Sell and Give
Sell and Give–Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Luke 12:33,34
Jesus tells you in verse 33 how to operate in His Kingdom.
- If you are going to operate in the Kingdom of God, you must operate in Kingdom principles. Most Christians are failing because they are trying to operate the world system in the Kingdom of God. You have to operate Kingdom principles in the Kingdom. World system ways will not work in your spirit. You must use Kingdom principles, which are foreign to the world’s way of thinking.
Sell that ye have. Jesus is ministering to all kinds of people.
- There are some poverty-stricken people in that crowd, and He says, Sells that ye have. In other words, “If you don’t have anything to give, sell something and give.”
- Provide yourselves bags. Jesus didn’t say to “provide for yourself with bags.” He said to provide yourselves bags. When the Bible speaks of “yourself” and the Apostle Paul speaks of “himself,” they are referring to the inner man. The real you is the man on the inside—the spirit man, the human spirit.
- Deposit God’s Word in your spirit. Then speak forth God’s Word from your heart. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart will bring forth good things.
- As an example, let’s take the scripture verse, Luke 6:38. Begin to say, “Thank God, because I have given, it is given unto me good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” Speak it. Make it a daily confession. Bring it forth with the words of your mouth.
God is honest; He will perform His Word.
- He said, “My Word will not return unto Me void.” (Is. 55:11.) But God wants you to return His Word to Him. So take God’s Word—His promise concerning a specific thing. If your need is in the area of finances, but that Word in your heart by speaking it there. Get the good treasure of God’s Word in your mouth, then speak it. That will bring it out and cause a manifestation.
- Giving is one of the fundamental principles of the law of prosperity. It’s not the amount given that is of the greatest importance to God, but the percentage. If you have five pennies and give one of them, you have given twenty percent of all that you own. To God that is just as important as a man who has five million dollars and gives a million. As far as God is concerned, that man hasn’t given more than you have.
Rewards are based on percentages given.
- The return is based on the amount you give. This principle works for you the same as it does for the millionaire. The only difference is that he is operating with larger numbers. If you will continue using the principle, your nickel can turn into a million dollars!
Don’t Eat Your Seed
What is the difference between selling and donating?
- Luke 6:38 says, Give, and it shall be given unto you… But some people eat their seed: They use all that they receive on themselves until they have nothing to give.
- A good example of what happens when you eat your seed can be seen in the life of a man I met in Montana. He picked me up at the airport and drove me to a meeting. Though he did very little talking, I could tell everything was going wrong for him.
- After the last meeting of the seminar, he came to me and said, “Brother Capps, my wife and I are in bad financial trouble. She doesn’t have a job, and my job doesn’t pay enough to meet the bills. I don’t know what we’re going to do!” I said, “Let’s pray.”
Not knowing how to pray, I prayed in the Spirit. As I prayed, the Spirit of God said to me, “He has eaten his seed.
- He has taken the money he should have given to the Gospel and used it for other things.”
- As I prayed for that man, the Lord said, “Give him $100. Then tell him not to spend it on himself, but to give it away.”
- He told me later that the Lord had already spoken to him about giving to two ministries. But he said, “I didn’t have any money to give.” He took the money I gave him and divided it between the two ministries.
- About three months later when I went back to that town for another seminar, the man said, “I want to tell you what happened: I got a raise and my wife got a job! Our financial problems are over!”
Seeds Are for Planting
- Any farmer knows if he eats his seed, he will be in trouble!
- All God has to work with is what is sown or given. He can’t produce a crop if we haven’t given Him the seed to multiply. Make a habit of giving, whether your income is large or small.
- Unless you give when your income is small, you will never give big. If you haven’t developed the habit of giving tithes and offerings when you are making $90 a week, you will never do it when you are making $1,000 a week. We must be obedient to the basic principle which remains the same regardless of our income.
- Jesus said if you don’t have anything to give, sell what you have to get some seed.
You Reap on Earth
- Sell that you have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not (Luke 12:33). Traditionally, we have misinterpreted this verse to mean that we are laying up treasures in heaven that are unavailable to us on earth. We won’t need money in heaven; we need it here on earth.
Your Bag Is your Spirit (Heart)
- When Jesus said, Provide yourselves bags which wax not old, He didn’t mean to get a purse that you would use in heaven!
- What part of you doesn’t get old? Paul said, Though our outward man perishes, yet the inward man is renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). According to Paul, the part of you that doesn’t wax old is your human spirit. Your inward man is renewed day by day; it never ages.
- The Greek word for treasure in Luke 12:33 means deposit. Jesus is saying that, by giving, you are providing yourself (the human spirit) as a bag, a purse, or a container, in which you store or deposit God’s Word (the Treasure). Moths can’t corrupt this bag; neither can thieves steal it because this container is the heart.
- Jesus said, For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The treasure isn’t being stored for you to get later in heaven. It’s in your heart—the production center of God’s Kingdom. This is God’s Kingdom at work on the earth.
Your Need Has Been Supplied
- Inflation is a thief, but it can’t steal what you put in your heart. Put God’s Word in your heart, and thieving circumstances will not be able to rob you.
Confess daily:
- “I have given, and it shall be given unto me. I sow bountifully; therefore, I’m reaping bountifully. My God meets all of my needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
- Paul wrote the Philippian church and said, My God, shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19). He used the word need, not needs.
- Before this, he had said, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only . . . ye sent once and again unto my necessity (Vv. 15,16).
