"Wisdom's Stewardship" Proverbs 19 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Jesus in Matthew chapter six says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.

I mean treasure on earth.

Take two.

Jesus in Matthew chapter six says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal.

With that paradigm, Jesus lays out for you that every dollar you have is a chance to display wisdom, a chance to display obedience.

Or to give you a more binary choice, every dollar you have becomes a chance for you to store it for yourself treasure in heaven or store it for yourself treasure on earth.

One is good, the other bad, even if I forget which is which.

Verse 21 gives you the moral implication of this.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

This is a wisdom principle, even here in the Sermon on the Mount.

It's a wisdom principle.

Even though much of the Sermon on the Mount is using law to get to gospel, this is more of a wisdom principle.

Because Jesus recognizes that you can't use every dollar on heaven.

You have to eat.

Jesus himself ate.

He had Judas, who had the money bag.

There was money involved in their ministry.

Of course there was.

And yet there's always a tension with every dollar about whether it's going to earthly endeavors or to heavenly reality.

We understand through other teachings of Jesus that when you send your money to heaven, you do so by making yourself friends in heaven.

That's the analogy Jesus uses later on in Matthew's gospel.

There was the dishonest manager, if you recall, who was fired, but on his way out the door he settled all of the accounts.

You know, you owe my boss$10,000, give me five and we'll call it even.

And it was actually a very shrewd move because if you remember, as the security was throwing him out the front door, the boss realized, wait, yesterday our outstanding balances were a million, now they're only 500,000.

Like money came rolling in when I fired that guy, money came rolling in.

That was actually really smart for me to fire him.

Because everybody paid up real quick.

And then that guy, remember, gets thrown out and has all kinds of friends that want him to come stay at their house.

That's the analogy for giving in the Bible.

Not that you're dishonest, not that you settle accounts.

The analogy that Jesus makes, and he tells you what it is at the end of the parable, remember, is make for yourselves friends.

So that when the money of this world fails, which it will, you'll have friends in heaven.

So the challenge of Jesus is to use your money to make friends in heaven so that when you go to heaven, you're going to meet people who are there that say, Oh, I'm here because of the money you spent on me.

You're paying missionaries.

This is why I love giving to Emmanuel Bible Church.

You give money to Emmanuel Bible Church, we give it to missionaries around the world, missionaries that you don't know and places you don't know, that you couldn't even, you know, if I showed you a globe, you wouldn't even know where some of our missionaries are, and that's fine.

But they're doing work with your money.

You know, your money is your employees, and you send your money out the door when you give it to the church and say, go to work, money.

Come back at the end of the day and bring me friends.

And your money goes around the world doing work in the mission field.

And when you die, you'll stand before God and you will receive rewards for what your money did.

What a joy that is.

And of course, God knows our hearts.

Uh, those who have been given much money in life will be judged differently than those who were given little.

Jesus says that too.

By the measure you give, it'll be measured back to you.

What is generous for somebody who is making$20,000 a year is, you know, going to be less in the dollar amount in giving than somebody who's making a massive amount of money a year.

Jesus knows all that, he knows all the secrets, and he's the one who keeps the books, and that's true.

That being said, it can be such a pitfall in so much of preaching about money or talking about money to make it sound like all rich people are sinning, that rich people are doing something wrong by virtue of them being rich, of course.

And that's not true.

In fact, in the book of Proverbs, when you get to Proverbs, you find that it is indeed wise to have money.

Remember, Proverbs is the key to wise living in the world as it is.

Wisdom is navigating the world like it is.

Wisdom is knowing what God requires you of complex situations in a fallen world.

Wisdom is getting to the river and seeing which way it's flowing and figuring out how to best navigate your life in the direction the river is flowing.

Wisdom is, you know, dropping something and knowing that it's going to fall instead of fly away.

Every decision you make in life is navigating the reality of a fallen world, and that's what wisdom is.

And of course, the foundation of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

The fountain of wisdom is God.

Wisdom corresponds to God and his character.

That's obviously true.

But so much of life is more complicated than simply knowing right and wrong.

A lot of life is wisdom, and that's what Proverbs is written for, and so it is with money.

And you have to have a framework in your head that it is never sinful to spend your money on X unless it's an actually sinful thing.

The Bible doesn't address money like that.

It's more of a wisdom principle.

Is it wise to spend your money on that?

If you have kids that get an allowance, you understand this, you give your kids an allowance, and they say, Is it okay if I buy the candy bar with it?

And you think, well, that's not the best use of your money, really.

Um I mean, it'll be gone in a minute, but it'll bring you pleasure for that minute, and is your money.

You can, I guess, use it as you see fit.

There's those kind of conversations.

Is it sinful for me to use on the candy bar?

Well, I wouldn't say it's sinful.

Just not wise.

And the kid's like, well, is that a yes or a no?

You're like, I don't know.

That's the nature of wisdom in the world.

Proverbs has a lot to say about money, and the reason Proverbs addresses money so frequently is because of what Jesus said back in Matthew, that where your treasure is, there your heart is also.

How you spend your money is exposing the value system of your heart.

And it is both a cause and effect relationship, it is a two-way street.

