F4F | Robert Morris: Living Beyond Blessed

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith here on YouTube. If you've ever read or been exposed to Robert Morris's teaching on the blessed life or how to have a more blessed life, there's a new teaching that's come out from Robert Morris.

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You know, apparently the blessed life was incomplete and he's added to it. So, you know, in explaining to you the things you need to do in order to be blessed of God so that you can be a blessing, yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below, and don't forget to ring the bell.

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You've been taught something very false. Robert Morris is an extremely dangerous false teacher, and his teaching on money and the so -called blessed life is totally based upon a complete twisting of God's Word.

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I feel like I'm gonna need to at some time go back in time and explain why and just what's exactly wrong with it.

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I have done some teaching on the podcast on this in depth. In fact, what I'll do is in the description down in this video,

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I'll put links to podcasts from the Fighting for the Faith podcast where I cover

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Robert Morris's false teaching regarding the blessed life in depth, and I think that will be helpful.

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So what we're gonna be doing is we're heading over to his Gateway Church, and we're gonna listen to Robert Morris as he's teaching on living beyond blessed, living beyond blessed, and we're gonna note how he engages in misdirection, isn't actually teaching something in the

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Bible, just saying something that sounds reasonable, but what the Bible teaches regarding the believer's attitude towards money is something very different than what he's saying.

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And we'll note the very real contradiction in his misdirection that he engages in.

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So grab some popcorn, let's get to it. Here's Robert Morris explaining to us how to live beyond blessed.

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Here we go. So we're going to begin a new series called Beyond Blessed.

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It'll be four weeks, I'll preach all the weeks, and the title of this message is Living Beyond Blessed.

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Now you might think, well what do you mean by beyond blessed? I mean if you're blessed, aren't you blessed?

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How can you be beyond blessed? So I thought of a little natural example, and it relates to where I am in my stage of life.

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If you have a grand... Now notice what he said there. I'm gonna tell you a natural example.

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If this were a biblical teaching, the first thing he would be doing is saying, I know that might sound odd to you, but let me open up a biblical text.

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We're gonna open up the Bible, please turn to such -and -such a chapter, and take a look at these verses, and we're gonna read this out, and I'll show you that this is a biblical teaching.

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So note, first thing he does is he goes to a natural example. This is not a biblical doctrine that he's teaching.

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This sounds reasonable to our sinful natures, but this is not a biblical teaching.

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He's not going to a biblical text, and when he does get to it, oh boy, is he gonna twist it bad.

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But we continue. Child, that's blessed. If you have nine of them, that's beyond blessed.

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So I'm beyond blessed. So what I mean by beyond blessed is that God blesses us.

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I'm not talking about materialism, please hear me, but it's so that we can be a blessing.

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It's so that we can bless others. Now note, this sounds so selfless, but it's not, and that's the hook of this false teaching.

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You see, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing. So it's okay to seek to be blessed from God so that we can be a blessing.

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Of course, there's things you've got to do, and primarily you've got to tithe and give offerings and firstfruits and stuff, and make sure you give the very, very firstfruits of the firstfruits to God.

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Otherwise, you can't be blessed. This is how he talks. But again, what he's saying, notice he's not exegeting a biblical text.

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And this started, this is actually, beyond blessed is the sequel to the blessed life.

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In some ways, it's the prequel. They go hand -in -hand, and I'll explain that. But let me give you a little history of the blessed life in...

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Talking about the book, The Blessed Life. We started the church in 2000. In 2001,

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James Robison's ministry came to me and asked me to come on the program and teach on giving. And the reason was,

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James said, because I teach giving, the way I teach giving, he was talking to me, he said, that you teach that we get to give, we don't give to get.

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All right, now that's an important statement that he made here, and this is where the misdirection is.

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So right up front, he's trying to create the impression, and it's a false impression, that he believes that we do not give to get, yet everything that's going to follow, you know, after he gives a brief history of, you know, appearing on James Robison's program, and then having, you know, publishing the book, and how the church itself there at Gateway owns the rights and makes about a half a million dollars a year off the royalties from the book,

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The Blessed Life. After all of that, everything that follows is you've got to do something in order to be blessed from God, and if you're not willing to do those things, then

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God will not bless you. In other words, you've got to give in order to get from God, and so he's denying it up front here, but this is like a magic trick.

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It's a, it's a, this is a form of, of sermon, sermononic, yeah,

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I don't even, sermonic, there we go, sermonic misdirection, you know, so it's, he's like, look over here, and so by you looking over there, he, you don't see what he's doing on the other side over there.

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You see, this is total misdirection, and I'll come back to that quote a couple of times in the segment, but I think you get the idea.

