Managing Money

When I make up every year, I make up a list of ideas for sermons. And I had this sermon scheduled for this week that I had scheduled months and months ago. And earlier this week, I was thinking, oh, I think I'm going to speak on something else. But just watching all the news and everything this week, where, of course, with the election, one of the big discussions was the economy. Making money, how much money we can make, what's going to happen. One side said, if we're elected, the economy will just explode.

And the other side said, no, if you elect them, it will collapse. And it will explode if you elect us. And I was watching these debates all about who's guaranteeing you that you're going to make more money. Well, I thought, you know, I was going to talk about money. Well, I don't know. I'm going to change the subject. But after watching the news all week, it was like, no, I want to talk about money today. No, I don't have any great advice on where to invest. I don't have any great advice on how to make lots of money.

But I want to look at some places in the Scripture, especially in the teachings of Jesus, where wealth and money, He discusses wealth and money. And we need to sometimes get this perspective, because we live in a very wealthy society. And just sheer amount of things we have and comforts we have, there's never been a country like the United States in all of history. And just the amount of things we have.

You go back 100 years ago, they didn't even have those things, right? 100 years ago, most people didn't even know what an automobile was. And here we all, well, I can't say that. In the 1920s they did. But there were a lot of farmers that didn't own automobiles. They might own a tractor, maybe. So let's start by going to Luke 16. And say, oh, why is He going to talk about money? Let's look at this very strange thing that Jesus says. He gives a parable. I'm going to go ahead and read the parable because you would think when we get to the end of this, you know what this parable is about.

You would think, okay, I know what this parable is about, and then Jesus gives the explanation of it. He says in verse 1, He also said to His disciples, There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his good.

So you have this wealthy man, and he has an employee. We'll just say, okay, he's a businessman. He has an employee. And it comes to him that one of the steward was different than just a regular servant. This was someone who had authority. This manager of his business was actually skimming off the top. This manager was making money illegally off the business. So He called him and said to him, What is this that I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward. He says, You're no longer my steward, and we're investigating you. So I want all your papers. I want your ledger book. I want everything there is, because we're investigating you because you have been stealing and cheating.

Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig, and I'm ashamed to beg. He says, I don't want to do manual labor. I like being a manager. I like making lots of money. I like being in charge.

And I'm sure not going to go out and take welfare. So what am I supposed to do? Putting it in modern terms. I have resolved what to do. That when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. In other words, I'm going to do something so that all the clients of my boss will take care of me.

See, he called every one of his master's debtors to him, and he said to them, First, how much do you owe my master? And he said, A hundred measures of oil. And he said to him, Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty. Now, he's actually doing this where he's going to sign on to this. He's lowered what he should pay his master. And since he's doing this so that the person... Wow, you're a good guy. Now, I've seen this happen in business. When you work for radio stations in big markets... I only worked in a big market for a while.

It was so cutthroat. Everybody was waiting for the arbitrant ratings to come out. And I was working for a station that had just become number one in the ratings. The result was every advertising salesperson in Austin, Texas was willing to leave their station, no matter how loyal they were, no matter what, to get here because...

And they were willing to go tell their clients, Oh, I'm going over there because, Oh, the new arbitrant has come out and they're beating us. And you'll want to take your advertising there. That's actually not legal, but they were doing it. And so the station I was working for was just grabbing all the talent. They had a man that had just come into the city from Honolulu. He was a salesman for a television station.

He got hired within like three days. He was in Austin. They weren't even going to let the TV have him. TV stations. They were hiring out all the talent because we have to now get all of their advertising. So this guy's looking at this and saying, You know what?

I go cut all their bills down. And when they found out I'm fired, somebody's giving me a job. Because, you know, I did something good for them. He said to another, how much do you owe? And he said, a hundred measures of wheat. And he said to him, take your bill. It's now 80. So the master commended. Well, okay. Now we know. We stop here and say, okay, the master's now going to say, You foolish and evil man, I shall throw you into outer darkness.

