00:00:00.000 - 00:00:33.000

[silence] [music] People Moving Power brings you Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. After a short word to our tape listeners, we will hear his message, "How to Become a Brand New Person."

00:00:33.000 - 00:01:13.000

[music] When I got up this morning, it was ice cold. I think someone went to bed last night and left the refrigerator door open. But every hour since, things have been warming up.

00:01:13.000 - 00:01:32.000

And now the congregation is coming to worship here at the Glendale Presbyterian Church. And there is a warmth of expectancy, a warmth of friendship, that warmth which becomes Christians. And it makes me feel wonderful. Because today I can tell all of these folks about how to become a brand new person.

00:01:32.000 - 00:01:41.000

I'm glad you're going to be listening to this message too. I hope it warms you. God bless you, my friend. [silence]

00:01:41.000 - 00:01:59.000

From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of Hosts. But you say, "How shall we return?" Will man rob God?

00:01:59.000 - 00:02:11.000

Yet you are robbing me. But you say, "How are we robbing thee?" In your tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse.

00:02:11.000 - 00:02:34.000

For you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of Hosts. If I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.

00:02:34.000 - 00:02:57.000

I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil. And your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of Hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed. For you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of Hosts.

00:02:57.000 - 00:03:28.000

And may God bless to us this reading from his holy word. Please be seated. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

00:03:28.000 - 00:03:59.000

Amen. Whenever a person gives himself to Jesus Christ, his Lord, whenever he becomes a faithful disciple, there enters into him a new life, a new power, a new joy, and a new enthusiasm, as surely as the day follows the night. Yet I think all of us will admit that even after we have become disciples of our Lord Jesus,

00:03:59.000 - 00:04:25.000

there are some days when we don't feel the joy and the enthusiasm and the excitement of our faith as we do at other times. We have, as it were, our ups and our downs. Sometimes we feel like the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote in the second chapter of his prophecy, "The Lord is a fountain of living waters. The waters keep pouring down, they never stop."

00:04:25.000 - 00:04:56.000

And then sometimes we feel like that same prophet Jeremiah, when he wrote in the thirteenth chapter of his prophecy, "God, you are like a stream that runs dry just when I want to get a drink." We feel the Jeremiah experience in our own lives. But it's important for us to recognize that when we feel that, it's not because God has moved, it's because we have.

00:04:56.000 - 00:05:27.000

Indeed, I think that most often, indeed invariably, when we as Christians encounter lows in our spiritual experience, it is because to one degree or another we are out of relationship with God. I came across a letter which I think illustrates this in a very interesting way. It was a letter written by a bricklayer who lives in Goulders Green in England.

00:05:27.000 - 00:05:56.000

And this letter appeared in the journal of the British Society of Contracting Engineers. This man wrote this letter to his employers, and they in turn put it into their magazine. And I just thought it illustrated the instances that occur in many of our lives, and I'd like to share it with you this morning. Very serious letter.

00:05:56.000 - 00:06:33.000

"Respected Sirs, when I got to the top of the building, I found the hurricane had knocked some bricks off the top. So I rigged up a beam with a pulley at the top of the building and hoisted up a couple of barrels full of bricks." Lifted the bricks up to the top to do the repair work, you see. "When I had fixed the building, there was a lot of bricks left over.

00:06:33.000 - 00:07:08.000

I hoisted the barrel back up again and secured the line at the bottom, and then went up and filled the barrel with the extra bricks. Then I went to the bottom and cast off the line. Unfortunately, the barrel of bricks was heavier than I was. And before I knew what was happening, the barrel started down, jerking me off the ground."

00:07:08.000 - 00:07:43.000

Jerking me off the ground. "I decided to hang on. And halfway up, I met the barrel coming down and received a severe blow on the shoulder. And, continuing to the top, I banged my head against the beam and jammed my fingers into the pulley.

00:07:43.000 - 00:08:35.000

When the barrel hit the ground, it bursted its bottom, allowing all the bricks to spill out. Unfortunately, I was now heavier than the barrel, and so started down again at great speed. Halfway down, I met the barrel coming up and received severe injuries to my shins. When I hit the ground, I landed on the bricks, getting several painful cuts from their sharp edges.

00:08:35.000 - 00:09:11.000

At this point, I must have lost my presence of mind, because I let go of the line, and the barrel then came hurtling down, giving me another crushing blow on the skull and putting me in the hospital. I respectfully request sick leave." Now, we can laugh at the fellow if we want to, but I would submit that most often in our Christian lives,

00:09:11.000 - 00:09:34.000

when we're going up and down, it's our own fault, just as happened to this bricklayer from Golders Green. This last summer, I met a young man. We'll call him Sam. He's a second-year student at the University of Kansas. He's preparing for a career in veterinary medicine. He found me in a little laundry in a little town in northern Pennsylvania.

