Managing God's Treasure 4

All right, I'm gonna go and get started. hopefully some more people will show up. and, man, yeah, but usually we don't get people until like 5 after, so we're gonna go ahead and start. Let me get, let me pray.

Lord, thank you for your, for your grace, and your goodness. Lord, you've given us, so much treasure and, Lord, it's overwhelming. There's some sometimes to think about what our lifestyle should be and, where we should work and how many hours and how much we should save and what about retirement and Lord, in all this, just let us not, not, your words is not lean on our own wisdom. but just to lean on you and to realize that our faith is in you.

You give us wonderful principles in your word, help us to study them diligently, but, but more than the wisdom we gain, Lord, let us draw near to you, because whatever happens in our life, we know that nothing happens to us that doesn't go through your loving hand. and we just thank you for that, for that truth. Help us to, to pay attention, help us be listening to your spirit this morning for what you want to say to us. just open your word as we go through it, in Jesus' name.

Amen. a couple of quick things here, just right at the beginning, in the, the second letter I sent out this week, this is, last week was dealing with debt. And if that is your, one of your primary things, if you are dealing with debt and wanting to to really go after that issue, this book by Dave Ramsey, The Total Money Makeover, is probably what, for as far as I know, probably your, one of the best tools you can get. And if you go on Ramsey's website, There's also, if, if you need encouragement, I was this week for some reason I got into, I, I don't normally listen to his show.

I'm not a, a Ramseyite. I know there are people listen to Dave Ramsey every day. I think he's on for what, 3 hours or something. He's on for a long time answering questions and I, I, I don't, I, I, I'm not, I guess I'm not a Ramseyite.

But, this last week he has this thing called the shout out, of the, no, it's called the debt-free scream, that's what it is, debt-free scream. Where during his show, he will interview someone who's followed his, the principles that he expresses and has become debt-free. And some of the stories are pretty darn amazing. people with very large amounts of debt knocking it off in a couple of years or 3 years and the stories they tell about what they did to get there and what's really cool too is, is hearing people talk about their marriages, that I, I got on this bandwagon and, and then, my spouse was not on that bandwagon and the conversations we had and, so it's, it's really a cool deal to, to listen to, to those, to those screams.

At the end, they scream, I'm debt-free. but if you're looking for motivation, Ramsey talks a lot about that, we talked about last week that gazelle focus. Getting out of debt does take focus because if you're not focused, the everyday stuff just gets ahead of you. It just, it just gets ahead of you.

And there's, there's this expense, there's that expense, there's this want, there's that want. And if you haven't really focused on, on getting out of debt, it, it's hard to do. And one of the people in it, that it was a couple and they had a lot of college debt and the wife said she didn't want to talk about it. She said, I just want to kick it down, kick the can down the road.

I don't, I don't wanna have this conversation about, about, about my my college debt. And so that, and it was interesting, so her opening up to it. The other one was, it was one where they had a, they, they had bought a new car. They, they had a child, I think they bought this really nice brand new van and the, the husband was convinced that that van was what was the problem with them getting out of debt, or going after student loans and stuff.

And so it, it took a while for them to eventually sell that van and the wife talked about that conversation and But, but anyway, it's just, it's just really good and everybody's situation is different. What's nice about it is you hear it's not the same for everybody. It's all, all these situations are different. What they do is different, but they all have this focus, they all have their own set of values, the things they're trying to accomplish.

And the principles are very, very simple, and they, they work their way out of it. And it is a, it is a good thing at the end because at the end you are free. debt is a chain, it constrains what you can and cannot do. It is in a sense a form of slavery.

We don't, some don't think about it that way because it's so pervasive, we think about And our, our culture teaches us all the good things that borrowing gives us. the good life is found in your credit card, right? That's where the good life resides. You wanna go to Spain, take your MasterCard, it's accepted everywhere.

You wanna go see the Olympics, take your whatever card. That's where the good life is found, but that, that, that part of life only lasts for that experience or for that possession, and the chain remains for A long time and, and it, it constrains other opportunities. If the Lord wants to lead you to go someplace, that debt is there holding you, holding you back. it's, it's, it's, it's got a hold of you.

All right, so enough said about that. so if, if you're working, if that's your goal, I would, I would recommend Ramsey's book, I recommend going on his website. he has what he calls his seven baby steps. We're following that pretty close in the things that we've covered and we'll talk a little bit about that today as we get into savings.

So let's go ahead and blast off. in this class, this is, I just want to remind you that this class is part of a series of classes called Equipping for the Journey. as believers, when we, when we come to Christ, we have not arrived. we, we just haven't, and most of us can look at our personal experiences and realize there's still a lot of areas in which we are broken.

And so we are on a journey from brokenness to wholeness. And, and my encouragement to you is as much as possible, enjoy the journey. That's what grace is for. Grace is there for you to grow.

don't get bogged down in your defeats. Defeats are gonna come. Don't get bogged down in them. Grace is, grace is always available.