Right? I'm going to throw you into debtors prison. I'm going to have you arrested. All of a sudden this parable goes just in another direction. So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly for the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. Now, if it just stopped there, this would be a bizarre parable that we would have no explanation for. Jesus is telling his disciples, yep, look at this thief, liar, and cheat.

And he knows more about business than you do. That's it? Does that mean I'm supposed to go become a cheat and a liar and a thief? Is that what I'm supposed to do? But then he goes on, and now he's going to break this down.

He says, I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon. Mamages is an old English word. It means wealth. It could be translated money. For when you fail, you may receive you into everlasting home. Make friends of money so that when you fail, you can receive the kingdom of God. That makes no sense either. So he has to explain more.

What's the point he's going to? I can't imagine being there and having him say this. It's like this is against everything you've ever taught. Because he was faithful on what is least is faithful also in much. And he was unjust on what is least is unjust in much. He says, you have to be learned the wisdom and the proper use of whatever wealth you have. Because this is part of how you're learning to be just and unjust.

This is how you're learning to be, you know, tell the truth or lie. How not to steal and to steal. In other words, I'm giving you wealth. God is giving us wealth as a learning tool. Sometimes we see wealth as a measurement of goodness, right?

Oh, wow! This person makes a lot more money than everybody else. They must be really righteous. God's pouring out blessings on them. It is the core of what's called the health and wealth gospel, right? You've seen them, right? See this watch? I paid $10,000 for it. No, this one was $39,000. Okay. But I – or $29,000. But this is what they say. This is a $10,000 watch.

You can have a watch just like this, too. All you have to do is give more money to the church, and God will bless you and give you a Rolex. They tell people that. That whatever you own is because God is blessing you because you give to God.

Now, it is true that God blesses us. But that whole concept, you give to that man and you get something, is absolutely wrong.

Absolutely wrong. So he says God's given you this to teach you things, whatever it is. A little or a lot, the amount doesn't matter. Whatever we receive, it is received so that we learn to learn or to obey God for what's given to us. Therefore, if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous man, who will commit to you to trust the true riches?

He said, if you can't learn to manage what we have now, how can you manage anything in the kingdom? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own? Now, that's very interesting. In other words, as an employee, because he's talking about the unjust steward here.

As an employee, we have to learn to treat our employer's goods properly.

We actually have to learn to be faithful within the framework of God's teachings to our employer.

Which seems like a crazy idea in the society we live in. But then he sums it up. He now brings down, okay, I'm telling you, look how this guy was so shrewd, because he knows how business works better than you do. And I'm telling you to learn to use what you have properly, because what you have is there for God to teach you. And then he wraps it up with the most important statement in all this. No servant can serve two masters, for either we will hate the one and love the other, or else we will be loyal to the one who despises the other. You cannot serve God and money. Now that doesn't mean you can't have money. In fact, part of the argument he just gave was, God's going to give you certain things, and then you have to learn how to use it right. But you can't serve it. You can't, your whole life can't be about what I get. I remember someone telling me one time, well, my philosophy of life is, he who has the most in the end wins.

So I said, so when you die, you have more than your neighbor, you know, more boats, more houses, more cars, more... you win. And he said, yes. And I said, win what? Well, you just win. No, no, I want to know what you win. So at your funeral, I can get up and say, this is what he won. Okay, I'll try to be at your funeral there, and I'll get up and tell people what you won. What did you win? So he says, learn to use what we have, and it doesn't matter how much or what amount. We have to learn to use it in the way God wants us to. What I really want to do is look at some very important lessons we learn from our money. Spiritual lessons. I'm not going to talk about how to budget your money. Maybe in the Bible study I'll talk a little bit about some biblical precepts of how to use money. I mean, there are precepts here, but we're talking about this parable here and his point in it, and that we can't serve. Our whole life can't be about what I get, what I make, what I do. That's part of life. And what we do with that spiritually, what do we learn from all this? What do we learn from the physical things that we have? The first thing is in Luke 12. Sort of a long passage here. We'll jump through part of it, but I want to cover it. Well-known passage. A lot of times we read it from Matthew. But Luke 12, a man comes to Jesus and he says, The one from the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Now, there were laws about inheritances all through the Bible. So when he comes to him and says, ask him to do this, he's asking him to support the law. Tell my brother what the law is, because he's obviously hoarding the inheritance, which he feels is unfair.