00:09:34.000 - 00:09:57.000

I was sitting there watching my clothes go around in the dryer. He'd been looking for me and found me. He came up and he explained that he'd become a Christian three years before, that he read his Bible every day, that he prayed faithfully, that he never missed worship, that he was part of a midweek Bible study group, and that his life was absolutely flat.

00:09:57.000 - 00:10:19.000

"I'm doing everything I know how. I'm following every spiritual discipline of which I can possibly be aware, and my life, even though I'm struggling for the peaks, is being lived altogether in the valleys." Now, why is that? It took me almost three hours to get across to him the fact that he had become so bloated with blessing, he couldn't carry himself all the way to the top of the mountain.

00:10:19.000 - 00:10:42.000

He had been so busy getting things from God in worship, getting things from God in prayer, getting things from God in Bible study, getting things from God in one discipline after another, all perfectly good activities, but there was no place in his spiritual experience where he was giving anything. And as a result of getting so much and giving so little,

00:10:42.000 - 00:11:05.000

he never managed to get up to the point where he wanted to and was living his entire life on the plains. Plains, plains. So he went back to school. He continued all the activities he'd been doing before because they were very good, but he also took on the task of teaching a Sunday school class and of leading in that midweek Bible study.

00:11:05.000 - 00:11:31.000

He became a tither of his time, his talent, and his treasure, and he is now signed up for missionary service next summer in the Far East in what will be a very difficult assignment. And the difference in it? Let me read one paragraph out of just one of three marvelous letters I've received from him in the last five weeks. "God continues to bless my life here on this campus. As you predicted, I am pressed by the challenges of the year,

00:11:31.000 - 00:11:51.000

but I am meeting them. I have committed my way to him and he is directing. I'm discovering a new way to succeed and a new freedom to fail. I was trying so hard in one way that I shut God out of my life. Now the Christian life has become more and more an adventure for me."

00:11:51.000 - 00:12:11.000

He was saying, you see, that he was spending all of his time trying to get a spiritual jag, and all the time he ended up with a spiritual jolt. But as soon as he began to focus not so much on getting from God, but on giving to God, things changed. And that's exactly what Malachi is saying to us in the passage of Scripture which is before us this morning.

00:12:11.000 - 00:12:29.000

Malachi is speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. These are not words which he made up himself. And speaking for God, he says, "You are robbing me." The people say, "How are we robbing you?" "Because you are not giving your tithe, which is a tenth of the time, a tenth of the talent, and a tenth of the treasure."

00:12:29.000 - 00:12:50.000

"Prove me," God says, "bring the tithe and see if I won't open to you the windows of heaven and pour you out such a blessing that you will not be able to contain it." "Prove me, put me to the test," he says. Many people never become totally, altogether, brand new, never know what it's like to have the windows of heaven opened above them

00:12:50.000 - 00:13:11.000

precisely because they are scrambling so much to climb into those windows and forgetting that it's only when they start to give that they begin to really receive. God, you see, asks for the tithe not because he needs our money or our time or our talent, but because he wants us.

00:13:11.000 - 00:13:32.000

And it's only when he has us that we become brand new people. One of the things you discover, for example, as soon as you start to tithe in every dimension of your life is that it feels great to be getting things right with God. We have a tendency to make things soft on ourselves while the Bible teaches us

00:13:32.000 - 00:13:46.000

that if we enter into hard living and hard serving and hard giving, then it is that we're going to know what the comforts of the faith really are. I don't know if this story is true or not, but it's supposed to be. It happened in Atlanta, Georgia, they say.

00:13:46.000 - 00:14:07.000

A Presbyterian elder was on the way to church one morning, very early, because he was to teach a Sunday school class. He was walking down a side street. Suddenly he was confronted by a thief who was wearing a mask over his face, pulled a gun on him, and said, "Give me your money or I'll blow your head off." So he began to empty his pockets, and among the things that came out of his pocket was a little pocket New Testament.

00:14:07.000 - 00:14:28.000

And the thief looked at him and said, "Are you a preacher?" The man replied, "No, I'm not a preacher. I'm a Presbyterian elder." And the thief looked at him and said, "Okay, you can keep all the money and all that other stuff. I'm a Presbyterian myself." I don't know whether that's true or not, but I know there are some Presbyterian robbers

00:14:28.000 - 00:14:51.000

who are busy robbing God, and what they haven't recognized is the truth that we used to hear on the shadow every Sunday afternoon. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The person who gets robbed is the individual who is robbing God. Four thousand years ago, God laid down instructions for powerful, brand new Christian living.

