Sermon Central
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Be Free In 2003 Part 2
Contributed by Michael Mccartney on Jan 6, 2003 (message contributor)
Summary: We need to be free in 2003 with our financial resources and make sure we are pressing to become debt free! We must actively and ruthlessly root out the weed of greed in our lives. We should seek to be debt free in 2003.
Series: Be Free in 2003 part 2
Thesis: We need to be free in 2003 with our financial resources and make sure we are pressing to become debt free! We must actively and ruthlessly root out the weed of greed in our lives. We should seek to be debt free in 2003.
Opening Illustration: from Shindler’s List about not giving more to save lives.
Texts:
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
1Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. 2Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.
6“I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.
“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’
8“Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’
“In tithes and offerings. 9You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. 10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. 11I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. 12“Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.
13“You have said harsh things against me,” says the LORD.
“Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’
14“You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? 15But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.’”
16Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name.
17“They will be mine,” says the LORD Almighty, “in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. 18And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
Introduction: I recall from the past and old song that went something like this “What the world needs now is love sweet love.” I hum it every once in a while and think but today I they would say, “What the world needs now is money sweet money.” Scott Titus said, “Its been said that the average American spends half his waking hours thinking about money.”
Finances – money – cash – the green stuff have torn apart many relationships in our culture today. There has been misunderstandings of financial resources and misappropriation of financial resources. This preoccupation with money has created some startling results in our world today listen to just a few that where mentioned by Scott Titus:
Nearly 80 percent of all divorced couples between the ages of 20 and 30 list financial difficulties as the primary cause of their separation.
The U.S. Consumer debt is at an all time high-currently over 7.3 Trillion dollars.
Us Credit card debt is over 500 billion dollars, and according to the Federal Reserve, American consumers add almost $5 Billion dollars a month to their credit card debt.
