Dangers of Success, Comfort, and Prosperity - Leland Zehr

Well, good morning to all of you. Again. I want

to welcome you here this morning. Everyone visitors, glad that

you're here with us, and appreciate things that have already

been said this morning, the Devotionals discussion in Sunday School.

We're here to be encouraged and to be strengthened as

fellow needy people. And so I trust that we can

that can be achieved and we can continue to do

that here this morning, as I share some thoughts. As

we go through life with various experiences stages, you might

say ages, we face different kinds of testings, tests of

our faith, temptations, spiritually struggles, trials, and often we think

about testing of our faith as the difficulties that we encounter.

Maybe it is suffering, maybe it is loss. Maybe it

does health problems, relationship problems, people face persecution, We pray

for those that are facing persecution and other parts of

the world. Maybe it's financial setbacks that we experience at times,

and these are trying times. These are times that can

put our faith to the test. They can people at

times fall away, people lose faith, become bitter, give up

on God, and so it can be a very vulnerable

and dangerous time or times of our life when we

encounter that. But today I want to talk about a

different kind of spiritual danger. It's not from suffering, it's

not from persecution, it's not from tragedy or loss. It's

a more subtle spiritual danger. And that is I've been

thinking about the dangers of success. When you've experienced success,

when life is going well, when your family is growing

and your crop is good for once and the prices

are up, when maybe you have a good paying job,

your relationships are well, your marriage is thriving, your children

are making right choices, the business that you have started

is seems to be booming, and you're comfortable. We have

all our needs met and many of our once meant.

And I'll ask you this way, have it just for

interest's sake, in your own in your own thinking. Have

you ever woke up in the morning on a beautiful

summer day and you had a wonderful day planned ahead

and life was like this. It was good, it was full,

it was rich, and you stopped and considered the spiritual

dangers that come with that. I don't, I don't know,

I haven't very often in a time like that. I

tried too at times. The title of the message this

morning I've given I don't know if it's the best one,

but I gave it specifically for a reason, dangers of success,

comfort and prosperity to capture just a little bit more

of my thoughts. And I should say right up front

here that this isn't a subject that I necessarily relish

or desire to talk about. So its been a subject

I think for various reasons on my mind the last

while I and some of the reasons I maybe would

hesitate to talk on something like this is because I

like success, and I want to prosper and I enjoy

being comfortable, and so to consider dangers of that isn't

necessarily where I would naturally want to go. But we

know that God, in his word we want to look

at that warns about success and prosperity and the comforts

that we experience in this life. And so we could

start with another question that does God desire his children

to be successful, to be comfortable, and to prosper I

don't know what you think about that. I hope to

answer that question a little bit more as we go

on here. Maybe part of the answer to that question

would be the definition of success and comfort and prosperity.

What we mean by that. I invite you to turn

for some Bible reading to Deuteronomy eight and to give

a little background to this chapter. Here the setting. This

is an account of the children of Israel. They had

been delivered from Egypt, from the bondage of Egypt. They

had wandered around in the wilderness for forty years because

of their unbelief, and now they are getting close to

the promised land, finally after and it's hard for us

to imagine. I think these poor people that have been

camp moving, dying, struggling in the wilderness and wondering like

nomads all these years, and now they are finally on

the verge of entering into this land that God has

promised them for many, many years. A lush land, a

wonderful land, had lots of water, had a valley that

would grow all kinds of crops like we heard about

in the devotional. It had mountains with natural resources in it.

It was a land flowing with milk and honey. But

they hadn't entered in yet. In this passage, they're just

considering entering in, and they're getting ready, and the children

of Israel have now suffered for close to forty years,

and it seems like they are long overdue for some relief,

for a permanent place that they can call home. And

God is wanting to bless his people with a good

land and good things, but it seems like at the

same time he knows, and he does know because he's God,

the tendency of human nature and the temptations that they

will face with these good things that he gives them.

And so God tells Moses to warn them ahead of

time before it even happens, the danger and the temptations

that they are going to face when they enter into

this land that is flowing with milk and honey in abundance.

