Salary of smoke

Grab your Bible. We're going to be in

Ecclesiastes chapter 5 while you head across there.

Ecclesiastes 5 · chapter mention

I just want to tag on what Chad shared on last week.

He alluded to a few good men in the movie where Tom Cruise is

the lawyer and he's speaking to the man in the dock and he says,

you know, we want the truth. And his answer is you can't

handle the truth. And he used that to start his

sermon as I'm using it to start mine, because he said

Ecclesiastes is not a difficult book to understand.

Where the rubber hits the road is where we apply it.

And we left last week Sunday going yes and Amen.

I'm going to be a man of faith. Just receive it.

And then we read in Ecclesiastes 5, Whoever loves money never has

enough. Whoever loves wealth is never

satisfied with their income. This too, is meaningless.

Come to church, they said. It'll be fun, they said.

And now he's preaching on money. As goods increase, so do those

who devour them. Think of someone winning the

lottery and all of a sudden Omakriki and that second cousin

twice removed suddenly pitches up and wants to devour it.

And what benefits are they to the owners except to feast their

eyes on them? Verse 12.

The sleep of a labourer is sweet whether they eat little or much.

But As for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep.

He's talking to the Lani's and the labourers.

Verse 13. I have seen a grievous evil

under the sun. Wealth hoarded to the harm of

its owners, or wealth lost through some misfortune so that

when they had children there's nothing left for them to

inherit. He's actually using medical

language here when he's talking about wealth hoarded and a

grievous evil. This phrase grievous evil only

is in scripture twice. Both of them in this chapter,

both dealing with wealth being hoarded and the medical language

that he's using as he's referring to wealth as being

sickly, diseased, and malignant. There's 15.

Everyone comes naked from their mother's womb, and as everyone

comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their

toil that they can carry in their hands.

This too is a grievous evil. As everyone comes, so they

depart. And what do they gain since they

toil for the wind? I think the Message Bible

actually refers to this as a salary of smoke, verse 18.

This is what I've observed to be good, that it is appropriate for

a person to eat, to drink, and to be satisfied in their

toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God

has given them for this is their lot.

Good morning. Thanks for coming to church.

You wish you sat in the queue because now you could sort of

sneak out, you know, going for a loo break.

Before we dive into this portion of Scripture, I would just want

to unpack a little bit. So Tim Mackie talks about the

hyperlinks in Scripture. I love that phrase, you know,

because when the Jewish reader or the Christian in the New

Testament heard Scripture read to them, they would always be

hyperlinking it to something that had gone before or

something that they believed was coming ahead.

And I want to pick up on just three hyperlinks before we jump

into the bones of Ecclesiastes. Five.

The first one is back in the book of Exodus.

You probably are familiar with the story where Moses leads the

the nation of Israel out of slavery, out of Egypt.

You've got the 10 plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, and now

they're in the desert. And what would have happened if

God hadn't given them the law was they would have just

literally become a refugee camp. There would have been

oppression, abuse, crime. But God gives them the law.

God stops to teach them his ways, and one of the ways he

does it when it comes to gathering or earning is he uses

manner as a day-to-day example of how to steward what God gives

them. See, because they're in the

desert, they're not farming, they're not raising sheep,

they're wandering around around in circles.

So he uses this to teach them a life lesson on one of the ways

we are to steward what God gives us.

And so he says, OK, every day you go out and gather just

enough except for the last day of the week.

They need to gather for two days, because on Sunday I want

you to rest. But the rest of the time just

enough. Don't hoard anything, don't

store anything. And of course, what do they do?

What they do, what you would have done, They gather more than

enough and they wake up in the morning and it says the manner

stank, rotting with maggots. Now remember, Solomon is talking

using language like sickly, diseased, malignant, like

Magnetson Manor when it is hoarded.

Another hyperlink is a little bit later in the story when they

get now introduced to what is coming ahead, the promised land.