00:14:51.000 - 00:15:08.000

Bring the tithe of your skills, the tithe of your time, and the tithe of all the material things that you have, and I will bless you beyond your capacity to imagine. I'll open the windows of heaven. And some people have never seemed to recognize the truth of that.

00:15:08.000 - 00:15:30.000

And though, thus, they're not brand new people. Another thing that happens when you begin to become a responsible tither is you get closer to the people of God. Someone has said, "Blessed be the tithe that binds." I think that's a good line. But the fact of the matter is, when you become a tither, you have less time to spend with other people and other things.

00:15:30.000 - 00:15:46.000

You have less money to spend on other people and on other things. You tend to go where your money and your time are, and you spend more of your time and more of your money in the church, since you have less of it to spend other places. And as you become more involved in the life of the church, you get closer to other Christians.

00:15:46.000 - 00:16:02.000

A young businessman in our congregation came to me four weeks ago, and he told me about being offered a position which was number two in the sales force of the corporation for which he works. It would take him back east. A fabulous promotion.

00:16:02.000 - 00:16:18.000

Meant a great deal in prestige and in income. And this young man came and he told me all about it, and I said, "It sounds very exciting. What are you going to do?" He said, "I've decided to turn it down." Why? "I'm so much of a part of this family of God's people, and my own family"--

00:16:18.000 - 00:16:35.000

he has a wonderful wife and children-- "my own family means so much to me that I'm afraid that if I enter into this new position, I'm going to separate myself from this family of God's people that means so much, and I'm going to have to put so much time in on that new job that it's going to take me away from my wife and children,

00:16:35.000 - 00:16:57.000

at least to the degree that I like to be with them, and consequently, I have decided that I'm not going to do it." Now, of course, that kind of a decision is branded as downright foolishness by some Presbyterians. Those are the Presbyterians who try to build their lives on the balance in their bank book instead of on what I call Christian social security,

00:16:57.000 - 00:17:20.000

which is to be in the society of Christians and to build not on a bank book, but to build on brotherhood. A long time ago, there was a man named Harley Proctor, and he owned a soap company in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now, in the soap factory, they have a big machine that stirs the soap. It's called a crutcher, and one night, somebody left the crutcher on. It went all night.

00:17:20.000 - 00:17:41.000

And when they came in the next morning, it had stirred that soap to the place where it was nothing but foam, wasted. So they let it dry out and get hard, and then they were going to shovel it out the window into some wagons to carry it away. Only when they shoveled it out the window, some of it missed the wagon and fell into a puddle. And lo and behold, when it fell in the puddle, it floated.

00:17:41.000 - 00:17:54.000

They'd never seen soap float before. They thought that might be a marketable item. So they put it on the market without any name. It didn't have any name. Now, this man, Harley Proctor, was a Christian. He was a tither.

00:17:54.000 - 00:18:15.000

He was a tither of his time. He was a tither of his talents. He was a tither of his treasure. And a few months after this product was on the market, he was in church one morning, and they were singing a song called "Out of the Ivory Palaces," which has to do with the purity of heaven. And he began to think about the purity of his soap.

00:18:15.000 - 00:18:28.000

So he talked to some of the other Christians there about it. Did they think ivory might be a good name? And they all agreed. And so ivory soap was named ivory soap. It floats.

00:18:28.000 - 00:18:52.000

Now, I'm not giving you any soft soap this morning when I say to you very seriously that the Christian who gets tied in with other Christians because of his involvement in his efforts and his stewardship begins to float. There is a buoyancy to that Christian life. There is an irrepressibility to that kind of Christian experience. There is a surge to the top kind of movement in that kind of Christian living,

00:18:52.000 - 00:19:11.000

which helps to make you a brand new person. And here's something else. When you begin to tithe in every dimension of your life, you discover a growing discipline in yourself. You have to say no to yourself. You don't have as much money to spend on other things.

00:19:11.000 - 00:19:26.000

You don't have as much time to spend with other people. You don't have as many skills to bestow in other directions. You've got to start saying no. And as soon as you start saying no, that begins to build the fibers of discipline more and more into your living.

00:19:26.000 - 00:19:43.000

There's a father who taught his girl how to budget before she went off to college. And then when she came back at the end of the first semester, he asked to see her budget accounts. And she showed them to him and said, "Clothing so much and food so much and entertainment so much and books so much." And then she had one thing there, T-L-O-K.