And you think Jesus would say, well, let's sit down and look at the law and let's figure out what we should do. And that's not what he does. He says, But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?

He's looking at this and he says, there's a number of problems here. Well, everybody has a problem because his next statement is about both brothers. Now, he didn't say, yes, your brother's wrong. Let me go deal with this. He didn't. He said, you know, take it to the courts. But here's the real issue here. And he said to them, Take heed of the aware covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. He didn't say it's wrong to possess things. There are some people in the Bible who were very wealthy and there were people who lived in abject poverty and their righteousness was the same.

You just see that. The righteousness was the same before God. But he says here is covetousness. It's this desire to get and to get what others have. And our whole society is designed on advertising, trying to make us get and go after what they want us to buy. I know I've mentioned that before. I mean, I just I get tired of writing commercials, new and improved. Because after a while, well, what was new and improved?

Well, they changed the packaging. Oh, they do studies on what color of packaging is right now. It's what people are attracted to and they'll pick it up. And you go into the store and you wonder why your favorite brand of whatever is down the long down on the shelf below and not on the shelf that you can see. It's because people pay to have it on that shelf because it's easy to get to.

Everything is designed to get you to get something. It's the whole society. I don't want to offend anybody, but just you have to realize capitalism in the end is as evil as communism. It just you get lots of things along the way. I'm saying capitalism the way it is today. It's big market capitalism. Big market capitalism ends up being just as evil because you're controlled by somebody.

The other communism you don't get anything. You're just controlled by the government. In big market capitalism, you're controlled by companies who are constantly manipulating you to get something. And it's like, oh, he's anti-American. No, I'm kingdom of God oriented and there will be free enterprise in the kingdom of God. But I guarantee you from looking at what the scripture says, it'll be actually more regulated than it is today.

It will be regulated by Jesus Christ. He says that he spoke a parable to them. Okay, now he's got to really talk about covetousness. They spoke a parable to them saying the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself saying, what shall I do since I have no room to store my crops? Well, what would you do? I'd say what I would do, I'd build another barn, wouldn't you?

I mean, that's the normal thing to do. And he's not saying this is wrong. You have to get to the end here to get his point. Because everybody's going to say the same thing. Oh, yeah, I know what I would do. And he thought within himself saying, or verse 18, so he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater. And these I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul or self, I will say to myself, you have many goods laid up for many years.

Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. I finally got my life laid out. Everything's great. And I'm just going to have a good life and I'm going to have fun. You know, I'm to the age where I have to think about retirement. Ministers don't. We don't make a lot of money as for towards retirement, but many of you don't either. Many of you don't have any real retirement. And what we're looking at is, all of us, or most of us in this room, a lesser lifestyle.

But what if you get to the place I'll do anything to have a good lifestyle? And you become obsessed with, now we should be planning for the future, and you become obsessed with that, so that I can eat, drink, and be merry. You know, I know people that their whole goal of being able to retire is so that they can do nothing but travel. And that's wonderful.

That's a good thing. But what if that doesn't happen? But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul will be required of you, that those whose things will be provided, or these things be, which you have provided. The point he's making here is, in verse 21, So as he who lays up treasure for himself, it is not rich towards God. He doesn't say we shouldn't lay up treasure for ourselves, by the way. The Proverbs is filled with instructions on how to do that. Filled with them. It's okay to own a house. It's good to save money for the future. It's good to have a retirement plan. It's good to save money so your kids can go to college.