And so that is the context of chapter eight. Let's

read that chapter at this time, and just I'm going

to tell also read a few verses just a little

later in Deuteronomy. When I get to the end, all

the command which I command thee this day, shall ye

observe to do that ye may live and multiply and

go in and possess the land which the Lord swear

unto your fathers. And thou shalt remember all the wave

which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years

in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee

to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest

keep his commandments or no. And he humbled thee and

suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee manna, which thou knewest.

Not neither did thy fathers know that he might make

thee know that man doth not live by bread alone,

but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth

of the Lord, doth man live. Thy raiment waxed, not

old upon thee. Neither did thy foot swell these forty years.

Thou shalt also consider in that consider in thine heart

that as a man chasting his son, so the Lord

thy God chasteneth thee. Therefore shalt shalt keep the commandments

of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways

and to fear him. For the Lord thy God bringeth

thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water,

of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills,

A land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig

trees and pomegranates, a land of oil, olive and honey,

a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou

shalt not lack anything in it, a land whose stones

are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.

When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt

bless the Lord thy God for the good land which

he hath given THEE. Beware that thou forget not the

Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments and his

judgments and his statutes, which I command THEE this day.

Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast

built goodly houses and dwelt therein, And when thy herds

and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold

is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied, then

thine heart be lifted up. And thou forget the Lord

thy God, which brought THEE forth out of the land

of Egypt, thus a bondage, who led THEE through the

great and terrible wilderness, where were fiery serpents and scorpions,

and drought where there was no water, Who brought THEE

forth out of forth, water out of the rock of flint,

who fed THEE in the wilderness with manna, which thy

fathers knew, not that he might humble thee, that he

might prove thee and to do THEE good. At thy

latter end, and thou say, in thine heart, my power

and the might of mine hand has gotten me this wealth.

Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is

he that giveth the power to get wealth, that he

may establish his covenant, which he swear unto his fathers.

As it is this day, and it shall be if

thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and

walk after other gods and serve them and worship them.

I will testify against you this day that ye shall

surely perish, as the nations which the Lord destroyed before

your face. So shall ye perish, because you would not

be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God.

So hang on to that passage and it will jump

forward to just a few verses in Deuteronomy thirty one.

If you care to, you can follow along. And this

is an interesting passage here. It's it's kind of the

same time frame even though it's at the end of Deuteronomy,

but they're about to enter the promised Land. Moses is

about to die and he's giving his last his few

last words from God, ready to pass on the leadership

to Joshua. And in a way, it's kind of as

you read that passage, to me, it's a little bit

depressing because Moses is about to die. The new leader, Joshua,

is to take over, and God is telling these people

through Moses that I know that when Moses dies that

you all are going to turn away from me. And

here they are getting this message at this time. But

I think God's heart in it was to try to

head off that and to give them a warning. But

the interesting thing about it is one of the interesting

things is here that the remedy or the way God

went about to warn his people about this danger of

turning away from him when they have eaten and are full,

is that he told Moses to write a song to

teach to the children of Israel, so that the words

of warning would be impressed into their minds. And you

know how that is how a song will play in

your mind, much more than just a sermon will play

in your mind. But the tune and the chanting or

however they did that. And so God told Moses write

a song and teach it to them so they have

it well into their minds, and that song is well.

I'll read a little bit in Deuteronomy thirty one nineteen.

But then the song is in chapter thirty two, and

he says in Deuteronomy thirty one nineteen. Now, therefore, write

you this song for you, and teach it. Teach it

the children of Israel. Put it in their mouth, that

this song may be a witness for me against the

children of Israel. For when I shall have brought them

into the land which I swear unto their fathers, that

floweth with milk and honey, and they shall have eaten

and filled themselves in wax and fat, then they will

turn unto other gods and serve them and provoke me

and break my covenant. And it shall come to pass,

when many evils and troubles are befalling them, that this

song shall testify against them as a witness. Where it

shall it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths

of their seed, For I know their imaginations which they

go about, even now before I have brought them into

the land which I swear. Moses therefore wrote this song

the same day and taught it to the children of Israel,

and then you have the song in Deuteronomy thirty two.

