Eternal Embezilment

His claim up on your life.
Isaiah 14:12-16, 53:6

The child clutches the new toy and cries at the top of his lungs, “You can’t have it, it’s mine!”
A grown-up says a little more calmly, “My life is my own and I live it to suit myself.”
Like the rich fool, we can only see that which revolves around our little world.

I: Sin Is A Refusal To Accept God’s Will.
1. One may be careful to give God the tithe and then dishonor God in the way the other nine out of ten are used.
2. One may play god by passing the churches total obligations with the tithe.
3. The sinner may refuse God’s way of life and built standards of his own.
4. “If I give and have not love.”
5. “What hast thou that didst not receive?”
6. “The living sacrifice is more important.”

II: Embezzlement of Church People:
1. The church, as a rule, moves forward under half steam (Xerxes led an army of 1,000,000 men, said, “I wish I had as many soldiers as I have men,”).
2. Giving is the finest discipline we can accept for developing our Christian lives.
3. We need to teach ourselves self denial.
4. Consistency — Too many of God’s people have to be primed when we ought to be like a steady spring.
5. Our own church embezzles enough time, talent, and tithe to triple our work if we were honest with God.

III: Sent It On Ahead.
1. You can’t take it with you.
2. A cup of water.
3. A visit to the sick or prison.
4. A stranger befriended.
5. Faithful to a task.
6. Some day we must stand before God and give an account.

With shame, we must face the eternal facts of that which we embezzled from God.

Embezzle – To make away with, to squander, to appropriate fraudulently to ones own use, as money intrusted to one’s care.