You spend your money on something, it's exposing what you actually do love.

Also, it's causing your love to go with it.

We'll talk more about that.

Now, all that to say, because wisdom is knowing how to navigate life in this fallen world, it is wise to have money, and Proverbs makes that very clear.

Proverbs 22, verse 7 says, the rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.

Proverbs 22:7

That's not saying it's good to be rich and it's bad to be poor.

It's just saying in a fallen world, the rich is ruling over the poor, and the borrower, the one who is borrowing, is the slave of the lender.

In other words, it is better, would you rather be the ruler or the slave?

If you have that dichotomy down, it is better for you to have money.

It is more wise for you to have money than it is for you to be in debt.

Just that very principle.

I think it goes radically too far, as some do with that verse to say, therefore it's wrong to have a mortgage, or therefore it's wrong to go into debt, or therefore it's wrong to, you know, take out a car loan kind of thing.

And I've heard people try to argue that from Proverbs 22, verse 7.

Proverbs 22:7

I think that goes way further than what Proverbs 22, 7 is doing there.

It's not telling you it's wrong to have a mortgage.

It's not telling you it's wrong to carry a balance in your credit card.

It may be unwise to do those things, but Proverbs isn't telling you it's wrong.

Proverbs is just telling you that it is wise to have money.

Proverbs 14, 24.

The crown of the wise is their wealth, but the folly of fools brings folly.

That's a tautology if there ever was one.

The folly of the fool brings folly.

In other words, the wise person, because these are parallel passages, the wise person is producing wealth.

The foolish person is producing folly.

He doesn't get wealth at the end of the day, he gets folly at the end of the day.

And so that's why Solomon says it is indeed wise to have wealth.

And the crown of, and the crown there is speaking, the end of a wealthy life.

The display of a wealthy life, the end of a wealthy life, this Proverbs 14, verse 24.

Proverbs 14:24

The end of the wealthy life, I'm sorry, the end of the wise life is wealth.

You led a wise life, you're going to have your legacy and the riches developed through your life to display that.

Of course, that wealth is not merely financial.

It is moral.

It is the family you have around you.

It is a hundred things.

It's probably going to display what you valued in life, though.

And the wise person will reflect their values in their life through what they have.

The fool at the end of his life is surrounded by folly.

That's what he valued through his life.

Folly, folly, folly, folly, folly.

At the end of his life, that's what he's got.

That's what he has to give to his kids as an inheritance.

Hey, grandpa died, where did he leave us?

Folly.

Verse, wisdom.

The wise person at the end of his life has treasures of wisdom, treasures of, in some cases, wealth, a legacy of their life to pass down.

That's the background of Proverbs 19.

Verse 1: better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.

So Proverbs engages with money by recognizing there are some things more important than money, namely your integrity.

It is better to be a beggar with integrity than it is to be somebody who is crooked and wealthy.

Desire without knowledge is good, and whoever makes face haste with his feet misses his way.

You want something in life and you just run after it, but you don't know what you're doing, you're setting off on the course of folly.

Verse 3 when a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against Yahweh.

Because you didn't plot out what's my goal here.

You didn't think out where I am headed in life.

Your feet just ran off to do what you wanted to do.

It didn't end well for you.

You didn't check to see if the screen door was open, you ran right into it.

Now you get mad at God.

Verse 4 wealth brings many new friends.

But a poor man is deserted by his friends.

Not his friend singular there.

That's funny, isn't it?

The wealthy person has all kinds of friends.

You're wealthy, you need to ride to the airport, you got 20 people to choose from.

The poor person has one friend, sends you straight to voicemail.

That's just, Solomon's not saying that's good that life is like that.

He's just saying it's true.

It's just true.

And the wise person recognizes that's the way life functions.

Verse 6, many people seek the favor of a generous man.

If you're generous with your money, you have all kinds of people who are like suddenly your friends.

I mean, sorry, then uh verse seven.

All of a poor man's brothers hate him.

How much more do his friends go far away from him?

He pursues them with words, but he doesn't have them.

So the generous person, all kinds of people surrounding.

Need something?

There's an army of people waiting outside the gate, eager to serve you, out of the kindness of your own heart.

But in verse 7, the poor guy, man, he's got one friend, the guy sends him a voicemail and then runs away from him.

You see your one friend in the mall, and he's going the other way.

That's not all Proverbs has to say about money, though.

There's some principles that can be extracted from the book of Proverbs to help you navigate money and wealth in a wise way.

And I'm gonna pitch it to you tonight.

I have four foolproof investment tips for you.

Four foolproof investment tips.

If you Venmo me$29.99, I will share with you these four foolproof investment tips.

Number one, buy my book.

Four foolproof investment tips.

Here they are.

I'll give them to you all at once, then we'll go through them one at a time.

First, don't trust money.

Second, don't rush money.

Third, don't hoard money, and fourth, don't lend money.

This is how Proverbs engages with money.

Memorize these four foolproof investment tips, and you too will be wise with money.

Let's look at them one at a time.

And if you don't have them all now, they'll make appearances later on throughout the night.

First, don't trust money.

This is the most basic element of money in the world.

