Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.
We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,
builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.
Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible
and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.
So welcome and enjoy the message.
If you have your Bible, please open it with me to Ecclesiastes chapter five.
And we're talking this morning about how to enjoy money.
Now, that seems like a little bit of a strange thing for a pastor to say, but you're going to understand it here as we go along.
Now, there's a lot of reasons that pastors don't get very excited preaching on money.
And it's actually the same main reason that Jesus talked about money so much in the Gospels.
Money is perhaps the greatest rival to Jesus for the human heart.
Now that should make us as pastors want to talk and preach about money a lot, but it turns out we don't like being attacked.
And so it's not very fun.
But that's exactly what happens when you start touching people's idols.
You can start being attacked.
Jesus said in Matthew 6, verse 24,
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
Jesus said, you've got to pick a God to serve.
You can serve money or you can serve me.
You can't serve both.
Now that's caused a lot of people to conclude that it must be wrong to have money.
But that's not at all what Scripture teaches.
Money in the Bible is amoral.
That means it's not right, it's not wrong, it's a thing, it's a tool.
It's what we do with money that matters.
Or more importantly, it's how we view money that matters.
1 Timothy 6, verse 10 says,
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
Now, it does not say that money is the root of all kinds of evil.
It says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
It really is a hard issue.
Do you love...
Your money so much that you're devoted to your money.
Does money have your love and your devotion or does Jesus?
Now, we're going to see from Solomon today why money is an infinitely inferior master compared to Jesus.
We're going to learn today that if you devote yourself to money,
your enjoyment for money will actually drop drastically.
Why?
But if you devote yourself to God, your enjoyment of money is going to increase exponentially.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon's been on a quest for meaning, for significance, for purpose.
He's tried everything under the sun.
He tried to find meaning in power as the king of Israel.
He tried to find meaning in women having a thousand wives and concubines.
He tried to find meaning in money, the richest man in the world, in every pursuit.
left him empty. And so his conclusion is that life is vanity, life is meaningless without God.
Now in chapters four and, or five and six rather, Solomon returns to the emptiness
that money brings apart from God. He says in verse number eight,
If you see the oppression of the poor and the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province,
do not marvel at the matter, for a high official watches over high official and higher officials over them.
Moreover, the profit of the land is for all.
Even the king is served from the field.
Solomon is saying, don't be shocked.
Don't let it shake you and disturb you when you see government officials getting rich off the backs of the poor.
I guess some things never change, do they?
Solomon says, for high official watches out for high official.
He's saying they're all in it together.
The bureaucratic system of government often grows corrupt with cronyism.
Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have government.
Government is needed.
But Solomon is saying, don't let some rich government
Government official who's gotten rich unethically stressed you out and take away from your happiness.
Why?
He's going to tell us in the remaining chapters because wealth brings its own set of problems.
It might look like he's, you know, making out with all that money, but he is actually not.
It's not always a good thing.
Here's the truth about money that we see in the next seven verses.
Money will never satisfy you.
It's never going to satisfy, so don't waste your life on it.
79% of Americans say that they believe they would be happier if they just had a little bit more money.
Solomon, who's the richest person in the world, knew that money can't buy happiness.
Oftentimes, it actually just buys problems.
More money, more problems.
Now, I think we all know that.
We all know that money can't make us happy,
but as Zig Ziglar said,
everybody wants to find out for themselves, right?
I mean, can't I just experience it myself and find out?
So we pursue money, right?
In the hopes that somehow it's going to make us happy,
but it never delivers.
It never does what we are hoping it will do.
The poor person who pursues money,
he's left frustrated and jealous.
The rich person who pursues money, he's left disappointed and hopeless.
Now, David Jeremiah outlined five reasons right here from our text
why the pursuit of money will leave you empty.
I think it's a great outline.
The first reason is the more that we have,
the more that we want.
Look what he says in verse number 10.
He says,
He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver,
nor he who loves abundance with increase.
This also is vanity.
John D. Rockefeller, America's first billionaire,
was asked one time,
How much money is enough?
And he said,
Just a little bit more.
Isn't that our mindset? The truth is, it's never enough. Solomon was a whole lot richer than
Rockefeller, and he knew that if you love silver, silver is actually not going to satisfy you. If
you love abundance, more is not going to satisfy. He says it's vanity. It's like grasping for the
wind. There's nothing there. Our oldest is 17, and we held out.
on buying a video game console for our family for 17 years.