You could read it later, but I want to read

just a few verses. Jump in that kind of give

this part that I'm focused on this morning. Verse twelve,

it says, so the Lord alone did lead him, and

there was no strange God with him. He made him

ride on high places of the earth, that he might

eat the increase of fields and the heat. And he

made him to suck honey out of the rock, and

oil out of the flinty rock, butter of can and

milk of sheep, and the fat of lambs, the ram

of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat

of kidneys of wheat. Thou didst strength the pure blood

of the grape. But gesturon, which is Israel, waxed fat

and kicked. Thou arn't waxing fat. Thou aren't grown thick.

They aren't covered with fatness. Then he forsook God, which

made him and lightliest esteemed the rock of his salvation.

If you jump bad to verse eighteen, oh of the

rock that begot thee, thou art unmindful and has forgotten

God hath formed thee. And I'll stop there. It seems

like God finds himself. God's not in a dilemma, but

it just seems like he's He's struggling here with this

reality of humanity that he children and people that he

loves and wants to bless, but at the very same

time that these things will likely cause him them to

turn away from him and bleed them into temptations and dangers.

And this is a problem that has humanity has wrestled

with down through the ages. We could read many Bible

passages from Deuteronomy, through the Prophets and into the Gospels

and on into Revelation that talk about this subject and

this dilemma. And of course today we are not an

exception to this struggle. There's a couple couple things on

this topic. I'll just say that I struggle giving a

little bit, and it's with the reality that I know

that people and maybe some of you now that are

on the other spectrum of success, comfort and prosperity that

seems like a distant dream to you and if you

could only get relief, and I know that there's stages

and times when we're in that, and so you'll just

have to bear with me. I'm not talking about that

this morning. But I know that that is a reality,

and I know that financial poverty and pain and suffering

does not equate to holiness. That's not I don't want

to be misunderstood in any way this morning. Another reason

that I struggle with a little bit is it's a

topic I've struggled with for a long time, and I'm

not completely satisfied with having it worked out in my

own understanding and my own mind, this thing of the

blessings of God, his creation and the richness that comes

with it, and yet the spiritual dangers as well, and

a lot of people have made a lot of attempts

at trying to work this out. And so I just

say that as a maybe as an upfront acknowledgment. But

having said all that, that's not really a disclaimer. It's

just more we need to come back to the fact

that the Bible warns us about success and comfort and prosperity,

and the details need to be worked out, and sometimes

that's that's challenging. As you all know or should know,

or that we live in a time and a place

and history of material prosperity and comfort at a level

that probably very few in the history of mankind have

experienced coupled with the technology and the modern conveniences that

constantly cater to our comfort. And we could talk about

a lot of those things. I won't go into a

lot of them, but from that on an average day,

from the time that we roll out of our plush

beds in our climate controlled room in the morning and

pad over to our express a machine and make our

coffee with its cream or whatever we put in it,

and sit on our plush couches and drink our Bible.

Hopefully we turn the knob on the dials of the

shower so it's not too cold and not too hot,

and our cars are We walk from our climate control

house to our climate controlled one of our climate controlled cars,

and everyone, the passenger and the driver can adjust there.

You know, we want to be comfortable. The seats are cooled,

the seats are heated, the seats can be adjusted. We

live in an age of comfort and and just it's

focused on that. It's marketed for for your and our

custom maximum comfort. In life. The biggest struggle is not

as if we will eat, but what will we eat?

Out of our many options of good gourmet meals. We

had not we meant we have hobbies, we have toys,

we have entertainment, we have our favorite restaurants, we have

our vacation spots and all of those things. The world

knows that America has a good, good life, and I

want to say that. A lot of people bash on that,

and I'm not doing that this morning. In fact, you know,

I'm grateful to live here at this time, with the opportunity,

with the freedom, and the things are clean, things are

relatively safe. Maybe that's just a lack of spirituality. I'm

not sure, but I've been to enough other countries I've

seen how that is done. I don't think that's always

a spiritual edge. And one thing I'll just say I

thought of here, and this is timing. Has nothing to

do with all the harvest workers that are here making

money this summer. I know that some of you are

here to get a paycheck and to work on the harvest.

