Good morning, everyone. Blessing to be in God's house. I brought my wife with me. She'll stand so everybody knows who she is. She's the redheaded one. I'd like you to turn your Bibles this morning to the book of Acts. As we begin our message, we'll look at chapter two of the book of Acts. Acts chapter two. And we're going to read verse 35. Or verse 34, excuse me. For David is not ascended into the heavens, but he saith himself, but he saith himself, the Lord saith to my Lord, sit thou on my right hand. The word of God is of extreme importance because it is the word of God. It is also important how God says a thing. He says a thing in a specific way, and that's the reason why so many of these new versions of the Bible are not accurate because they have changed the way God said it. So it's important that God said it, and it's important the way God said it. This morning as you came in, I believe you received a handout. Everybody have one? Anybody that does not have a handout? There's some folks over here that do not have handouts. Give you something free. Won't cost you anything now. I want to talk to you about giving by faith today. There's a vast difference between giving by faith and bringing back to God what already belongs to Him. The Bible is very specific. In this handout, you see that I'm gonna divide your income, every person who has an income, if you're a paper boy, and you have an income, if you have a little job of some kind as a teenager, you have an income. A wife may work and have an income. A husband may work and have an income. And I'm gonna ask you to fix in your mind how much you make if you get paid every week or every two weeks or once a month, however you get paid, I want you to divide that amount of money into two parts. And I'm going to ask you then to turn to Malachi chapter three. Malachi chapter three. And we're gonna look beginning with verse eight of the third chapter. Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me, but ye say, wherein have we robbed thee? The answer is in tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse, for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, and there shall not be room enough to receive it. Here in this passage of scripture, God is speaking in the Old Testament about the matter of tithing. Now, you say, well, that's under the law. We don't have to tithe now because we're no longer under the law. Tithing was not only practiced under the law, it was practiced before the law, and it is still practiced after the law, under grace. And you will notice that the tithes and the offerings are not to be given. He says here, bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse. There is a place to bring the tithe, and that is the house of God, called the storehouse in the Old Testament. And you don't give it, you bring it. It's very specific how God says certain things. You can't give God what already belongs to Him. The tithe is already his. If you're a Christian, you become a child of God, you live by the Bible, and the Bible tells you that 10% of everything you make belongs to God. You don't give it to him, you bring it to him. You are blessed if you bring it. You are cursed if you don't bring it. Very plain and very specific in the scriptures. Now, this is God's property. You look on the left side of your handout and it says God's property. Tithes and offerings that you bring because they already belong to God. You can't give him what already belongs to him. It is a matter of giving, not by faith. It takes no faith to obey. It takes a determination to simply do what God asked you to do. Obedience is not faith. So when you bring your offering, to God and give him the tithe, you're not giving him something that you have decided to give him. You're bringing him what already belongs to him. That's very important to understand that. Bring ye all the tithe. So over here under my, God's property, under God's property, you have this matter of being obedient, doesn't take any faith to be obedient, and you bring the tithe into the storehouse. Now, I want you to also notice that on the other side of your sheet, you have my property, your property after the tithe has been brought to God, That which is left of your income belongs to you. It's your property. You can do what you want to with it. And I want you to notice now we'll go to the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. Exodus chapter 36. And we'll read beginning with verse three. Verse three, and they received of Moses all the offering which the children of Israel had brought for the work of the service of the sanctuary to make it with all. So they brought what belonged to God to the house of God. And they brought yet unto him free offerings. Notice those two words, free offerings. Every morning. And all the wise men that wrought all the work of the sanctuary came every man from his work which they made. By the way, this is before the law. And they spake unto Moses saying, the people bring much more than enough for the service of the work which the Lord commanded to make. And Moses gave commandment and they caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp, saying, let neither man nor woman make any more work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing. Have you ever had your pastor stand up on Sunday morning and say, ushers, we won't need you today. We will not be taking an offering we got so much, now we don't need any more. That's what Moses had to do. You see, they started giving, not only bringing what belonged to the Lord, but they gave their own property to take care of the house of God, and they started bringing it every morning. Before they went to work, they dropped by the church and brought an offering, and they gave offerings. And so the man said, we got more than we need. What are you going to do, Moses? And he said, well, I'll tell the people they don't have to give now. And he restrained them from giving. What you have in this passage is beyond obedience, you have people giving of their own property after they have already brought what belonged to God, the tithe. This is blessing beyond blessing. Because if you're blessed when you bring God's property, what belongs to him, then you are even blessed beyond that if you dig down into your own property and give him something by faith. It takes faith to give what belongs to you. It takes obedience to bring what belongs to God. Very specific language is used in those two cases. Faith giving causes us not only to obey, but to trust in God that he will take care of us. Doesn't take any faith to bring what belongs to him. If I give you $1,000 and you come back in a short time and you say, well, I'm gonna give you $1,000. You can't do that. You owe me $1,000. All you can do is bring what you owe me. The tithe is what you owe God. It always belongs to him, never belongs to you. And if you keep it, you're under the curse of God. If you bring it, you're under the blessing of God. So then if you go beyond that and do what these people did, bring an offering every day, then you are being blessed beyond the blessings of obedience. That's very important. It's an act of love for a lost world. You see, your faith promise offering is not out of your tithe. You don't give a portion of your tithe and say this is my faith promise that I'm gonna give for missions. You can't give it because it already belongs to God. You can only bring it to him. But then your property You look at your property and you say, I want to do for a lost world. I love the lost world. I love sinners. I want to be involved in world missions. So I'm going to give by faith some of my own property toward the advancement of world missions. the cause of Christ. Now, world missions has become a lot of things to a lot of people. There's medical missionaries. There's agricultural missionaries. They go out to do different things. Biblically, there's