What Your Money Says About Your Faith: Wisdom for Life | Week 5

We're in a series today called Wisdom for Life.

We're in a series called Wisdom for Life.

And today we are going to talk from the book of Proverbs about wisdom with our finances.

Everybody loves to hear about money in church, right?

Unfortunately, it's in the Bible.

And so once in a while, and it's in the Bible a lot.

So unashamedly, we need to talk about finances.

And it's actually in the book of Proverbs quite a bit.

So we're in this Wisdom for Life series, and we're talking about wisdom from the book of Proverbs.

And wisdom is knowing the difference between what is right and what is wrong, and choosing to do what is right.

Now, wisdom in Proverbs gives us some principles for how to handle money.

Gives us some really great principles for how to handle money, but it doesn't start there.

It doesn't start there.

Because before we get practical, we need to understand that there is a prerequisite for godly financial wisdom.

There's something that needs to happen first in our lives before we can truly practice godly financial wisdom.

Do you know what's necessary before we can do that?

Faith.

Faith.

Before we can handle our finances with godly wisdom, we must have faith.

We must trust in the person of Jesus with our whole hearts, because trust in Jesus drives godly financial wisdom.

Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 and 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Now, this verse has been shared more than once throughout this wisdom series.

And I'm highlighting it again as we get started today because the only way to practice godly financial wisdom is to trust in the Lord with all of our hearts.

Now, many of us, we trust Jesus with some things.

Maybe we trust him with a lot of things in our lives.

But money is one of the most difficult areas to put our trust in Jesus.

And our willingness to trust him will determine more than anything else how well we live out godly financial wisdom.

Now, every morning I make myself three eggs and an avocado.

And sometimes I eat some blueberries and some gluten-free, sugar-free cereal.

I know, I eat very weird and ridiculous.

It's important, my wife has taught me this, it is important that you don't leave shell in the eggs.

That's important, apparently.

Very, very important.

So I scramble these eggs up, and then, I mean, some of you know this, then you just put it in the pan.

Can somebody tell me what the problem is here?

Yeah, you all the way in the back.

I only have half of a pan.

You wouldn't cook eggs with half a pan.

You wouldn't do it.

It doesn't work.

In fact, it's ridiculous.

It makes a mess.

And you cannot have godly financial wisdom and only trust him with half your heart.

You will make a mess.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

That is where wisdom starts.

God doesn't want half of you.

He doesn't want us to trust him halfway with our lives.

Life doesn't work when we only give God half.

He wants all of us.

And money is one of the clearest places where our faith gets tested.

So this isn't just a financial conversation today.

This is a faith conversation.

This is a conversation about trust in the person of Jesus.

So we're going to look at four principles of godly financial wisdom, all built on a foundation of faith.

And we're going to move through the first few pretty quickly and spend a little more time on the last one.

The first principle is build income with patience and purpose.

Build income with patience and purpose.

Proverbs 12, 11 says, those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies have no sense.

Now, Solomon, the author of Proverbs, wrote this 2,000 years ago.

Well, actually, it was more than that.

Now.

And it was written in an agricultural society where 85% of Hebrews were connected to farming or herding in some way.

Working the land was normal for these people.

This was not a metaphor.

This was real life for the people of God.

And so if you have had a garden or you've done any kind of farming, you know that it is a marathon, not a sprint.

It takes hard work, watering, weeding, sometimes fertilizing, and faithfully working the land in anticipation of a harvest over and over again before the results appear.

And he says, those who work their land will have abundant food.

What he's saying here is practice faithful endurance over time.

Solomon's not just talking about hard work, he's talking about faithful long-term endurance.

Modeling a stick tuitiveness in your work.

Not being fast to quit when things get hard.

But sticking in, digging in over time.

Build income with patience and purpose.

Proverbs 10, 4.

Solomon says, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Interestingly, this phrase, lazy hands, doesn't mean inactivity, it means careless effort.

So it's not just about doing less, it means half-engaged work.

And Solomon contrasts this with diligent hands, a phrase that means purposefulness, decisiveness.

See, he's not talking about working more here, he's talking about working with intentionality.

Don't just put in the time, be focused, be purposeful, build income with patience and purpose.

Principle number two always choose integrity over profit.

Proverbs 28:6 says it's better to be poor and honest than to be dishonest and rich.

Proverbs 28:6

Now we live in a culture where money is valued above almost anything.

Money has tremendous value, and most people would do a lot of things to be rich instead of poor.

That's a big deal in our culture.

Earning wealth can drive many of our habits and behaviors, but Solomon says it's better to be poor and honest than dishonest and rich.

