Obtaining God's Peace & Blessings in Finances - P1

I read something from a friend the other day said man blames fate for other accidents but feels personally responsible when he makes a hole in one.

I was thinking about Robert in that particular deal.

Amen.

Amen.

Five things people ponder.

First thing you hear a lot of people ponder is, is there a God?

There's a lot of people that are really trying to make that decision.

Second thing a lot of people try to figure out is why are men and women so different?

And they're supposed to live together, you know?

Thing.

How come every food that tastes really good is bad for you?

You know, I don't even have to have one of those calor counters.

I don't have to have one of those good food, bad food.

I taste it.

If it's good, I know it's bad.

I can't eat it.

That's all there is to it.

And the question that I've pondered most of my life: who has all of those pens that I've lost?

Somebody's got a warehouse somewhere.

And the last question that I think all of us ponder from time to time is where does all of our money go?

Isn't that right?

Just can't figure out where it all goes.

So we're going to talk about some of that tonight.

We're going to talk about obtaining God's peace and blessings in your finances.

And before we really get started into this, I'd like to kind of do a little short quiz and see how much you know about finances.

Because there's some certain principles that work in finances.

So let's go through a few of these and just see what your knowledge is about finances.

Because one of the problems we have is a lot of us really don't know enough about finances.

Excuse me.

Bruce gave me a piece of chocolate.

If you saved$200 a month and you earned 10% interest, how much would you have at age 65 if you started at 45 years of age, if you started at 35 years, and if you started at 25 years of age?

$200 a month, 10% interest, and you just save that each month, put it into an account, whether it's a stock account or whatever, that earned yourself 10% interest.

Now, if you started at 45, the principal that you would have put into the account would be$48,000.

So I want you just to ponder for a minute what the interest is and then what the total amount would be.

Okay?

In your mind, kind of if you've got a pencil and a piece of paper, jot down there on a piece of paper, this is a quiz now, pop quiz.

We're going to turn this in at the end, and whoever you know gets the best score gets a little money.

Okay.

Okay, so check my antenna on together because it's cutting out.

No antenna.

Antenna's gone.

If you start at 35, you're obviously going to save ten more years, and so you would have saved$72,000 plus interest.

How much would that be?

Or if you started at$25, you'd have another 10 years and you would have saved$96,000.

So with interest, how much do you think that total would be?

Okay, if you kind of got an idea in your mind, let's let's go to the next slide.

If you started at$45 and had a principal of$48,000 with interest, that would be$143,760.

So that's about$100,000 interest.

If you started at$35, even though there's only a difference between$48,000 and$72,000, that's only$20 some odd thousand dollars.

The difference jumps all the way from$143,000 to$412,000.

Now that's just on the difference of$24,000, you gain$250,000 more,$260,000 or$70.

Now if you started at$25,000 saving$200, you'd only have$96,000, which is another$24,000.

But with interest, that total would be$1,100,000.

So look at the difference.

One of the things I want to show you here is that the difference it makes to start saving early.

It doesn't matter where you are, this principle works the same.

10 years versus 20, 20 versus 25, there's a multiplier effect.

This is what they call compound interest.

You earn money on your interest, and then the interest earns interest on the interest, and it makes a multiple of what you started with.

So whereas if you started with$48,000 and only went to$143,000, that's about three times your money.

Whereas down there on the bottom, you can see that's 11 times the amount of money that you actually put in, you earned in interest.

Or 10 times.

10 times the amount of money you put in, you earned in interest.

So this is an amazing effect to how money can work for you.

If you, just to give you another example, if you had put in$65 a month, which is more like what a lot of us could maybe say, but you started early, you started like at 20 years old, and started putting$65 a month in, and you earned a 12% return, that would equal almost a million four hundred thousand dollars.

Now, you don't think of sixty-five dollars as ever adding up to very much money.

But sixty-five dollars a month, when you let it work for yourself and earn a compound interest on it, makes a million four.

Is there anybody that wouldn't like to retire and have an extra million four?

I think all of us would like to figure that out.

It's an amazing principle.

Now let's take the next little little test.