We want to in our journey, we want to take the gospel. I hope, there we go. We wanna take the gospel to every area of life. We wanna take that grace to every area, and that's part of growing, that's part of, that's part of the growth process.

All of us have areas where the gospel has not gone yet, right? I don't know of anybody, even Milton, I don't know anybody where the gospel has gone anywhere. In fact, Milton will probably give you a list of the places in his life. He's pretty careful about looking and, and thinking about what's going on, but it, it, the gospel has not gone everywhere.

And so we want to learn how to take the gospel to every area of life, our temptations, our anger, our, our PowerPoint, going out. all those different areas, we want to take the gospel with us. How did I fix this last time? I may just decide that I don't need this as badly as I thought I did.

OK, let me disconnect. And Reconnect. Real quickly. And I think last time I had to kill the PowerPoint and start the PowerPoint again.

So Let me do that in my slide show. If this goes down again, it's going down for good cause I'm only gonna do this nonsense once. there we go. The gospel to every area of life.

I, but I, I shouldn't, I shouldn't do that. It's gonna get me back. and in this, there are steps, right? It's, when you, when we talk about managing our treasure, we want to manage our treasure, that's one of the places we want to take the gospel, and there are steps to that.

the first session we talked about the gospel journey and God's treasure. What role does treasure play in the journey? Why does God give us treasure? the second one we talked about, budgeting, right?

If you're gonna manage, you should have some way of managing. So we talked about budgeting, and then we talked about an emergency fund and we're gonna talk more about that emergency fund. today, but in terms of action, step one is budgeting and emergency fund. Before you do anything else, everything else rests on those two things, right?

You, you need to have a budget and you need to have an emergency fund. If you don't do though, if, if you try to go to the other steps without doing those first, those first steps, it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be very, very tough. If you don't have an emergency fund, as Dave Ramsey says, and I don't really know if I really like what, but he'll say Murphy is going to get you, Murphy's law, what will go wrong, goes wrong.

He will say Murphy is going to get you. I don't know if I wanna use that phrase, but something's going to get you. It's, it's, it's gonna get you and you're gonna have to borrow more money. You're gonna have to go to somebody and ask for help or something's going to happen.

So you need to have a budget, you need to have an emergency fund. even if it, even if it hurts, you need to have that emergency fund there. So those are first steps. That's like Dave Ramsey talks about baby steps.

The second step is taking on debt. You don't want to go on to other steps and you don't want to start paying back debt until you have the emergency fund. Don't start going after your debts until you have like 1000 at least $1000 in the bank, somewhere where you can easily get a hold of that. We're gonna talk about that more today too.

because when you start paying back debt, something comes and the thing is we, we, will something come along? Yes. Something will happen. That's why it's not to me, it's not Murphy, it's, it's this just the way life is.

Stuff happens. Things, cars break down, appliances blow up, all those, and some of those things you can take care of like I always watch my dad fixing everything himself, but there's a point at which it's gonna get you and it's gonna, it's gonna require some money to get you out of it, right? Now, what I like though in all of this, we want to bring the gospel and like I said at the beginning of the class, I am not a finance guy, I'm a gospel guy. And if you, if you are messed up and, and I have spent a lot of my life being, being pretty darn messed up.

The gospel, it becomes, becomes everything to you. Jesus says, the more you're forgiven, the more, the more thankful, the more thankful you are. And that's where I wanna be, I wanna be living, living a thankful life. And one of the things I do, I, I, I can't, I can't deal with a little gospel.

I'm not a, I'm not a good person at memorizing just verses. Verses don't normally cut it for me. I need long sections of scripture to, to, to flow into me. And one of the things I do a lot is I will go when, when I'm, when I'm feeling bad or I've messed up really badly, I will go to Romans and I'll read Romans 1 all the way through the end of 8.

That's the way I preach the gospel to myself. Romans 1 through to Romans 8, and it's just a beautiful journey, because Romans 1 explains to me I'm worse than I thought I was. that my sin is much more complicated than I think, so I get over the, thinking it's just a little thing, it's a, it's a very big thing, and then it goes on and explains, how wonderful the gospel is. Romans 7, it explains the ongoing struggle that I, that, that I'm experiencing and then Romans 8 just goes into the, intimacy.

That we have with God even in the midst of struggle. So I just love going through that section, that's, that ministers to my heart. A single verse though if I, if, if I'm stuck, I'll go to, I'll go to, I'll go right to the end and I'll go to Romans 8:1. That's my, there's therefore no condemnation.

Yeah, OK, yeah, we're good. Moving on. but at the end of Romans 8, I like this, Romans 8 ends with, with this statement. It's like this is what Paul bringing it.

to a head and after Romans, Romans 8, Paul's gonna go on with a little bit more theological stuff, but he's basically made his gospel case. He says at the end of his gospel case, he says, for I am convinced. And that's what I need. I need convincing.

I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels, nor principalities, no no things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, including myself especially, will be able to what? Separate us. You, me, from the love of God, which is, has been demonstrated, not something I made up, right? This is not just warm feelings.