And so my question is, do we actually believe this?

Do we actually believe that it is better to be poor and honest than dishonest and rich?

If we do, it'll drive our behaviors.

But if we compromise integrity for the sake of gain, what we're saying to God is, I don't trust you.

I don't trust you with my whole heart.

When we make a decision that increases profit but compromises integrity, we're showing that our faith is in ourself, not in Jesus.

When I was 17 years old, I was a telemarketer.

Yes, I was a telemarketer.

I'm not proud of it, but it's true.

I've done many weird things.

And I spent my days in a room with about 20 or 30 other people on the phone.

This was 90 years ago.

I was 17, it was about 25, 26 years ago, you can do the math.

And the phone would flip to the next call and the next call.

Every time I push the button to hang up, it would flip to the next call.

And when someone would pick up, I would say, Hi, my name's Mike, and I'm calling you from Diamond Communications to let you know you have been entered into a$25,000 cash sweepstakes.

And simply for participating with us today, you're gonna receive a free diamond watch.

On top of that, we want to give you three free monthly magazines.

So what are you more into?

Sports, news, fashion, or entertainment?

And I would bait them in to answering my questions, pretending like we're giving them all this free stuff.

The reality is the sweepstakes was something that everybody in the United States was entered in, and we had nothing to do with it.

The diamond watch was a diamond chip that cost us$12.

And participating with us today meant that by the end of the call, they had to charge their credit card for$780 to pay for five years of weekly magazines that they did not want or need.

And it's amazing how many cards declined because many of these people lived that way and we were just tricking them into going more in debt.

Was it legal?

Yes.

Was it honest?

No.

No, it was not.

It wasn't honest.

And when we compromise integrity for the sake of financial gain, we are showing that we don't trust God.

Proverbs 16.8 says it's better to have little with godliness than to be rich and dishonest.

God calls us to operate with integrity regardless of the financial implications of choosing that integrity.

Because placing honesty over profit tells God and the world that our trust, our faith is wholeheartedly in Jesus.

Now maybe you're tempted to cheat on your taxes.

Just a little bit.

Not claiming those tips.

Or whatever.

Maybe the culture of your job is to make people think they're getting a good deal when you know they're not.

Whatever it is, those little ways that we sacrifice honesty and integrity for the sake of financial gain, is saying, I don't trust you, God.

I don't fully trust you to take care of me.

Do I trust that God will take care of my finances if I live his way?

God says it's better to have little with godliness than to be rich and dishonest.

Always choose integrity over profit.

Principle number three, avoid unwise debt.

Avoid unwise debt.

Now, Proverbs doesn't talk a lot about this, but it's important enough to highlight in Proverbs 22, 7, Solomon says, the rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.

The borrower is slave to the lender.

Now, this is a bold statement.

This word slave to the lender.

He didn't have to use that word.

Why does he do that?

Because debt creates a power dynamic.

It creates a power dynamic, it limits your future options.

Now, we live in a culture, to be fair, we live in a culture where having a mortgage in order to own a home is necessary.

And sometimes it's wise to borrow money for the sake of investing it elsewhere.

That's called wise debt.

Those things are often wise.

But sometimes when I make a decision that increases my debt and it's unnecessary, it can cause more difficulty for me and my family in the future.

We live in a country where credit card debt is at an all-time high.

In 2023, national credit card debt for the United States hit$1 trillion for the very first time.

Today, three years later, it's at$1.25 trillion.

That's 25% more in three years.

38% of adults in the United States carry a balance month over month, paying an average of 21% interest.

16%, one in six have a balance of at least$5,000, and 10% of us have a balance of$10,000 or more.

I don't judge.

I'm not judging you.

But when we engage in that, it creates pain for us in the future and pain for our family as we continue to pay high interest on credit card debt.

The borrower is slave to the lender.

Now, for many of this, for many of us, credit card debt is creating this power dynamic where it will make difficult financial choices ahead for years to come.

And we need to avoid unwise debt.

That's important.

Okay, principle number four.

And this is the one that is most important and most difficult for us.

So we're going to spend a little bit more time on this one.

And this principle is called live generously.

And Proverbs talks a lot about this.

Live generously.

In Proverbs 19, 17, it says, if you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord.

This is an interesting verse.

It's super interesting to me.

If I help the poor, I'm lending to the Lord.

Really?

Because I don't know about you, but I want to lend to the Lord.

I want to lend to the Lord, the creator, the owner of all things.

I mean, this idea sounds almost irreverent because what this verse implies is that when I give to the poor, God owes me something.