This isn't the issue. It's good to save money so you can buy a car. That's not the issue. The issue is, is that what life is all about? And for a lot of people, that's all life is. It's the economy, right? It's can I make money? Can I continue to make money? Why lose my job? Now those are concerns. I'm not saying it's not long to be concerned. I'm saying is that the focus of your life? It's the focus of your life, what I get. And since it's what I get, you're always comparing yourself to other people.

So it's covenants-ness. So you have to measure up with what you have. He says, so you're rich towards yourself, but you're poor towards God. Now this would mean, of course this would include tithing, obviously. We're in the tithe. We give offerings. But it would be, if you look at the rest of the context of what he talks about here, because he talks about this part of what he gave on the Sermon on the Mount, when he said don't worry about life because God is going to take care of you. And so over the next few verses, over and over again, he says don't be anxious all the time.

You have to trust that God's going to take care of you. He didn't say you're going to have to trust that God's going to make sure you always have steak. He didn't say that. He said God will take care of you. So this is more than just paying tithes. I mean, God doesn't need our money, right? We pay tithes because we're grateful to God. If we pay tithes for any other reason, you're missing something.

We give to God because we're grateful. We're thankful. And so what happens is this being, you know, rich towards God is a whole lifestyle. It's the way you approach God so that you're not worried all the time. Now, you have worries about money. We all do. Every one of us has to have times in life where we've worried about money, right? We all have. But his point is, stay right with God and He will take care of you. It may not be what we want all the time, but He will take care of us.

And that's what he says here. He says in verse 31, But seek the kingdom of God. And of course, it's included in Matthew. It's Matthew's account would be a little bit more complete because he was there. And his righteousness. Seek his way. And these things shall be added to you. He says, do not fear little flock. Verse 32, for it's your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. So he says, keep focused on what's important. Enjoy. By the way, God wants us to enjoy physical things. He made physical things for us. We just went to the Feast of Tabernacles where we were commanded.

You know, this is a special time. You could buy things you would normally buy. You could stay in places. You could eat. In fact, the command is, go eat lots of stuff, okay? God made physical things for us. There's nothing wrong with wanting nice clothes. There's nothing wrong with wanting a nice house. There's nothing wrong with that. When that becomes our focus of life, then it's a problem. Our focus of life must be the kingdom of God.

Because, you know, no matter, unless you're extremely wealthy, life is always what? A roller coaster of up and down. It's always a roller coaster of up and down. And sometimes it's like, wow, everything's going great. Good. This too shall pass. And then it's really down. It's like, oh, it's terrible. Yes, this too shall pass. Because why? Because we walk with God. That's why. But it's hard in a society where we are told that our value comes from what we buy, what we have, what we wear. So our first thing is, the first thing we learn is trusting of God to supply our needs.

That is part of why we have things. And that's part of sometimes why we need things. We have to trust in God to supply our needs. A second thing we learn from being, from the physical things that we have, is we have to learn honesty. That's one of the things we just read. We have to really learn honesty. You know, it's only business—take it personal—it's only business. Is it godly? I want you to just—I'm going to read this.

You don't have to turn there because I want you to listen to what I'm reading. These are two Proverbs. Getting treasures by a lying tongue is the fleeting fantasy of those who seek death. That's a pretty strong statement, isn't it? Trying to gain by lying is just seeking death. Proverbs 31, 11. Wealth gained by dishonesty will be diminished, but he who gathers by labor will increase.

One thing that we find throughout the Scripture is the requirement to work.

Absolute requirement to work. When we accept money for a day's wage, honesty, the internal character, the virtue of honesty, is that we will give everything we have to that employer within, of course, what is proper right—I mean, you don't commit a crime— but you do everything what that employer asks for the sake of the fact that they hired you.

You will accomplish that day's work so at the end of the day you want your employer to say, You did a good job, but you know what? Most of the time they don't, do they? But you know, honesty requires I'm exchanging my labor for your money, and I will do more for you than you're paying me.

If you are an employer, you will make sure those people get their pay, and you will make sure that they're taken care of, and you're sure that you do what's good for them.