And I'm not rebuking any of you at all. I

think and providing is good. Glad that you're here, and

I'm glad that farmers have a good crop and the

prices are high. And I love to see small businesses

that struggle and wrestle and get traction and become prosperous.

That's good, It can be good. I like to see

families that are not under financial bondage and burdens and stress.

There's benefits that come with these material blessings. But we

need to come back around to the subject this morning,

that there's also dangers. So I just want to say

that comforts and conveniences even are not wrong, but they

are not a good guide for decision making, especially spiritual

decisions in life. Making decisions based on our comfort and

conveniences is a shore road to hell, just the way

that we're made up. If that is our soul guiding

principle in life. Even from talking about our country or world,

it's broader than our country, even from a non spiritual perspective,

from a secular social standpoint, you know, there's books written

about the dilemma that we are facing as just a

humanity people. There's The Dopamine Nation a book, and The

Comfort Crisis. Haven't read both of them, but those books

are addressing this problem that our country is facing. Outside

of the spiritual facts, we are a nation in pursuit

of comfort and dopamine, and people are killing themselves with addictions,

with gluttony and diseases that spring from all kinds of excess.

So we can circle back to that question, does God

desire his children to be successful, comfortable, and to prosper

I won't answer that yet, but I do believe. I'll

give part. I do believe it is. The Bible teaches

that God's heart is to give his people good things.

That is the heart of God, but that these good

things can lead us away from Him. And we need

to always remember that God's definition of prosperity is not

always the same definition of Wall Street and our bank advisor.

Jesus taught about the talents, the parable of the talents,

and about the man that had won is it two

or three and five? And God is not does not

want lazy stewards. He does not want us to bury

our talents. He does not want us to be Can

I say minimalists. I don't know. Maybe there's a place

for that. I think we need that to some degree,

But in a selfish sort of a way to prune

down my life that is all about me and no

access for anyone else is not necessarily the picture that

God gives us. That can be a whole nother form

of selfishness if we're not careful. We are to be stewards.

We are to multiply our talents that God has given us.

That can involve finances, that can involve money, but I

think Jesus taught primarily it is the talents that build

the Kingdom of God and bless and build up other people.

We are to good godly stewards. Now, I'm going to

just list a few dangers, and I'm going to commit

to quit on time today and I'll just quit if

I get there. But I'm going with that clock, and

this one's ahead of that clock, so you can hold

me accountable. What are some of the dangers that come

with success and comfort and prosperity. Well, one of the

first things I'll just say about that is that is

that it's subtle. It's a subtle process. And that might

seem a little what do you mean. Well, you know,

out of the different testings spiritual testings that we face

in life, like the suffering and the difficulties and the setbacks,

those things grab our attention in life. We are aware

that we are living in misery, suffering, grief or loss,

and it's not nice. We don't enjoy it. Doesn't mean

it's but it's who are We're aware of it, we

know what's going on. It has our attention. We wrestle

with it, we fight it, we try to improve it.

Hardship can can bring a dependency on God can bring

us back to that if we allow it to success

and comfort feel good and it doesn't feel dangerous, and

it can slip on us unawares, and that is what

is one of the dangers of it. You think about Samson,

the Philictines had all kinds of things. They came at

him directly with armies. They could not conquer Samson. But

it was sweet Delilah massaging Sampson's head in her lap.

That was his downfall, and that is a type of

how it can be for us spiritually. He was comfortable,

it felt so good, and he let down his guard.

So that is one thing. Another thing, Hey, if you

just pulling a couple things out of Deuteronomy here and

then maybe get get to a few more practical other things.