I'm going to read a few portions of scripture for you as God

begins to prepare them because now they're going from deserts

to deliverance. They're going to be walking in

the province promised land. And it says when the Lord your

God, this is Deuteronomy 6. When the Lord your God brings

you into the land he swore to give you, it will be a land with

large flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with

all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you didn't

dig and vineyards and olive Groves you didn't plant.

Then when you eat and are satisfied, it's the word that he

uses in Ecclesiastes 518. He says this is what you need to

do, Eat, drink and find satisfaction in your toil.

So he says when you reach that point, be careful that you do

not forget the Lord capital Lord is referring to God as King with

a Kingdom, with ways. They said don't forget the Lord

who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Once I've entrusted all this wealth to you, you've gone from

desert to prosperity. You've gone from being COO to

CEO. When you close that deal, when

you start that new department, when you get the job that you've

been on your knees crying out to me, praying for, Do not forget

the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of

slavery. And then a little later in

Deuteronomy 17, it says the king must not acquire great numbers

of horses for himself. He's talking to you, CEOs.

The king must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself.

He must not take many wives, so his heart will be LED astray.

He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold,

hoarding sickly, diseased malignants.

When he takes the throne of his Kingdom, he is to write for

himself on a scroll a copy of the Law.

It is to be with him. He is to read it all the days of

his life so that he may learn to Revere the Lord is God and

follow carefully all the words of the law and these decrees.

Why? So that you will know how God

has determined for you to steward what he's entrusted to

you. Whether you're a peasant,

pauper, or king and queen, it all applies.

And Solomon is starting to say, listen, the reason why this is

so important, why you're called to steward what God has

entrusted to you, is because actually inside of this is this

dark, sickly, diseased, malignant element that comes

with the God of this age. I had a dream the other night,

actually, it was a few years ago.

Integrity, OK, I never remember dreams.

I don't know if you do, but I can remember distinctly waking

up and this thing I, I knew that God had spoken so much so that

when I came to to work, we had elders meeting that morning and

I actually presented the dream to the team.

I said, listen, this is so heavy on my heart.

I don't know if there's anyone in this situation right now, but

if you do, this is share this dream.

And this is this is probably 3 years ago.

And while I was prepping, I was reminded of this dream.

And I'm fully convinced someone here today needs to hear this.

The dream was of a businessman sitting at a boardroom table

striking a deal. And you know, it's like your

typical Hollywood movie where you've got that silver briefcase

and gets chained to your to your hand.

And as he's walking out in his in his fancy suit and with

beautiful briefcase, I see it's not actually handcuffed to him.

It's like these tentacles from the business deal that's

wrapping around his arm. And it will have him.

It will have you. And I look at that through the

lens of what Solomon is saying is it looks so good to you.

I mean, how can something so good be so wrong?

But I don't know if you've ever come face to face with the

hordes of darkness. You know, we're not we're not

talk about like the the powers of darkness.

You probably think of someone manifesting or growling in a

cemetery. But you know how the hordes of

darkness present themselves in Pretoria, E the devil comes to

make a deal. He slides that briefcase across

the table and he says, just sign here.

I can give you the crowns without the cross.

And he calls it blessing, hashtag blessed.

He calls it answer to pray and you're so blind to it, walking

away proudly holding that briefcase.

And the sickly, diseased, malignant deal has got a hold of

your heart, your family, your marriage, and the generation

that follows after you. Do you know that the Israelites

only considered wealth a blessing if it's influenced the

third generation positively? Because he is the God of

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. None of that's in my notes.

I'm sorry I watched Tom. Someone here needed to hear

that. You see, because what he says

here, he says I've seen a grievous evil under the sun.

I believe that this is Solomon saying I'm not.

He's not like I'm asking for a friend.

I have seen a grievous evil wealth hoarded to the harm of

its owner. Somehow I think he knew, maybe

realize a little too late, the malignancy of this hoarding of

wealth. Because what happens right after

this? The next generation, Israel is

decimated, Solomon's son splits the Kingdom, they lose their

defenses, and eventually they end up in exile.

Could it be a coincidence that he said, I've seen a grievous

evil under the sun, wealth hoarded to the harm of its

owners or wealth lost through some malignant disease so that

when they have children, there's nothing left for them to

inherit? Now I know you probably

thinking, well, I'm not a king and I'm not a farmer.