We forget sometimes that this whole relationship—and this is especially for most of us—most of us are employed by somebody, right?

And by being employed by somebody, we forget the moral obligation we have to actually serve that person, that company, to serve them as Christians by being honest and be giving them a full day's work.

Honesty. What you have comes from them. If you've ever lost a job, you find out real quickly how suddenly you've lost everything.

There's not a paycheck coming in. There's no paycheck coming in.

A third thing we learn—I've told this story before, but it just makes this point so well.

The first woman millionaire in the United States back in the 1800s, Hedy Green, Hedy Green became a billionaire, played the stocks, owned businesses. I mean, what she did was amazing.

But you know what she's really known for? She's known for being so frugal that she lived in a dump.

She wore a black dress, and every once a year, whenever that black dress wore out, she would buy a new black dress and some new underwear, and she would just keep wearing the same clothes, washing them by hand.

She never ate a nice meal. She never rewarded anybody else. She never gave away to anybody. She never was kind.

Her son needed an operation, and she let him suffer because she said it cost too much. And she was a multi-millionaire at a time when a million dollars was a lot of money.

And she died in 1916 as the world's wealthiest woman.

And as one person said, and probably the most unhappy person on the face of the earth, stinginess is a sin. And one of the things we learn from what God gives us is generosity. Now, we can be too generous sometimes. We can give things to people that they'll just abuse.

But at the same time, generosity should be a character trait we have. And see, it doesn't matter how much you have. If you're the poorest person in this room, you can be generous with what you have.

It doesn't matter how little it is. That's not the point. Or how much it is. That's not the point. Generosity is a character trait. Now, I'm going to read some Proverbs again. Just listen to these.

These are all from, you know, the book of Proverbs in your Bible. He who oppresses the poor reproaches his maker, but he who honors him has mercy on the needy.

I understand there's people that are poor, and we'll talk about that in a minute, because of their own fault and because they won't work. That's something different.

Most people are in poverty and they can't get out of it. Many of them are.

And yes, maybe they made mistakes. Maybe they... But the bottom line is, we're not supposed to hand out a survey with every poor person we have a chance to help. And you can't help all of them. It's just too much. It's overwhelming. It is overwhelming.

And I know I've told you this before, too, but I... It's like one time I went down to Austin. I was looking for a man who said he was going to commit suicide. And he was homeless. And I went to the homeless shelters in Austin. And I'm at night just going through homeless shelters where there's thousands and thousands of people.

Many of them just out on the street because the homeless shelters were full. People with children. People... And I'm walking through thousands of people trying to find a face and a sea of faces. And I couldn't help all of them.

My only hope was to help one man. Maybe he won't die tonight. And he didn't.

But that's just overwhelming. How do you help all these people? You can't. But one guy, one person, you can help.

Well, we have an opportunity at the right time to do something.

The Proverbs says, He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he gives his bread to the poor.

Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard.

See, I get a little nervous when our answer to all poor people is get a job.

Now, I agree. People should work.

But you know, we don't always know what the situation is. We don't always know what people are going through. I'm just reading you the Bible, folks. That's what it says.

The righteous considers the cause of the poor, but the wicked doesn't even understand that kind of knowledge.

Isn't it? That's a remarkable statement.

Generosity is simply the willingness to share a little bit of what you have to others.

When the opportunity arises.

A fourth, and this gets us now to the other end of this discussion in terms of generosity on one side, is that the Bible does require that we have a work ethic.

We have a work ethic. We're supposed to work. There's an idea around somehow that—and I don't get it— that so many people believe everybody owes me something. The government owes me something. Everybody owes me something. Why?

Well, I mean, it's like I saw an interview with an artist. He wasn't very good. Nobody would buy his paintings.

So the government owed him a job. They owed him a weekly check so he could do his paintings because he's an artist.

But no one was going to buy it. He's terrible, but it didn't matter. The government owed him because he was an artist, and that's what he was created to be, and therefore all of us were supposed to pay him every day to create art that my five-year-old granddaughter is better at.