I remember before I became a Christian, I got into positive thinking and a little bit of yoga and stuff like that. those are all things where I was doing things to juice my brain to feel a certain way. The gospel says no, God has demonstrated His love. Through Jesus Christ.

And he's not letting go Nothing can separate you. It's gonna crash again, I bet. I just heard it go do doot. Oh no, it changed screens.

What's that all about? All right. Oh, it didn't crash. Yeah, it did crash.

All right. I said I was not going to Yeah, cause it's gonna drive me nuts. All right, I wanna begin real quickly. I want you to imagine, this is on your sheet and I had a great graphic of this on the thing.

I want you to imagine to begin with that you, you have, the president's just come to you and says we have a great need and you have been appointed to be the ambassador to The Gambia. That's your appointment. And you're gonna travel to the Gambia and you're going to be the, the American ambassador to that country. you've been given your salary is $150,000 a year.

Nice salary, you're traveling over to the Gambia where the average person makes It's on the sheet? Yeah, $473 a year. What is going to your mind as you're in the airplane? Flying to the Gambia about how you're going to live once you get there.

What, what, what goes through your mind? As the ambassador of the United States to The Gambia. Safety? OK.

How is safety gonna play into this? Meaning what, what, what thoughts are going through your mind? What does, what does safety look like once you get to the Gambia? What's it going to affect?

What's your thinking about safety going to, going to affect once you get there? Like, for example, where you live, is, is, is safety going to affect where you live? It's going to be, yeah, OK, OK, anything else, other things that are going through your mind as you're the ambassador, yes. OK, maybe that's, that's.

Anything else that's going through people's mind. You're in the airplane, flying to the Gambia, great salary. It's a a big promotion and everything. what's going through your mind?

Yes. Yeah, what's it gonna be like buying food there? Yeah. 0 150,000.

I put 150. It's OK. Well, that's good, that's a good thing, yeah. That language is meant to communicate.

Periods are meant to communicate something. That's good, but yeah, that, yeah, it should be a comma, $150,000. Yeah, $150 a year, that would be not good. That's less than $1 a day.

It's like what, 30, 30-something cents a day. That would be tough. Then you'll really be thinking on the way on the airplane, like, yeah, does this, does this ticket have a return on it? type of stuff.

anyway, there's lots of things you need to think about in terms of what, what's an ambassador supposed to do? What, what's the job of an ambassador? I was just saying let's Jeremiah. What's the, what, what's the job of an ambassador?

To represent, yeah, you're the representative of your country. You are the United States to those people and however you decide to live in that country is going to represent the United States to them. The same is true for us as Christians, we are called to be, oh, I wish I had my slide, up there. we are called to be ambassadors.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul says, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. As, as though God were making an appeal through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. So we are ambassadors representing whom? Representing Christ, representing God, representing the Father, representing the Holy, representing the Holy Spirit.

We are God's ambassadors here on earth. Does that have an implication for lifestyle? Yeah, we want to begin to think about an ambassador's lifestyle as representatives. Randy Alcorn, and I hope this is Oh my gosh.

You are kidding me. You are totally kidding me. Oh, this is unbelievable. Oh man.

Piece of junk. OK, where's my Where is my Oh Huh? No, it's just, it's perfectly, it's, it's. Oh man, it's all charged and everything.

We will deal with that later. where am I at? Pilgrim Lifestyle. Randy Alcorn says that, the, the pilgrim is a that ambassadors are pilgrim and the pilgrim is a traveler and not a settler.

One who is, acutely aware that the excessive accumulation of things can only distract from reaching the goal of the destination. Material possessions are valuable to the pilgrim only as they facilitate this mission. So, as a, as an ambassador, as a pilgrim ambassador, you don't, you don't live there, you were somebody moving through that country, you want to be thinking about possessions in terms of your mission. How will your possessions affect the mission that you have there?

And you'll, you'll notice, on the sheet here that I've got two columns that are helpful I think when we, we start talking about, about livestock. We're gonna be talking about saving. But saving is based on is based on lifestyle, right? You, how much you save is based on how much you live because saving comes from The excess, right, that comes from The excess you have.

No excess, no savings. So you have to think about your lifestyle. So the questions you can run through your mind is, is when you're going to purchase something is, number one, in what ways will this new possession weigh me down? And there are lots of ways it can, it can, it can weigh you down.

How, how can a possession weigh you down? It's not just the cost of it. I want to talk about the, the weight of it. When it goes into your, that possession goes into your pack, what are, what's the weight of that possession?

For example, you buy a car, what's the weight of the car? If, if you, yeah, if you bought it on time, you've got payments. They're saying you've got to take care of it. Yeah, there's insurance payments, you have to protect it.

You're not worried about it being stolen, so you've got to have, there's all this stuff that, that, that, that, that goes along with it and that becomes what? That's weight that you're taking on the journey. One of the crazy things that you buy a possession, like say you buy a bicycle. Now you have to what?

To justify the purchase, so you buy a really nice bicycle. Now you have to justify it by. By riding it. So there's another weight, right?