Don't trust it.

You saw it a little bit in Proverbs 19, verse 4.

Proverbs 19:4

Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man's deserted by his friends.

You can't trust money.

You can't trust the friends you have because of money.

They are not there because of you, they are just there because of your money.

Solomon is letting you know, and yet still, rich people will often be surprised when it becomes transparent.

Like, oh, I thought that person just liked me for who I was.

No, it was the money.

But the Proverbs says this in other places as well.

Proverbs 11, verse 28.

Proverbs 11:28

Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.

It's very interesting wordplay here from Solomon.

When you trust your own riches, you're standing on, you know, you're standing on a trapdoor.

And you trust your own riches, you're in a trapdoor, you will fall.

Your riches will not come through for you.

It's like the Israelites who trust in the Egyptians.

They constantly think the Egyptians will bail them out.

And whenever the Egyptians do pick up the phone, they come and invade Israel and conquer the Israelites.

And you remember the surprise of Israelites.

No, wait, we called you because you were supposed to help us.

Like, oh, sorry, we forgot what side we were on.

Our bad.

Give us all your money and we won't do it again.

We promise this time.

That's the person who trusts in their riches.

It never works out.

Meanwhile, the righteous person, it's not saying the righteous person doesn't have riches, it's just saying the righteous person doesn't trust in his riches.

The righteous person will flourish like a green leaf.

And green leaf is a very interesting word picture there because we are in the end of fall right now.

Somehow all the trees are bare, but the leaves keep falling.

I don't know where they come from.

I think people pack them up in bags and then dump them over my house.

A green leaf is strong.

It withstands the wind, the storms, it withstands the storms, it withstands everything except death.

And that's the righteous person.

You can extit you can withstand any storm in this life.

You will die, of course.

You won't be eternal, you will die, but you will flourish while you're alive.

Your righteousness makes you flourish.

Not riches, so don't trust riches.

Riches are so fleeting.

Somebody challenged me recently to think of all of the things I saved up money for when I was a kid.

I remember the first thing I saved up money for was a Lego set that I really, really wanted.

It was a gas station Lego set.

Oh man.

My parents would not buy it for me.

I had to save my money, and I got the Lego set.

And well, that thing disappeared.

My brother bashed it into a hundred pieces.

That guy.

And I never rebuilt it.

I wanted it for so long, I never rebuilt it.

Then there was a Playmobile set.

You remember those things?

I was after a Playmobile set.

And uh that one backfired on me because I saved up enough money for it and then bought it.

And I'm talking like I'm a you know a fifth grader here, and I bought it, and then I found out that my dad had actually bought it for me when he knew how much I wanted.

So I ended up with two of them.

That was redundant.

Uh when I got a little bit older, I saved up for CDs.

I have a subscription to Spotify right now.

CDs are worthless.

I don't even know how we play one.

We we spent so much time in our house last week looking for a remote control to turn on a CD player that we hadn't turned on the CD player in, I don't know, like a gear, and the rat stole the remote control or something.

Who knows where it went?

And we're destroying our house looking for the remote control so that we can play a C D because it was what a fiasco.

There was a DVD I really wanted.

An iPod?

I still have it in my office.

I have one of those little iPod nanos in my office.

I can't even put music.

There's not even an adapter the adapter that can't even fit in any of my computers right now.

I'm stuck with like the greatest hits of 1999 on it.

I mean all the things we save up money for are worthless, aren't they?

Worthless.

Do you recognize that's most of our life?

Most of our money is spent on those kind of things.

It's not as obvious as the iPod nano.

But the things come and go.

They come and go.

Don't trust in them.

Don't trust in the DVD.

Don't trust in those things.

They just fade away.

As I was coming, moving out uh here to Manuel Bible Church, what, 12 years ago, now or 13 years ago, something like that, uh leaving Grace Community Church, John MacArthur offered me a choice of gift, a choice of my going-away gift.

A leather briefcase or an iPad, like the iPad Pro, the 2012 iPad Pro.

And then I wanted that iPad so bad.

I didn't know really what you did with an iPad, but I wanted it, and I preach off of it, uh, a shiny one.

I did not this is not the 2012 one, I promise you.

And a good friend of mine, I told him I was thinking about getting the iPad, and he was like, Don't get the iPad.

Because in a few years it's gonna be gone in trash, whereas you can always say you have a briefcase from John MacArthur.

So I chose I chose the better portion, and then my friend gave me an iPad as a gift.

I won out.

Thanks, Kevin.

This is our life.

Our money is so often spent on things that expire, are outdated, and thrown in the trash all the time.

Don't trust in those kind of things.

Proverbs 13, verse 7 One person pretends to be rich and yet has nothing.

Proverbs 13:7

Another pretends to be poor and yet has great wealth.

Ask yourself, what is more likely?

A poor person who is dressing up like he's rich, trying to impress people?

Do you think that is the reality in our world?

Absolutely.

Or a rich person flaunting his own wealth?

Probably not.

A rich person's not going to flaunt his own wealth.

A rich person, somebody who's actually wealthy, is going to want to downplay that.