We broke down this past year.
And the deal is one minute of reading equals one minute of video games.
That's the currency in our house.
Now, we got it for our boys because they really wanted this particular hunting game.
And my youngest was especially persistent.
And so that's all they wanted.
They wanted this hunting game.
Well, it took three days for them to have three different requests to buy new games, three other games.
Why?
Because the more video games a kid has, the more video games a kid wants.
That's what Solomon is saying.
It's like that with money.
The more you have, the more you want.
For the first five years of marriage, Kelsey and I lived in a small apartment with no washer and dryer, no dishwasher.
And so whenever Kelsey and I would dream about maybe owning a house someday,
we would talk about, okay, what's important to you?
What do you want in a house?
And Kelsey would always say, my only request is that I have a dishwasher
and I have hookups for a washer and dryer.
And I thought, well, that's an easy woman.
I think I could handle that.
Well, as soon as we could afford to buy a house, we went looking for a house.
And it took me about three minutes in the first house to realize, okay,
That wasn't true.
There was a whole lot more that she wanted
than just a dishwasher.
And so my question is what changed?
Now we had some money to care about more things, right?
The more we have, the more we want.
Stuff never satisfies.
But Solomon also says in verse number 11,
the more that we have, the more that we spend.
He says, when goods increase, they increase who eat them.
So what profit have the owners
except to see them with their eyes?
I loved watching the Rocky movies when I was growing up.
And Rocky starts out as this poor boxer.
He lives a very simple life.
But by the time we come to Rocky 3 or 4, everywhere Rocky goes, there's this entourage of people.
They're employees.
Mousy's feeding.
The more money that...
He had the more expense he now had.
Now, whenever we get a raise at work,
it's amazing how fast that goes, right?
It's like, where did it go?
Well, we spent it.
I remember when Kelsey and I first bought our first house,
you know, we had a little bit more money,
so that's why we were able to buy a house.
But I remember going to the store with Kelsey
for the first time, we were gonna buy a garden hose,
because we're homeowners.
And our hearts sank at the cost of that little garden hose.
Right?
And it's like, where are we gonna come up
with all this money for being a homeowner?
Right?
The more we have, we have a house now,
the more it costs, the more the expense goes up.
That's what Solomon is teaching us.
Now, the other thing about what happens with a lot of money
is the leeches come out.
When you've got money, everyone wants a piece of you.
Former NFL quarterback Bernie Kosar earned $19 million in the NFL before he retired.
Well, eventually he went bankrupt.
And he later said on ESPN documentary, he said at one point in his life, he said,
I was paying 60 cell phone bills for various friends and family members.
No wonder he went bankrupt, right?
Whenever you're rich, everyone wants to be your best friend, which means you're not sure who your true friends are.
And that's a very sad problem that some wealthy people deal with.
Solomon also says, he says, the more that we have, the more that we worry about it.
Verse number 12, he says, the sleep of a laboring man is sweet.
whether he eats a little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not permit him to sleep.
Solomon is saying, the more money you have, the more stress you have.
That laboring man, that working man, that blue-collar man, he punches out at the end of the day,
the clock, and he goes home, he enjoys some time with his family, and he sleeps like a baby.
But the rich CEO, he's always worrying about how he's going to keep it all, right?
What did the stock market do today?
What's happening in the world economy?
How do I keep my business afloat?
And all of those questions consume him, and he's tossing back and forth, turning all night long because he's so stressed out he can't sleep.
Solomon also says that the more that we have, the more that we lose.
In verse number 13, he says,
There's a severe evil which I have seen under the sun.
Riches kept for their owner to his hurt.
But those riches perish through misfortune.
Solomon's describing the person who's got this stockpiles of wealth and riches.
And when he loses it through a bad business deal, maybe a bad decision, maybe it wasn't his fault at all.
Maybe the economy collapsed.
It was a misfortune.
When he loses it all, it delivers this crushing blow deep within him.
In 2008, when the housing bubble burst and we went through the Great Recession, so many of you lost everything.
I know many of you that you lost a great deal and it was devastating to you.
But I'll be honest, Kelsey and I weren't all that affected by the Great Recession.
Why?
We didn't have any money to lose.
We had no assets, right?
And so we weren't really actually hurt by it.
The more money you have, the more money you're able to lose.
Now, there was a time in my life
when I routinely would check my retirement account,
which is mainly made up of stocks.