- The Philippians had been obedient to the laws of prosperity and had hidden the good Word of God in their hearts. Because they gave to help Paul, God’s servant, then God was promised to supply all their need. He was saying that their needs wouldn’t pile up, but that they would have one need at a time and that He would meet each need as it came due.
The promise came because they had stored the Word of God in their hearts and acted on it by giving.
- According to Luke 12:33, when we sell what we have and give alms, we are provided a treasure in the heavens that faileth not.
- In the Bible three different phrases are translated as heaven or heavens. In this verse from Luke’s Gospel, heaven refers to the lower level of heaven, which is just a little higher than the earth. The Greek word for heavens in Luke 12:33 doesn’t mean the higher heaven where God is; it means the first level of heaven which is just above the world system.
The World’s System Is Designed to Fail
- God’s system of success we are discussing is not positive thinking or a scheme dreamed up to work in the world system. It works in the spiritual realm. It works out of the human spirit, not out of man’s intellect. If you only confess out of your head (your mind) the system won’t work because it’s a spiritual operation.
- Provide yourselves bags which wax not old, Let your spirit produce what you need. Let it be the ground in which you deposit the seed of God’s Word. Out of that seed, good things will grow and you will reap the harvest on earth.
A treasure in the heavens that faileth not.
- After all the world’s schemes fail—when everybody is hiding in the mountains, storing up for the famine— God’s system of sowing and reaping will prevail. The present world system is failing because it was designed to fail. God’s system won’t fail; it will prevail.
- When everyone else has an empty gas tank, your tank will be running over because of the good seed you have sown in your heart.
- Jesus says that it is unfailing on the higher plane where no thief approaches and no moth corrupts. (Luke 12:33.) We begin to think, That must be in heaven because no thief can get up there and there will be no moths or insects there to corrupt it. But wait a minute! He says, Provides yourselves bags that wax not old. How many ladies do you know whose purses are no older now than when they bought them? Jesus is saying, “Provide yourself as a container, a depository, that will never wax old.”
You may say, “That must be in heaven.”
- No. In 2 Corinthians 4:16, the Apostle Paul says, but though our outward man perishes, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. Jesus was saying that you provide yourself. Your human spirit, which the Bible calls “the heart,” becomes the container in that you put the treasure.
- Now how do you put it in there? In Romans 10:18 Paul tells you: The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart. First in thy mouth, then in thy heart. It gets in your mouth before it gets in your heart. The Psalmist David said, my tongue is the pen of a ready writer (Ps. 45:1). Proverbs 3:3 refers to writing upon the table of thine heart. How do you do it? With the tongue. The tongue is the instrument that writes on the heart.
- When we operate in the realm of the spirit with God the Father, we will find the wisdom of God to bring our prosperity to earth.
Consider the account of the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 6:1-6.
- When he and the sons of the prophets went out to cut down some poles at the edge of the Jordan, one of the ax heads flew off and sank in the river.
- The prophet Elisha cut a stick and threw it in the water where the ax head had sunk.
- The people standing around must have wondered, “What in the world is he doing?”
- Elisha used the stick to cause something to happen: The ax head floated to the top! Under the world’s system, ax heads don’t float, but Elisha was operating in the spirit realm. An ax head floating on water is a spiritual operation that cannot be explained in natural terms.
- When you operate in the spirit realm, the people around you who operate in the natural realm will react to you just like the people who reacted to Elisha. They’ll say, “What in the world is he doing by confessing abundance and no lack? The news tells us that inflation is eating up our bank accounts!”
- People have told me, “God’s not concerned about material things.” Isn’t an ax head a material thing? There is certainly nothing spiritual about it! God produces miracles of like substance. When Elisha wanted the ax to float, he threw something in the water that would float and received a miracle of like substance.
God’s System Produces Abundance
- We must realize that God designed a system in the earth, in you, that will produce everything you need in this life —not just enough to barely get along, but more than enough so that you can live an abundant life!
- You must work the system diligently; otherwise, it won’t produce for you, just as the world system won’t produce for the man who is too lazy to work at it. Some people can start with nothing and make a million dollars. Why? Because they know how to operate the world system. Others, not diligent in operating the world system of business, could start with a million dollars but lose it to someone who applies himself to the ways of the world.
Operate in the Spiritual Realm
- God’s principles, which operate on a spiritual plane, put a positive charge around you and ward off all that the Devil can send against you. This faith force, which works on a higher plane, causes the blessings of God to come to you when everyone else is in lack.
- Knowing how to live on that higher plane is worth digging for in the Word of God. Jesus said that you are providing a treasure on a higher plane that will fail not. That treasure won’t fail when it’s on that higher plane.
- If you drag the supernatural principles down to the level of the world, they will fail. If you say, “This system doesn’t look as though it’s going to work!” you’re dragging the spiritual principles down to the level of what you see, feel, and hear. They won’t work!
- Apply the giving principle to small matters first until you learn how to give successfully. It will work just as well to get you a parking place downtown as it will bring in $50,000 to play a note. God’s way is a miracle of like substance. No matter what you give up—whether it’s money or your parking place—it works by the same principle.
Things To Remember
- Giving is one of the fundamental principles of the laws of prosperity. Rewards are based on the percentages given.
- Don’t eat your seed!
- Make a habit of giving. If you don’t have anything to give, Sell something. By giving, you are providing yourself (your spirit) as a bag. You deposit God’s Word in your spirit by speaking it.
- The Word is in your mouth before it gets in your heart.
- Operating in God’s system will produce abundance in your life. The blessings will come when others lack!