For the most part, there might be some fools, but I'm talking in most of the world, if you have a lot of money, you're not flaunting it.

If you have a lot of money, you're hiding it.

You know, you're trying to negotiate the price of a new car, you don't roll into the lot with a you know a BMW.

What kind of price do you think they're gonna give you?

Like, oh, there's a five percent tax on this one just passed when I saw you pull in the parking lot.

Sorry about that, nothing we can do.

You rub some ash on your face.

This is the reality.

The rich person wants to look like he has less money.

You can't tell on the outside.

I think I shared this with you before, but I used to work at a BMW dealership.

And the sales manager there, we are the people who worked in the the lot doing trash is what I did.

I did trash and I washed cars.

We were not allowed to talk to customers.

No.

If they asked us a question, we could like bow our heads and like point to somebody else.

We were not allowed to mess up anybody's, you know.

And the sales manager had like had a rule.

The more poor a person looks at the at a BMW dealership, the more likely they're actually going to buy.

When you see the person like the nice fancy suit, you know, forget about that guy.

They're not gonna buy anything.

That has proved to be true throughout life.

I didn't know it was a proverb, but there it is.

You can't discern it on the outside.

Proverbs 18, 23.

The poor use entreaties, but the rich answer roughly.

The poor people sound so polite in their speech.

This is again, this is general.

I'm not talking the homeless guy berating you at the intersection.

I'm talking about somebody who actually needs something from you.

Oh, he's so kind to you, isn't he?

So kind.

Remembers your kids' names, knows everything about you, just wants to talk about your favorite sports team.

That's all they're doing.

And eventually they'll get to the request.

They're so polite.

The rich person who doesn't need anything from you, he just answers you roughly.

He's like, oh, hey, keeps going on.

Now you would make a mistake to think from that that the poor person is actually kinder.

He's not actually kinder.

That's the point of this proverb.

It's not that the poor person is a nicer person than the rich person, or the rich person is meaner than the poor person.

No.

It's just that the poor person needs something from you.

That's what I mean by don't trust money.

Don't trust riches.

It is so deceptive to the point that you can't even tell how polite somebody is when they're talking to you.

You think the waitress who wants a tip actually likes you?

Come on now.

If she wasn't getting tips, she wouldn't refill your water, I promise you.

That's the way the world works.

Proverbs 14, 20 takes us to the next degree here.

The poor is disliked even by his own neighbor.

But the rich person has so many friends.

And I lost my job, and suddenly my neighbor doesn't help me take out the trash anymore.

He doesn't need anything from you anymore.

And Solomon is a bit tongue in cheek here.

Do you think the rich person, by the way, actually has a lot of friends?

Do you think that's what Solomon's point is?

If you do, you're missing his point.

The rich person doesn't really have all those friends.

This is Luke 6, verse 24.

Luke 6:24

Woe to you who are rich, because you have received your consolation.

This is the parable we read earlier from the Gospel of Luke earlier tonight.

The rich person has so much in this life, and it's all going to be turning their head in the next life.

It's so misleading.

So misleading.

I mean, we make opinions about people's wealth by their appearances, but it's often wrong.

Proverbs 18, verse 11.

Proverbs 18:11

A rich man's wealth is a strong city and like a high wall.

Dot, dot, dot.

In his imagination.

Man, a rich man thinks that his wealth makes him invincible.

You can't do that to me.

I have the best attorneys I can I have the best attorneys money can buy.

Kind of thing.

And the rich person thinks they are invincible.

They can do anything.

It's like a high wall.

And the high wall metaphor, if you're being attacked in the ancient Near East, you would retreat behind the city wall.

And if the enemy can't scale the city wall, then you have victory.

And if your city is up on a high hill or a mountain, then you are invincible.

Nobody can get up there and fight you.

But what about if they dug a tunnel, huh?

You've been to Israel, perhaps you've walked through Hezekiah's tunnel.

A little reminder every time that I see the entrance of Hezekiah's tunnel, I think, man, this is the parable of riches right here.

You think you're invincible because of money, and then there's a tunnel pops up, and all kinds of soldiers.

Our tunnel pops up and circumvents the siege, is what Hezekiah's tunnel was for.

But that's the point.

Would you rather have a visible wall defending you or an invisible God?

So Solomon just drops off, man, rich people, their wealth makes them invincible in their own imagination.

So first, don't trust money.

Don't trust money.

The appearances money presents are just conflicted as well.

People go into debt for crazy things.

You know, when you see a car, a nice car in the parking lot, you think, oh, that person must have so much wealth.

And then you remember these proverbs don't trust wealth.

That nice car probably means that person has so much debt.

Not so much wealth.

Once you start viewing the world that way, you become more wise in understanding of money.

So first, don't trust money.

Second, don't rush money.

Don't trust it, and don't rush it.

Money builds returns.

You invest money.

Money is dollar bills, as I mentioned, they're your employees.

You send them out in the world, they come back at the end of the day with friends.

You invest them in a long-term strategy.

You want your money to grow, you want your money to produce dividends.

It does not do it overnight.

People make so many mistakes with money when they look for the get rich quick schemes, which of course there are not.

You cannot get rich quickly.

