started off talking about sacrificing and redeeming okay now a little bit further down so that was exodus 12 to 13. but if you go to verse 14 and 15 look at what it says this is beautiful in days to come if i could have the band come when your son asks what does that mean say to him with a mighty hand the lord brought us out of egypt out of the land of slavery when pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go the lord killed the firstborn of both people and animals in egypt this is why i sacrifice to the lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons do you know what's happening here this father is sacrificing a first-born lamb and his little boy is nearby and he's saying daddy why are we doing this and he's like come and sit on my knee and let me tell you the story let me tell you the story of why we do this because god is a god that redeems because god is a god that delivers because we to be thankful to god because when we give our first god always looks after us and so son this is why we do what we do do you know what that means that means that we get our kids like my mom did with me and she gave us the the tithing money the offering money and i remember sitting in sunday school because it wasn't called kids church back then because it was pre-1980 it was called sunday school and i remember the little um we had those old-fashioned tithing things you know the one that had the velcro sack velvet sack with that wooden handle i think we should bring them back that's passing covered yeah and then but they're smart because you twist them right you have no idea what i'm talking about trish does and i remember them passing it around all the kids and i remember being so proud to give jesus my 20 cents i didn't understand all of this but i understand that god loved me and that he saw me and that he was looking after me and that even though i was living in a house where i knew that my mom didn't have a lot i knew that god was there and it's our responsibility to not just live by god's principles but to say hey and cameron and i have done this with our kids well we've told them the story i grew up in a single-parent home and my mum always tithed and i never went without and god always looked after me and so now we've passed that on to the next generation and that is our responsibility we tell them the story how good is that you're so quiet you're like he's trained so well so let me just recap on the principle of first number one all first things belong to god number two we need to give our first of our first number three the first redeems the rest number four the first goes to church number five tithe is a now principle and number six the first is to be passed down to future generations how good is that you know what i want to do just for a moment i just want to pray over all of us because each of us have our own like i said at the start relationship with finances and you know for some of us we might you know we might struggle with that or for some of us it might come easy and god understands because really you know what it is it's an issue of the heart that's why in the new testament it talks about where your treasure is there your heart is and of course vice versa where your heart is your treasure will go so let me just pray and then we're going to end on a dance oh yeah pressure oh you're all of a sudden compassionate that he's hurt his leg camera said he hurt his leg all right why don't we pray dear lord we just um we thank you father for this whole month lord where we're talking about finances lord this is an area that you care so much about in our lives and father every person here has a different personal experience lord we all have a different story to tell we all have our own feelings perhaps for some of us we feel like we get reactionary when it comes to finances but lord we just lay all these things down before you and father i thank you that you understand and that you care but i thank you also that you've laid out principles in your word for us to live by and just like lord we give the first part of our week to you by coming to church lord we understand this principle of tithe and father we just ask that holy spirit you would bless every person here no matter where they're at no matter whether their bank balance is full or looking empty right now lord i just ask your protection and your blessing that as we heed your commands that our barns would be full just like your word says in jesus name we pray amen if that message spoke to you and you want to respond or you want to give your life to jesus for the very first time why don't you click the description box there is a link that says new to faith and we will have a pastor reach out to you this week thank you so much for joining us today we cannot wait to see you next sunday we hope you have a fantastic week bye

Channel: Public Church

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Length: 32min 25sec (1945 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021