Don't Curse Your Tree Before It Bears: The Secret of the Tithe

Sermon outline

God has a due season and a good future for you, and the way to protect and extend what He puts in your hands is to honour Him with the tithe, as Abraham did.

1. Whenever God has a need, He raises a man

   From Genesis to Revelation God uses a man or a woman to bring His people out of bondage, lack and sickness, and that is why the enemy fights to disconnect you from your church and your shepherd. God first shows you who you really are, and only when you admit it can He start to help you. His pattern is to break you first and then make you.

   Illustration: As a young Christian reading the Word he began to see himself: full of unbelief and religion but with no power of God. Then God started to deliver him, year after year.

   “Whenever God has a need, He raises a man.”

2. Your due season is on its way

   God's people lack patience, hope and faith, and some are trying to script their own future and force connections God never planned. If God said it, He will do it, so wait for the appointed time and keep calling your fruit forth even when the tree looks bare. Do not look at someone else's script; God has one just for you.

   Illustration: Before the joy of a baby there is labour pain, pushing and screaming. There is a time when the curtain goes up and your play begins.

   “Don't curse your tree before it bears.”

   • Numbers 23:19
   • Galatians 6:9
   • Deuteronomy 29:29

3. You will recover

   People in the world lose things and never get them back, but not the children of God. It may take waiting, patience and some fighting, but God is the God of the future as well as the now. He says this was not part of his notes, but somebody needed to hear it.

   Illustration: David at Ziklag: the city was plundered and the wives taken, David inquired of the Lord, and the word came to pursue and recover.

   “It may take some fighting but you will recover.”

   • Proverbs 6:31
   • 1 Samuel 30:8

4. Your fortune is in the book

   You do not need a witch doctor, a soothsayer or a fortune teller to know your future. It is written in the Word, and it is a good one, with long life.

   Illustration: A story he heard from a preacher: a man in Ghana was told by a witch doctor that a starved chicken eating grains of corn would decide how many years he had left. The man kept his chicken, ran to a church and gave his heart to the Lord. He jokes that he will eat the chicken instead.

   “Your fortune's in the book, and it is a good fortune.”

   • Psalm 91:16

5. Seed that leaves your hand never exits your life

   Breaking into Hilton's testimony, he teaches that seed goes into your future and multiplies, so you can sow into your future. He did not reach where he is through cleverness or open doors but by sowing at every opportunity. Over and above the tithe, find out what God's house needs and meet it.

   Illustration: About two years earlier Hilton sowed more than R15,000; he has now been offered two positions in one company and given a new company car. A couple new to the church bought a keyboard costing over R35,000 after Adrian had asked for one for a year.

   “When you see to the house of God, God will see to your house.”

   • Ecclesiastes 11:1

6. The tithe is a law God has set in motion

   The tithe is ten percent of all your income, it is holy to the Lord, and it pays for the running of the church. Oil, fasting and prayer cannot make up for ignoring it, because it is a law that works whether you believe it or not. It takes faith to tithe, and after the tithe come offerings and getting involved in God's house.

   Illustration: The Lord asked him whether a man who is anointed with oil and then jumps from the twentieth floor will live. He also tells how he used to hold back the tithe in bonus month and everything he touched went wrong, and how, while working for the government, he pledged towards a church car park by faith, was given the money within a week, and saw over R100,000 come into his hands the week after.

   “I've set a law in motion and it will work whether they believe it or don't believe it.”

   • Malachi 3:8-10
   • Leviticus 27:30

7. The secret of the tithe: one of seven secrets of Abraham's success

   Abraham, the father of faith, gave tithes of all to his priest Melchizedek long before the law of Moses. David, the man after God's own heart, confessed that everything he offered had come from God in the first place. Your intelligence, looks, job, income, degrees and spouse were all given to you by God.

   “Wherever you are in life, remember that God has made you what you are.”

   • Genesis 14:20
   • 1 Chronicles 29:14
   • 1 Corinthians 4:7

8. Everything you hold has an expiry date

   We live under a law of degeneration: paint flakes, grass grows, and things run down unless you apply the law of renovation. The tithe and the offering are what protect and extend what God has given you, and if you do not give God what is due to Him, He will displace and replace you. The first voice telling you to give is God's, not the devil's.

   Illustration: As a young Christian, when God told him to give, he would rebuke the devil. It was not the devil he was rebuking but his own unbelief.

   “The devil is not a giver, he's a taker.”

9. Our lives are in God's hands: tithe for the generations to follow

   Life can be cut short however bright the plans, so give back to God and place your life, your length of days and your family in His hands. You are tithing for your children's and grandchildren's future, and he is convinced his own children will never lack because he and Pastor Zubeda chose to be tithers and sowers. There is no condemnation for those without an income, but once you have work, give God His portion.

   Illustration: A colleague about to be married died when his car struck a tree on the day he had given him a Bible. A friend he led to the Lord refused to help with the church and went after money instead. A family acquaintance qualified as a doctor and died at 27. On the flight home a man coughed for eight hours near him, and he prayed for divine protection.

   “We are not living for ourselves but we are living for the generations to follow.”

   • Psalm 90:10
   • Proverbs 11:25
   • Psalm 37:25

10. Learn to make a life, not only a living

    He reads a piece a friend from Pretoria sent him on the paradox of our time: more possessions and fewer values, a living but not a life. He adds that giving the tithe and offering is a way of saying 'I love you, God', and that giving releases a joy that cannot be explained. Stress less, laugh more, drop prejudice and become a better you.

    Illustration: One year he sowed three or four cars to people, one of them brand new, and his heart overflowed with joy.

    “When you give to God the tithe and the offering, you say, I love you God.”