No, if you're not good enough to paint, you better find something else.

You better find out something else. No, that's what I want to be, and everybody owes it to me.

That is not biblical. You and I have a requirement to work, to produce. Second Thessalonians. Paul dealt with this in the church. Second Thessalonians chapter 3. It started in verse 6. But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. Now, this is very interesting. He's not talking about the world. He's talking about the church. He says, if you have a troublemaker in your church that just causes trouble all the time, don't talk to him.

Just don't talk to him.

You know, pretty soon he just stand there by himself. He or she just stand there by themselves. Nobody seems to talk to him.

For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you. Now he's going to explain how the situation, what does disorderly mean, okay, in this specific case. And he's going to explain it. For you yourselves know that you should follow us, verse 8. Nor do we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but work with labor and toil night and day, that we may not be a burden to any of you. He says to the church of Thessalonica, he says, okay, you have problems there with people who won't work.

And so all they do is cause troubles with everybody, always asking for money, asking for help. Now it's not wrong to ask for help, but ask for money. But this is a specific issue that we need to be aware of. People who live this way. We as ministers try to warn each other. There are people who travel all... They find out that the United Church of God is an easy mark because we try to help people.

Sometimes they deserve it, sometimes they don't. We had a man come in here recently and wanted money. And I asked him some questions. And he says, yeah, I want your church to give me money. And I said, well, we're a small church. I said, I tell you what, we don't have anything to give you, but I'll give you everything I have.

I opened my wallet, pulled out, I don't know, $18 or whatever was in there. And I said, there, I give you everything I have. He was really disappointed. But he left. I said, now you can't ask these people for money, but I gave you everything. I have nothing else to give you. So he left.

That's disorderly, okay?

Demanding money from the church.

He's never been back, by the way.

Here we have Paul's example. When we were there, we didn't even ask for money. He would later say in other places, but we have a right to. God says the workers of the laborers of the gospel can be paid by the tithes of the gospel. He says, you know, we wanted to show you how not to take advantage of each other. So, you know, we know he was a tent maker. He was preaching the gospel, visiting people, healing people. And in his spare time, he's making tents to make enough money to live off of. So you know he's not getting rich, okay?

He says, not because, verse 9, we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us. For even when we were with you, we commanded you this, if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.

Okay. In other words, this is a willingness to be in poverty. This is a willingness to have other people take care of me, because I won't take care of myself. Now, I just was talking about how we have to be careful sometimes. We can judge people that are trapped in a situation. But this situation is the opposite. It is a willingness not to work so that I can get what other people have. And he says, then don't give them anything.

If that's all it is, that they just won't work, then don't give them anything.

For we hear that there are some among you who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. In other words, all they do is cause trouble, and they tell other people what to do, and they're not producing anything by working, and in the church all they produce is strife.

He said, okay, don't give them anything. It's simple. You don't have to yell at them. You don't have to be mean to them. Just nobody give them anything.

This means that you and I have a responsibility, and we are required to work. Now, if you're out of work, you can be out of work for a lot of reasons, and many times not because of something you did, right? Everybody's been out of work. Well, maybe some of you haven't, but... Most of us have been out of work, and I've been out of work, okay? I got fired for one time and from a job because of the Sabbath, and I was a minister. That was weird. Actually, I didn't get fired. I quit. I would have been fired. And, you know, Kim and I said, what are we going to do? I don't know. Well, go get a job. Just go get another job.