Years ago, I would check it and it was no big deal
because if it was up, it was up just a few dollars.
If it was down, it was down just a few dollars,
but I had kind of fun seeing what was happening with it.
But a few years ago, I stopped checking it so much.
You want to know why?
It hurt whenever that thing dropped.
Because now there's more dollars I lost, right?
And that was painful.
The more money we have, the more money we lose.
Now, the last reason that Solomon gives us is that the more that we have, the more we leave behind when we die.
Verse number 14.
He says,
When he begets a son, there's nothing in his hand.
As he came from his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came.
And he shall take nothing from his labor, which he may carry away in his hand.
And this also is a severe evil.
Just exactly as he came, so shall he go.
And what profit has he who has labored for the wind?
All his days also he eats in darkness, and he has much sorrow and sickness and anger.
Solomon, he comes back to the theme he's been repeating all throughout the book of Ecclesiastes,
that life without God is vanity.
It is meaningless.
Why?
We're all going to die.
If there is no God, we're all going to die.
It's all going to be over.
There will be no meaning to our life.
And so what he's saying is acquiring wealth also is meaningless because when we die, we have to leave it all behind.
Right?
The successful man who works and works building this great empire of wealth,
he dies the same way that the poor man dies.
His empire is like a sandcastle that a kid spends time building on the shore,
and the waves of the ocean just wipe it away.
The waves of death are going to wipe away every castle that's been built on this earth.
What matters is eternal.
Steve Jobs, the CEO and founder of Apple, was worth estimated $10.2 billion when he died.
You know how much money he left?
All of it.
He didn't take a single penny with him.
Naked we shall come from our mother's womb, and naked we shall return.
Now, in verse number 18, Solomon tells us the secret to enjoying life,
and it's actually the secret also to enjoying money.
Verse number 18, he says,
Here is what I've seen.
It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink.
And to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life, which God gives him.
For it is his heritage.
As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth and given him power to eat of it.
I think that means to enjoy it.
To receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor.
This is the gift of God.
For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart.
Solomon is saying, here's what you do.
You enjoy the life God's given you.
And you live in the moment that God has given you of life to enjoy.
He says the guy who learns how to enjoy the simple pleasure of life,
like eating and drinking and enjoying the money from all of his hard work.
He said that man does not dwell unduly, foolishly on the days of his life.
Because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart in the moment.
He's not living for tomorrow.
He's living right now, enjoying what God has given him.
He's content, content.
Most people go through life either longing for the good old days of the past
or they're thinking the grass is somehow going to be greener in the next stage of life.
You will never be content by dwelling on the past or fantasizing about the future.
Contentment comes from enjoying the life God's given us in the now.
Contentment doesn't come from some future thing.
It comes from what God gives us now.
That's the trap that money brings, right?
Because we think in our mind somehow,
if I just have a little bit more, then I'm gonna be happy.
Well, we get that little bit more,
and then what do we think?
Well, I just had a little bit more than this.
Now I would be happy.
The problem is it's a moving target, isn't it?
It's like chasing the wind.
We never arrive.
We never get to that point of happiness.
Sheryl Crow said, it's not getting what you want,
it's wanting what you got.
Isn't that the challenge of our human heart?
Why? Because we idolize money, and it never delivers.
It's only a relationship with Jesus Christ who can bring the satisfaction to your life.
So many people are living for the next dollar.
They're not enjoying the dollar they have now.
They're living for something that they don't even, it's a hypothetical thing.
So Solomon says, learn to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
Just enjoy every bit of it.
Learn to enjoy the life that God sovereignly gave you.
So if you're rich.
Enjoy the life God's given you.
That's okay.
Enjoy it.
Now, be generous, all the things that we know about money, but enjoy it.
If you're poor, enjoy the life God's given you.
It's a great life.
I've met a lot of incredibly miserable rich people,
and I've met some incredibly happy poor people.
The difference is how they view money in their life,
and the biggest difference is whether they have a personal relationship with God.
Now, these last verses in chapter 5 that we've been looking at over the last few minutes,
they show us that it is not wrong to have money.
Why?
It's a gift from God, he says.
God gave us the ability to make this money or to have this.
It's a gift from him.
And these verses also show that it's not wrong to enjoy money.
Here's what we learned.
Money can only properly be enjoyed as a gift from God.
To recognize whatever we have, it comes from him.
Solomon is making the point that satisfaction in life does not come from money.