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Now, we'll move forward just a smidge in the actual lesson itself, and I lost my cue point.

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How, what, bummer for me, but thankfully I know where it is, and we'll jump in right here.

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But right after I wrote the book, I started getting a lot of emails and questions, and people would say something like this,

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Pastor Robert, I'm giving, but I'm still in debt. Okay, so notice what he just said there, that after he wrote the book, people would come to him and say, listen,

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Pastor Robert, I'm giving, but I'm still in debt. Didn't he just say that you, that he teaches that you do not give in order to get, and yet the assumption of the person coming to him is, well,

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I'm giving, but I'm not getting from God, I'm still in debt. And so what he should have said here is, well, didn't

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I tell you, you know, that we do not give in order to get.

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I mean, that's kind of the whole point of what he was saying at that point in the sermon. In fact, let me pull this up again.

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Listen to what he said. That you teach that we get to give, we don't give to get. Right, so he said that he teaches that we don't get, we get to give, but we don't give to get, and yet the presenting problem here with this person after he's published the book,

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The Blessed Life, is that their expectation is, well, I'm giving, how come I'm still in debt?

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I wouldn't agree with that. But right after I wrote the book, I started getting a lot of emails and questions, and people would say something like this,

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Pastor Robert, I'm giving, but I'm still in debt. And for me,

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I didn't understand that. Right, you should be saying we don't give to get. Watch what he does.

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Because giving is only one part of being blessed. Oh, see, there's two parts.

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There's two parts if you want to be blessed. So notice it's up to you whether or not God's going to bless you.

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Uh -huh. In other words, you're still giving in order to get from God. It's almost like saying, you know, when you talk about grooming, you know, you need to brush your teeth and wash your hair and use deodorant and, you know, all sorts of things for grooming.

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But it's almost like someone was saying to me, you know, I comb my hair, but I still stink. Well, notice no biblical texts yet.

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So he's full -on teaching a doctrine without any biblical texts, and it just sounds reasonable.

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God blesses you so that you can be a blessing. But is that what the scriptures teach regarding our attitude as Christians towards money?

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Answer, no, not at all. But let's keep listening. Well, there's more to it than simply running a comb through your hair, you know.

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So giving is very important, generosity. But there's a huge second component, and that's what we're going to talk about in Beyond Blessed, and it's stewardship.

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Now, please hear me. Stewardship is not a bad word. It's not a bad word. Many times we have a bad connotation of it because a church will say, we're going to do a stewardship campaign.

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It means we're going to raise money for something. Or I'm going to bring my annual stewardship message.

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It means he's going to preach on money, you know. But stewardship has to do with every area of your life. So let me explain to you about living beyond blessed.

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Let me tell you point number one. Point number one is it takes two legs. It takes two legs.

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Which biblical text says that in order to live beyond blessed, that it takes two legs?

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Answer, there is no biblical text that teaches any of this.

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This doctrine of the blessed life and living beyond blessed has its origin not in the clear passages of Scripture and what the

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Bible teaches. The origin of this is the heart and the mind of Robert Morris. If it weren't, then

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Christians would have believed and would have taught this since the beginning days of Christianity.

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But this is a brand new doctrine. It only recently appeared in the 2000s. Here's what

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I mean by that. I didn't name the blessed life. I didn't name it the blessed wallet. I didn't name it the blessed checkbook.

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I named it the blessed life. And a life walks on two legs. If you're going to get someone...

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Sure. Yeah. A life walks on two legs if they both work, unless you're a paraplegic or a quadriplegic or maybe you had a leg blown off in Afghanistan.

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Then you only walk on one leg and the other one's prosthetic. Again, this is weird because he's building doctrine based upon something that sounds reasonable -ish, but isn't really?

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Hmm. You got to be able to move forward by moving one at a time.

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Even Nick, who was here last Sunday night, you saw him on the table moving his hips, moving from side to side, just moving right, left, right, left.

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All right. So it's the same thing with being blessed. The two legs are generosity, which

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I covered in the blessed life, and stewardship. Let me say it this way. If you are generous, but you're not a good steward,

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God will never open the windows of heaven over you. Yeah.

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Which text says that? Again, if you are generous, but not a good steward, that God will never open the windows of heaven over you.

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I would beg to differ here because I know a lot of pagans, like major celebrity pagans, who make a lot of money, make bazillions of dollars every year.

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You think of Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey or Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg isn't known for his great

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Christian confession, is he? Not at all. And yet these guys are worth gazillions of dollars.

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One would argue, well, it seems to me like the gates, the windows of heaven have opened up over these people, and yet they might be generous to charities, but oftentimes their generosity is driven by the desire to not pay too much in taxes.