There's two guys, go right here to uh Gateway, by the way, and uh Bill invests a thousand a year from age 22 to 30.

In other words, he has eight years that he puts a thousand a year in there.

And he's gonna draw interest on that until he's 65 years of age.

So he totally invests$8,000.

Now, Bob is a friend of his, and Bob keeps hearing Bill all these eight years talk about how he's saving money, saving money, and Bob says, Well, I'm gonna have to save some money too.

So he says, Okay, I'm gonna start saving too.

So Bob starts putting$1,000 a year in at age 30, and Bill decides, hey, I've got enough money, I'm not gonna put any more in savings anymore.

So Bob says, okay, well, I'm gonna outsmart this guy.

I want to live better than he does when I retire.

So Bob not only does it for the same eight years, he continues doing it for 36 years, not just eight, like what his buddy did.

So one of them has put in 36,000, and one of them has put in 8,000.

One of them started at 22, one of them started at 30.

Okay.

Now, who is smarter?

The guy who put in 8,000 or the guy who put in 36,000?

Let's look at the uh the answer to that.

Whoops, didn't put it in there.

Um, okay, back up that one, back up that one.

Uh okay, Bill put in 8,000 and he has now got$388,000 at retirement.

On$8,000, he has$388,000.

Bob put in$36,000, and Bob now only has$329,000.

So he put in three or four times as much money and still has a huge amount less.

So again, you can see the power of money when it multiplies itself, starting out at earlier ages.

Now there's not a lot of difference.

The difference in starting at 22 and at 30 makes all that difference.

And one guy had to give for four for uh 36 years.

36 years he put money in there.

Other guy only put in for eight years and he still had more money.

So the earlier you start, and this is a principle that a lot of people don't understand.

They think, well, I'll start saving when I get older, when I'm making a little more money, or something like that.

Okay, let's look at the next uh next slide.

I call this one death by plastic.

This is credit cards.

If you owed$2,300 and had a credit card that charged 19.8% interest, which is what a lot of the credit cards do charge nowadays, how long would it take you to pay it off if you paid the minimum payment, which is usually about 2% of the balance?

You're like they you had your credit card and they say minimum balance and you make that payment.

Just think for a minute, how long do you think on a minimum balance of$2,300 it would take you to pay off your credit card?

30 years, I hear out there.

45 years is how long it would take you to pay off your$2,300.

You remember that chart where I showed you how your money can work for you and how just$8,000 can turn into$329,000?

Well, guess what?

It works the other way when you owe the money.

The two or three thousand dollars debt turns out to be a hundred and something thousand dollars if you're paying interest on it over a period of time.

And you don't realize this because they don't sit down and tell you all that up front.

They just say, hey, just pay the minimum payment here and it'll be fine.

And you you and your mind say, I'll catch it up later, I'll do it later, and later never comes, and then you get another credit card to start paying the minimum payment on that credit card, then you get another credit card to pay the minimum payment on this card and that card.

Guess what?

If it takes 45 years to pay it on$2,300, do you have any idea how long it takes on$5,000 or$10,000 or$20,000?

It would take more than your lifetime.

And that's why you end up declaring bankruptcy down the way, is because you never can catch back up on the debt like that.

So money either works for you or against you.

The earlier you can start saving money and get it to work for you, the better you're gonna be.

The earlier you start taking out debt, the more it's gonna go against you, and it's gonna make it very hard to ever overcome that curve.

Now I'd like to ask you, who has given you your training and your advice on finances?

Nobody.

The world?

That's right.

Yeah, the world gives us our training on finances.

Most of us receive very little training and very poor role modeling in three areas.

The first area is marriage, the second one is raising kids, and the third one is finances.

You know, think about it.

How much training do you get on marriage before you get married?

Very little.

How much training do you get on raising kids?

I mean, at the very best, you know, you ask everybody you know and panic when they get there.

But, and then how much do you get training on finances?

Not very much.

But you know what?

Your finances affects all of those areas.

Your financing affects raising your kids, affects your marriage, affects your marital happiness, it affects your family happiness.

Handling your finances affects all those three areas in a big way.