So, you bought something expensive and now your spouse or your friends are sitting there saying, hey, why is that thing sitting in the garage with, with dust on it. There's this, there's, that's another weight you have. You, you, you bought it, you spent a lot of money on it. Now it has to be used.

So possessions put weight on us. They put, they put weight. On the other side of this is in what ways will the purchase of this possession better equip me? How will this make me a better ambassador?

And, and for me, even buying a bicycle when I was teaching, I used to go riding with students. So it's a way that I could get to know, get to know my students, so it was something I could do for recreation and something I could, that, that also had a, a ministry component to it. but not, but you also have to realize that we are created as beings that need rest and need relaxation. you're, I don't, I don't think this means you have to become, a monk., where your, your, your, all your furniture is solid wood, no padding, you don't, don't ever run the heat or anything like that.

this is not calling you to, to a monk lifestyle, but it is calling you to stop and think. It's talking you to stop about, think about the weight of the possessions that you're putting into your pack, as you, travel on. Oh, I'm missing my PowerPoint. I, I do not like, I don't like doing what I'm doing right now.

Anyway, I'm doing the best I can here. another quote from Randy Alcorn, he says, if anything we have, I'm now on the 2nd, I think I'm on the 2nd page. Paper gets me all bedraggled. if anything we have is off limits to God, it is not subject to prayer, and it, if it's not subject to prayerful dialogue, then let's be honest about it.

We aren't stewards, we are Empezzlers. we aren't serving God, we are Playing God. Yeah, Randy Alcorn always just beats around the bush. no, that's really, we need to think about that, that the things we have belong to God, how we're using them.

If we're not conversing with God about it, if we're not, if we're going to purchase something, if we're not having a prayerful conversation, if we're not in scripture, if we're not thinking about that equipping and weight decision. we are embezzlers. The other thing we get into is what I like to call lifestyle creep. Where your lifestyle just Happens, right?

I, I wish that there was some magic steps for this. There really aren't because everybody's going to be different. and we start talking about deciding your lifestyle, if you look down, Well, actually, no, I don't want to go there yet. There, there are no, there are no easy answers to this because there's not some A Christian should own this, this and this.

a Christian should spend no more than this on a house, a Christian should drive a car like this, a Christian. Is there anything like that in scripture? No. Does it make any sense?

No, our lifestyles are going to look different. and two things we want to watch out for. We don't want to covet somebody else's lifestyle. And be very careful of judging someone else's lifestyle.

both that goes both ways, if, if, if you are, if you are quote unquote doing financially well. Be really careful about looking down on someone who is not doing it financially well. There may very well be, there are good choices, the reasons for doing that. Now I've had friends who've made conscious choices to go into professions that Oh, it's, it's not even worth work.

I, I'm, this thing is. Now on my hit list. Exactly, exactly. I'm now thinking about the weight of that, that gadget.

Hey gadgets do weigh you down. I, I, I think I mentioned a while ago that I'm in the, in the process of, downsizing, purging, whatever you want to call it, and, Yeah, I used to always say I'm, I'm keeping it because it might go to Uganda with me. And I've been in Uganda for what, about 5 or 6 years or something, and, and so I, it just, it just, it just accumulates. but, but there is no, there is, there is, there is no formula that I can give you for this.

It is, and that, and that's cool. Because one of the things I'm gonna talk about later is really we don't wanna we don't want to lean on wisdom, we want to lean where? We want to lean on our relationship with God. That's a real relationship.

It's not just a list of do's and don'ts, it's a real relationship. And when you're reading God's word, it should be a A conversation, not just a list of, the, the, the Christian looks like this, the Christian doesn't look like this. The, the Christians look all kinds of different ways, for all kinds of different reasons, God's got all kinds of different things going on. but we all need to sit down and go through that process of thought, otherwise we, we become, embezzlers.

There's also a chart there in the middle where we're weighing, There is a place for wisdom, there's a place for thinking through and planning, but there's also a place where we're looking at immediate needs. And if, and if you've traveled much in, in, in developing countries or whatnot, oh my gosh, it's, it's, it's heart-wrenching. You're, you're going back and forth, you become so aware of how much you have. walking, walking through Uganda, I have, I have more wealth in my, in my backpack than a lot of the people do if they added everything up.

It's hard. So your, your, your wisdom of planning for my own life balanced with the immediate needs, how do you balance that out? I don't have a good answer for you. I don't, I, there is no good answer.

the only answer I have for you is read scripture and pray. Talk to your father about it and let, let him lead you. That's, that's actually the good news. It's a relational thing with God.

I don't, I'm not going to dictate to you how that's, how that's done. Scripture does, however, instruct us to save and we're gonna turn to the classic passage on that and that's in Proverbs, Proverbs 6:6 through 8. and the proverb says, it says, go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise, which having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer. And gathers provision in the harvest.