I'm not a sheepherder. I don't gather man or every day.

I'm a business person. OK, the third and final

hyperlink I want to turn to James chapter 4.

James 4 · chapter mention

James ends this chapter by saying this.

He says verse 13. Now listen, you who say today or

tomorrow we'll go to this or that city, spend a year there,

carry on business and make Mullah, why?

You don't even know what will happen tomorrow.

What is your life? You are a Myst.

Sound familiar? You are a Myst that appears for

a little while and then vanishes.

Verse 15. Instead, you're to say if it is

the Lord's will. In other words, you've discerned

how it is that God is calling you to steward that and not like

the manner that's going to stink and turn into maggots.

If it is the Lord's will, we'll live and do this or that as it

is you boast in your arrogant schemes.

All such boasting is evil, grievous evil.

If anyone there knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do

it, it is sin for them. In other words, if you know that

God is not opening that door for that business, but it's just so

good, the piece of land you've had on your heart for years, if

anyone there knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it,

it is sin for them. And then actually he's only just

at the table because he goes into chapter 5, this one.

Now listen, you rich people, it's very quiet today.

That's you rich people. I mean, we build houses, little

houses for our cause. So listen, you rich people weep

and wail because of the misery that is coming on you.

Your wealth has rotted. There's the manner, there's the

malignancy and moths have eaten your clothes.

Your gold and silver are corroded.

Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh

because you have hoarded wealth. Ecclesiastes found hoarded

wealth in the last days. Verse four.

Look, the wages you failed to pay, the workers who mowed your

fields are crying out against you.

I said to the guy who said this week he was at a coffee shop in

Silver Lakes. Maybe it was you and he

overheard 2 businessmen talking about how they, if they just

withheld the payments that were supposed to go out on the 1st of

April for their labourers, if they just withhold that payment

for two weeks, you know, all the benefits and the downstream

stuff that it could influence just two weeks.

And he said to me, do they realize that they could tip

their labourers into poverty with that wicked selfish

decision? The wages you failed to pay, the

workers are crying out against you.

Verse 4, The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears

of the Lord Almighty. You've lived on earth in luxury

and self indulgence. You have fattened yourself in

the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered

the innocent one who is not opposing you.

OK, deep breath. What's going on here James?

The book of James, the letter was written to the early church

in Jerusalem. Actually, it's believed that the

this letter is the earliest of all our New Testament writings.

It was probably written just a few years after Jesus died,

probably written slap bang in the middle of the book of Acts.

And what had happened in Jerusalem was that Jerusalem had

become divided among along socio economic lines.

So you had the really rich living behind.

You know, you had to put your fingerprint there and give you

ID to get into that estate. Hypothetically speaking, of

course, we wouldn't know anything about that.

Living in luxury, lovely homes had everything that they need

and then some, storing up their wealth.

And then you had the poor. And the poor literally lived

downwind because one of the dividing lines was the sewers

you lived above. If you're rich and you live

below, everything sort of sloshed past your front door as

the poor. And the reason why this massive

divide had had become so exaggerated in this time when

James was writing was because the king at that stage, the

Roman sort of authority was Herod the great.

And Herod is called the great because of his capacity to

build. If you've ever been to Israel,

that's that's kind of a huge chunk of the tour is going to

see all the things that Herod built.

But the reason why he was able to build this was because of

hyper aggressive taxes. He put a system in place, this

three prong attack. Firstly, he did, I mean he has

proper state capture. He thinks that was Zuma, but it

originated with him, state capture.

He had Rome backing him because of his relationship.

So he had all the power to influence and implement

absolutely everything he wanted to do.

And he even had religious clouts.

He had the high priests executed, put a puppet in there.

And because he had control of all these systems, he then

introduced a 20 to 30% empire tax, depending on what it is

that you're harvesting, 20 to 30%.

If it was fish, it was a 50% tax.

