Our Gospel Journey and God's Treasure

Lord, I thank you for the Just the journey you've taken me through over the last few weeks, getting ready for this class. and Lord, I have a long, long way still to go. Lord, you've given us treasure, you've given us abundant treasure, and Lord, how we manage that has a lot to do with how we move from brokenness to wholeness. And I just pray today, Lord, that You would help us to wrap our minds around that and, and just to encourage each other.

and just grow in our love for you and our love for each other. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, let me do a, before I, before I introduce myself and all that good stuff, let me do a, a couple of housekeeping items just really fast.

You should have a handout that has the course schedule and the overview. I forgot to put the course goals in there, so I'm gonna go over the course goals here in just a moment with you so you have that. you should have gotten an email if you actually, if you actually registered for the class, you got an email. The way the readings will be will be handled is there is a book for the class.

it's, called Your Money Counts by, by Howard Dayton, but, you can get, get to that book online for free if you want to read it digitally, which is the way I read everything I can possibly read. you can go buy it on Amazon and I will also be sending out PDFs of the chapters. I've already sent out the 1st 3 chapters which are very short, and I will be sending out, probably Monday or Tuesday of each week, what you will get from me is an email and it will have the notes from the past class.

It will have the PowerPoint from the past class.

It will have, some notes of encouragement and The readings for the next class, all that stuff. Some links to some YouTube videos if you have some extra time, and things like, things like that. The most important thing in this is that you do, if you want to get the benefit of the course, you need to do the tasks that are given. You, it's unlikely that you will complete those tasks by the end of the course.

Very unlikely you will complete, complete those tasks. So most tasks, quite honestly, I am still working on. this, this class has changed me, and I'll talk about that a little bit later on. the, So doing those is very important and when we get to the end of the 6 weeks, you may not be done and I'm gonna talk about this a little more later on too.

rather than doing a part two of this class, my preference would be to have people team up with people who are more experienced than them with these kinds of things. And I know in this class we have that. That's actually one of the goals. Of the class, and I'll talk about that in a second, is that we are trying to help people.

Our, our purpose at Cornerstone is to help people move from brokenness to wholeness. And most of you are aware, I think it's no news that a big part of our brokenness is The way we handle money and possessions. So if we want to help people move from brokenness to wholeness, we need to think through. But our purpose also says by means of what?

The gospel of Jesus Christ. So we need to learn how to gospel, as Mike Milton likes to say. I'm not sure this is the word or not, we need to be able to gospelize people from brokenness to wholeness, all of us do. That's our purpose together.

We need to be able to gospelize people from brokenness to wholeness. In a very big area of brokenness. That's our finances. So that's where we're headed and we'll see what happens with, with part two and that stuff.

Are there any quick questions that you have, things that are bothering you, irritating you, need to know type stuff right here at the beginning that I can answer for you? Wanna make sure you're feeling good about stuff. All right, here we go then. Let's, let's go ahead and blast off.

First of all, who am I? some of me, some of you don't know me, but let me just talk about who I am just really briefly. What I am, quite honestly, is a blessed and thankful guy. That's, that's, that's what I am.

I've had an extremely blessed life. I have a wonderful career as a high school teacher. I, I was able to retire just a few days before my fifty-sixth birthday, and retire financially comfortable. and, and right now I'm having a good time serving at church and, doing a lot of other things.

I'm also a very, jacked up guy. Talked to Milton. it has taken a lot of time to keep me, he spent a lot of time gospelizing me to keep me, from self-destructing. so there's, there's a, that, that's where the idea of, of who I am.

Now, what are my, what are my qualifications to teach a finance class? OK, I'm not a finance guy. I'm a gospel guy. and for me, this, the, and the reason I'm teaching this class, quite honestly, is because God uses our management of his treasure to do gospel works in our lives and others.

I, I'm teaching this class because money management is, does gospel work? And I want to do gospel work, not just work. I'll be, I'll just, I'm just gonna be honest. I've been pretty much financially stable all my life because I had a great finance teacher when I was young, and I'm gonna talk about him in just a second.

but being financially stable and having, having your management of your money, do gospel work can be two very different things. And I want to make sure that what we're doing is we're, we're We're moving along the journey. All right, gospel thinking and actions regarding treasure produce huge movements from brokenness to wholeness. I found out recently, the more I think about my money, the more I grow in the gospel.

So you can think about money, you can think about money and grow, and treasure is one of God's, primary gospel tools. Jesus talks a lot about money. it talks about possessions. the vast majority of his parables involve some possession management, money management, the faithful servant, the unfaithful servant, the wise guy, the whatever, it, it, it, there are a lot of them are about that.

So it, it's, it's very important to God, very important to Jesus in doing gospel work. When he's gospelizing his disciples and gospelizing us, he talks a lot about money. And now let me introduce you to my financial teacher. This is the guy who taught me.

This is my dad And, yeah, most of what I know about Keeping myself out of financial trouble comes from my dad. And, my dad passed away here just recently and, it was my joy and, and, and it's partially because of what my dad taught me. when you people, some people will say, why, well I'm never going to retire. I will never stop, that Christians don't retire.