It comes from enjoying God, right?
It's not a lot of money.
It comes from enjoying what we do have, what God has given us.
Now, I proposed to Kelsey just outside of a restaurant overlooking the ocean.
And when I proposed, I gave her this nice diamond ring.
And so she starts jumping around, and she's shouting, and I mean, she's just doing this happy dance.
And everyone around the restaurant was staring at us.
To be honest, it was a little over the top, but if you know Kelsey...
It's exactly what I expected. I wouldn't have it any other way, but she's just like
making this big scene. And well, throughout the night, she kept staring at her ring.
She kept looking at it. She would smile, and there was no doubt she was enjoying the gift that I had
given her. And that made me so happy, right? I was so proud that she was pleased with that.
But as much as she was enjoying the ring, there was not a single moment where I felt like she loved that ring more than me.
All of her excitement and praise was directed not at the ring.
It was directed at me in our relationship of engagement that we're about to get married.
The ring was merely icing on the cake, right?
Now, it was expensive icing, I will tell you.
But it wasn't the main deal.
Our relationship was.
Now, if Kelsey had ignored me all night long,
and if all she could think about and talk about
was that ring, whether she was mesmerized by the ring
or whether she was disappointed it wasn't better,
either way, that would have been hurtful to me,
wouldn't it?
Why? Because it's not about the ring.
It's about our relationship.
it's the same with us and God. When God gives us his bride, remember he's the bridegroom, we are
the bride. When he gives his bride, you and I, when he gives us the gift of money, whatever it is,
whether you think it's a big ring or you think it's a ring that you deserve more, you deserve
something better, whatever it is, we have no right to make the focus the ring. Why? Because God's the
price.
The relationship that Jesus offers us, He is the price.
And it's only when we realize that, that we will know how to appreciate and cherish all the money that He has allotted to us.
He truly is the key to unlocking our ability to enjoy the resources He's given us.
I'm sure that evening Kelsey would have enjoyed finding that diamond ring on the beach as we walked,
but that would have paled in comparison to how much she enjoyed it as a gift from me.
Our relationship is what elevated the value of the ring.
It's what made the ring so special.
I hope that makes sense.
It's our relationship with God, only enjoying the blessings he's given us of life,
of eating and drinking, whatever it might be.
It's only in relation to the relationship he offers to us.
So in these last few verses of chapter 5, Solomon is describing this man
that has this incredible ability, whether he has a lot or whether he has a little,
he has this incredible ability to just enjoy it.
Because he's enjoying it as a gift from God.
In chapter 6, though, he transitions to describing a successful man with incredible wealth and honor.
And this guy's unable to enjoy it.
Verse number 1.
He says, there's an evil which I have seen under the sun.
It's common among men.
A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that he lacks nothing for himself of all he desires.
Yet God does not give him the power to eat of it.
I think it means to enjoy it.
But a foreigner consumes it.
This is vanity and it is an evil affliction.
Solomon's describing the sad state of the man who has got all this money.
He has all the success, all this reputation, and yet God hasn't given him the ability to know how to enjoy it.
He's miserable still.
Sadly, that's the average American, isn't it?
We're living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
The vast majority of us are among the top 1% wealthiest people in the history of the world.
And yet the average American is miserable, depressed, and frustrated they don't have more than what they have.
Even the richest among us have all these, maybe multiple houses.
They have all these cars, all of this money.
They're not happy.
Why?
God's not letting them be happy.
That's why God has not given them the gift of enjoying it.
Why?
Because God loves them too much to let them be satisfied in something so fleeting
and insignificant and temporary that's all going to be left behind.
God loves us too much to give us contentment in something so miserable.
C.S. Lewis, he wrote,
It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak.
It means we settle for nothing.
lesser things than God. We're half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex
and ambition. I'd add money. When infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go
on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday
at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.
We think money is going to make us happy, and we have no idea how happy God will make us.
Listen, there is no lasting pleasure in money.
And yet, we make money our pursuit, don't we?
And it fails us every time, and we just keep, it's on repeat.
It didn't deliver, but maybe a little more will deliver.
It's never enough.
The key to enjoying whatever amount of money that you have in life is to first enjoy God.
then and only then are we able to be satisfied with whatever he chooses to give to us.