Unless you invent Velcro.

I saw a documentary about that guy.

Other than that, there's not a get rich quick scheme.

It is only paths to folly.

Proverbs 28-20 says it this way: a faithful man will abound with blessings.

But whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.

And faithful there is speaking of a long-term trajectory.

The person who is faithful over the long term will have a life of blessing.

He's faithful today, he's faithful tomorrow, he's faithful next week.

At the end of that life, he's going to have blessings around him.

In contrast, the person who is quick to be rich is going to be punished.

You can't rush in for money.

Fools rush in.

Wisdom builds slowly.

Wisdom is, of course, building.

The faithful man is working.

He is saving.

He's not rushing.

Proverbs 13, verse 11.

Proverbs 13:11

Wealth gained by by wealth gained hastily will dwindle.

But whoever gathers little by little will increase it.

That right there is the plan.

It is better to save a little every week or a little every month than it is to save nothing for years and then try to make one big deposit.

You understand this with your with your mortgage.

You pay it off a month at a time, a month at a time.

That's how you live your life.

Faithfully, steadily, making the investments in your house.

What a contrast with the person who looks for the quick way, the quick way to get$100,000.

Those kind of people fall for scams all the time.

You're not going to get rich quick.

The person who's calling you saying, hey, just give me this money and I'll wire you all kinds of money from Uganda, they're not telling you the truth.

They're not telling you the truth.

You know, your son is not kidnapped and you have to give money to get him out.

You did not win a million dollars in the publisher's clearing house.

The person on that phone or behind that email is not actually going to give you money.

I know people fall for that stuff all the time.

You just need to remember Proverbs 13, 11.

Somebody wants to give you a lot of money quickly.

If you fall for that, you will only lose your money immediately.

And beyond that, when you pair this with Ecclesiastes, there's a bigger picture.

That the person who gets money quickly, like even if that does happen, you get your money quickly.

You didn't learn the value of it.

And so you use it, you use it all right away.

You lose it all quickly.

Because you don't know what it's like to work to save.

And so it's all gone.

It's all gone so quick.

Remember those kind of proverbs.

The person who works gains money.

You know, jobs pay you.

You understand this, right?

Jobs pay you.

It's very common for college students to get, you know, it's on the older people, you get scammed by somebody saying, you know, they have your nephew you kidnapped, send the money, or that you just want a million dollars, send the money to free it or whatever.

But on the younger side, college kids get scammed all the time.

Tech savvy's college kids get scammed all the time with like, hey, come get this job, you'll make a lot of money, starting in month four.

But month one, two, and three, you just have to give us money.

They don't say it quite like that.

They say, hey, this is look at me, look how wealthy I am.

You want a job with me?

Come to work for my company, come work for my company.

You go to some meeting and they're like, okay, it just costs you$2,000 to work for my company.

You're like, okay, well, I've already gone to, you know, a lunch at a nice hotel, so maybe I should just give them$2,000.

It's like, okay, now that you've done that, it's only$2,000 more to get your client list.

Now that you've done that, it's only$2,000 more for you to get like a little office space you can use one hour a month.

Oh, but don't worry, you'll get rich soon.

College kids call for that stuff all the time.

The basic principle to remember in life is that jobs pay you, you don't pay them.

And when you work little by little, you save money.

That's Proverbs 13.

Randy Alcorn, if you know him from the book The Treasure Principle, he also wrote a book called God, Money and Possessions.

He wrote that book in the late, I think 1989, he wrote that book.

And it was a good book.

And somebody, one of his friends challenged him to not take royalties from that book, to live out the message that he was preaching it.

And so he gave his royalties, directed him to his own church, uh, because the church had given him the time to write to book, and so the royalties of the book went to him.

It was later that year that he went and protested at an abortion clinic in Oregon.

The protesters, it was non-violent protests, they like locked arms outside the protest clinic.

You know, a typical pro-life uh abortion clinic protest in the 1990s.

This is before the federal laws that made that kind of stuff illegal, and the abortion clinic sued him and won in federal court in Oregon.

They won a judgment of$8.4 million against Randy Alcorn.

The dude's a pastor of a small church in Portland.

And in 1990,$8.4 million was a lot of money in 1990.

Anyway, the judge ruled that his salary, one-fourth of his salary for the rest of his life, was going to be garnished from the church to go to the abortion clinic.

And he decided that he is not gonna give any money to the abortion clinic at all, no matter what.

He didn't want any of his church money to go to the abortion clinic.

The judge had there's an Oregon law that protects people that make below minimum wage from having their wages garnished.

So he decided in 1990 that he was going to spend the rest of his life making below minimum wage from his church.

And as long as he did that, the abortion clinic wouldn't get any money.

You know, he's still alive and still writing today.

And his church gets the royalties from his books, and his finances are analyzed by the courthouse, and he is not allowed to make more than minimum wage in any year to this to this very moment.

It's kind of an incredible story.

What's incredible to me about it is he wrote a different book called The Treasure Principle about that experience.

And he says in there that you might think a newly married guy trying to raise a family in Oregon would lament knowing that he's only going to have a life of minimum wage.

And he says, the truth is it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.