Well, I stopped going to work right before my 56th birthday, but I got to spend 8 months of my dad's last Time here on Earth with my dad taking care of him. Oh my gosh, did I plan for that? No, I'm a blessed guy. I, I did not expect that.

I did not expect it, but it was, I can't, I can't communicate to you. I just can't communicate what a blessing it was. I, it was just absolutely incredible to be there for my dad every day to make him breakfast, to make him lunch, to do all the things he needed. I got deep into his finances.

I know more about my dad's finances now than I ever knew. yeah. anyway, just some, some quick things he taught me. Now one thing my dad did not teach me is the gospel power of the management of money.

I do not know if my dad passed away as a believer. I don't really know. We had some good conversations at the end. I was able to in some ways to embody the gospel to him in his last days, which is an immense, immense blessing.

I really don't know, but they're good principles anyway. Here, here are a few of them, they're, they're very complicated. and this is a very, it's very complicated stuff. You got to know calculus and all, you got to get the root of the hypotenuse and all kinds of stuff to be able to do this.

One, don't spend more than you have. Oh, that's, I, I thought that was the way people live when I had a roommate. I had, when I got roommates, I realized that everybody did that. There were people who spent more than they had.

And it caused a lot of problems. Always pay cash. now my dad in his late in his life discovered credit cards and he realized he could get things like airplane miles and cashback and stuff like that. And so he did begin to use credit cards towards the end of his life but they're always paid off and, and credit cards are, are somewhat controversial and we'll talk about that later.

but I grew up paying cash. I, that's the way I paid. My, my rent and my grocery and everything and I watched my dad normally pay with green stuff growing up, so paying with cash, get the best deal you can. my dad, I went, I went to buy a tape recorder once and my dad said, let, let me, let me, let me buy it for you.

And before we were done, I had extra this and extra that and extra all kinds of stuff with that tape recorder because he got the best deal that he could. save for what you want. do not want too much. Right?

Don't want too much, be generous. And a very important one that my, that my dad got on me about often was make sure what you want is what you really want. Make sure what you want is what you really want. Don't, don't buy impulsively.

Impulsive buying is dangerous and credit cards contribute to that and we'll talk to that later, about that later but make sure what you want is what you really want. and that has tremendous, we talk about this a lot actually. My dad didn't know it, but that concept has tremendous gospel power. When God's, when, when, when, when, Paul writes to Timothy, and said, God has created all things for us to enjoy.

You really need to figure out what that word enjoy means. What is real joy? What is you doing? And at the end of that paragraph, he says the goal is true life.

We have all things to enjoy for the goal of true life. So be thinking about is what you want, what you Really want? What do you really want, in life? buy a home.

I frustrated my dad on this. I didn't buy a home until I was what, Eileen 30. 37, 38, we've been married quite a long time, I had a daughter and waited a long time to buy a home and that bugged my dad but he, he'd made me so debt adverse that this idea of owing, 100 $100,000 or something just blew my brain and I, I felt it was constricting and, and there's arguments on both sides of that. I eventually did buy a house because the, the market crashed and It, it was just really hard to not buy it.

It was just ridiculous prices, ridiculously low interest rates., hard work and education, pays off and prepare for life after employment. My, my dad retired pretty early. also, there's more to life sometimes than going to work each day. Though I act I actually sometimes miss going to at the high school.

high schools are cool places. I, I really like them. I know it's controversial in some circles, but I happen to love public education. I especially love public high schools.

they are amazing places. every, I'm gonna be going on, get me going here, but 90 something, whatever it is, I don't have exact statistics of this, but a huge percentage of the young people in this country go through those schools. Think about that. It's a cool place.

bad things happen there from time to time, but, But it's a very cool place. OK, course goals, I forgot to put these in the thing and I'm a teacher and I forget to put the course goals in the, in the guide. Here are course goal, course goals. Course goal number one, apply gospel thinking to our decisions regarding possessions and money and here's the keyword, to maximize our movement from brokenness to wholeness.

Right? Making decisions to maximize our movement from brokenness to wholeness. That's what we wanna be, it's, those are the decisions we wanna make. We wanna maximize that movement.

Here at Cornerstone. I got my cute little chart down there. OK, now goal number one, what is wholeness? That's a big topic.

Milton talks about that a lot and I'm not gonna be able to do it in a couple of seconds, but, what is wholeness? I think Paul does a really good job with this in First Timothy. He says to Timothy, the goal of our instruction is what? Love from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.

And for me, I'll, I'll just, I have a very, simple-minded guy. I have to keep my, my, my eye on the prize. I have a very simple definition and I'm always looking, am I growing in love? Am I loving better?

Whatever I'm learning, whatever I'm doing, whatever I'm thinking, is this, is this helping me to love better? And to me that's wholeness. I envision, eternity as a place where I am, we're massively growing in love, and trust in God in relationship with God. And that's, and, and right now I am, I am not a very good lover.

I am, I am not, I am broken. I, I love poorly. I, I hurt people I love, I do stupid things. I do a lot of dumb, a lot of dumb stuff.

Right? Oh my gosh. And now I whacked my screen. OK, 1 2nd, please.