So, you know, I was looking for jobs. We have to understand the importance of not being lazy. Laziness isn't just somehow, well, I just don't feel like doing things. It's a character issue. It's actually a spiritual issue. Some more proverbs. The soul of a sluggard. You know, that's someone who... that's an English word. I don't know. I have to look up what the Hebrew is. I don't think it's as colorful as the English word. You know, a slug. How slow a slug moves? Okay. A sluggard. It just moves real slow. The soul of a sluggard desires and has nothing. But the soul of the diligent shall be made rich. You work hard. You get something for it. He gives... In Proverbs 24, he tells the whole story about he was walking along and he looks over at a field. And it hasn't been plowed. The fences are down. There's vineyards there. They haven't been trimmed. And the whole place is just decaying. And he said, that man deserves what happens to him. He didn't take care of his own property and grow his own food, but he'll want other people to give it to him. He must have known the person to know what the problem was. He said, so what's going to happen is he's going to get... He's going to feel like he got robbed by an armed man when he wakes up one day and realizes he has nothing. Proverbs 21 says, the desire of the sloth will kill him, for his hands refuse the labor. He covets greedily all day long, but the righteous gives and does not spare.

Those who refuse to work can't give to others. They don't have anything themselves.

I've seen people have almost nothing, but they work hard. And they'll share with you everything. They'll just share everything with you. Even though they work really hard, but they don't have much. Maybe they just don't have any skills or whatever. I mean, there's a hundred reasons why somebody cannot be making a lot of money and still be working very hard.

I remember as a kid, I never knew what worked any harder than my dad. He sanded floors, worked construction. He tried to do that in February when there was three feet of snow. But he wouldn't go on welfare. But there were times there wasn't much, but we would take people into our house and take care of them. And then I remember one person complained one time, because all you get is cornmeal in the morning for you folks in Tennessee that's grits. All we get is grits in the morning, cornmeal in the morning. And at dinner they never have meat. That's because the dairy shot. By late February we'd run out of meat.

But you know, the spring would come, he'd go out and work, and we'd get all kinds of stuff, right? But boy, usually in some of those winters there was a couple of months in there, we had nothing. It wasn't because he wasn't a hard worker. He would get himself up every morning at 6 o'clock, drive in the town, I don't care how much snow and ice there was, and go to the doughnut shop where all the construction people used to meet before they went to work. And he'd go in there and get a cup of coffee just in case somebody came in and needed to hire some money. He'd do that every morning. And I asked him one day, why do you do that? He said, well, there's another reason. Because I'm not going to just lay in bed and get lazy, that's why. Because when construction's back, I've got to be willing to get up and work, and I'm going to be ready because I get up every morning at 6 o'clock and I go someplace. I always thought that would really put in my mind the realization of that commitment to work and take care of his family. That's the kind of commitment we have to have ourselves. And then our last point, we have to have a work ethic. The things given to us are supposed to cost us something, and we're supposed to work for them. It's in 1 Timothy, our fifth point. 1 Timothy. Chapter 6, verse 6. Now godliness with contentment is great gain. This is one of the most difficult things to learn in life, to be content. Man, that's hard. That is hard to be content. When this is all I have, sometimes it's all you have. I can remember working on a guy's farm. I must have been 12 years old working on a guy's farm, and it was lunchtime, and I thought, all good. I was working for free. I just happened to be his son's friend, so I got hired that day. I'm working on the farm at lunchtime, and we each got a cold hot dog. That is your lunch. Well, I was so hungry I was content. That cold hot dog wasn't even cooked. Just here's a hot dog, right out of the package. He's like, oh man, this is so good. I learned a little lesson at 12 or 13, whenever. Man, I must have been a little older. I had to be a little older because they're driving the truck, and one of the guys said, have you ever driven a truck before? And I said, no. He said, oh, okay. Scoot over a little bit. He opened the door and jumped out. First thing I do is jam on the brakes, and I heard all the guys in the back screaming, because they were loading hay, and I was throwing them out of the truck. I don't know how I got off on that, but it was the hot dogs. There was a great contentment in that hot dog. We have to understand that contentment, godliness with contentment, you know, sometimes you could have all the things in the world and be very discontent. There's a lot of rich, discontent people.

So sometimes even in what we have, in a good time, when you have a lot, contentment means everything, that this is part of what God's doing. This is part of our lessons. This is what we learn. He says in verse 7, For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. But having food and clothing with these we shall be content, not filled with anxiety and worry all the time. For those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and to many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. He warned us about getting too involved in it. Once again, I mean, Abraham was a rich man. There were lots of rich men. There were lots of poor men. Elijah had to go live with a widow, rent a roofer. We didn't have any money to pay her.

