Robert Morris: The Enemy of Generosity is Selfishness | FULL TEACHING | TBN

i'm telling you money is a bigger test than you think [Music] because god is seeing if he can handle if you can handle true riches but the test he uses is if you could handle money or not thank you thank you guys for being here and thanks so much for joining us for beyond blessed i want to remind you we are talking about being blessed beyond for the purpose of being a blessing and that's very very very important because god wants his children to be a blessing you can go all the way back to abraham when god begins the nation of israel and he says to abraham i will bless you and you will be a blessing and another place he says and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed so we want to talk about being able to receive god's blessing yes but also being able to be a blessing for someone else so i want to talk to you today about am i generous and i put this in the first person because we each have to ask ourselves that question and uh the reason i'm saying that is is because um i god's used me and i've been able to give a lot but i still see selfishness in my life i still see times when i am selfish about my time selfish even with my wife or my kids or with someone else god is continually rooting selfishness out of our lives and if you think about this why did god even invent and i'm going to use the word invent because god did he created it why did god even create giving i mean think about it did he did he do it to support the work of the ministry i was teaching a bible class one time and i asked that question why didn't god invent giving and one of the answers was to support his ministry to support the work of the kingdom and it hit me like i never thought about before and so i said to these students and they actually got to laugh and after a little while thinking about it i said i want you to think about this do you really believe that god needs our money to support his work do you really think that's why god invented or created giving no god did not create giving for his sake he's got it all he created giving for our sake he created giving to work greed and selfishness out of our lives and so it's just totally opposite when you see this selfishness and generosity this battle that we're actually born with from the beginning and there's a passage in scripture that shows selfishness and generosity as clearly as you'll ever see it it's in john chapter 12. let me read it to you verse 1 says then six days before the passover jesus came to bethany where lazarus was who had been dead whom he had raised from the dead and there they made him a supper and martha served but lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him then mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard anointed the feet of jesus and wiped his feet with her hair and the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil but one of his disciples judas iscariot simon's son who would betray him said why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor this he said now watch very carefully what the bible tells us not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief and he had the money box and he used to take what was put in it but jesus said let her alone she has kept this for the day of my burial for the poor you have with you always but me you do not have always okay so two questions immediately jump out of me number one why didn't mary give such a generous gift 300 denarii now you might not know what 300 daenery represents uh daenery is the plural of the word denarius denarius would be one coin that coin was a day's wage so if you worked a day you get a day's wage you get a denarius uh if you worked you know five days and they paid you through the week you get five denarii that's how you would say the plural so 300 denarii would be 300 days wages think about this with 365 days in a year and you have sabbaths and you have festivals feasts things like this 300 denarii this is what it meant everyone knew in jewish culture a year's wage that's what he meant you would earn about 300 denarii in a year so here's what he said why why would she take something that could have been a year's wage and it would have been put in the offering box so two questions one is why would mary give such an extravagant offering a year's wait now that'd be extravagant for anyone here wouldn't matter what your salary is wouldn't matter is thirty thousand or a hundred thousand that's a science extravagant for you right okay so why would mary do such an extravagant gift second question is this why would it make judas so mad and here's what happens we have two hearts displayed here remember jesus said where your treasure is there your heart will be also so we have two hearts we have a hard generosity and we had a and we have a heart of selfishness and they're displayed for us so we can look at these and learn some things about what about this that happened here so the first thing i want to tell you is here's number one if you're watching a home here's the first point the enemy of generosity let's talk about the enemy of generosity and it's it's very very simple the enemy of generosity is selfishness that's the enemy of generosity now i have some bad news for you you were born selfish now here's the good news though you were born again generous you now we have to grow as believers we have to renew our minds and so we can become more generous and we can become better stewards so we can be more generous but you want to be generous when you're born again you want to be as a matter of fact if you're thinking about generous and selfish now this is just my way to remember generous begins with a g and god begins with a g selfish begins with an s and satan begins with an s satan is selfish god is generous by the way uh theologically we say that we were born with an adamic nature a damage would mean like adam and that's true we were born with the nature and adam by the way means mankind doesn't mean male so in the beginning eve's name was also adam genesis 5 2. god called both of them mankind that's what he called that's what it means adam means mankind god called them mankind and god created male and female mankind okay so so we were born with a mankind nature but a fallen mankind nature you all just get so disappointed what i might say but we were not only born with an adamic nature we were born with