God chooses to owe me something.

If you help the poor, you're lending to the Lord.

Friends, if we actually believe this verse, we would be fools not to help the poor.

But you'll only do it if you trust God with your whole heart.

You'll only do it if you believe that God is who he says he is and does what he says he does.

You'll only do it if you believe that God is trustworthy.

Because generosity is not about compassion, it's about faith.

Generosity is not about compassion, it's about faith.

It is a declaration to God that says, I trust you more than what I can hold on to.

I'm gonna let go of what is mine in faith that you will take care of me, God.

One time, about six months ago, I was coming out of a grocery store, and there was a gentleman in the parking lot standing next to his vehicle with a microphone and a violin.

And he had a speaker there, and he's playing this violin, and the music was beautiful.

I mean, man, he could play.

As a musician, I really appreciated it.

And he had a sign, like presumably homeless or something, and and he was asking people to help.

So I parked my car because I was already driving, and I walked over and I gave him some money.

And I walked away and I got in my car, and as I got in my car, I looked across the parking lot at this gentleman, and he had stopped playing because he was putting the money away.

Now, I had also complimented him.

I forgot to mention, I had said to him, Your playing is beautiful.

Like you're real a really good musician.

And so as I'm in my car looking at him, starting it, he's putting the money away, and the violin music starts back up.

He's not playing it.

And this flood of questions started going through my mind all in an instant.

What else is he lying about?

He's deceiving me.

He's scamming me.

Is he even homeless?

Does he even need my money?

Is he just lazy and he doesn't feel like working?

These questions flooded my mind after I gave him the money, and the Holy Spirit of God said to me, Mike, that is not your job to decide.

That is not your job to decide.

Your job is to be generous and trust me.

Because generosity is about trust in God, not in people.

Generosity is about trust in God, not in people.

Now, many of us, if we're being honest, we struggle with some version of this.

We see a person begging for money and thoughts come to mind.

Is he going to spend it on drugs and alcohol?

Why doesn't she get a job?

These various questions come to mind.

But that's not your responsibility.

You don't know that person, you don't know their story.

Your responsibility is to be generous and trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Generosity is about trust in God, not in people.

Now the most critical way to live generously is to support your local church.

That is the most critical way to live generously.

And you may be thinking, of course you say that.

You're a pastor.

You work for the church.

You're biased.

I mean, yes, I am biased.

I'll admit I am biased.

But that is not why I believe this.

I have not always been a pastor, but I have believed this for much longer than I have been on staff at a church.

The most critical way to live generously is to give to your local church.

Why?

Because it is the surest path for my generosity to impact the spiritual lives of people.

It's the surest path for my generosity to impact the spiritual lives of people.

Proverbs chapter 3, verse 9.

Proverbs 3:9

Solomon writes, Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of your crops.

God's people in the Old Testament were expected to give in faith to support the temple worship system.

And for thousands of years, all the way back to Abraham, we see in the Bible that the people of God were expected to support God's work of ministry.

Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops.

The Hebrews, God's people were to give the first portion.

That's what first fruits means.

The first portion of the harvest.

And what's interesting about this is that the first portion comes first, which means you don't know how good the harvest is gonna be yet.

You don't know how much you're going to get.

And that is why first fruits giving took faith.

God's people gave before knowing how much they were going to get.

They had faith at the beginning that God would come through.

At the end.

And we see this throughout the New Testament as well.

The practice of giving to support the local church was normal for God's people.

So why?

Why do we give to the local church?

Is it because God needs my money?

Is it because the pastor says so?

No, it's because when I do, it says I trust him.

Because when I give to support the local church, it says I trust you, God.

It says, I want to be a part of what you're doing in the spiritual lives of people.

It says, I want the privilege of partnering with you in people's lives as a family together.

Now at Grace Church, every staff person and every elder gives to support the ministry, what God is doing.

That's something that we've communicated as an expectation because we will not ask the people of Grace Church to do something the leaders of Grace Church are not willing to do.

Finances fuel what God wants to do.

Money drives a Jesus-centered vision in the lives of people.

Proverbs 11, 24 and 25 says this.

One person gives freely yet gains even more.

Another withholds unduly but comes to poverty.

A generous person will prosper.

Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

I love this verse.

I do, I love this verse.

One person gives freely yet gains even more.

This phrase gives freely comes from a Hebrew phrase that was a farming term.

It meant to spread seed in a field.

It was to scatter.

Have you ever scattered seed before?

Give me a hand if you've scattered seed.

Grass seed, farming seed.

Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of us have scattered seed.