He said through that he learned how to actually save and give money away.

And now he says that he is better at saving and giving than he ever was when he had a you know a normal paying job.

The person who gathers little by little will be blessed and will increase.

Proverbs 21, verse 20.

Proverbs 21:20

Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man's dwelling, but the foolish man devours it.

A person who is wise saves things.

Now, in Solomon's day, they didn't have any savings accounts at the bank, and so that's why it's not this kind of language.

If you wanted to save stuff, you would buy something precious.

You know, the English analogy today would be a quasi-endowment.

You put your money in property or something, that's where you store your money, and your property gains value.

That's oil back then.

So a wise person is purchasing things like oil, purchasing things that are treasure, that are growing in value, and keeping them so that their wealth increases.

Solomon says it's wise to do that.

It's a long-term investment.

You can make long-term investments.

You can invest in stocks, for example, that have value, where the company is producing something of value and you put your money into it, and your money is increasing in value.

We don't sell precious oil today.

Essential oils are not an investment.

They're the scam part I said earlier.

Okay, the right people aren't here.

That's good.

The foolish person devours all the money.

The fool foolish person devours everything.

They have money, they spend it right away.

They get a raise, it's spent before the first paycheck comes in.

They don't have anything.

Don't spend money on things that are not worth it once you buy it.

That's the principle.

You spend money on things that grow in value, not things that decline in value.

And we right now are living in the greatest wealth transfer, probably in world history.

The what's the greatest generation, so-called, has stored so much, saved so much of their money.

That generation that, you know, between World War II, the Korean War, that generation, they didn't waste money.

They didn't waste money.

They reused coffee cups, plastic coffee cups.

And they died with millions of dollars in the bank account.

Because they didn't waste their money on foolish things, and they see their kids like buying avocado toast all the time and it kills them.

The wise person saves money.

Solomon says it's good to weigh to save money.

Who knows?

And economists say it's the greatest wealth transfer ever in world history, because it doesn't seem like the generations coming after them are doing that.

Third, don't hoard money.

So don't trust money.

Don't rush money.

Like be slow and steady with your money.

Save it.

Buy things that grow in value.

And then don't hoard it.

So investing good, hoarding bad.

There's no threshold with that.

Psalm doesn't say if you're saving 10% of your money, that's investing.

And if you're saving 15% of your money, that's hoarding.

There's no principle like that because it's going to look different in every society, every stage of life.

It's going to look how much you save when you have little kids is going to look different than how much you save when there's no kids in your house.

Like it looks different at every stage of your life.

And so there's no number value given.

That's the point.

The principle is save and invest with long-term horizons in mind, but don't hoard your money.

Proverbs 14, 31.

Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.

We've looked at this verse under so many other headings, under worship, under, we'll look at it later under justice.

It fits into so many categories in Proverbs.

It's such a key verse.

But here, under the heading of wealth, you don't exploit poor people for their money.

You're not that greedy.

That you would take money from somebody who is, you know, poor just because you want it.

You remember that poor people are in the image of God.

We're called to be generous within the bounds of wisdom.

He who's generous to the need, he honors him.

The New Testament fills out a lot of what that looks like.

I'm not going to go into that tonight, but it's not talking about being generous to the people who are, you know, with the sign, you know, we'll work for beer kind of stuff.

You don't need to be generous to people who are, you know, not working.

2 Thessalonians says, if you don't work, you shouldn't eat.

Don't give that kind of person money.

So you understand generosity is inside of the bounds of wisdom.

But if you are generous with your money, you will honor the people that you are generous to, and you're honoring the Lord who made both of you.

Proverbs 19, verse 17, which might even be open if you're still up in Proverbs 19, verse 17 says, Whoever is generous to the poor lends to Yahweh.

Proverbs 19:17 Proverbs 19:17

You're generous to the poor.

You're really lending to Yahweh.

And God will repay you.

That's because God is sovereign over the poor.

God owns everything.

You're just managing it.

God is the one who owns it.

Proverbs 22, verse 9.

Proverbs 22:9

Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.

This is that Randy Alcorn cycle here.

The more generous you are, the more you're going to be blessed.

And it will seem like the more you have.

When you're giving, when you're saving money to give it away, you suddenly recognize how your money is multiplying.

When you're spending your money on frivolous things, it seems like there's holes in your pocket.

That's the language that Haggai uses in Haggai 1.

You're spending things on all kinds of crazy things, and you realize, oh, I must have holes in my pocket.

And you blame God for it.

But once you start being generous with your money, the holes in your pocket close because you're being generous with it, and it seems like your finances are growing.

God owns everything, you're just managing it, and so you're generous.

Proverbs 22, verse 9, your bountiful eye, you're going to see yourself blessed because your heart goes where you put your money.

Proverbs 22:9

Where you put your money, this is what Jesus means in Matthew 6, it draws your affections there as well.

It draws your affections.

You give money to a missionary, suddenly you care about that missionary, and you pray for that missionary, you love him more.

The more you give, the more things are multiplied.

That same point is made in Proverbs 11, 24.

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer.

Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want.

Person says, I don't have enough money to be generous.

