Sermon Overview
Scripture Passage: Malachi 3:7-11

By definition, stewardship is our relationship with money: how we obtain, save, invest, spend, and give our wealth.

God is interested in this relationship—in how we care for the things He places in our hands. Satan, who is also very interested, would love to keep us in financial bondage.

Malachi 3 shows us how to open the windows of Heaven and receive the blessing of financial freedom.

“Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of hosts. “But you said, ‘In what way shall we return?’” (Malachi 3:7).

If we want freedom, we must first recognize our failure; financial bondage is not just debt. If money increases our worries, or if we have plenty in the bank, but no treasure in Heaven, we are in financial bondage.

Second, we need to renew our fellowship; God isn’t interested in our money, just our hearts.

When we remember tithing is God’s way of revealing our priorities to ourselves, we will see tithing as a great blessing. It is our privilege to show God that He is first in our lives and everything else is second.

After we return to our fellowship with God, we need to release our finances to Him.

Adrian Rogers says, “If you can’t trust God with your finances, how is God going to trust you with true spiritual riches?”

“Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it” (Malachi 3:10).

According to Scripture, tithing is ten percent given to the temple of God (church), for the work of the temple. Giving to charities or ministries is good, but it is not a replacement for our tithes.

When we learn to give back to God freely, we’ll see a spiritual renewal. God will renew our faith, rebuke our foes, and restore our fruitfulness.



Apply it to your life
Are you seeking freedom from an indebted spirit? Recognize your failure and renew your fellowship with God. Understand that He wants you, first and foremost. Then, show your faithfulness through tithing.

Sermon Overview
Scripture Passage: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

If we believe in our hearts that Jesus is coming again, we must be ready for His return; 1 Thessalonians 5:2 says He will come “like a thief in the night.” This chapter, 1 Thessalonians 5, offers four truths about Jesus’ glorious return.

First, it will be a surprising day.
We are certain that He is coming, but we do not know when. As we wait for Him, we should be sharing our faith with others, so that they are also ready for the Second Coming.

Adrian Rogers says, “Jesus Christ is coming; He came on time, He was born on time, He died on time, and He rose on time. He’s coming again in His own time; He will never be late.”

Second, we can escape sudden destruction.
“But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief” (1 Thessalonians 5:4). The day of Christ’s return will be a solemn, sudden, and sure day—the calm before the storm of judgment to come. On that day, He will rapture His Church from the world, and believers will escape the Great Tribulation prophesied in Revelation.

Third, we must endure this surrounding darkness.
We live in a world plagued by moral, spiritual, and political darkness. As children of God, we must be aware and wise up, be awake and get up, and be alert and dress up—putting on the armor of God. According to 1 Thessalonians 5:8, we need to get our hearts right and keep our heads right: “But let us who are of the day be sober.”

Finally, we will experience a sure deliverance:
“For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-11).

This passage explains that we can expect to be delivered from His wrath. This assurance is meant to edify us in these Last Days. As God rescued Noah and his family before flooding the Earth in Genesis 6, so will He rapture His Church before the Great Tribulation.

Apply it to your life
As we wait with expectation for Jesus’ return, we should be in the habit of sharing the Gospel. Adrian Rogers says, “Get your head out of the clouds of prophecy and get your feet on the pavement of soul-winning.”

Sermon Overview

Scripture Passage: Daniel 9:20-27

Before Jesus stepped into our world the first time, Daniel 9 predicted His Second Coming. This Old Testament passage can be seen as an outline of the things to come in the Last Days, when time runs out.

“Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city…” (Daniel 9:24).

This passage first designates the period of time (490 years), the people (God’s chosen people, Israel), and the place (the Holy City of Jerusalem) to take center stage in the End Times.

This passage also determines the prophecy’s purpose: “...to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy” (Daniel 9:24).

Adrian Rogers says, “God has a plan and in 490 years, He’s going to finish that plan; nothing has gotten out of hand, not a jot or a tittle will fail from the law, till all has been fulfilled.”

This passage also reveals how it will come about. “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince…” (Daniel 9:25).

This command to rebuild Jerusalem was given in the Book of Nehemiah; this is when God’s clock started ticking. Adding up the years recorded in the Bible concerning Israel’s commencement and construction, we calculate 483 of the 490 years prophesied.

When Jesus came, the clock stopped and it has yet to resume; there are seven more years of biblical prophecy yet to be fulfilled.

Daniel also saw Jerusalem being destroyed, symbolizing how God’s chosen people (Israel) rejected Him. We are living in an undetermined period of time marked by wars and desolations as God deals with Israel.

But once the Bride is complete, and the last soul is finally redeemed (Romans 11:25), Jesus will return to rapture the Church, and the clock will begin ticking again.

After the seven years of Tribulation, when the 490 years are complete, Jesus will step in once again.

As Adrian Rogers says, “This time, Jesus is not coming for His church, rather with His church in power and great glory; 777 will take care of 666.”

Apply it to your life

Study the prophecies in Daniel 9 with humility and reverence; ask the Lord to help you understand it and affirm it in your heart today.