Blessed To Be A Blessing

Malachi 3:10

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.”

The word “Give” was mentioned 869 times in the Bible, while the word ”Gave” was mentioned 633 times, comparingwise. The word “Offer” was mentioned 123 times, while the word “Offered” was mentioned 90 times. “Tithe” was mentioned 13 times, while “tithes” 15 times.

Overall, the idea of giving or being generous was mentioned 1,713 times, thus making this as one of the most highly emphasized themes in the Bible. This is why no matter what they say against tithing or giving or as becoming generous as they ignorantly say it to be “unscriptural”, never and do not believe in them, because we should only believe and believe on God and His words as He commanded in the text in Malachi.

And even if until now, you do not believe about the idea of becoming generous, I do hope that our simple word search will give you the idea of how important this is to our Lord so to write it with much emphasis in His written word.

I tried comparing the word “love” or the idea of “to love”: the word love was mentioned 513 times, while the word loved was mentioned 89 times, and finally the word “loves” 68 times. Overall, these sums up to 670 times.

Note that “LOVE” is the central theme of the Bible, the quintessential spirit behind the law and the prophets, but the idea of giving and becoming generous as a practical application of love was indeed given a greater emphasis in the Bible, and giving or being generous is an expression of that love from God, just as He gave us His Son out of His unconditional or agape love. As one says, one can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving.

In context to the Bible, if one gives in the name of the Lord, it should be in the heartful inner motivations of love, just as God gave us His Son out of His agape or unconditional love, when the object of His love, i.e., mankind, is not even worthy of such love that motivated Him to give His only begotten and beloved Son to die on the cross to redeem us from our sins, the pure and perfect, holy and sinless Substitute for the sinful mankind!!

Knowing all these, we will discuss here God’s plan for us in line with generosity and financial freedom, as our reflections of how God loves us and bless us to become a blessing as manifested by our giving and generosity as our heartful expression of our love for God and mankind.



God’s Plan For All The People: That We Will Be Blessed
Genesis 12:2-3
2“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you
I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

This is what we know as the Abrahamic Promise, or the Abrahamic Covenant, which is God’s covenantal promise to Abraham, where God swore by Himself when no one was greater than Himself. Try to look for our relation within inside that promise. In verse three, the people who blesses Abraham will be blessed, and those who will curse him will be cursed. And, the last sentence clearly says that “ALL PEOPLES ON EARTH will be blessed through you.”

This promise was fulfilled when Christ came to save all the people (Galatians 3:14), because He was the promised Seed who fulfilled all God's promises, as represented by the foreshadows and types in the Old Testament. Let us try to see some more inner truths in this passage.
As we can see here in the passage, God used Abraham for his ultimate purpose, i.e., to become a blessing to all peoples on earth. For him to become a blessing, he was blessed first by God. This is why God said in verse 2, “I will make you into a great nation”, as Abraham's being blessed first by God. Just how can Abraham bless others or give blessings to others, if he was not first blessed by God.

You can only bless others if you are blessed first. In connection to this, Christ is like the Seed promised through Abrahamic Covenant to be planted first by dying as a seed to be buried in the ground, just as what happened after His death. Just like a seed, such that after His resurrection, His fruition has been leading into the birthing of God's other sons who have Abraham’s faith, viz. the Christians, to illustrate that the fruits (i.e., Christians) as blessings from the first Seed. Jesus is also the fulfillment of the first fruit offering commanded in the law, which is clear as His resurrection is the first fruit of the other fruiting or resurrection of the other sons in the faith.
Thus, the same thing is true with us. God blessed us in every way at the first hand to become a blessing to others, i.e. to be generous in every way.

In the Bible, you will always see the analogy of sowing seeds and harvesting in comparison to giving and receiving. In agriculture, no farmer harvests without even planting the seeds first.

There should be a plant or seed, planted or sown by the farmer, and in the proper time, he will reap a harvest, after patient cultivation and nurturing of the germinated seeds. It's basically following God's foreordained law of sowing and reaping, i.e., sow seeds and reap more abundant seeds from the fruits, to become the blessings of food. Such law is as sure as the Law of Gravity and the Laws of Thermodynamics in nature.

Then setting some seeds aside (i.e., not to be eaten) can start another sowing-reaping cycle, which the Lord clearly ordained after the creation of plants. And in the Garden of Eden, he made Adam as the first farmer to tend His garden. And as He ordained after the universal flood that destroyed the whole earth and only Noah's family was saved, the cyclical principle and seasonality of sowing and reaping can be clearly seen reinstated in :

Genesis 8:22 (KJV):

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer
and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

Note this, God first gave us the seed to plant, just as He first gave Jesus as the first seed for the gospel to be sown to all the earth. He blessed us first for us to learn how plant seeds. The seed that God gave us is not only for own self consumption, but also for planting to produce more new seeds to repeat the cycle of being blessed with the sowing-reaping principle.

Similarly, a farmer does not sell all he can harvest, nor eat everything he can harvest. He will have to set aside some seeds for sowing for the new cultivating season or cycle, and then set aside some seeds for consumption and selling as sharing God's blessing of food. Biblical example is the wheat that blesses man with bread to eat. Local example is rice, the staple blessing for the Filipinos.

Deuteronomy 8:18

18But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to
produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your
forefathers, as it is today.