Then there was a 12 1/2 percent Caesar tax, a Roman tribute tax,

a transit trade tax, a market exchange tax, a temple tax and

religious taxes that, say, probably added up to more than

80% of your income. And you thought Zuma was bad.

He had reduced the region to poverty so he could live in

prosperity. And you have no idea the

opulence that he and the elite lived in in Jerusalem.

I, I had a business meeting at the Saxon Boutique Hotel.

I don't know if you ever get a chance to go there, if you ever

stay there, you know, above my pay grade.

But if you ever get to go there, what an experience.

It is beautiful. And so we ordered lunch.

I was going through the drinks menu and I noticed, oh, here's a

bottle of wine for 170,000 Rand. I didn't get that one because my

hour was on the 200,000 Rand bottle of wine.

Now in today's terms, Herod had bottles of wine twice that price

and he had sellers full of it. Talk about hoarding wealth.

The elite didn't care. But what James is after is

neither did the Christians see because when Jews, slaves,

outsiders got saved. One of the things that God does

with you is he works with the integrity and the credibility of

your heart. He makes you employable,

promotable and trustworthy to to be entrusted with more and more.

You're giving greater responsibility and you so you

build a rapport and then you build an industry and you build

a name. And now you're living above the

sewer line and James is saying your wealth cries out against

you. You see what's his name?

D Whited, he quotes from Francis Schaeffer says when the message

of the church, its concerns and priorities get reduced to

personal peace and affluence through CI, the church has lost

its voice. When my horizon of concern

shrinks to it, I'm only thinking, do I and my family

have enough? Or how can we get more then the

church has ceased to be the people of God.

We are no longer the prophetic conscience of a nation steering

the country according to the ways of God, but rather we will

have assimilated to and have been overrun by the God of the

age. He's saying it doesn't help that

you can scream and have a tantrum about all the corruption

over there while you're doing exactly the same.

You see, James wrote to the church in Jerusalem because he

was there in Acts chapter 4. Acts 4 says grace, the grace of

Acts 4 · chapter mention

God worked powerfully among the people, so much so that they

were thinking of having a second service on a Sunday morning

because the cube was so full. And they were wondering like, do

we pay volunteers so that we can double up on this?

The grace of God worked powerfully among the people.

They were negotiating buying the land next door so that they

could park there. And Barnabas, Barnabas came

along and he sold the piece of land and brought the proceeds

and laid it at the apostles feet.

He saw that he was right there, sort of the highest of heights,

but he was also there when it bumps against Acts chapter 4,

Acts 4 · chapter mention

sorry. Acts Chapter 5.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

Ananias and Sapphira, they just wanted to bit here.

The sickly disease, malignant allure of wealth.

And so he says to them, he says, listen, you rich people weep and

wail because of the misery that's coming.

He he started to join the dos. He started to see something from

the manner in the Old Testament to Solomon and the loss of the

Kingdom in exile. And he started to see the first

fruits or something of that bubbling up.

He would have seen when Paul wrote to Timothy and said, some

people eager for money have wandered from the faith and

pierced themselves with many griefs.

And he prophetically says to them, listen, I see something

coming. You need to recognize when the

worldly wealth and the stewardship of God are clashing

and trying to win your heart. This was probably 50 AD that he

wrote this letter. 66 AD. Rome decided they've had enough

of these Jews and the laid siege to Jerusalem took the wealth of

Jerusalem back to Rome and they used the money to build the

Colosseum. The Colosseum was largely funded

by the wealth of these these Christians.

And so from Genesis to Jesus, from Joshua, Moses, Solomon,

Peter, James, Timothy, over and over and over again, Scripture

whispers, I've seen a grievous evil under the sun, wealth

hoarded to the harm of its owners.

Jumping back into Ecclesiastes 5.

Before we do that, I can cut the tension with a credit card.

Yeah. I've never seen so many like

this on a Sunday morning. Yeah.

What says is that are you threatened?

You must see behind you. It's like there's another and

another and another. So some ground rules, OK #1 he

is not saying Scripture's not saying I'm not saying rich bad,

poor good, not saying wealth bad, poverty good.