And you're exactly right.

The world is the one that has given us our training and told us what's good for us, what's going to make us happy, and told us that it's not really a problem, just take out that credit card.

I was shocked after our kids went to college because immediately upon signing up for college, the credit cards that were approved started coming in the mail, and they just came day after day.

Sometimes each week we get several credit cards, and they were pre-approved for thousands of dollars.

And this is when when the kids were working just to get spending money to go out on a date and uh could barely even make ends meet, and they're already a pre-approved for credit because the world wants to get you in that hole right as early as they can get you.

The sooner they can get a hold of you, the sooner they can get you starting to pay that minimum payment, start paying that interest, the sooner they got you for the rest of your life.

You know, it's it's it's just amazing how tricky and how deceitful the world is on that.

And they start at a very young age now approving it to you.

Let's talk about the lies of the world.

The world tells you to get it now and pay later.

Get it now and pay later.

You know, we'll charge it.

You go into Sears or Pennies or whatever, and they don't say, uh, will you pay cash?

What do they say to you?

They say, Would you like to put that on your credit card?

Why do you think they do that?

Do you think it's because they make less money if you put it on their credit card?

No.

They know if they can talk you into putting it on your credit card that you probably won't pay it off and that they'll make lots more money on you than what they did on the original garment.

That's why they're constantly asking you, could we put that on your credit card, please?

The world tells you that you need it and that you deserve it.

You need it and you deserve it.

The world tells you that it'll make you happy.

The world tells you that everybody else already has it.

I mean, it's like, how come you don't have one?

Everybody else has the new uh such and such, such and such?

You don't have a designer label on your jeans?

Oh, how can you even go out to eat?

The world tells you a lie.

And the question is, why do you believe it?

Why do you believe the lie?

I think deep down we all know it's a lie.

We really do.

We don't think it is true, but we still believe the lie.

Let's look at what the Bible says in uh Luke 16, 13 through 15.

Have we got a slide on that, Donnie?

Okay.

Go ahead and just turn to that.

Uh it's a pretty long passage, so uh give you a second, just a couple of verses.

Luke 16, 13, 14, and 15.

It says, No servant can serve two masters.

For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and mammon.

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided him.

Verse 15 says, And he said to them, You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.

For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

Well, let's look about, look at what that's saying.

It says, We can't serve two masters.

As I went back and looked at the original language, the word master there is curios.

Curios is supreme and authority controller.

A respect.

And so what the word is saying is we can't have respect and control in two areas of our life.

We're either going to have God controlling our life and our desires and our heart, or we're going to have the world and money and things controlling our heart and our desires.

Let's look on a little more at that.

It says, you cannot serve God and mammon.

The word mammon in the original language is mammonus.

Mammonus means wealth.

You can't serve God and wealth.

You can't serve both of those, the Bible tells us.

It says, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your heart.

In other words, God knows whether our heart has Him as a priority, number one.

And these other things are things that we enjoy, but we understand that their priority is down the list.

Or He understands whether our priority is things.

And that's where our real excitement is.

That's what really gets us going.

That's what we get up for in the morning.

That's what we're more excited about when we get something of the world.

Is it God in your heart?

Is it wealth in your heart?

Is it things in your heart?

God knows your heart, according to this verse.

What is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

You know, think about that.

What is highly esteemed?

What is highly esteemed in the world?

It's an abomination to God.

So you might meditate some on those verses.

I'm not going to spend any more time tonight on them, but there's a lot of meat right there in those verses.

I want to talk to you a minute about what I call using, loving, and serving.

The world says use people, love things, and serve money.

I've got business people that I know, they will hire people, work them to the bone, use them up, and that's their philosophy.

Use people.

Get all you can out of them.

Love things.

That's the world's philosophy.

Love things and serve money.

When we say serve money, we mean that's where your heart is.

That's what really gets you going.

Serve money.

But if you look in God's Word, like we were just looking at, God's Word says use things.

God gives us these things just to use.

Just like this building.

We're using this building so that we can do things for the kingdom of God.

Use things.

Love people.

Don't love things, love people.