OK. What does the ant teach us? What, what, what does We've looked, look at, think, think of an ant, observe the ant in your mind. We've all seen, anybody who hasn't seen an ant?

we've all seen ants. Think of ants in your mind. Think of, look at the passage. What do we learn here from the ant?

It says a sluggard, look at the ant. So what do we learn from ants? it What's that? OK, so the, the, oh thank you, John.

So the Yay. It is, yeah, you see, now do I trust it? That's the question. Do I trust it?

Thanks, John. That is awesome. Let me see if I can get to this. Oh, I'm very.

Very skeptical about this thing now. Yeah, see how cool that is up there? Oh, there it is. Go to the sluggard.

All right, observe, observe for ways and be wise. All right, there's some built, there comes some built-in. In other words, the ant doesn't need what? The ant doesn't need But the ant doesn't need a boss, right?

So the ant knows what? It may not be a conscious thought, but the ant. The ant knows what to do. Thank you.

So we observed the ant, the ant knows what to do. It's not, there's no lack of knowledge, yes. Yeah, there, it's, it's interesting if, if reading through, if you read through Ramsey, any of these, any of these, these guys who write on finances, how they describe the way men look at finance and how women look at finance is different and Not always, there's differences. This is just like general, general type of things and savings is one of those things that they mentioned that women tend to view savings significantly different than men.

and maybe we'll, we'll, you might, you might be able to tell me what, probably, probably most of you can probably tell me, describe to me what that is, but let's, let's just go back to the ant before I get myself in a lot of trouble. No, it's, it's, it's a, it's, it's a good thing. I, anyway, I'm gonna stop before I'm in a lot of trouble. What else do we observe about the ant?

OK, it's a her ant. good observation. What else do we observe about the ant? That bites, yeah, ants do bite.

Yeah, ants bite. All right, good job. What else do we observe about the ant? Preparing, right?

She's emergency Exactly, yeah, she knows something's coming. In the future, well she'll, well, she'll have a lack, right? That's coming. She knows that lack is coming.

I need to store. And quite honestly, that is a I, if you compare guys, guys and women, I think women think more that way than guys do. They think that they're thinking about I need to have stuff in reserve for this thing that's going to happen. so when the husband says I want to buy X.

Often there's a conversation about, well, what about We don't, there's this, what, what about if the car breaks down, what about if, there's, there's, what about conversations? There's that, don't just think about right now, think about what's going to happen in the future. So she gathers now. All right.

so that we learned about, we learned about the ant, and I actually think I wrote down some of the things I learned from the ant. Is it gonna go? All right. we know what, what we need, we need to do.

We just need to Do it and, and that's true for most of us. We know the right thing to do. It's just, it's that, it's not the want to, it's the, it's the do. it says to work hard.

Work hard and create what? Work hard enough that you create more than you need. Right? So you should be seeking to work hard enough where you have more than you need.

self-discipline to not consume your excess. So tempting, right? you get the, the Costco check, you get the money back from, from taxes or you get a gift or, Aunt Mary, passes away and leaves you money. there's that self-discipline, not to, not just to consume it.

and plan for lack, it will come. There are going to be lean times., Americans, oh gosh, I, I taught history for a long, long, long, long time and one of the things I was always trying to get through to my students is it's going to go bad. That's, that, that's the nature of our country. If you think it's going to stay good.

Heaven help you. That's the American positive thinking that it's always is going to be, it's always going to be good. If we get the right government in, it will be, it will be good. And I'm not trying to do politics here, but the economy tends to cycle.

Bad is coming. be aware of that. I, I, there's all kinds of examples of that where, politicians take, take credit for the up and people get kicked out of office for the down. When There's, I'm sorry, there's not a lot you can do about it.

it, it, it's just, it's just tough. It goes up and it goes down and the wise person realizes it's going to go. It's gonna go down. I might lose my job.

You might, I might lose my job. This, this job may not exist forever. It goes up, it goes down. one of the things we struggle with, is, is saving, trusting God.

And there, there are people who honestly say, say you, I, I, I don't need to save. I, I'm trusting God for my, my needs. that really is the balance. We really do need to keep that in mind.

I, I wouldn't just say to that person, well, that's ridiculous. I need to save. I want to keep that in mind. Am I, am I trusting God?

quote from Randy Alcorn, he says, savings is a means of not presuming upon God. Hoarding is a means of replacing God. I tend, on the scale, I tend to lean towards hoarding. That's, that's my tendency.

I'm a, I am, I am a, I, I am a savior just by nature. And, and, and, and a lot of people say, well, that's a good thing, Bill. You save money. That's really good.

You're a saver, you're a saver. Not necessarily, right? Not necessarily. there are people who give away a lot, to, to their detriment and people will look at them and say, oh, what's, what's wrong with them?

They're giving away to their detriment? And, and they don't often get the pats on the back, it's like they're, what's, what's wrong with them? They're putting themselves in a bad, a bad situation. But there's a balance there to be, to be drawn.

anyway, saving means not presuming upon God, hoarding is a means of replacing God. Saving can avoid presuming upon others to assume responsibility for our future needs. If we learn from the ant, we are responsible for our future needs, not the government, not our neighbor, we are responsible. Is, is saving a guarantee that all our needs will be met in the future?