a satanic nature because that fallen nature came from the enemy satan wants to turn every conversation to himself isaiah 14 he wanted to be lifted up he wanted to be exalted he wanted to be worshiped all through scripture that's what he wants jesus on the other hand turns every conversation off of himself onto the father everyone they said we love the miracles that you do he said i don't do anything unless i first see my father do it they said okay we love the teachings that you teach he said i don't say anything unless i first hear my father say it see that when when we get when we're say when we're when we're born we're born trying to get the attention to us when we're saved we try to get the attention on god are you all following me i mean you think about this um i can prove that we still have a little bit of that selfishness in us that little bit of look at me here's his real simple way to prove it who is the first person you look for in a group picture see and if you don't look good the whole picture's bad that's a bad picture that's a bad picture don't look at that picture right okay again let me prove to you we're born selfish we're born selfish uh i'm going to tell you something that you just going to shock you again a little bit see it's humorous but a baby's first word is all the same every baby has the same first word it's not mama it's not dada it starts way before that a baby's first word is i they started from the fir from day one in the hospital in essence i want to be fed i want to be held i want to be changed i now in my opinion the second word could be mama or something like yes but somewhere along the line one of the first 10 words that a baby learns is another word it's called mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine there there's it's amazing how you can be in another room and you start hearing this mine mine mine mine mine mine and it it makes chills go up your spine you know and a parent has to go through the house and find this sound where is this sound coming from my mind my mind you know and you get in the other room and it's normally a younger child pulling something from an older child and the younger child is saying mine mine mine mine right okay you have to know though there is an age when parents do not care anymore about justice they don't care whose it is they just want quiet so we say something stupid like this give it to her just give it to her and the older child said but dad it really is mine give it to her she has things of mine too give it to her that's the way we start out we start out selfish the enemy of generosity is selfishness i i can remember one time i had a pastor in town and we were going to a restaurant and we just happened to be driving past some large homes and there was this really big home very big home and the guy is actually a member of our church and but this pastor saw this home and he said wow look at that house and then he said this he said he ought to sell that give it to the poor now every now and then i like to kind of make an impact not be mean but make an impact and so i said to him do you know who first said that statement right there judas did the one who betrayed our lord we just read it judas said that should be sold and given to the poor and according to the bible he didn't say because he cared about the poor he said it because he was a thief so i actually said this pastor i said i'm just going to shock you man you don't care about the poor because if you cared about the poor you'd sell your house and give it to the poor you do you really know what extravagance is really the definition of extravagance someone who has more than you [Laughter] that's an extravagant car well that's an extravagant car i never never would buy that car and then we get a raise you know i think i could afford that car now wouldn't live in that neighborhood never never would have lived you know i think we could now you know it's extravagant so so here's judas doing this and this is selfishness this is all through scripture by the way there's something really curious to me in this and that is that judas had the money box please remember who the leader of these 12 people were remember who the leader was jesus so who gave judas the money box jesus did why because he knew he actually said two years before this happened two years before this happened didn't i choose 12 of you and one is the devil he knew who would betray him so did he give judas the money box to fail no because the bible says that god tempts no man and will with every temptation make a way of escape he was actually giving judas a chance to change his ways he was giving him the money box where judas could say you know what this is going to help other people now think also about something that judas was doing judas was taking money out of the money box that's like the offering box now here's what we all think here's what every one of us think watch it at home everyone thinks well this would never take money out of the money box okay if 10 of it belongs in the offering box and you keep it in your account isn't that the same thing as taking it out of the money box it also says that judas was a thief the bible calls him a thief remember how we read how in the bible in malachi it says you rob me joshua says you've stolen from me because you took what belonged to me see it it's it's kind of tough to to read these things i'm telling you money is a bigger test than you think because god is seeing if he can handle if you can handle true riches but the the test he uses is if you could handle money or not so that's talking about the enemy of generosity let me talk about the extravagance of generosity mary gives one year's wage that's pretty amazing that's that's extravagant for any any person no matter what your salary is a year's wage is extravagant but does an extravagant gift impress god now we have to look at it two ways okay what is extravagant to god is it the amount or is it how we give it it says that jesus sat opposite the treasury and watched how people gave it doesn't say how much it says how they gave he watched their heart i'll tell you some extravagant gifts in the bible david gave 21 billion dollars to build the temple in today's currency a lot of people don't realize that 21 billion dollars same extravagant uh solomon when he became king offered it one thousand bulls a bull represented the king's wealth one thousand