Pastor Brian illustrated it this way. He said, imagine you have a rich uncle who passes away and
he leaves you this massive inheritance. And his lawyers meet with you and he said, well, we've got
good news and bad news. The good news is that your uncle left you millions of dollars. The bad news is it's
It's secured in a bank, and no one knows the password to the bank account.
The bank won't give it to us.
So you're a multimillionaire, but you can't enjoy it.
That's the average American.
All these riches, but we can't even enjoy it.
That's what riches are without a relationship with Jesus.
You see, knowing God is what makes it possible to enjoy any riches that we do have.
He's the key.
He's the password to unlocking enjoyment and fulfillment in all that God has given to us.
And verse number three, Solomon continues describing the miserable condition of this rich person who's unable to enjoy it.
He says, if a man begets a hundred children and lives many years, so the days of his years are many,
but his soul is not satisfied with goodness or indeed he has no burial.
In other words, he doesn't have a great relationship with these hundred kids.
I say that a stillborn child is better than he.
For it comes in vanity and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness.
Though it has not seen the sun or known anything, this has more rest than that man,
even if he lives a thousand years twice, but has not seen goodness.
Do not all go to one place.
All the labor of a man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied.
For what more has the wise man than the fool?
What does the poor man have?
Who knows how to walk before the living?
Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire.
This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.
Solomon says, if a rich man...
who lives for 2,000 years, has 100 children,
but he can't enjoy the goodness of his riches.
Stillborn baby is better than he is he's poetically trying to describe that it's better
To have never been born than to experience a long life with no purpose
No meaning
No enjoyment of the good blessings of God and that's what life is if you're chasing the dollar
There is no purpose in it.
You're going to be left empty every time.
You see, money is a very heavy burden if God hasn't given you the ability to enjoy it.
Some of you are thinking, Pastor, you are doing a Jedi mind trick on us today, you know.
You're saying money's a burden?
Some of you are thinking, all right, Lord, please curse me with this burden of riches.
I want to experience it.
Be careful what you ask for.
Jesus said it's more difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of God.
Why is that?
Well, the idol of money that I think is perhaps the greatest rival for the human heart to the Lord Jesus Christ.
That idol of money becomes so big, the richer a person gets, so that many wealthy people choose their money instead of choosing Jesus.
It's a problem.
Alexander the Great was marching with his army to meet the Persian army,
and they had conquered city after city along the way.
And he noticed that every day as they marched,
it seemed like the soldiers were more and more exhausted,
and they could march fewer miles every day.
And then he noticed that their backs kept getting bigger.
the bundles that they were carrying were bigger and bigger,
and eventually he realized and figured out that every city they conquered,
all the soldiers, they were gathering up all the gold and the silver of the city,
and they were gathering all of the wealth, and they were carrying it with them every day.
And so one day after they marched,
He told them, put it all in one big pile, and he set the pile of wealth on fire.
And the guys were frustrated by that.
They were irritated.
They were upset.
But the next day as they marched, they marched with a lightness.
They were refreshed.
And when they met the enemy, they won.
What's the point of that?
The point is that materialism can become a weight.
a heavy weight. The very thing that we think is going to make us happy in life is the very thing
that drags us down. Now, you don't have to be rich for money to drag you down, though.
Poor person can be just as greedy and covetous as the rich person. It really does have to do
with the heart. So let me ask you, who has your heart?
I challenge you to ask the Lord that today.
Maybe you're struggling with evaluating who has my heart.
Ask Him.
Evaluate.
Who has your heart?
Is it money?
Or is it Jesus?
Now one last thought for us today as we wrap up.
God's rich, isn't He?
I mean, he owns it all.
He made it all.
You make it.
You own it.
He owns it all.
And as Christians, the Bible teaches us that you and I were joint heirs with Christ.
That means his inheritance.
Everything that God owns is his.
And guess what?
He says it's yours too.
You're joint heirs with me, which means we're all rich too, aren't we?
There are treasures waiting us in heaven, the treasures of his grace.
Ephesians 1, verse 3 says,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in heaven.
Christ.
Let me ask you,
has God blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ?
He has not if you don't know Jesus as your Savior.
Let me ask you, have you ever come to a point in life where you've admitted your sin?
I mean, you really came clean with God.
You owned it for what it was.
It wasn't blaming and pointing the finger at someone else.
It wasn't a victim inside.
It was, God, I have sinned.
I've blown it.
And have you ever cried out to God for his mercy and grace and forgiveness
and received the riches of his grace?
If you've never done that, I want to invite you to do that right now.