They're never going to have enough money.

You never have enough money to be generous.

You never do.

But the person who is generous will find that their money multiplies.

This isn't health, wealth, prosperity kind of language.

It's just the basic point.

When you're trying to be generous, you spend less, and as you start spending less, guess what?

It's you don't have to have an economics degree to get this.

When you spend less, you get more money.

It's wonderful how God made economics.

And your joy is multiplied.

When you're giving, your joy is multiplied.

I've heard it said that you should have more kids because kids bring joy.

I read an article this week in some newspaper that it was a challenge to have one more kid than you think you should.

Like just err on the side of one more kid because you're just multiplying joy in your house.

And that's fine and everything.

And I read that and I thought the same thing is probably true with giving.

Just give a little bit more than you think you should, because the money you give is going to multiply your joy.

It'll multiply your joy.

You're actually going to delight more.

That's Proverbs 11, 24.

Proverbs 22, 16.

Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth or gives to the rich will only come to poverty.

You oppress your own.

You oppress the poor person.

Just to multiply richer, the rich give to the rich, you're only going to come to poverty.

That ends in a fiasco.

The great irony is that money is like water.

The tighter you grip it, the more it goes through your hands.

Or like sand.

You know, you can hold sand in your hand if you hold it loosely, but once you squeeze it, it goes away.

And that's the way money is.

Proverbs 22, verse 22, don't rob the poor because he's poor or crush the afflicted at the gate, for Yahweh will plead their cause and rob of life those who rob them.

Proverbs 22:22

That's a pretty sobering verse.

If you are in a position of leadership and you exploit the poor person because they can't do anything about it, what's going to happen to you when you stand before God?

Compared to God, are you rich or poor?

Obviously poor.

So if you're a judge and you're an authority and you exploit a poor person, one day you're going to stand before God and you're going to be the poor person, and he'll treat you according to your own standard.

I remember my first year here, Justice Clarence Thomas attended an evening service here, and I had just finished reading his biography and kind of admired him tremendously.

And uh the Kennistons, if you remember them, brought him to an evening service, and I had an illustration that night about uh it was a gospel message, and had an illustration about God is a good judge, and I talked about how good judges don't pass over sin and everything, they have to execute judgment.

And as I'm thinking about it, I know Justice Thomas is there, and suddenly I'm second-guessing everything I'm saying about judging.

No more judge illustrations, please no, please no, please no.

And then afterwards in the in the hallway, I asked him, so did I get the judge part right?

And if you know him, he is so gregarious and laughed and was like, ha ha ha ha ha ha, it was excellent.

That was my Justice Thomas impersonation right there.

Imagine being a wicked judge in standing before God.

The tables will be reversed.

You know, you're gonna be judged by God and all the money you got from that, from being a wicked judge, how hard is that gonna come back?

What's that gonna be worth?

Nothing.

At the great white throne judgment.

Proverbs 14, 21.

Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner.

But blessed is he who's generous to the poor.

Again, generosity within the bounds of wisdom is good and a virtue.

And you may as well be generous, because you don't get to take it with you.

I'm sure you know the story about J.D.

Rockefeller after he died.

A reporter called his accountant and asked, How much money did John D.

leave?

And the accountant's reply was classic.

All of it.

That's the nature of money.

It goes away.

So be generous in this life.

Be generous in this life.

And finally, number four, don't lend money.

Don't lend money.

And this is basically lending money at interest is expressly banned in the Old Testament.

Leviticus 25, verse 35.

Leviticus 25:35

If your brother becomes poor and can't maintain his life with you, support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he'll live with you.

Do not charge him interest because you fear the Lord.

Don't lend him your money at interest.

Don't give him food for profit.

I'm Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, so don't lend him money.

If he becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, don't make him be a slave.

Just let him be like a hired servant.

In other words, you're paying him.

That's what a hired servant is.

He owes your money and sells himself to you, pay him.

The Jews broke this all the time.

Of course, they're judged by it in Nehemiah's day.

They had a cycle of poverty because they couldn't afford life.

Because they were exploiting each other.

Proverbs 11, 15 brings this as a wisdom principle.

Whoever puts up security for a stranger will surely suffer harm, but he who hates striking hands in a pledge is secure.

If you are lending somebody money, you're not going to get it back, is the point.

You know what you call lending somebody money?

Giving somebody money.

That's the best phrase for that.

Waving bye-bye.

Striking hands is this, you know, shake hands.

Security is saying, hey, somebody says, I'm taking out this loan.

Would you back me?

You're like, sure, I'll back you.

See you later, man.

The principle in the New Testament is to mind your own business.

There's a sense in which you can invest with people, investing with people you know, using your money, pooling your money for some investment.

That's that's fine.

That's not this.

That's not lending somebody money who you're not going to see again.

So don't Don't give money to random people on Facebook.

Don't give money to the person who calls.

All that.

Don't fall for those kind of things because you're not in the money lending business.

Proverbs 17, 18.

One who lacks sense gives a pledge and puts up security in the presence of his neighbor.

It's lacking sense.

The neighbor here is the person who witnesses the transaction.

He's going to think you're foolish.

Proverbs 20, verse 16.