That's what this church is all about.

And serve God.

Make God first in your heart.

Now, one of the reasons we get that confused is the influence of movies and TV and advertising and our peers.

We're constantly being bombarded with different messages.

We're shown that fast, easy money, loose morals, and violence by the majority of television and movie program.

I mean, that's what they they show us.

I turn on the TV now and there's hardly anything I can find to watch.

Because every show is about either loose morals or fast money or something that is not out of the word of God.

I know it is directly in conflict with what God's word says.

Now, these people, we're made to believe, are what we should emulate if we want to be happy.

You know, they've all got big smiles on their face, they act like it's the greatest thing in the world to be living the lifestyle that they live.

And yet, if we read about the very movie stars that are very wealthy, have all the fame, have people at their feet, they're all miserable.

They're on suicide watch, they're on drugs.

I was talking to a guy.

A little bit ago, I said, I said, Why were drugs such a problem in your life?

And he said, I was so unhappy I had to drown out the pain somehow.

And I think that's what happens to a lot of people.

They've got to stop the pain.

And there's only one way to stop the pain, as we know, and that's God.

God stops the pain in our life.

But a lot of people are looking to money to stop the pain.

Go spend some money, buy something, it'll stop the pain.

And it may for a few moments.

It may for a few days.

But it won't stop it very long at all.

Same thing with drugs.

It may feel good for a second, but you're going to crash and you're going to be in the worst pain you ever saw.

So there's a big lie that the world tells us, and it's it's permeated by movies, by TV, by the advertising we see, and by our peer groups.

It's all a lie.

And you need to really keep saying that to yourself.

When you see these things on TV, when you see them in the movies, you need to kind of have this self-talk that goes on that says, that's a lie.

That's not true.

God's word says differently.

That's not right.

That's not true.

I know better than that.

Talk to yourself.

When somebody, when you're sitting there and and you're in a group of people and they're telling you, you know, what's what's life's all about, even if you don't say it out loud to them, you need to be saying it to yourself, that's not what God's word says.

That's not true.

I know better than that.

That's a lie.

Let's look at Matthew 13, 22.

Now he who has received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.

It says that the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and you become unfruitful.

And this is why you've seen the scripture that says it's it's very hard for a rich man to get into heaven.

And it's because of the deceitfulness that riches can bring.

It can deceive you into thinking that things are important that aren't important.

And it will choke out the word of God.

You will begin to believe the lie and harden your heart towards God's word if you believe what's going on in that.

So what it really comes down to is where does your happiness come from?

Either your happiness is going to come from God or not.

If your security, your feelings of approval and being loved come from God, then you're probably not going to spend near as much time chasing after the lies of the world.

Now what happens when we don't feel approved, when we don't feel loved, when we don't feel important, that's one of the reasons we go chase after these things.

We think if I go to that party in a new dress and I have wild jewelry, or if I drive up in such and such car, or if I do this or I do that, then people will approve of me, people will love me, people will admire me, people will look up to me.

That's what we're made to believe is that if we will put on something on the outside that we can buy, that it will make people admire us.

Because you know what happens?

That's the case in a lot of cases.

A lot of people who have their values in the wrong place, they really do.

They look up to people who have some of those things.

But as a person of God, that's really not what we should be admiring and looking up to.

We should not defer to someone who has wealth or defer to someone who doesn't have wealth.

That's not a measurement of the value of a person.

We value people according to how God values people.

Think about it.

When you stand before God, is he gonna say, hey, tell me about all the stuff you got?

How about your toys?

What good stuff did you have?

Did you ever, hey, I heard you used to drive a Porsche.

Hey, that was pretty cool, man.

And you had some neat clothes.

I really like those clothes you had.

And uh, by the way, uh you were a good Christian too.

Thanks a lot.

But I I gotta tell you, man, you really know how to live.

You think that's what God's gonna say?

He's gonna say, boy, you sure did waste a lot of the provision that I gave you.

You know what?

I funneled a lot of money through your hands, and you didn't do near as good with the money I funneled through your hands as you could have.

I didn't mind you using some of it.

I didn't mind you living good.