Who gives the ability of the people to produce wealth? It is God who gives us the seed to sow and plant to bless us with food. It is not even us who produces the seeds to plant, it is God Himself, who created them and owns the soil to plant them in and the water to feed them as well as the sunlight for the plant to create its own cellular food, and we are just only participating as His co-workers in being stewards of His created order. We are only co-working with Him to apply His laws of sowing-reaping, if we labor in cultivating and nurturing the plant for us to harvest for our food, and then repeat the process of sowing-reaping as cycles of blessings.
All we have to do is to learn how to plant seeds. We can learn from even the uneducated farmer who has his own education from his practical experiences. Sometimes, God gives us seeds, but instead of sowing them, we eat them all and have no more seeds to sow to reap new blessings later on. So, instead of multiplying the seeds further by setting aside some for sowing, we consume them all and will go poor and hungry later with no more harvest to be expected! This is why many of us are still as if we are so engulfed with poverty, actually, the curse for robbing God of His due share in the tithes and offerings. He does not actually need those blessings, but His way to distribute His blessings to others in need, such as those in the household of faith.


That We Will Become A Blessing

2 Corinthians 9:11 is one of my most favorite verses when it comes to this lesson. It says:

“11You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every
occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to
God.”

Here, we see a picture of us, being enriched by God, in every way. So that,
it is for a purpose, we can be generous on every occasion. And relating to
Christ, He was the seed planted by God to reap more new seeds, being the new
believers, who will be sown later in His service in His mission field or farm to
reap more new seeds .... and on and on, over and over, again and again ... ad
continuum ... till the final harvest when He will come again for the
Second time to judge the living and the dead, the living to reap their reward of
eternal life, and the dead to reap their penalty of infernal death!!!

God blessed us so that we will become blessings to be generous on every occasion.
Note the context of the passage. We can see here that Paul is actually talking
about giving, about God’s economy about the sowing and reaping principle.

God’s economy is very different from our worldly economy. Our
worldly economy tells us to selfishly and slavishly save money, to keep
something for own selves for our own selfish use ONLY. To be frugal for our own
use, and as much as possible, to use money only for the things we need, not
thinking about the needs of others. God’s economy tells us, on the other hand,
that we have to be generous, help those who are in need, to generously give
things away for God’s glory, to support God’s work, and to support God’s
workers, so that God will bless us to become blessings to others, thus repeating
the cycle or season of sowing and reaping as a manifestation of our blessedness.

Even the Israelites in the wilderness can not hoard the daily blessings of manna
given by God for their food, because they rutted and spoiled the next day, no
longer edible. Blessings hoarded will become curses to the
hoarder.

In our personal and worldly point of view, God’s economy
is like a waste of money, while for some it is totally an abuse or religious
fanaticism. One of the controversial issues right now is about forbidding the
passing of the offering inside the Church. Congresswoman Garin of Iloilo is
trying to make a bill to prohibit the church to pass the offering plates 2
times, when God commanded only voluntary giving out of love, not a coercion on
the begrudging giver. I am not a politician, but I believe that it is my
responsibility to protect the gospel, in which one of the things that it teaches
is to be give generously out of love. As guaranteed by the constitution,
there is supposed to be a clear separation between the church and the state,
that neither can each intrude on the power, authority, and government of
the other.

Fellow pilgrims, do not be deceived by these kinds of
selfish people. We have to know how to work with God’s economy, just as
following His ordained laws, like the natural Law of Gravity, such that if
violated can kill us like in jumping out of a plane with no parachute. In fact,
in the moral and ethical law of the theocracy in the Law of Moses, following and
obeying God lead to blessings, while disobeying Him lead to curses. God don't
force people, but let them make a choice between blessings or curses, and people
always reap blessings or curses from what choices they sow, as the law clearly
admonishes or warns. If you know how a farmer plants and harvests, in the same
way, we have to plant seeds in the spiritual Kingdom, so that later on we will
reap harvests, not just in terms of harvesting souls for His kingdom, but as
many other blessings of fruitfulness to us and others from what we
sow.

Again, God never forces His people to give, because God loves
only a cheerful giver, who gives out of the pure motivations of love of God to
obey His commands and laws. In fact, the Bible said that it is a requirement for
us to give but should be out of love. Also, in the context of what Paul said
about God loving a cheerful giver, he meant for us to give with HILARIOUSNESS,
not begrudgingly, in giving out of love, not being coerced of giving not
out of love. The thing is, God wants us to learn how to be generous out of
the heart. In Jesus' teachings, He commended the poor woman who heartfully
gave like ALL what she had because of her love of God, as compared to the proud
and hypocritical Pharisee, who gave out of his pride and abundance, wanting only
the praises of men with his way of flaunting his giving. The poor woman humbly
gave her heart first and foremost in her giving, while the hypocrite gave
only out of his pride to reap the praise of men with his proud
hypocrisy. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. It was not the
amount given, but the heart behind the hand that gave.

Three days ago, as I was watching the 700 Club Asia, I was deeply blessed by the personal
testimonies of some people who tested God in giving. Indeed, what they have have
been greatly multiplied that they themselves do not have enough room for the
harvest of blessings that followed the sowing in giving out of their generousity
and love.

The Lord said in our passage; “Test me in this.” Let us
bring the whole tithes and offering. And guess what, the Lord himself gave a
promise, “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.”