But forgetting God. God talks about that himself and different

of the passages and in other passages I haven't read,

but it seemed like a concern of God was that

with all this good that I'm going to give you, you're

gonna forget me. And he says different times too, when

you have these blessings, be thankful and remember that I

gave you these things. Sounds like a simple thing, but

there's something about it. You know, none of us like

actually forget God, like he's erased from our memory and

we just don't remember him in that way. I don't

think that's what it means. But as we get immersed

and the good things and pleasures, and we have eaten

and are full, and we have everything at our disposal,

our focus and our priorities congradually shift, and the day

to day material comforts take our focus and become our priority,

and God gradually shifts to the background. We might say,

are we spiritually become dim? God becomes a little more distant,

a little more removed, a little less needed, you might say,

in everyday life, yes, we want him there, we know

he's there. We want him especially there in case we

need him. But in the day to day things that

the pleasures of life and all that come with it

can can hold our primary attention in life. And if

we're not careful, and if we're not intentional and if

we don't choose to remember God and remember he said

his commandments in the good times, because sometimes it feels like, well,

you just start letting things slip when life is good,

is it really necessary? And things can easily start to

unravel and we start using a different measuring stick for

making our decisions in life. We listen only to the banker,

We listen to only what makes sense dollars, dollars and

cents wise. And as I said before, that is why

it's so dangerous to make our decisions based only on

our success materially and our comfort, prosperity and success and

other things. And I enjoy all these things. These things

are things that I struggle with, and yet I know

they're a spiritual detriment or can be. Prosperity and success

can bring an air of independence. That is one of

the nice things about having money and having enough is

that you're not bound quite so much to maybe your

job or to the day to day demands. I have

a little flexibility, but with success, some other dangers that

can come. Is a confidence that it is my good management,

is my good judgment, it is my good decision making

that has kind of I'm at the lead of the pack.

I'm succeeding. It's it's about It's about me. And Deuteronomy

eight seventeen he says, and now say in that heart,

my power and the might of my hand has gotten

me this. And God says in eighteen, don't forget that

all these things have really come from me. They're not

of your own doing. If it wasn't for me, you'd

still be a slave in Egypt. And in Deuteronomy again

thirty two fifteen, he said, when Jesure walks fat and kicked,

and now was waks and fat, and that's grown thick

and are covered with fatness. They forsook and forgot God,

the rock of their salvation, the very being in God

that had God them to this whole point they forgot.

So forgetting God is a problem that can happen, or

a danger. Another one he talks about in different passages

is the simple fact of our heart's being lifted up.

And we see that in verse I think fourteen, when

your hearts be lifted up and you forget God. And

none of us admire proud people, and none of us

want to be proud people. But we need to be

on guard against that because we can slip into that,

especially when things are going well. We think about the

story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not going to go into

that very much, but Sodom had a reputation still has

a reputation for it's terrible immorality. We know the story

of Lot in Abraham and how that all played out,

and finally the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But what

led to that, You know, we were when you're looking

at that story that is in the final days of Sodom,

and it is just corrupt and seedy, and there's immorality

of bounds. But in Ezekiel sixteen forty nine and fifty

it gives a little view of Sodom. He says, behold,

this was iniquity of the sister Sodom. Pride, fullness of

bread and abundance of idleness was in her and in

her daughters. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the needy.

And they were haughty and committed abominations before me. Therefore

I took them away as I saw good. And so

we see here the things, the things that led to

the immorality of Sodom were the fullness of bread and

the pride and the idleness. And you know today that

is still a recipe for immorality. Often is when when

all my needs are met and I've got idle time,

I'm not quite busy. I'm not helping the poor with

my abundance. There's many many a man and a woman

that have found themselves caught in the trap of immorality

through that, through that recipe with success talking about pride,

and we could break it down into other words. We don't.

We don't use that word proud. It's too harsh. But

with success comes a confidence, often or an arrogant confidence,

especially towards those that appear to not be as successful.