Seeds in a garden.

Flower seeds.

To a child or someone who's completely uninformed, it looks like you're just throwing it away.

Like what else do you throw on the ground or bury in the dirt?

Stuff you don't want anymore, perhaps.

It looks like a complete waste or a loss, but the reality is that there will be a future return on that investment.

It's an investment in the future harvest.

And you're not only investing seed, but the time it takes for a nicer lawn or vegetables or a harvest that will earn you income.

In a few weeks or months, those seeds will germinate and sprout and grow, and you will have a future return on your investment.

And Solomon says one person gives freely yet gains even more, like spreading seed in a field.

Because when we live generously, we're scattering seeds of faith, trusting that God will bring the future return.

Trusting that God will take care of us.

Solomon goes on in this verse, he says, A generous person will prosper.

Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

The word for prosper here means to flourish.

It's broader than just financial.

It involves one's overall well-being.

You could translate this: the generous person will thrive.

We hear prosper, we think of finances.

That's not what this verse, what this word means.

It is bigger than just finances.

And I've seen this truth so abundantly in my own life, over and over and over again.

Because generosity can feel like loss in the moment.

But in God's economy, we're sowing seeds of faith for future blessing.

But we have to trust him with our whole hearts.

Verse 25, he says, Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

Church, you and I need to be refreshed by God.

We need it.

The question becomes, do I trust him with my whole heart?

Because you cannot outgive God.

You cannot outgive God.

You just can't do it.

You don't have enough to outgive God.

My wife and I determined early on, before we got married, that God wants us to give at least 10% of whatever He provides for us.

And sometimes it's a little more.

And most of that goes to our local church, whatever local church we've been planted at.

And before our wedding, when we were getting married and we had sent out invitations, we had invited several hundred people to our wedding.

And most of the people who couldn't come sent us gifts in the mail.

And so for weeks we were getting these gifts in the mail, mostly cards with gift cards or checks or cash.

People sent us these gifts, and we just felt so blessed, so blessed.

Almost every day we'd get a couple of envelopes.

And we were just talking about how blessed we are and how much God is just uh doing for us.

And then I got home after work the next day.

This was a Saturday, and there were two envelopes in the mail that looked like gifts.

And so I said to God, we said to God together, Lord, whatever is in these two envelopes, you've been so good to us.

We're gonna give these extra to our church.

And I opened the first envelope.

Now this was 2004, okay?

It's 22 years ago, almost.

I opened the first envelope and there were$200 in it.

That was a big one.

And I'm like, oh wow.

Okay.

Open the second envelope.

$500.

I'm not making this up.

$700 in these two envelopes.

And I said, God, can I give you the next two?

He said no.

I said, is there someone else I can talk to?

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT what that would be worth today.

$1,230 puts it into perspective.

And so the next day was Sunday, and we gave an extra$700, and it felt painful.

And when we got home from church, we got word that God had blessed us unexpectedly with$10,000.

And that was the money that we used to start our life.

You cannot outgive God.

You cannot outgive God.

Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

This is not a get rich quick formula.

God's not a genie.

Sometimes the blessing, sometimes the refreshment that God gives is not financial.

Sometimes we give and it's hard, and we just trust God.

But when we choose to live generously, when we choose to honor the Lord with the first fruits of what he gives us, he always responds with blessing.

And that is a critical part of wholehearted trust in God.

A critical part of godly financial wisdom.

God calling his people to support the work of the local church so that more lost people can become found people and more found people can follow Jesus.

Because of your faith and generosity, in the last 10 months, we have seen 81 people put their faith in Jesus for the very first time.

Yeah, oh, that's something to celebrate.

Yeah.

Because many of you have trusted God with your whole hearts to support the work of Grace Church.

And because of your faith and generosity, we've seen 60 of those people get baptized and testify their faith.

Yeah, praise the Lord.

Because of your faith and generosity, we've been able to help 70 families who are in hard times in the last 10 months.

70 families have been helped because of your faith-filled generosity.

When we practice wholehearted trust in the area of our finances, God shows his power.

Now, in a moment, Pastor Dan is going to share with you how God has been incredibly faithful in the Pave the Way Project.

And we're going to get to hear that in just a moment.

So I'm going to pray and I'm going to invite Pastor Dan out to share with us.

Let's bow our heads in prayer together.

Jesus, we ask that you would strengthen us to trust you with our whole hearts.

That you would make us a people who practice wisdom, godly wisdom, in the area of our finances.

And God, we thank you for your faithfulness.

We thank you for all that you're doing in the lives of people and in this project that Dan is about to share.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.