But do you realize how much you wasted?

Do you realize how much you spent to get the approval of the world instead of spending the way that I've directed you to spend?

I think that's what God's gonna really say.

So the important thing is for us to have our security, our approval, our sense of self-worth to be centered in who God says we are and who God cares about.

We need to be able to wake up and say, God, thank you for loving me.

God, thank you for approving me.

God, I feel so secure in who I am because I know I'm walking as close as I can to your word.

Now, what are some of the signs that you may have a problem related to money?

Overdue bills, worry about your investments, a get rich, quick attitude, laziness, deceitful attitude, greediness, covetousness, and lack of contentment.

Let's back up and look at those individually.

Overdue bills.

Well, obviously, if you've got overdue bills, you've got probably a problem with managing your money.

Worry about investments.

Now, you may have money in the bank, you may have money in your investments.

But you may be, according to some people, in very good shape financially.

But if you're worrying about your investments, you're not doing what God says, God says not to worry.

Not to worry about money.

That's not something we need to put on our list of worry, worrying about money.

You know why we should worry about money?

If we think that our money is our security.

If we think money is really up at the top of our priority list, then we need to worry about it.

It's really important.

But if we know that God is our security, God is what's important, then we won't worry about our investments, regardless of how much money we got stacked in the bank.

You need to be able to have your money over there in your investment account.

You need to invest it wisely.

But if it all evaporates and goes away, you say, God, it's okay.

I know that uh I'll I'll still have plenty of provision to take care of what I have.

If you got a problem worrying about your money, even worrying about having it, worrying about losing it, you got a problem with money.

You haven't got your priorities quite right.

A get-rich-quick attitude, the Bible has some verses on this.

We'll look at one in a minute in Proverbs.

But uh if you have a get-rich-quick attitude, you probably are under 45 years old.

Because that's something that once microwaves came out, uh it seemed like all life started becoming a microwave society.

We want to get it quick.

We want to get our hamburgers quick.

We want to pull up, and just as quick as we can pay that money, we want to drive up there.

That hamburger's cooked and it's ready to hand out to us, right?

And we want our wealth to come the same way.

We want to drive up to the bank and say, I'm putting$5,000 in, and we want to drive around to the front and say, I'll take my hundred thousand, please.

That's the way we would like it to work.

Just pull up to one wind and deposit, come around the other end and pick up your hundred thousand dollars.

And because that gummit, the banks aren't doing that.

We find these other schemes.

We come up with all these other schemes that we think will help us get rich quick.

And if that's what you desire to get rich quick, you are going against God's principles.

That is not what God's word tells us to do.

It tells us, in fact, the only way to get rich quick is not to try to.

It says to diligently work and pursue what we're supposed to do and let God bless us.

But if we go after it, we're not going to get it.

Laziness.

If you're a lazy person, you're probably going to have a problem with money.

If you've got a deceitful attitude, you're probably going to have a problem with money.

Because you know what happens?

People who are deceitful are deceitful about how they're spending money, they're deceitful with their spouse about what's coming in or what's going out.

I can always tell a lot about my salespeople by how they tell me to handle their check.

We'll get three checks during the month.

They'll get a check at the beginning of the month, which is kind of a draw check, a check at the middle of the month, that's a mid-month draw check, and then they'll get a bonus check at the end.

And I can tell a lot when these guys say, now I want these two checks automatically deposited in my account.

And this check here, make sure you always give it to me and don't tell my spouse about it.

If they ever call, don't ever tell them I've got that money there.

There's a deceitful attitude because they want to go spend that money their own way without being accountable for it.

If you've got a deceitful attitude, you've probably got a problem with money.

Greediness.

He's not really in for that here lately.

Covetousness, uh, if you want what other people have, if you find yourself, when somebody else gets something, if you find yourself really wanting that, then you've got a problem with money because again, you've put that too high on your priority list.

It's okay to say, gosh, I'd like to have that, that's nice, and then drop it.

But to truly covet something means that you fix your mind on it, you fix your heart on it, and you're like just focused on making that happen.

You know, I've got to have one of those, I gotta have it, I gotta have it.

