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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Sowing And Reaping With God

Everything Is God’s Gift And Stewardship

Tithes Offerings And The Local Church

Margin For Spirit Led Generosity

Freedom From Money And Final Charge

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All right, day five. Galatians chapter 6, verse 6. One of my favorite verses, you should memorize this and participate in it. Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. Be generous to your pastor. That's kind of about halfway a joke, but seriously, regardless of what church you were involved in, if your pastor is a Bible-teaching pastor, then you should share all good things with the one who is teaching the word. And then he goes on. He says, Do not be deceived. He's going to talk about money. He's going to talk about generosity. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap. If we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Now, this passage is obviously more than just about generosity, but I want to talk to you about generosity. You see, the reality is that everything we have is a blood bought grace gift from God. Everything we have is God's. We are but stewards. And something in your life has to go first. And what goes first in your life determines the direction of your life. And Jesus says that money goes first. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that where your treasure is, your heart will be also. And God doesn't need your money, but what he wants is your heart. And so can you be a stingy Christian? The answer is no. That if God is not the Lord of your finances, then something is out of whack and you are worshiping at the altar of money instead of surrendering your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. God will not be mocked. He is first and he doesn't do leftovers. You see, the reality is that Christ is preeminent, that God is first and God went first. And God loved us first by sending his son, Jesus Christ. And so what we, as followers of Christ, are called to do is that we are to bring back, I'm talking about our resources. We are to bring back our first and our best. The Bible calls that tithes and offerings. Tithe literally means a tenth, but in the Bible, both Old and New Testament, it doesn't simply just mean 10%. It means the first of what has given you. You see, the reality is we all tithe to something. We all take the first and the best of what God has given to us and we put it towards something. And what we're looking for is satisfaction and security. But the reality is only God can bring us satisfaction and security. So we bring our first and our best, our tithes and our offerings to Jesus. And the way that we bring things to Jesus is we bring it to the local church because the Bible says that Jesus is the head of the church. And so this is not simply charitable giving, this is gospel giving that we are bringing back to the bride of Christ because Jesus is the head of the church. And we sow into whatever ministry that we are hearing the word of God taught. So if you want to sew into the Daily Blade, feel free to. And then in addition to this, we should steward our lives and our finances in such a way that we live in margin so that whenever the Spirit of God nudges us and leads us to help, to be generous, to give money, especially to our brothers and sisters in Christ, then we should be ready to do this. And this is the normative way that the follower of Jesus should live his life. That we should bring our tithes to the local church, to bring our first and our best to Jesus, who is the head of the church. That we should bring, like if you're being fed by a ministry, that you would sew into that so as to be generous to the person that is teaching you. And in addition to that, we should not grow weary of doing good things, and that we should look for opportunities to help those in need, particularly those who are in the church, and we should not give up on that. So the reality is can you actually be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ and be ruled by your money? The answer is no. Can you believe and follow a Jesus who gave himself up at the cross while you hold on with clenched fists everything that God has given to you? The answer is no. For the way that you sow, you will reap. And if you reap stinginess, then that's exactly what you'll get. But if you sow generously to a generous God, and I am not talking about health and wealth and that sort of thing, but if you begin to trust God with what he has entrusted to you, then you will experience a freedom in the good news of the gospel. The Bible says that for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and when you begin to see all of the resource that God has given you as a tool to be used by God, to come through your hands to be used by God for the advancement of his kingdom, that you will no longer bow down to the idol of money, but you will be able to walk in a freedom that declares that Christ is your king.

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Amen. Stay sharp.