Proverbs 20:16

Take a man's garment when he has put up security for a stranger and hold it in pledge when he puts up security for foreigners.

Do you catch that?

If you lend somebody money, and this other person, this third person, puts up security for it, cosigns for it, and then that person defaults on the loan, Solomon says, go ahead and take that guy's jacket from him.

Take it from him.

He deserved it.

What's he doing?

Co-signing a loan for some random person.

That same proverb is repeated in Proverbs 27.13, which says in Proverbs 27.13, I'm not going to put in the screen, but it says that a lot of people will co-sign, and the people they're co-signing for are just getting a prostitute.

And you're cosigning the loan.

Today's English version translates Proverbs 20, 16 this way.

I normally don't quote from this translation, but this one made me laugh.

Anyone stupid enough to promise to be responsible for strangers' debts ought to have his own property taken away from him.

That's their translation of this.

Amen to that.

Proverbs 22, 26.

Be not one of those who give pledges, who put up security for debts.

If you have nothing with which to pay, why should your bed be taken from under you?

So don't put up security from somebody else who's in debt.

This isn't saying don't give money away.

Of course you can give money away.

And if you can, if you're lending money to somebody with the intentionality that it's a gift, you're like just for the sake of the relationship, call it, I'm lending it to you.

Okay, that's fine.

Don't charge them interest for it.

The idea of interest is wrapped up in the idea of lending, because again, if you're not charging interest, you're basically just giving it away, and so give it away.

Somebody's in need and you want to help them, better to give them money, and maybe they'll pay it back, and maybe they won't.

But it doesn't matter to you because you gave it away.

You're not making a weight around that person's neck.

If they made a financially foolish decision that got them into debt, so much so that you're asked to bail them out.

Do you think they're going to be making better decisions to pay you back?

No, they're not.

They're not going to be making better decisions.

I'll help you with the answer to that question.

They will not.

But if they've made bad decisions and get them in a situation and you feel compelled to help them, help them then.

That's fine.

You can be generous with your money.

That was the third point.

When you start lending it, it creates a complexity of relationships that is ultimately not going to be wise.

Proverbs 28, verse 8.

Proverbs 28:8

Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.

I had to read this like six times to figure out what someone was actually saying here.

If you are the person who's lending money and collecting interest, you're only gathering all of that work, all of that paperwork, APR plus three points, all that paperwork you're doing, you're just gathering all that money to give to somebody else who's generous.

The generous person who's not collecting interest is going to be getting your money that you're working so hard for.

That's the way the world works.

You collect interest from people, you're going to lose it all because you have no friends.

If you get in trouble, nobody's going to help you.

Now you're in debt to the person who's been generous his whole life.

Ultimately, God has vindicated.

Again, you want to help people out financially, you can give them money.

And if it's your kids we're talking about here, you can co-sign a loan for your kids.

That's fine.

You're teaching them financial principles.

But you're understanding with a you know degree of oversight here that if they default on it, it's gone.

Is that wise for you based upon your investment in your kids?

You know your kids better than I do.

It could be very helpful.

Remember, part of wisdom is setting up your kids to do well in this world, and so you can, you know, you can invest in them and you can give to them.

And if teaching them responsibility is part of cosigning for them, that's fine, but you're cosigning with the knowledge that those things might not come back to you.

That's just the reality.

And a wise person understands that.

Ultimately, you're making decisions about what best to do with your money.

Proverbs 13, 22 says it this way: a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous.

It is wise to save money.

That's true.

Don't hear me say otherwise.

It is wise to save money.

It's wise to invest money in long-term investments that produce a return.

That's wise.

Do that.

And we're back to where we began at the beginning of the night.

The crown of wisdom is the treasure you have.

For some people, that's financial.

For some people, it's the family and relationships.

A life of wisdom, somebody who saved throughout their life with wise investments, who's also generous.

You're not saving the exclusivity of generosity.

That's a miser.

That's not wise.

A miser is never esteemed.

But somebody who's strategically saving while leading a life of generosity comes to the end of their life, their money has grown, they have enough to give to their grandkids.

That's the legacy of life right there.

Not the foolish person, though.

He devours his wealth when he gets it.

He doesn't have anything left to give.

His wealth is laid up for the righteous.

The truth is, five minutes after you die, you're gonna stand before God.

And all of your investment decisions throughout your life will have clarity.

The iPod nano won't matter five minutes after you die.

No DVD players in heaven.

Nope.

What you spend your money on in this life will be so evident when you stand before God, what was valuable and what wasn't.

The wise person understands that and lives in light of the end.

Lord, we're grateful that our lives are finite.

We don't live forever.

It's appointed for man once to die, and then the judgment.

We long for the return of Christ.

We long for the end of navigating a fallen world.

We long to be with you.

We long to be on the other side of Jordan's river.

In the meantime, Lord, we want to make wise decisions.

We want to send our treasure ahead to that far shore.

We also want to make wise decisions about navigating relationships here and now.

Help us live life with wisdom, with a generous heart, giving to those in need, not expecting to be repaid.

Help our money grow wings, fly around the world, making friends for us in heaven.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.