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Just saying. But they're not known for their Christian stewardship. Far from it.

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So you'll note here, he's just making stuff up. Now, let me show you a biblical text.

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Okay. Jesus warns about the deceitfulness of wealth and putting your trust in it.

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And it's in Luke chapter 12. I'll start at verse 13. Let's read this out and see what happens here.

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Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

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And Jesus said to him, man, who made me a judge or an arbiter over you?

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Jesus was not in the office of arbiter. Okay. And so he said to them, take care, be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

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Huh. In other words, it's possible for somebody to engage in the sin of coveting.

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Uh -huh. It's in the 10 commandments. I suggest you look it up. And coveting then leads to them having an abundance of money, an abundance of possessions.

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And yeah. And they have no faith or trust or anything.

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And they're not even saved. So then Jesus told them this parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully.

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Did. And you're going to know it did that despite the fact that this man was neither generous, nor was he a good steward.

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And so he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops.

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And he said, I'll do this. I'll tear down my barns. I'll build larger ones. And there

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I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry.

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But God said to him, fool, that this night your soul is required of you.

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And the things that you have prepared, that you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.

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How did he have such an abundance of monetary blessings from God when he was neither generous nor a good steward?

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Yet, well, Robert Morris was just saying that if you're not a good steward, you're not generous, you'll never,

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God will never open the windows of heaven over you. Yeah.

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What then is the Christian's attitude towards money? What is the one actually taught in Scripture?

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That we should seek to receive God's blessings by giving and being a good steward so that we can then be blessed to be a blessing?

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Is that the Christian attitude towards money? Answer, no, not at all. Listen to what the

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Apostle Paul writes in 1 Timothy chapter 6. I'm going to start halfway through verse 2.

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So Paul says to young Pastor Timothy, teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our

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Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he's puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

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He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

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But godliness with contentment is great gain.

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For we brought nothing into the world, we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, well, with these we will be content.

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But those who desire to be rich, and I would argue if you think that you've got to tithe so that you can earn from God, and you've got to tithe and you've got to be generous and be a good steward so that you can finally be rich, so that you can be a blessing, of course.

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You see, Scripture says this, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith, and they have pierced themselves with many pangs.

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Proverbs 30, starting at verse 7, says this, two things I ask of you,

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God, deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me falsehood and lying, and give me neither poverty nor riches.

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Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say who is the

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Lord, or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

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And Jesus teaches us to pray daily, give us this day our daily bread.

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Godliness with contentment is the Christian's attitude towards money. I just need enough for today.

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That's it. So let me neither be rich nor poor, but let me only have from God what is needful.

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That's the Christian, the biblical attitude towards money, and that's not what we're hearing from Robert Morris, and he just said, if you're not both generous and a good steward, well,

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God will never open up the windows of heaven to bless you, and he said that without a biblical text.

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I'm going to back it up just a smidge so that you can hear that. Let me say it this way, if you are generous but you're not a good steward,

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God will never open the windows of heaven over you. No biblical text says that.

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Here's the reason why, because you won't manage it right. He can never give you a lot.

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Yeah, what about that guy who had all that grain and stuff and was going to build another barn? He didn't steward or manage it right either, and he had all kinds of abundance.

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Huh, that's weird. Resources, because you don't understand stewardship. You're not managing.

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You won't manage them, and so it'll get wasted. On the other hand, if you're a good steward but you're not generous, by the way, we call that tight.

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Go ahead and nudge. Okay, then why would God bless you either?

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Hey, please hear me, because his purpose is to get the resources to the people who need it.

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See, now that sounds reasonable, but in order for a doctrine to be biblical, it has to be clearly taught in scripture.

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There's no scripture that teaches this. Think about the need.

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All the people who need food. Yeah, think about the need. No, I'm thinking I need to hear a biblical text, because you're teaching doctrines without biblical texts, and you're saying things for God that God has never said.

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In order for a doctrine to be biblical, it has to actually be taught in the Bible. The gospel preached, churches built, missionary sent, all the need.

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Over here, all the supply and demand would be God. God owns everything.

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He owns everything. He owns everything in the world. Yeah, that's true. Out of the world, for that matter.

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He owns Mars. He'll be at Mars when Elon Musk gets there. He owns everything.

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God owns it all. Here are all the resources, right? All of them.

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All of them. God has it all. Here's all the need. What's in between?

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You are. Again, this sounds reasonable and stuff, but it's not taught in scripture.

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Yeah, weird. Because God channels, directs, funnels his resources through his children.

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So he's trying to get it over there, so he'll bless you, but if it doesn't get over there, please hear me, he's going to move on to someone else.