only one mission. and that is to deliver the word of God to lost men and lost women. Our faith promise offering, therefore, is a missions offering out of our own property, putting our faith in God to take care of us and to supply our need after we have given to him. And that gospel, that offering, is a free one, you don't have to do it if you don't want to, if you don't want the blessings of God upon you, if you don't want to go beyond obedience, you don't have to give it. But if you wanna go beyond just obeying God and doing what he asked you to do, then you give out of your property what's left, a faith promise offering, and your motive here is love and faith combined. Not obedience, but love and faith combined. You bring God's property, that's obedience. You give some of your property, faith promise offerings, that's love and faith combined. So it's very important that we understand where faith promise offerings come from. Another important thing about God's property and your property being given and God's property being brought is that you bring it to the house of God. You don't send your tithe to a favorite missionary. You don't send your tithe to some heretic preacher on television. You bring the tithe in obedience to God to his house. And then if you want to give out of your property to faith promise, because you love souls and you love missions, you bring that to the house of God. And the house of God is the headquarters for world missions. You're not the headquarters, your church is the headquarters for world mission. So you give your money and it is managed by the spiritual leadership of each church that's involved in doing these things. So faith giving, and that's faith promise offerings, faith giving cannot even begin until you first obey God and bring God's property to him. I hope you understand that. That's very important. Most people don't understand that concept and it's a biblical concept and it's worded like that in the scripture. Faith giving comes out of your own property because love comes out of the heart. thus love and faith moving us to give that the world might hear the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Faith-giving can only take place, therefore, after obedience, bringing the tithe, has been done. And I want to say this to you, that if you're here today and you're not saved, God is not asking you to give him any of your money. There's only one thing God wants if you are here today and you are not saved. God wants you to give him your heart. God wants you to put your faith in his marvelous plan of salvation, which is a giving plan. Doesn't cost you anything, but it costs heaven everything. It bankrupt heaven to provide salvation for the eternal soul. So you can't be saved by joining a church. Some people think, well, I'm saved now because I belong to a church. You can't be saved by going down into the waters of baptism. If you're not saved and you go down into the waters of baptism, all that happened to you is you got wet, but you didn't get saved. Water does not wash away our sins. Only the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin, the Bible says. So if you're here today and you're not saved, God has a love message for you. He has a message that he wants to save you from your sins. He wants to save you from the judgment of God. He wants to save you from an eternal hell. He can save you from all of that by you merely putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, realizing that you are a sinner, and realizing that your only hope is Jesus. He's the only hope. He is the greatest gift that man has ever been given. It's a sad thing to see such a marvelous gift be rejected by so many people. So many people just say no to the marvelous gift of salvation. And if you're here today, I plead with you to receive Jesus as your Savior. Let Him come into your heart and change your life. Then you can become involved in the giving and the bringing program that's taught in the Bible. And a Christian loves to do that because we love the Lord. The more we love the Lord, the more we want to obey him. And the more we love him, the more we want to exercise faith in him and trust in him and not depend upon ourselves. Years ago, I started a church in the state of Indiana in my country, and we had a very rich man start coming to the church. And one Sunday, it was about time for the offerings, and he stood up, and he said, I'd like to say something before you take the offering. He said, if everybody here would give 25 cents, the church would have all the money it needs. That was his idea, 25 cents a piece. That wouldn't even pay for the electric bill. It wouldn't even have covered the water bill. Much less do anything else the church needed to do. And I never will forget, he came to me after the service and he said, I got something else to say to you. He said, you know that I have money. And he said, I'm willing, I'm willing to put up the finest, most beautiful church building in this city for you and pay for the whole thing if you will call it the Davis Memorial Chapel. His name happened to be Davis. It just happened. And I rejected that, turned that offer down. because I said we're going to build this church for the glory of the Lord and in the name of the Lord, not in any man's name. So what'd he do? He gave the money to Notre Dame University, a Catholic university. They got it. Didn't do him more good there than it would have if we had received it. So what we have to do is obey God. You have to obey God. When you fill out that commitment card for faith promise, what you are doing is you are saying, Lord, I love you. I love missions. I love the souls of men and women. I wanna give you some of my property. I've already brought you my tithe. Now I wanna give you some of my property. I wanna show you how much I care. I want to show you how much I love you. It's an act of love when you bring, when you give to God something out of your own property. You may have wanted to spend that money on something for yourself or for your family or for a friend, but if you give it to Jesus instead, it's an act of love. It's an act of real faith. It's a way for God to bless you even above blessing you because you have been obedient. And those of you who are here today without Jesus, I trust that you will open your heart to him and give your heart to him today. Let's bow together for prayer. This morning as our heads are bowed in prayer, I wonder how many of you say, Preacher, help me. I want God to help me be obedient in bringing what belongs to Him. And then I want to give Him some out of my own property by faith to advance the cause of world missions. I want you to pray for me as I direct myself to signing that card today. Please pray for me. Anyone like that would like us to pray for you? Yes, God bless you. Many hands I see, God bless you. Amen. I want God to help me obey and I want him to help me have faith. God bless you. Yes, God bless you. Yes, God bless you. Anyone else? Let's just pray for these whose hands have now been raised. Our Father in heaven, we come before Thee and we ask Thee to bless each one who has just raised their hands. Help them to be obedient with the tithe and help them to exercise faith with their own personal property. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Heads are still bowed. I wonder today if there's anyone here who said, Preacher, you know I've never been saved. Maybe you've gone to the church, maybe you've been baptized, or maybe you haven't done any of that. But you say, Preacher, I don't know if I'd die today if I'd go to heaven. And I want you to pray for me because I need to be saved and I need the assurance of my salvation. Anyone like that? Slip up your hand for prayer in the audience today. Anyone today? All right. We're going to give an invitation this morning, if you'll stand, everyone, and maybe this