00:19:43.000 - 00:19:56.000

And after it was one-fifth of her total income. And her dad said, "What's T-L-O-K? You spend an awful lot of money on T-L-O-K. What is T-L-O-K?" She said, "Well, Dad, there's lots of times I can't remember what I spend it on. It just seems to go so quick."

00:19:56.000 - 00:20:10.000

So I put that category in there. He said, "What does T-L-O-K mean?" She said, "That means the Lord only knows." Well, I'd like to ask you this morning, if anybody other than the Lord really knows where all your time goes,

00:20:10.000 - 00:20:25.000

have you ever run a strict analysis of your time and how you spend it? Of your skills and how you utilize them? Of your money and how it goes through your fingers so swiftly? If you were to do that, you would be able to discipline yourself

00:20:25.000 - 00:20:39.000

and do the kind of thing that we're talking about from this passage of Scripture. You see, we use no force with regard to giving in the Church. There was a time when the Church was supported by taxes levied on all the people. We don't do that in America, thank God.

00:20:39.000 - 00:20:57.000

And then there was a time, you know, when the Church was supported by bazaars and church dinners and cake sales. Some churches still do that. We don't do that here at Glendale. There are some churches that have a pledge card where you promise that you're going to give so much and you sign your name and they send a bill every three months to let you know, you know,

00:20:57.000 - 00:21:11.000

how you're doing on your promise and all that stuff. We don't do that either. We allow it to be a matter that's totally between you and God. You put the amount on the card and you put that in and there is no name attached.

00:21:11.000 - 00:21:31.000

You are the only person who knows whether you are living up to what you and God have agreed to do. That means the burden of discipline falls upon you. I moved into a house last September. I've been in it just a little bit over a year now. I never knew how expensive it was to own and operate a house.

00:21:31.000 - 00:21:50.000

I didn't even know the grass grew so quickly in Southern California. And I made a faith promise and I got behind in it. The first time I ever got an electric bill for $90 and a water bill for one month for $72, all of a sudden, you see I've got five guys living in my house

00:21:50.000 - 00:22:08.000

and you can go into my house at any hour of the day or night and at least three of them are taking a shower. And suddenly when the money was going out that way, I found out that the faith promise was not going to be what I thought it was going to be. And I will be quite frank to you and tell you that I got many hundreds of dollars behind.

00:22:08.000 - 00:22:23.000

And when I started to talk to you a few months ago about catching up, I was not only talking to you, I was talking to me. And it's been a very difficult discipline catching up. And it's been even harder to go ahead of that because some other people aren't catching up.

00:22:23.000 - 00:22:40.000

But that's been good for me and I commend that to you. You see, the future of the world rests in the hands of disciplined people. And the tithe is but another way in which God blesses us by helping us to discipline ourselves. It helps to make you into a brand new person.

00:22:40.000 - 00:23:03.000

When you enter into this kind of giving, you get right with God, you get closer to God's people, you feel a growing discipline in your experience. And one more thing, you know that you are making a difference in this world. You know that you are making an impact in this world for Jesus Christ.

00:23:03.000 - 00:23:20.000

You are putting your talents in his service. You are putting your time at his disposal. You are putting your money into the hands of those who together with you can spend it to honor his name. And that makes a difference. Now, we all need to make a difference, you know.

00:23:20.000 - 00:23:35.000

Life doesn't have much point if there's no difference in your even having been here. I can identify very closely with that old lady in Tennessee who heard a sermon on missions one Sunday morning and she was very, very poor and she wrote out a pledge for $10 to missions.

00:23:35.000 - 00:23:50.000

And that night, when the stewardship council was putting all the pledges together, the financial secretary saw her pledge and he said, "I know how poor she is. I know she can't give that $10. All this lady does is take in washing. She does our washing.

00:23:50.000 - 00:24:06.000

So I'll just pay her pledge for her right now and you can mark it paid in full." And he did. And a few weeks later, this lady came in to her pastor and she said, "I'd like to begin playing on my pledge." And he said, "Your pledge is already paid for." She said, "It couldn't be. I haven't paid anything on it." He said, "Oh yes, it's paid in full."

00:24:06.000 - 00:24:22.000

She said, "It couldn't possibly be. I've just been saving a few pennies out of each washing. I don't even have the whole amount now. I can only bring in about a half of it now. It couldn't possibly be paid." "Yes, it is paid," he said. And he explained how it was paid. And she began to weep.

00:24:22.000 - 00:24:36.000

And he said, "What are you weeping for?" She said, "The gospel is being proclaimed. The glory of Jesus Christ is being announced. And men are hearing of him and accepting him as Lord.