No, I, I, one of the things I'm, I think I'm gonna say later or say now is there is no lifestyle that guarantees financial stability. I don't care whatever the the finance guy, financial advisor tells you. There's no, there's, there isn't one. I've studied, you look, look through history, there are, there are people who are, who are doing great one decade and getting killed the next decade, who, who lived responsibly, who did good things and they, and things happen.

that's, there is no guarantee but we do need to be as stewards, we need to, to be prepared. so Randy Elkhorn says, he says, is, is saving, money, we can't say saving money is biblical or save, saving money is unbiblical. It may be either depending upon the reasons and the alternatives. We do see in scripture foolish saving.

and let's look at, the, this is a great, this is a great passage. let me see if I can get it up there. Yeah, foolish saving. And this is Jesus, he says, and he told them a parable, saying the land of a rich man was very productive.

So he worked hard and he had what? Excess. Good, that's a good thing. And now what does Jesus do?

He goes into his head, right? He goes into this rich man's head. Nothing wrong, nothing, nothing, nothing a problem yet. It goes in the guy's head.

He says he began reasoning to himself. Aha, right? what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? I have excess and I don't have enough place to put them.

So what am I gonna do? Then he said, this is what I will do, I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods and I will say to my soul, soul? Feeling good. You have, this is the hoarder, man, cause, I, I, oh, I can't tell you how many times I've done this, look at the bank statement and go, yeah.

Good, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm bulletproof. Yes, Bring up, bring it on. soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be.

Mary, But God said to him, you fool, this very night, your soul is required of you. Now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. So what do we do with this?

Work hard, save your excess for the future. This man's a fool. What's different about this guy? Why, why does this guy get Yeah.

It's all about him. You don't see anything about So who are wealthy. Mhm with that Mhm. Yeah, I've, I've, I've done this.

I have a good, yeah. not Yeah, he's not just planning for the future. He's saying, the barns I have right now aren't large enough. They might cover my, my needs for the future, but I need bigger barns because I want to be able to party for a long time.

I don't wanna, I don't wanna give it away, yeah. Yeah. It's, Yeah Exactly. Yeah, God expects a return on his treasure.

Extra credit for anybody can tell me what the return on the on, on his his treasure is. OK, tithe. He, he wants to return. He, he has, he had, and this is actually getting, is actually getting at it, right?

What's happened to this guy? He has died And there's no, there's no return. He's not rich towards God. God's primary return is us changing.

That's the primary return for God. He wants our management of his treasure to change us. He, he is, he is preparing us for eternity. This guy is not prepared for eternity.

His, the way he's thinking and reasoning about the treasure he has is not changing him. we want to handle our treasure in a way that is changing us and that we want to keep in our minds we have our conversation with our father about, about saving or about all this stuff. All right, moving on. in this story, the guy is rich and when we see rich, we normally go, well, that's the Bill Gates and the, Warren Buffett's and all that.

I don't want to go into this too much, but as Americans, we are We are the rich Right. even, even, an American who's living at the poverty level is still going to be in probably the top 25, 30% of the world. Most of us are probably somewhere in the top 10 or 15% of, of the world's, the world's income. we have, most of us have homes, we have running water, we have toilets that flush.

and, oh my, I, oh, I remember coming back from Uganda the first time just going, oh my God. It was just like My house is a palace, my house is a palace., my toilet's flush, I can hit a button and, and it gets cool, I can hit a button, it gets warm. oh my goodness. we are rich.

I don't wanna belabor that, very, much. Anyway, so moving on, we are the rich. So How do we, how do we save? the goal of savings is to not to be in any need.

That's from First Thessalonians. Some, just some statistics. This is mind blowing to me, to me. The average American, 70% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings.

70% Which means pretty much any emergency is gonna put you in what? Any, any serious or half serious emergency, yeah. That I'm not sure, I am not sure about that. What that, what that is.

investments though, investments are not money. That's, that's one of the great American mind delusions. Investments are not money. they, most investments are not money.

They're, they're, they're, they're, they're not liquid. But I don't, I'm not sure where they're getting that. But the fact that the average American only has $1000 even in their savings account is not a good thing. 34% of Americans have no savings at all.

Right? and it's not just a problem for people who are, who are not making very much. This is not a The people in other countries who don't make very much can save more than Americans sometimes. It's not an income thing necessarily.

So, this is staggering, 44% of people earning between $100,000 and $150,000 per year. That's a pretty I don't know how you evaluate that. I evaluate that as, whoa, that's pretty darn good, have less than $1000 in savings. that's scary.

And, and often they have a lot of debt. They have, maybe a couple of new cars in the driveway, a boat or something in the garage, that they're paying off. Bottom line, if you are, part of the 70%. Save $1000 fast.