That that can be a danger. It doesn't have to be,

but that that temptation again to think in my heart

that you know, I'm actually a little wiser, my opinions,

a little more weighty than my brothers because of my

material success. There's other successes we could talk about, though,

and that's partly why I included success in here. We

often think of success as how much money we have

or how much material possessions we have, But there's a

lot of other ways to be successful, and good ways

you can be educated and well read. You can have dessernment,

you can have good people's skills, you can be charismatic

and likable, good looking and athletic. There's a lot of

gifts that we can have and be very successful in

that set us up for these same traps. So humility

is a choice a responsibility that we as Christians all

have to choose. And God tells us that He tells

us to humble yourselves. And for me, and I think

it's for all of us, it's kind of a daily

thing that we need to kind of circle back around

to or it just kind of gets away on us,

this thing of humility, my standing before God, my standing

with my fellow men, that I am no better, that

I am nothing without the grace of God. And it

tempers and takes away a lot of relationship problems. If

we can truly keep a heart and a spirit and

a mind about ourselves of humility, it just helps us

a lot in this danger of success. A few practical

things here, I would imagine that many of you have

heard about the three cycle generation. It's very common. It's

a pattern people talk about of a pattern of success

where the first generation is poor, is struggling, works hard,

to get ahead in life after many years of working,

they build something, They got a business, they got more

than they started with. Their trajectory is going up. And

the second generation has been raised in that same teaching

and watched his dad, and he takes it and he

builds off of that opportunity and grows it and prospers

it and whatever it is, it could say, the business

in this case grows and is abundant. And then the

third generation of children grow up in that and it

is a world of ease, it is a world of plenty.

It is there's prosperity, don't have to work as hard.

And the trap in that is that children become spoiled,

they become lazy, they become entitled. And this generational thing,

I found it interesting. There's terms for that. English call

it sometimes is shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve and three

generation meaning you start working, you attain, and you end

up back working a day job again. The Japanese call

it rice patty to rice patty cycle and the Italians

from stable to stars and back to the stable. And

it gives you that picture of that cycle that often happens,

and I don't think it has to happen but it

often is the natural process unless we fight against it.

The cycle, and this cycle happens spiritually, not just materially,

where a generation will fight for their faith and take

a stand and raise their children in there and pass

it on and then hand them their faith. And if

that doesn't catch in the hearts and lives of the children,

they discard it, seen no value in it, and the

cycle starts over. And so one of the temptations, one

of the dangers, I guess the point I'm trying to

make here is that comes with maybe more than we

need as parents, is to spoil our children. And I love,

I'm a sucker for that. I love to get little

things and you take them to your little children and

you watch the joy and the happy and the shining eyes,

and they're so excited this thing. And that's good. I

think some of that, it's not all bad. But we

got to be careful. The reins will get out of

our hands where those children. You can't walk into a

store without a fight for something, and we need to

be careful. That is the signs of an entitlement. We

talk about the word entitlement attitude and what does that mean?

Entitlement are any of you entitled? Am I entitled? Do

we even know what that means? Well, I'd like to

say a little bit about entitled titlement with the customize,

the ability to customize everything from our coffee drink, to

our car, to our house and everything in between, we

have grown accustomed to that. That's normal. I want it

when I want it, how I want it, and exactly

how I want it. And that when we are constantly

catered to in that way, the attitude we just in

our human nature is we become ungrateful. We only want more,

We only we desire special treatment, we want the VIP status.

We become. The more you get, the more fussy and

complaining we become. It's often a sign of I tell

my children, it's just a sign that you've gotten too much.

It isn't that you don't have enough when you're fussing

and complaining for this next thing. And now. As bad

as it is to have it in children, it's it's

much much worse to have it in us as adults

and in youth and all of us. It makes brotherhood

almost impossible and family life miserable. You try to take

your family on some special outing, you're going to go

on vacation and go one a thing of people are

bickering and fighting the whole way. It's like, we need

to go home. We need to work, we need to discipline,

we need to reset. So entitlement attitude is something that

we can slip into. We need to work against that.

There needs to be responsibility, There needs to be nos

there needs to be work. There needs to be a

heart of gratitude for the little things in life. Some

a quote I came on A life of service is

a way to overcome and entitlement attitude. I think that

is so true. Entitlement is so much about what I

want focused on that, and a life of service kind

of shifts that around and works against that. Okay, a

couple other things. We can love the creation more than

the creator, and we heard about that in both devotionals

about creation and the beauty of it. And I think

Josiah said something about it's not the creation that's the point,

it's the creator. And I think that's right, that's what

the Bible teaches. But the creation is there too for

mankind to enjoy and to to be blessed with. But

we must be careful and keep our hearts pointed towards

God and be aware of that. Someone has said, what

we give our attention to is worship. What we what

we focus on, what we what we prioritize, is a

form of a form of worship. Another couple things here. Value.