Actually, often it's the poor that are more captivated by

wealth and the need and the longing.

And you just see those BMWs in the squatter camps.

So that's the first. It's a hot issue.

It's a stewardship issue. Secondly, this is not a message

where you go. Yeah, they, yeah.

CLC Hatfield, you know them, that life group, you know, my

life group leader, he's got a new watch every.

No, no, no, it's not a them, they you.

It's a me, my journey with Jesus, my station in life, my

stewardship of the gifts and wealth that God has given me.

The end. Actually, I wouldn't have even

leaned Lent this heavily if we were having a life group this

week. Because you have no right to be

the Pharisee and sit in the group and go like, oh, you're

that and that and that. No, and here's the thing.

Because when it comes to wealth, when it comes to God's blessing,

when it comes to stewarding and God entrusts his blessing on

those who steward, well, it's outward.

It's easy to judge, prone to abuse from Pharisees.

They don't know the context. You don't know the context.

And there are so many landmines here.

I was like, can't to find another verse just before we get

here. It's like, I'm sure I can leave

this one to Rory. He's back next week and he'll

beat you up about your shell collection.

But for now, for now, I've seen a grievous evil under the sun.

Wealth hoarded. Wealth hoarded, you see, in

spite of all the landmines. And I spoke to Jay before.

He's like, listen, when we close and pray, I'll come, right?

We can like, zoot you out of there before you get stoned.

Yeah. I mean, it wasn't it beautiful

to see that Ferrari Exhibit A on the way to church tail ended by

a clunky old Bucky? Meaningless.

Meaningless. But you see, if we never allow

Scripture access to our hearts, if you never allow Scripture

access to the stewardship of the wealth that God has given you in

the wealthiest part of South Africa, do you know that the

2011 census put put Pretoria E above Houghton above Constantia

above Zimbali, is the most affluent part of South Africa?

You and me, if we don't let Scripture get access to that, we

will live just like the world. We'll handle our finances just

like the world. We will serve the God of this

age just like the world. So it's worth it having this as

my final sermon in three CI. OK, please.

Yes, he's 518 coming in to land. What do we do with this?

Well, he says this is what I've observed to be good.

This is five verse 818. Sorry that it is appropriate for

a person to eat, to drink, and to find satisfaction in their

toilsome labor under the sun. Find satisfaction.

Just want to pick a thread from there.

Find satisfaction. I looked at that in the in the

Hebrew it means learn about satisfaction.

Give attention to what does it mean for you to be satisfied?

Discern what steals from that satisfaction.

Look intently at all my favorite.

Make a disciplined pursuit of satisfaction.

So he's saying essentially, if you recognize this in your

heart, here's the antidote. Make a disciplined pursuit of

satisfaction. GK Chesterton says there are two

ways to get enough. Two ways to be satisfied. 1 is

to accumulate more, the other is to desire less.

Two ways to get rich, earn more or want less.

And he goes after the earning more.

So want less. What does it mean to be

satisfied to want less? Bible scholars distill it down

to two very simple things. One is simplicity and the other

one is generosity. So first, simplicity.

I love this one because it turns it on its head.

It's not what else can I get? So what else can I do without me

and Chet GPT? We had a conversation around the

storage situation in our country.

Do you know that we paid 7.3 billion Rand to store the stuff

that doesn't fit in our already cluttered homes that we never

see? We don't even know if it's

there. 7.3 billion Rand last year on stuffs hoarded.

You know they have old furniture, not even new ones.

And the piano that no one ever played.

When we moved my mom up from Durban, we had to pay per box.

You've got to know my shock and horror when I opened one of

those boxes and it was filled not with Tupperware, but with

Tupperware lids. She's sitting over there.

If you need to go and counsel a little bit later.

I know what it's like. When we moved into the house

we're in, we decided, well, let's get ahead of the curve.

Let's start packing some things into boxes.

You know, the house was sold, was sold any minute now.

And that became like three or four or five months later.

And then we moved in and we didn't unpack those boxes

because we are still building a main bedroom onto the home.