And that's not what God's word tells us to do.

And lack of contentment, we'll speak some more about lack of contentment here this evening because it's really a big one.

But if you are not content with whatever provision God has given you, with whatever money you've got, if you live in the United States in particular, with the jobs that are available, with the income that's available, and no matter what job you have, if you're not content, and you always think you're worth more, you ought to be paid more, you ought to get more, you've been unfairly treated, whatever it is, if you're not content with what God's given you, you you've got a problem with money.

So if you see yourself in any of those areas, uh maybe some things we'll learn this next couple of weeks will be helpful to you.

Let's look at what God's definition of true riches is.

What I've tried to do, by the way, I've tried to put a lot of these notes up here.

I found that from a teaching viewpoint that if you can see it and hear it, you can retain this stuff a little bit more, and then I will send you home tonight with some notes, and all of the scriptures that we use tonight will be in the notes so that you can look back over this and kind of study it at a later date.

And if you if you see it, if you hear it, and then if you go back and look through it again, it's going to become something that sinks deep in your heart, and God will be able to use it.

What's God's definition of true riches?

It's much more than the accumulation of material possessions.

You know that if you ask the world, what is wealth?

It's it's how many toys?

How many things do you have?

The more you got, the better it is.

That's what riches are.

But to God, it's something much different.

Let's look at some scripture and see what he's got.

1 Timothy 6, 17 through 19.

Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

Let them do good, and they will be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, for they may lay hold of eternal life.

It says God gives us richly all things to enjoy.

It doesn't say God gives us some things.

It doesn't say he wants us not to be happy.

He gives us these things to enjoy them.

And he says we should be ready to give.

So one of the characteristics you're going to see is that when your heart is right, you're anxious to give.

You're not focused on what you're getting, you're focused on what you can give.

Ready to give, willing to share.

Okay, let's look at the next scripture.

Proverbs 22, 1 through 4.

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.

Loving favor rather than silver and gold.

The rich and the poor have this in common.

The Lord is the maker of them all.

A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself.

But the simple pass on and are punished.

By humility and fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.

So, you know, you begin to wonder what is God's main concern about our money?

His concern is our attitude, it's our heart.

He cares more about our relationship with Him than He does how big a house we live in, or, you know, what kind of clothes our kids wear or any of those kind of things.

He cares about our attitude, he cares about our heart, and he cares about our relationship to Him.

I was praying one time about my business, and uh I had uh made God a bunch of uh of promises.

I was like, okay, God, if you'll do this, here's what I'll do.

Negotiating with Him.

Okay, God, I'll tell you what, if we could make this much, I'll give you this percentage, but if you could make this much, I'll give you even more, and if you make this much, I'm gonna give you half of it.

Okay, and uh, as I was praying a couple days about that, I heard real clearly from God.

He said, I don't need your money.

I've got plenty, thank you.

But and I don't care about deals.

He says you may be in the car business and you deal all the time, but I don't make deals.

And in fact, I'm kind of irritated that you even brought that up.

So as I began to uh pray more, God said, You know what I'm worried about?

I'm worried about you, about your heart.

I don't care about how prosperous your business is.

Yes, I'm gonna prosper you if your heart is right.

I'm gonna prosper you if you have the right attitude.

I'm gonna have prosper you if you follow my principles, follow my word.

But in all honesty, I don't care about how your business does and how much that then ends up going in my pocket because I don't need it.

I've got it all.

And when it really sunk into me that God's main desire was me and my attitude and my relationship to Him.

And it was kind of like we do the opposite thing.

We say, well, God, I'll tell you what, if you'll bless me, then I'll get my attitude right.

If you bless me, then I'll have more time to take off and get my relationship right with you.

If you bless me, God, then I'll get everything right.

I know it's not now, but I'll get everything right.

And God says, sorry, doesn't work that way.

You get everything right, then I'll bless you.

That's a lesson we need to learn.

Let's look at uh, let's see, what have we?

Have we looked at Job 31?

Let's go to Job 31 24 through 28.

If I have made gold my hope, in other words, money, if I've made money my hope, or said to money, you are my confidence.