We could need to be careful not to value things

in money more than people and to slip into that

subconscious Maybe businessmen can struggle with this, the mindset of

calculating a person's worth by what I can get out

of them. But you know that works on both sides

of the equation. There's people that are on the needy

side that calculate and try to get up to the

wealthy to get something from them. And so either perspective,

looking at people for the value, the material value I

can get out of them is a wrong concept and

not a godly attitude. Just this last week I was

at one of my jobs. A couple few of my

guys where there working, and he's an old, old man

from South Africa and he came over to me and

he said he wasn't like really super friendly, it's kind

of stern. Why at probably seventies, And he said, you

know you have good workers, right, I said, yeah. He said,

these guys are good and I said, I know. I

realized that they're good. And he said, I hope you

treat them right. And I said, I do try to

treat them right. And he didn't just quit there. He

kind of me. He said, I've had a crew and

I've had construction, and when you get good guys, you

need to make sure that you treat them well. And

I said, okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And I

went out and I was going to leave, but then

I went back and I told my guys, I said

that man just said, you guys are amazing workers. You're good.

And they appreciated that. But it was as I thought

about this subject, I was reminded that and I try

not to do that, but it can be I can

slip into that at times where people we gauge people

by their value to us. You know, each one of

our fellow people, employees, whatever it might be, have a

whole life, a whole value. Are we treating them in

a way that is not taking advantage of them? Material

wealth can contempt us in that if we're not careful.

Sometimes success of different kinds brings us social power or

an influence that we can abuse if we're not careful

as well, we need to be humble. We need to

listen to the voice of a brother that may have

a different perspective that is actually better than better than mine.

Success and prosperity can give us a false sense of

security and erode our faith. And again, wealth and prosperity

do give us some security in this life. They give

us options. They help pay the rent and buy the food,

and help us be able to go to the doctor

and a lot of things. But there again, when we

have an abundance of wealth, we can just gradually start

to lean on that and to count that as my

security and my answers in life turn to that. Jesus said,

it's hard, and I don't like these words. I've wrestled

with them a lot, but it's just here, he said,

it's hard for rich men to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

And you ask why why is it hard? Why is

it hard for its Well, he said, because it's hard

for rich people to not put their trust in their wealth.

And so I think it's something that I think all

of us here are rich by the standards of society

and the world, and we need to be intentional about

where our faith is, where our priorities, where our trust is.

And I'll read one another passage and revelation Revelation three.

Jesus here talking to the Church of Laotaicea. And he says,

because they'll sayest I am rich and increased with goods,

and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou

art wretched and miserable, and poor and blind and naked.

I counsel they to buy of me gold, tried in

the fire, that thou mayst be rich and white raiment,

and thou mayst be clothed, and that the shame of

thy nakedness doth not appear, and anoint thy eyes with

eyesav that thou mayst see as many as I love,

I rebuke and chase and bezealous therefore and repent. And

so we see that the Church of Laotaicea here at

a false sense of security. They thought they were rich,

and they thought they had need of nothing. But Jesus

kind of laid that bearer that he said, actually you

all are blind and naked and miserable. But he invited

them to get their perspective back to God and to

his his priorities. So closing. Does God desire his children

to be successful, comfortable, you could say, and prosper I

think it is the heart of God to see his us,

his people prosper. But I think we do need to

remember that the measuring stick for prosperity needs to first

be guided by the Spirit of God, measured by the

fruit of the Spirit. For our decision making, that we

grow in the spirit, we grow in grace and all

these other things, Jesus said in Matthew six thirty three.

But SEEKI first the Kingdom of God, and all these things,

all these and His righteousness, and all these things will

be added unto you. So it's a little abrupt here,

but I'm going to close that clock still a minute

before let's have a song.