00:24:36.000 - 00:25:03.000

And their souls are being saved. And I have no part in it." Well, it is a sad thing to have that going on in the world and not be a part of it. And when you begin the kind of stewardship that Malachi enjoins here, then you do become a part of it and you know that you make a difference.

00:25:03.000 - 00:25:23.000

I get uptight about this because-- Well, a minister friend of mine in an airplane was sitting next to a Vietnam vet. And he asked the vet what he did in the war, and the vet explained that he'd been a medic. And he said, "Well, what do medics do?" And he told him.

00:25:23.000 - 00:25:37.000

"Well, of course, the thing that we do which is most dangerous is after a battle, we go out onto the battlefield. We identify those who are fatally wounded and we leave them there. And we go on and take care of those who can be saved."

00:25:37.000 - 00:26:08.000

And my minister friend said, "It must be awfully hard to turn away from a fatally wounded comrade on the battlefield." He said, "They teach us in medic school never to look into the eyes of a dying man. That makes it easier for us to leave."

00:26:08.000 - 00:26:24.000

You see, my problem is I've seen too many eyes. I've looked into the eyes of little black children in Africa with kwashiorkor who would be dead within four weeks of the time I saw them. And I've looked into the eyes of youngsters in Glendale, California

00:26:24.000 - 00:26:42.000

whose eyes are hurt because they're out of relationship with parents who not only do not honor Jesus Christ but dishonor him. I've seen the hurts on their bodies where they've been hit. And I've seen the hurts in their eyes where their hearts have been stepped on.

00:26:42.000 - 00:27:02.000

And I've seen the tired eyes of black women in Tanzania who are worked beyond what we work our beasts of burden because there's no redemption from the gospel there. And I've seen the tired eyes of women in this city who know terrible frustrations at home,

00:27:02.000 - 00:27:25.000

living with men sometimes who dishonor them, dishonor their families, dishonor the society, let alone dishonoring God. I've looked into the glassy eyes of suicides and held their hands while they died. And I've looked into the glazed eyes of people who are committing suicide

00:27:25.000 - 00:27:50.000

over a longer length of time by wasting everything that they are and everything they have on pleasures and clothes and parties and six-packs and junk. They're making no difference and who know it and are dying because of it. How can you miss the eyes?

00:27:50.000 - 00:28:19.000

God in his providence has put us as his church in the midst of a basin where there's more alcoholism, more sexual perversion, more illegitimate births, more venereal disease, more narcotics addiction than any other place in the country. We're right here. How can we miss the eyes?

00:28:19.000 - 00:28:48.000

How can we be satisfied with not making a difference? That's the reason, you see, that Paul echoed Malachi. Malachi said, "Bring the tithe and I will pour out blessings." Paul put it this way, "I beseech you, present your bodies, that is your whole life,

00:28:48.000 - 00:29:12.000

a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is your reasonable service." And both of these two, Malachi in the Old Testament and Paul in the New, were but hinting at a truth which Jesus put so succinctly that no one with even half a mind can miss it.

00:29:12.000 - 00:29:51.000

He just said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." God wants us to give, not because of what we give, but because we follow what we give. We give ourselves, and it's when we give ourselves that we become brand new people. So the financial secretary in my little church back east was 80 years old.

00:29:51.000 - 00:30:10.000

Can you imagine that, a financial secretary 80 years old? One morning one man came in and he handed her his envelope, and he went out and he got in his nice car and he drove away. And she said to me, "He is a model giver."

00:30:10.000 - 00:30:42.000

I said, "Really? That guy is a model giver?" She said, "Yes, you know what a model is. It's a small imitation of the real thing." I have never forgotten that, because you see, small imitations of the real thing never become brand new people. Let us pray.

00:30:42.000 - 00:31:06.000

It's hard to know what to pray right now, because I can't think of any one prayer that fits everybody in the room. So pick out one of these three prayers. If you are a tither, then thank God for the blessings that you have known in tithing. But remember, tithing is time and talent and treasure.

00:31:06.000 - 00:31:29.000

Thank God for the privilege which is yours in doing this, praising. Now, if you are not a tither, and you have heard the word of the Lord today, and you are going to begin to tithe, not next January, but today, you are going to begin tithing now, well, then make that commitment to God, your prayer.

00:31:29.000 - 00:31:44.000

"Lord, I want to be a brand new person. Lord, I want to honor you first. I'm going to look for opportunities to serve you. I'm going to call the Church and make myself available.

00:31:44.000 - 00:32:28.000

And I'm going to begin to write your check first each month." And, if you haven't made that decision, and if you're not a tither, well, I would suggest that you just pray, "Father, help me. Forgive me.

00:32:28.000 - 00:32:53.000

Teach me. Humble me. And love me anyway." Amen.