If I rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gained much, this also would be an iniquity worthy of judgment, for I would have denied God who is above.

I thought this was interesting.

This was in Job.

Job.

And uh Job says, you know, don't put your faith and your confidence in money.

That's what it says.

Okay, we'll cool it off here just a second for you.

Keep everybody awake, good.

Okay, let's look at 1 Timothy 6, 9, and 10.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation.

Guess what?

If you desire to be rich, guess who is out there tempting you?

Satan says, aha! He's playing my game.

He's believing my words, he's listening to me.

I've got control of him, and I'm going to be able to tempt him.

Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drowned men in destruction and perdition.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Now, be careful not to misread that.

It says the love of money.

It doesn't say money is the root of all kinds of evil, because money can be a great blessing.

Money that flows into the right hands and does the right things.

You know, Bill Gates is doing some wonderful things with the money that's flowing through his hands.

He set up some wonderful charitable things.

He's doing some things to bless people.

There's some people whose money flows through their hands and they do wonderful things for the world, for the church.

Money is not a problem, but the love of money is a problem.

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

So, what is God's desire for us in our finances?

That we be good stewards of whatever he passeth through our hands and return to him the tithe.

That's really what God's desire is.

Be good stewards of whatever he passes through our hands and return to him that which is the first part to him.

We say, God, you're first.

You've given this to me.

I'm going to first say it's all yours, and I'm going to give you your part.

Robert spoke last week about God's tithe needing to be the first check you write, the first thing.

It's not what you write when it's all left over.

And okay, it looks like I'm safe.

I can go ahead and give you some now, God.

The tithe is what you give God because you say, God, all this is you.

It all came from you.

You gifted me with my talents.

You gifted me with the opportunity.

You gifted me with the things that I have.

Therefore, I'm going to give my tithe back to you first.

You're going to bless the rest of the money.

If I do that, it's very important to see yourself as a steward of the money that he passes into your hands.

We'll talk some more about what a steward is.

But let's look at this story about the talents in Matthew 25.

Matthew 25, 14.

For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them.

And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability.

And immediately he went on a journey.

Isn't that kind of the way it is in life?

Doesn't God give some of us one talent, some of us five talents, some of us two talents?

God seems to, in certain areas of our life, you know, like in the musical area, he gave me a half a talent.

Okay?

But in some of the other areas, he gave me two talents.

And in some areas, he gave me five talents.

That's kind of how God works.

He gives us in different areas different talents, okay?

And it's interesting that the word for money is talent in the Bible, uh, because it has the two uh two meanings, the talent that God gives you and the money that God gives you.

But a talent, actually, in this uh meaning here is is money.

He gave uh to one he gave, let's say, five thousand dollars, to another two thousand dollars, and to another one thousand dollars, each according to his ability.

Okay, let's read on.

Then he had received the five talents, went and traded with them, and made another five talents.

And likewise he who received two gained two more also.

But he who had received one went and dug the ground and hid his Lord's money.

After a long time the Lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them.

So he who had received five talents came and brought the five other five talents, saying, Lord, you delivered to me five talents.

Look, I have gained five more talents beside them.

His Lord said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant.

You were faithful over a few things.

I will make you ruler over many things.

Enter into the joy of the Lord.

He also, who had received two talents, came to the Lord and said, Lord, you delivered to me two talents.

Look, I have gained two more talents beside them.

His Lord said to him, said the same thing, Well done, good and faithful servant.

You have been faithful over a few things, and I will make you ruler over many things.

Enter into the joy of the Lord.

I think the reason that they put this there with the five and the two is that the secret wasn't that one guy was more capable and had five and doubled it, and one guy was two and doubled it, and only the guy who doubled the five God considered as faithful.

It didn't matter whether it was five or that it was two.

It wouldn't even matter if it was one.

It's that God took whatever talent you had in that particular area or in the financial area that we're talking about, and God wants to know what did you do with the finances that I gave you.

Then he who had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

And I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground.

Look, there you have what is yours.

But the Lord answered and said to him, You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed.

I could go into some examples.