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Yeah, which text says that? Because that wealthy guy sure did amass quite a lot of wealth for himself, not realizing that he was going to die soon.

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And again, the scripture warns us against the sin of coveting. He's going to find someone who will be a river, not a reservoir, because he's trying to help those people who need help.

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So he blesses. So we can be generous, but here's what happened with the blessed life. A lot of people caught generosity, but then they did not catch stewardship or the management of their resources well.

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And so the blessing didn't last very long, because when they got blessed... Oh yeah, see, they were only blessed for a short amount of time, because they were bad stewards.

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Oh, if only he had written the second book sooner. Or they didn't handle it well.

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They didn't manage it. So this is such an important thing. It reminds me of when

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I was growing up. I can't even remember what it was. I just remembered the picture in my mind. I saw some cartoon character, and they nailed one shoe to the floor, you know?

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Yeah, so now we're referencing a cartoon character, an unnamed cartoon character, who nailed a shoe to the floor.

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Notice what hasn't been referenced yet. A biblical text. Yeah, this is a man -made doctrine.

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So, I mean, if you want to just kind of get it in your mind there, you know. So this guy just did this the whole time.

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Everyone got it? Because I want to quit doing that. All right. That's what a lot of Christians are like.

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They're either generous, and they just keep going in circles, or they're tight, and they just keep going in circles.

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But you have to have both. You have to be a good steward, and you have to be generous. And here's the reason why it takes both legs to be blessed.

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Goes all the way back to our patriarch in the faith, Abraham. Now he's going to quote

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Genesis chapter 12, and he's going to twist it badly.

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And so I know the text he's going to go to. Let's take a look at it first before he gets there, so you can understand what it does say.

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And the text is Genesis chapter 12. I'll start at verse 1, and here's what it says.

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So Yahweh said to Abraham, go from your country, and your kindred, and your father's house, to the land that I will show you.

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And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

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And by the way, God explains what kind of blessing he will be. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you

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I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

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In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

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So God made Abraham a blessing, a blessing to all the families of the earth.

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Do you have any idea in which way God then has blessed all the families of the earth through Abraham?

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Answer, through Abraham's descendant, his seed, Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, who came and lived sinless life, bled and died for your sins on the cross, rose victorious from the grave, and is ascended into heaven, and now rules and reigns.

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That Jesus, that's the way in which Abraham has blessed the world. Now, a little bit of a note here.

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We can check this out, because Galatians, the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3, talks then about this blessing.

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Says in him writing against those who believe that they are saved by grace, plus by keeping

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Torah, you know, grace and works. The Apostle Paul says to them, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

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It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. So let me ask you this.

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Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? The answer is hearing with faith, by the way.

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Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain?

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Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and work miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

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Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness,

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Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Know then, it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham in the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the

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Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed.

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So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

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All who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written,

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Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and continue to do them.

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A little bit of a note here. If you think that you earn God's blessing by your generosity and your stewardship, that's all law, that's all works -based, that's all giving in order to get, and that's exactly what

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Galatians, the entire book, is written against. So what Robert Morris is doing here is absolute violence, and now let's see what he does with Genesis chapter 12, because we now know that Abraham was made, was blessed, and he has blessed all of the families of the earth through Jesus Christ and faith in God for the forgiveness of our sins and justification by grace through faith.

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That's the real blessing that's being referred to here. Watch what Robert Morris does, he's going to only quote part of the verse, and he's going to basically make up his own interpretation of what the blessing of Abraham is.

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Genesis 12 verse 2. I will make you a great nation. This is God talking to Abraham. I will bless you.

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Notice the idea of blessing a person was God's idea. God said, I will,

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I want to bless you and make your name great, and here's the reason why, you shall be a blessing.

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Not talking about financial blessing. Nope. Talking about the blessing of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins, salvation by grace through faith.

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That's what Paul says in Galatians 3. I will bless you so that you can be a blessing.

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See, God wants his kids to be beyond blessed. We're so blessed that we get... This has nothing to do with God wanting to bless his kids beyond blessed.

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But get away. We need to help people. We get to minister to people. Again, you have to have both.

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You have to be generous and a good steward. Yeah, yeah. Robert Morris is teaching on the blessed life as well as living beyond blessed, both of them.

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Total twisting of God's Word, and they do not teach what God's Word truly reveals regarding the attitude that we as Christians are to have towards money.

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Far from it. And the fact that he thinks that he can somehow take the blessing of Abraham and turn it into something financial for us to...

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That God wants to bless us financially here in the 21st century means that this man has no clue what the

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Bible is about or who the Bible is about. The Bible is about Christ and what he's done for us. What a mess.

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So what'd you think? Yeah. If you found this helpful, please share this video with people.

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So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.