That's, that's like number one baby step priority. You need to have money in the bank, $1000 at least before, if you're, before you deal with debt, before you deal with anything else, you want to have that $1000 so that those small emergencies don't turn you back towards a credit card. But you won't have to get turned to a credit card to pay, a deduct, a medical deductible or something, that, that, that for a medical emergency. That's the reason for $1000 and it needs to be liquid, savings, emergency funds.

This is like, this is like the baby emergency fund. We're gonna talk about a fully funded emergency fund in a moment. A fully funded emergency fund would be 3 to 6 months of expenses. Not 3 to 6 months of income, 3 to 6 months of your expenses.

so when you figure out, bottom line, what does it take you to live per month, you want to know whether do you have 3 to 6 months and we'll talk about what, what, how, what makes you 3 or what makes you 6, yeah. Death. Well, most people are, are, are gonna turn to plastic or they're gonna turn to a relative or they're gonna turn to, they're gonna, they're going to borrow. It is, yeah.

Once, once, once, once you start, yeah, you, you, you couldn't make it this month and now you've added a payment for the next month. That's the, that's the problem of debt. That's the problem with not having an emergency fund is it puts you into a, it, it puts you into a snowball going the opposite, going the wrong direction. You're now not snowballing towards getting rid of debt, you're now snowballing into debt.

because the, the, the, the, the, the amount you couldn't make this month is now worse next month and who knows when the next emergency is gonna happen. This money needs to be liquid. It's not an investment. It needs to be somewhere where you can get at it, but not that you're going to be tempted to spend.

It's amazing what can become emergencies. things that are, that are expenses like car insurance, regular car repairs, all those kinds of things, those should be where, those emergencies. Those are not emergencies. Those should be in your budget.

if you, if you're going to buy new, new tires for your car, this year or next year, that should be in your budget, being, being saved up so you can buy the tires. Those are predictable expenses. This is for things that are, are, are more unpredictable, things that come along unpredictable. when it's spent, it needs to be replaced immediately.

If you're paying off debt, stop paying off the debt, pay your minimums, yeah, pay your minimums, but stop paying off debt and refund your, your emergency fund. This, this is, this is primary and it needs to be liquid. It, it, don't put it in something where there's a penalty to get it back. don't put it in something, it's an investment like, like, a mutual fund.

Because Mutual funds go up and they go. They go down. You want to put it someplace where it's reasonably secure. Nothing is ultimately secure but really secure, a, a, a, a separate bank account.

Maybe you have a bank account just for your emergency fund, something like that, maybe money market if you have more money so you're getting a little bit of interest, but the, this is not an investment. It's not an investment. Do not look at it as an investment. If you invest your emergency fund and this gets really tempting, somebody comes along with a really good opportunity and you're looking at your, your emergency fund and you're saying, oh man, I could double this emergency fund in 2 years.

don't do it. That's just my, that's gonna be my advice without seeing the specifics, because if you invest it in an emergency happens, it may very well not be there. Investments normally have to stay somewhere for a long time. They go up and down.

There are penalties to get that money out, all those kinds of good things. OK, doesn't like emergency funds. All right. known expenses, this is my list of things like car repairs, Christmas, car replacements, home maintenance, replacing the roof, appliances, it's, it's always crazy at Christmas time.

I, I'll talk to people at work about Christmas and they'll go, oh my gosh, work, my credit cards are maxed out because of Christmas and everything. I'm like Christmas is not an emergency. Christmas happens the same day every year. Yeah, oh dear.

Things like that, home maintenance, replacing your roof should not really probably should not be an emergency. If that's, that's probably, if you have to have a roof repair, something goes wrong, that would be an emergency. All of a sudden, something happens to it, you, you, you have an insurance deductible that doesn't cover it. You gotta plug your roof up, that would be an emergency.

But if in, in 10 years your roof has to be replaced, that's not an emergency. You should be saving and planning for that. OK, I've already said these things I think must be liquid, no fees for withdrawal, or investment lost. that's the problem with mutual funds.

Mutual funds do what? They go up because they're tied to the stock market usually or some other investment tool that where the value will go up and the value will go down. It'll go up and it'll go down generally. And if, if you need that money and it's on the down cycle, what happens?

You go, I can't take it out of all this money. it's down. I put in $1000 and it's now down to $700. I can't take that money out now.

I've just lost $300 blah blah. No, you can't think that way. an investment, it needs to stay there until when? Until it goes.

Back up unless you bought something really, really bad like I, which I've done and it never comes back up. and then you You can do that. Yeah, you can keep cash and the problem with cash is, is it's easily accessible and spendable. If you are a person who's pretty self-disciplined about this, that might work.

If you are not, it's probably better to have it in a like separate savings account or money market account or something like that. It depends upon your personality and cash in the, in the safe gets, well, you put it, you put it in a savings account, you get almost nothing anyway. Yeah, you can't even keep up with inflation either way. So I I've never read that in Ramsey, but it, it makes, I know my dad always kept.

A lot of, a lot of cash around. he's always paying with things with cash, so. OK, The next thing you want to do, after you've paid off your debts, you want to become debt-free before you go to the next step, and that's a fully funded emergency fund. And a fully funded emergency fund is 3 to 6 months of family expenses, not, not income.