And about nine months later, our garage is filled with boxes that

we didn't need, we'd hadn't opened.

And I said to my wife, why don't you just throw it all the way?

We didn't do that. We opened it.

Somewhere in there was a fondue set that we hadn't used, but we

might. Just when we started the series,

I heard someone in our life group was saying they had an

order from Take a Lot. They sat at the front door for

three weeks. Simplicity.

You want to know what simplicity is?

Oh, brace yourself. This is not my words.

You know, I wash my hands with this man's blood.

John Mark Comer says people should look at how I spend my

money, the car I drive, the clothes I wear, where I live,

what I post on Instagram, and they should assume that I earn

less than I do. So if you look at me and the way

that I dress, the car that I drive, you should think you're

shame struggling on that pasta celery.

There's no way I'm going to do that.

I like to look good. I'm obsessed with looking good,

just like you, Matthew Emmons, he was a sharpshooter, one of

the best of in in the US gets to the Olympics.

He's in the final. He is so far ahead in gold that

all he has to do is hit that target.

But he's not just going to hit the target.

He's going to go for the cleanest, best shot of the

entire competition. And he does.

You know, if there was a black dot in the middle of that

middle, he would have knocked it straight through there.

And the crowd erupts. But when he looks up, they're

not erupting the way he thought they would.

They were erupting all because he had shot at his neighbour's

target. Bulls are but at the wrong

target. Instead of getting gold, he was

disqualified and got nothing sent home.

You know that's what you and I are in for if we don't allow

Scripter to give us the lane to steward the finances that God

has given to us. Matthew 6 says no one can serve

2 masters. Either you will hate the one and

love the other targets, or you will be devoted to 1 and despise

the other target. You cannot serve.

You cannot. It's a definitive to the

infinite. You cannot serve God and money.

It's the only thing in Scripture ever that God compares himself

to. Such is the malignance, sickly,

diseased nature of mammon. Simplicity, generosity.

I actually make it radical generosity because generosity is

one thing you know you can come and you drop your money in the

bucket. Radical generosity is when what

you put in there or what you give away influences where you

go on holiday in December, that's radical generosity

influences the car that you buy or that next pair of shoes.

I was in this position many years ago with my business.

It was flourishing and God began to address this this in my

heart. I'm like, yo, I don't know what

to do because everything I touch turns to gold.

I was working in productions and I was like an anomaly.

I never needed an agent. My phone was always called

ringing agent takes like 20-30, sometimes 40% on everything that

you do. And I just never needed it.

I was getting phone calls from Ireland and Singapore and you

know, but something wasn't right.

And I was chatting to a friend and he told me a story about a

an engineering firm that applied what they called the bred seed

principle. So it was a bunch of brothers

that started this firm and the same thing.

It was doing so very, very well. But they were sitting at the

lunch table every one Sunday month.

The whole family would gather around and they'd eat and drink

and have fun and catch up. Kids would be playing outside,

the men would be Brying and they were sitting at the table And

there was he talking about where they were at at the moment.

And one of the brothers was talking about a boat that he had

his eye on. And another one of the brothers

said, listen guys, when is enough, enough?

And one thing led to another and they decided they were going to

implement a bred seed principle where basically this, they had

to discern what is bread to eat and what is seed to sow.

And so they sat there and them and their wives decided what

their salary cap was going to be and what the budget cap was

going to be for their business. Everything else was seed.

Everything else would have been sown.

And so they're taking kind of what they needed, a little bit

of gravy on top, what have you. But they said that's it and God

bless them 10X. So I'm thinking like, OK,

there's something in there. So I decided to do the same, set

budget for my month. Everything that I earned above

that I gave away. Now the nature of my business is

sometimes I'd make budget by like week 2-3.

There were sometimes where it was like just a day or two

before I'd sort of made budget. There were also times when the

first or second day of the week of the month, I'd made budget.

Now you got to know what that does to the power of wealth in

your heart. When Kippy phones you on a

Friday afternoon because he knows one of the studios is

actually at your your property. I know it's late.