There is nothing like experiencing a relationship with God.
Let's bow together in an attitude of prayer, if you will.
This is a holy moment in the life of our church.
In just a moment, I'm going to pray.
As soon as I pray, there's going to be pastors and leaders here at the front.
We're going to stand to our feet, and we're just going to sing a song.
We're going to ask you to come and give your life to Jesus.
The title of the message is How to Enjoy Money.
So my question is, how do we enjoy money?
It's a very simple answer.
By enjoying God.
He's the prize.
He's what we were made for.
He's who we were made for.
We focus on these little trinkets.
They have no eternal value.
When the prize is right before us, it's a relationship with the one who made us
and loves us and died on the cross for our sins.
I want to invite you to find your joy and your fulfillment in God.
That's the only way you'll have satisfaction in life.
Solomon is saying it over and over.
He said, I've tried it all.
I've tried it all.
It comes down to relationship with God.
And so I want to invite you into a relationship with God.
It's very simple.
The Bible says, whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
I want to invite you to call on his name right now.
When we stand, there's going to be pastors and other leaders here at the front.
We're just going to invite you to come forward.
Come down one of these aisles and take one of these leaders by the hand and say,
I want to give my life to Christ.
It's time that I know him.
I want the empty void that's been that hole that I've been trying to fill with money and pleasure and stuff
and all these different things that none of it's fit.
I want the hole to be filled.
And the only way to fill it is with Jesus.
Maybe you're a Christian today, but you're not enjoying life like you should.
There's a lack of contentment.
You know, the apostle Paul said in Philippians, he said, I've learned how to
be abased, that means be poor, and I've learned how to abound, that means have stuff.
In all things, I've learned how to be content.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
I want to invite you as a Christian, every single believer in Christ should seek to come to that point of complete contentment in Him.
And that really comes when we strip away the idols of money.
And He becomes the prize.
Then whatever he chooses to bless us with, whether it's a lot or it's a little,
it's this wonderful icing on the cake of life.
Jesus said, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
What Jesus was doing was he was helping us discern where our heart is.
Some of you might be listening to the message and you're struggling because you're thinking,
okay, I think God has my heart, but I really want to be honest here.
Money might have my heart.
And so Jesus said, I can only serve one master.
Who's my master?
Who am I serving?
Who am I living for?
And so I would challenge you to really reflect on your time.
Reflect on your resources.
Jesus said, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
And he also said, he said, don't store up treasures here on earth where rust and moth destroy,
but store up your treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy.
Now, how do we do that?
What is he talking about, treasures in heaven?
There's only one thing that I know about that goes to heaven, that's souls.
It's people.
And so one way that you can reflect, according to Jesus, of where your treasure is there, your heart will be also.
One way you can evaluate it is just look at your bank account.
Is all your treasure wrapped up and going back to yourself?
Or back to those around you?
Building your kingdom, your empire, your sandcastle?
Are you putting some of your treasure that God's given you, are you putting it in heaven?
Are you pouring it into ministry and into people, into souls?
And so that's between you and God.
But that is something I think that's important for you to evaluate here today.
Let's bow together.
Father, thank you so much, Lord, for your love and your grace and your goodness.
You're an amazing God.
You give us stuff.
You give us the power and the ability and the mind and the energy to work and to receive a wage.
Lord, all that's a blessing, but Lord, help us not be focused on the gifts.
Help us be focused on the giver, you.
It is only when we're focused on the giver that we can actually enjoy and appreciate the gifts.
Lord, help our church family understand that in a deep way, deep within them.
That it really starts with this encounter with you.
through faith.
Help people receive your love and experience your grace.
Please do a work that goes way beyond anything
I was able to say, that's a work of your spirit.
Draw people to yourself.
Lord, I pray that your spirit would tear down idols,
if they exist in our hearts,
that you would touch those spots,
and Lord, that we would respond.
I pray, Lord, that we would view the resources that you give us as an amazing blessing from you,
that we would be thankful and we would appreciate and be grateful,
but also, Lord, that we would be a channel.
Amen.
That it wouldn't be just a, we wouldn't be just a reservoir of your blessing, but we would be a
river of your blessing, a channel, Lord, by which you bless the world and store up treasure in heaven.
Help us, Lord, have the right perspective on money, a perspective that allows us to actually enjoy it.
We love you and we give this time to you. Please, Lord, draw people to yourself. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
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