And they ate from the same barrel of wheat every day.

That's all they had.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

It's okay to love the new clothes. It's okay to appreciate the nice meal. It's okay to appreciate the new cards. That's not the point he's making. He says this can't be the goal of life.

It can't be the goal of life.

These are the trappings, the nice things that happen along the way as we learn and we grow and we work.

I'm going to end with Proverbs 30.

Proverbs 30.

I've always thought this was an amazing prayer.

Proverbs 30 wasn't written by Solomon. It was written by Agar.

No one's quite sure who he is.

He says in verse 7, it's a prayer to God. Two things I request of you, deprive me not before I die. He says this is how I want to live my life. Between now and the time I die, this is what I ask of you, God. Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Help me not to live by lies. Help me not to tell lies. Help me to be an honest, truthful person.

So this is what he asked God for. And then he says, Give me neither poverty nor riches.

I like riches myself.

I have a hard time with this prayer.

Of course, compared to most people in the world, I'm a rich man.

I mean, just physically. Spiritually, what would you trade that for? What would you trade it for? Spiritually, we're all rich. But I mean, physically, we don't have a dirt floor.

Right?

We don't have to worry about where the next meal's coming from.

So we're all rich. This is where that gratefulness comes from.

Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me.

Lest, here's why he says, don't make me poor or don't make me too rich.

Lest I be full and deny you.

He says, Lest I get so wrapped up in my things, I forget where they came from.

I forget who God is. He says, so don't let me have so much I forget you.

That's an interesting prayer, isn't it?

Please don't give me so much that I forget you.

Of course, we use, well, give me a lot.

You know, maybe too much God is making a million dollars a year. Okay? That would be too much.

$900,000 a year would be okay.

Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

He said, I don't want to be so poor that I slip into theft, that I slip into sin. But I don't want to be so rich that I slip into sin either.

It's a very self-aware man here. A very profound guy saying, keep me in the middle here.

Where I can appreciate what I have, I can be generous, I can give to others, and I won't live in poverty.

But not too much and not too little.

It made me think of a story I read a long time ago about a woman who realized that she should earn more money.

That she went to her boss and said, you know, I'm only making $20 an hour, I should make $30.

And he said, well, why? She says, because of what I produce.

So he went and looked at her work and came back and said, you're absolutely right.

You deserve $30 an hour.

And she was so happy. She was so content with it.

And she started thinking about, you know what? I can get that new pair of shoes I wanted.

And I won't have to worry about the electric bill.

An extra $10 an hour, that's a 30% increase.

I got 30% more money to spend. This is so exciting.

And she thought for a minute and said, oh, I should have asked for 40.

And at that moment, she was discontent again.

For a moment, she was happy because of what she was receiving.

But then she thought about what she could have had or didn't have or what she should have.

Because if she would have asked for 40 and got it, what would she have said next? I should have asked for 60. See, that never ends, right?

It's important that we always remember that whatever we have in this roller coaster of good and bad, things and not things, money and no money, that trusting in God and honesty and generosity and work ethic and contentment is what God's all concerned with.

All these things He's giving us, or sometimes not giving us, is so that we learn these things.

I said I was going to end with Agri's Prayer, but just one more Proverbs. Proverbs 13.

Proverbs 13.

And verse 7.

Because remember this, this is a profound proverb that we could spend a lot of time talking about.

But I want you to think about it in your life.

I want you to take this proverb and go home and spend this week thinking about this proverb.

Proverbs 13.

There is one who makes himself rich and has nothing, and one who makes himself poor and yet has great riches.

Sometimes to obey God, we lose jobs. We lose things.

Honesty requires it, or the Sabbath requires it, or whatever.

Integrity.

And there is one who makes himself rich and has nothing, yet there is one who makes himself poor and has great riches.