Boots aren't used. We're going on Jacaranda

tomorrow and I didn't even think to have a a billboard and the

head and tail of my interview. Can you help me?

Well, I would normally, absolutely, yeah, make some

money. Now it's Friday afternoon.

I'm going to spend 6 or 7 hours working on that thing late into

the night, early morning, and then I'm going to give the money

away. So I can't help.

There's just no power there. But when you're sitting going

like you're actually, yeah, I can add 20% to my bottom line

this month just on this deal. It loses its power when you

start to give it away. That is why I would call

generosity, radical generosity, the antidote for greed.

I calculated once a few years back that if you and I were to

also give away on top of all our generosity, but if we just had

to set aside 3000 Rand each on average, I know for some of you,

that's like, you got that in your back pocket.

For others, that's your entire income for the month.

But if on average us, just us AS3CI were to give away 3000

Rand a month, you know, to the petrol jockey, to the lady

behind the till when you see the lady behind you coming and she's

like counting coins to try and pay this and you just you just

give just are we on? Can you hear me?

OK, I'll carry on. Just three thousand a month.

It's 108 million Rand a year. If we bump it up to five, it's

180. That means in five years we

could sow a billion Rand into the city.

A billion Rand from the fluff. Imagine if we could pour a

billion Rand. Not the beggar on the street who

could get a job, but a person just struggling.

A billion Rand, it's nothing. And you know if you're saying

like where am I going to get 3 grand from?

We once emptied our drawer. I think we made 12,000 ran from

the junk in the drawer. We had a guy actually come now

that can use the the power failure for some extra time.

We had a guy who came and he would collect stuff and he ran

this little auction on web on WhatsApp.

What was the company that came from like cash converters or

something like that out in Nell Sprite?

But it came with a big trailer because we had ATV cabinet that

we wanted to sell. And he said, what else do you

have? What do you mean?

What else he's like, what else do you have?

And we grabbed our skates. My wife had ripped off the side

mirror on her H1. We put that down.

We we had like Tupperware and lids.

Yeah, Tupperware lids for days. But it's like stuff.

And he put it on auction, sold it and gave us a couple of 1000

Rand when he left. I'm like, how does that happen

now? Use it.

Don't use it, but we we genuinely we had emptied our

drawers and just cash converted at 12,000 radical generosity,

empty the stuff rather than hoarding.

And then lastly my our domestic her name is Lizzie.

I was listening to I think it's the money show Steven Curtis on

seven O 2 and he was talking about the poverty line and the

bread line poverty line in South Africa.

I think there's 1400 and some change.

And that basically means hand to mouth.

You've got nothing for nothing else.

You can't bar clothes, you can't fix shoes, nothing poverty line.

And then your bread line is not much better.

It's just in the 2000s. So I, I was deeply convicted,

but at least satisfied that our domestic wouldn't be anywhere

near there. I need to find out that she was,

she was barely making bread line.

Bread line is, you know, you can sort of bar clothes now and

then, but if anything serious happens, you know, you get sick,

you can't go to the doctor. Everything's like ransom sense.

So went to him. I said to my wife, this is, this

is what God's laying in my heart.

And we decided we'd double her salary.

So. But then she said this to me.

She said by giving me a raise, my daughter can go to varsity.

Like here I'm thinking, hey, you can buy new shoes.

She's thinking generationally. She's thinking biblically.

I'm just thinking, yeah, bigger TV.

We've subsequently doubled it since.

But The thing is that God will hold you and I accountable.

Everything he's given to us to steward land with us.

Hebrews 13 says keep your lives free from the love of money and

be content with what you have because.

Channel your inner Rory and say because, because God has said

never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.

What he is saying there is again, can't serve God and

money. He's saying if you dig deep down

deep enough, you're either going to find the love of money or a

heart in love with God. It's one or the other and the

way that you steward and handle your finances.

Pretoria East is a 3D full living color rendering of your

relationship with your Heavenly Father and the city knows it.

The spirit of the city knows it too.

And you'll have it and you'll have you.

Keep your lives free from the love of money.

Be content with what you have because God has said I'll never

leave you.