that's extravagant here's another extravagant gift that we forget about a widow gave two mites a mite is one half of a roman penny it takes two jewish mites to make up one roman penny so she gave one roman penny jesus said she gave more than everybody else here that was an extravagant gift that's what mary did but but what i'm trying to figure out is why did mary give such an extravagant gift here's why i think her brother had just been raised from the dead read john 11. well he started in john 12. i think she realized what was true riches she lost her brother he was dead he was four days dead he'd just been raised from the dead i think she looked at this perfume that maybe she had saved for a long time to buy and she thought this is more important to me than anything else it's showing my gratitude to jesus and so she gives this incredibly extravagant by the way jesus said this this was done for my burial now what some of us don't remember is that jesus was crucified on passover his body was taken off the cross and put immediately in the grave and they came the morning after passover to with the spices to prepare his body for burial and he wasn't there he rose but the point is for the time he was in the grave the only anointing he received was from mary yet we started back in john 12 this was six days before the passover let me put another way jesus died on passover six days before he died so jesus said she came into this to prepare my body for burial so we talked about the extravagance we talked about the enemy here's the third thing the reward of generosity the reward now this story is also told in mark and here's what it says in mark what this woman did will be told all around the world what this woman did will be told all around in other words there was a reward for what she did um i just want you to know that god is a rewarder he does reward i was at a bible school one time in costa rica teaching and they had on friday it was called bless another day and they were trying to teach the students to give and they said on friday you give something to someone else and they told us about this student they'd had five years before and he came and said he was very upset and he said i have nothing to give i cannot give i have nothing yet and they said well pray and ask the lord so he worked at a peanut farm and and went to bible college and so he went to the owner and said could i give one peanut every week could i buy a peanut so i could give it so to bless another one peanut and the farmer said hey just you're one of my best workers to take it take it and he said no i'm not gonna do that because then you're giving it i need to give it so he worked it out to buy a peanut to give away well this guy starts getting promoted at the end of that semester he paid for his tuition and another student's tuition then he got promoted again at the end of the next semester he paid for his tuition and 10 students when i was there they had over 200 bible students over 200 and they said to me do you remember the kid that gave the peanut a week i said yeah they said he now owns the peanut farm and he scholarships all 200 of these students all 200 because god rewards when he can find a good steward and a generous person he rewards and that's exactly what heaven think about this here's what jesus said what this woman did he's going to be told as the memorial to the whole world okay so she comes and gives this offering mary because lazarus has been raised from the dead and we're still reading about it today and the best selling book of all time recorded it it's told all over the world she got a reward because she was an extravagant giver but here's what will stop us from being extravagant givers selfishness i'm telling us i'm telling us when i say us say i'm telling me i'm telling you all the time we have to think about this so i'm gonna i talked about the children mine so this is a little different i'm gonna end with a little bit of a funny story okay all of us are born selfish right we're all born selfish and i told you i still work on this i still have to work on this okay men do not like to share food this is still a weakness that i have we drive up to a drive-through i say to my wife what do you want everybody know what she says nothing i'll just have some of yours no you won't [Laughter] i'll buy you two orders of fries but you are not getting any of my fries and the fries that fall in the bottom of the bag are mine too so i'm just telling you i'm still working on this i'm sorry i'm still working on it we're still working on it we were born selfish we were born again generous but we work on it when we work on it when we're honest with god god can do something in our hearts he can show us these little areas where we're selfish and we're not generous so remember the question today is am i generous you know what the answer is yes and no sometimes i am and sometimes i'm not let me pray for you lord i pray that you will do a work in all of our hearts in all of our hearts in every area the small ones and the big ones that we will become generous extravagant givers and that we will remember that it wasn't just as mary our brother's been raised from the dead we've been raised from the dead many of our family members have been raised from the dead because of the resurrection of jesus i pray lord that we will become generous extravagant givers and that lord we will live a life beyond blessed so that we can be a blessing in jesus name amen thank you so much for watching i'll see you next time friends with your faithful partnership tbn is reaching over 175 nations that's why for your gift of support any amount this month we are excited to offer you michael w smith's heartwarming book the way of the father take a moment to visit tbn.org the father thank you you

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Keywords: robert morris, beyond blessed, a blessed life, robert morris a blessed life, robert morris blessed life, a blessed life robert morris, living beyond blessed, robert morris living beyond blessed, living beyond blessed robert morris, gateway community church, robert morris gateway church, gateway church robert morris, pastor robert morris, stewardship, christians, tbn, trinity broadcasting network, trinity broadcasting network live, tbn live, matt crouch, t8b2n6, 8t2b6n, tbn826, 826tbn

Id: eI1efL1BFjg

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021