You don't have to have, 3 to 6 months of income, 3 to 6 months of what it would cost you to live if you lost all your income. Everything was gone, nothing coming in. could you live on it? How much depends upon the stability of your income.

And some things are more stable than others. Some jobs are more stable. If you're self-employed. Starting your own business, you probably should have.

6 months. If you have like, like I had, I, I, I, I was a public school teacher. pretty predictable, especially when you're there for a long time. Once you get about 10 or 15 years, it almost takes an act of Congress to fire you.

So it's That's unfortunately true. There are a lot of, there were some of my colleagues I would have liked to have seen disappear., cause they were, they were engaging in what I would call malpractice. They were, they were, they were hurting kids. But it, but it's, I got on that tangent.

I, trust me, I love public schools. I don't like bad teachers, but I love public schools. That's a, that's a pretty stable income and so the chances of you losing your job are, are pretty small. You really have to, you have to work at losing your job as a teacher.

I've seen people do it, but I, oh my gosh, I just Things will just go, you would think being late for work would, would Cause you to get There are people. There's lines before lines outside their classroom door every morning. No teacher. Like, anyway, OK, what about, what about saving, what about, Save for a home.

Can you save for a home after your emergency fund is fully funded? That's an option. once you get them, you, you, you've paid off your debts, you have, You have a fully funded emergency fund. Where you go next, we'll be talking about next week.

where do you go after that. saving for a home can be part of that. You're, that's, that's not your emergency fund. Your emergency fund is not your savings for a house.

Yeah. No, this is the scary thing. is $1000 an adequate emergency fund? Not at all.

It's not. It is not an adequate emergency fund. And, and it may not even be for you. You might say I really need to have 2 or 3 or whatever it is in there before I start going after you, after my debts.

And if that's what you're saying, I'd say more power to you. if you're feeling insecure with only $1000 there, then, then by all means save more before you go after your debts. But the way Ramsey talks about it is going after debt is serious business. You really have to get at it.

if you really get at it, you can get it quickly. That's part of the goal is to get it as fast as you can and if you're busy trying to build up 3 to 6 months of, of living expenses. That will be much easier after you don't have, all these debt payments going on except for your mortgage. Mortgages are an exception to that.

But if you've got, several $1000, in student loans and everything else out there, you, if you, if you, if, unless you want to just kick the can down the road and have that hanging around for a while to go after it and get it done fast within a, a year, a couple of years or whatever, you have to get really razor focused and For that, you, you needed that there's a risk there with your emergency fund and but if you said to me, you said, Bill, that seems ridiculous to me. I'm really not comfortable.

I would rather have at least a couple of months of of, of family expenses in there before I go after my debts, I would say y'all go. I would, I would, I wouldn't say anything about because that's where I'm at.

I'm, I'm, I'm more of a I like to feel secure person. I, I, to, to go after my debts with only $1000, in my emergency fund would be a little bit scary for me. I like, I like, but I'm, I'm, I tend towards hoarding so. I, I, I, I, I'll confess, I am a, a hoarder.

ultimately, as I, I, I began is where do we place our trust in all of this? my trust is not in Dave Ramsey. My trust is not in, it's not even in the, even in the proverbs. It's not, it's not even in the wisdom I get from scripture necessarily.

That's not where my, my trust is. My trust is where it says trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. The scripture sometimes is a, is, is a mixture of what the scripture says and my interpretation of the scripture. So I want to be careful of even leaning completely on my understanding of scripture.

I want to lean on God. In all your ways acknowledge Him, personally him, he really exists. He's not just words on the page, he really exists. Acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

Those paths may go some places that are difficult, but they will be paths that he has made for us. It may not look quite like the path we want, but it's his path and we're with him. I don't know if that makes sense. Hopefully I'm not being heretical.

wisdom is a gift from God, but wisdom is not God. With qualifications, So, Jesus says, search the scriptures because you think, you search the scriptures because you think in them, you have eternal life. But it is these that testify about me. You are unwilling to come to me so that you may have eternal life.

We manage God's treasure so that we can have true life. True life is knowing Jesus Christ. It is being with him and the Father and the Spirit forever, right? And that's where we want our hearts to be, not caught up in our wisdom, not caught up in Dave Ramsey, not caught up in any of this stuff, but caught up in, in knowing him.

And, and realize that I know one last scripture and then, James says, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. This doesn't mean you shouldn't prepare. But he says that it's gonna come, right? Trials are gonna come and he says, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

So even if you prepare, your faith is still going to be tested. That's, that's the way it is and let endurance have what it's perfect result. So that you may be perfect, complete, and lacking nothing. My, my interpretation so that you might have true life, so that you might be a true human being, that you are going to be what God has created human beings to be.

That is what the treasure is there for and that's why we want to manage it well. Lord, thank you for your grace to us, help us just to be, lovers of you. Managers of your treasure, but lovers of you. we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.