We will fix this. He says, And I didn't want to use the official cornerstone gadget. I'm going to pay for that. OK, hang on here.

No. it is. OK. Goal number 2.

One of our goal is to learn, oops, let's just say learn, not learns, learn ways to come alongside others to apply gospel thinking to their decisions regarding possessions and money to maximize their movement from brokenness to wholeness. We, we all should be thinking about, we should be looking at our brothers and sisters and asking ourselves the question, how can I maximize their movement from brokenness to wholeness and According to Jesus and a lot of the Bible and Proverbs and all kinds of other places, money is a big place.

and we want to be able to gospel, we want to be able to gospelize others and help them move from brokenness to wholeness, in that area. And goal number 3.

apply basic money management strategies to achieve biblical financial stability. The Bible has some very specific advice, doesn't require calculus, doesn't require getting this the hypotenuse of the square root of the, what, what, what you call it, to be able to, to be successful at finances. I think, I think the Bible is pretty clear, it wants us to be financially stable. and it wants us to plan to be financially stable.

I know I had roommates and stuff who would say, I'm just gonna trust God, I'm just gonna trust God, and there's some, there's some beauty to that and I probably err on the wrong side. I probably err on the be careful plan side. And, but I'll tell you, even if you plan, God's gonna do things to cause you to trust Him. But, my personal belief, belief is, it is our responsibility to plan and do the things to make ourselves financially stable so that we can come alongside others.

Paul says, to work hard so that you have stuff to share. so we want, we, we, we want Things are gonna happen. Early in my marriage I made an investment that was really, really stupid. Lost a huge amount of money, thought I was being smart.

God, God's gonna do things to, to straighten you out, but you should plan that way. what is financial stability? And this is our goal here. How do I define financial stability?

Now this is moving away to just like the facts Jack, right? here's financial stability. One, you're able to pay all expenses without borrowing or gifts. That's basic level financial stability that you're not spending more than what comes in.

You can make your, you can make your bills. By the way, you'll, you'll get this in an email so if you're, if you're writing things down, just teaching style thing. I, I would rather be having, it makes actually makes me feel good when people write stuff down. It's I go, oh I'm so, I'm so insightful that they're writing it down.

So it does make me feel good. But what's actually better for learning is if we have this. I have that. I have your mind.

I have your, I have you asking questions and that stuff going on in your head. That's really, that's really what I want. When I was, when I was a high school teacher, that's what I wanted. I wanted that, where are we going?

What's, what's, what's he mean by this? What's he mean by that, blah, blah, blah, blah, that stuff, right? Number 2, you have savings enough to cover simple emergencies. you've got some money in the bank in case, you're not one, you're not one emergency away from insolvency.

And you've got some money in the bank in case the car breaks down. It's not the end of you. You can replace the radiator or whatever. 3, be debt-free except for a mortgage.

And there's some and there almost with a caveat, there's some good reasons not to buy a house. I didn't buy a house for a long time. there's, there's no fast rules to this. people's lives are different.

But if you're, if you're going to buy a house, I think it's a good idea to buy a house. mortgage is what most financial cats out there will say is an OK debt. Dave Ramsey and all the other gurus will say that, that, that's OK, but you want to be working to pay it off really quickly. That's what I did.

I got this, I got this big well actually it was a pretty small mortgage because the person who owned the house before me lost a lot of money. so, The, my goal was to pay that off really fast. just boom boom, boom, pay extra, get a fifteen-year mortgage, go for it. have savings to cover serious problems.

This may take a while, this may take a while to, to cover really serious problems. If you were out of work for like say 6 months, could you weather that storm financially without borrowing or getting gifts from other people? Could you weather that storm? You want to be in a place where you can weather that storm.

I think it's biblical to be able to weather a, a, a larger financial storm and to have money sitting. and, and simple to say you got to be really careful about that because that's money that could be doing gospel work but having money sitting there for a big disaster. 5, you want to make sure that you have, adequate insurance, and a living trust in place. you want to be saving towards short and medium term goals.

If you're going to be buying a car, save for it. Don't borrow for it. I, I personally don't think car loans are something you should, we should really be looking at. It's, it's the American way to have car debt.

it's a very expensive way to buy a car. it's better to save, if you're gonna be one of 5 years, have your car. Something may happen to mess that up, then God does stuff, but I think it's biblical to, to prepare for that. And when it, when it comes to buy the car, have some idea what you want, probably buy, I, my advice is to buy used, that's Dave Ramsey's advice.

Other people's guru's advice, buy used, and, you're gonna, that's the way to go with that. and have long term investments for income after employment. I think that that's, there's a lot of, you, you'll hear some controversy about, should Christians have retirement accounts? Should they have retirement investments?

That's just locking up money that could be doing, doing gospel good. but it's also money that may be very well preparing you for gospel good. I learned a lot of things being a public school teacher. That I am now free to use at pretty much the Lord's direction.

I can spend 8 months with my dad, I can teach a class on finances. I can Yeah. I don't, I don't go to work every day, but I, I can ask Eileen, my wife, yeah, I work quite a bit. I'm gonna, I'm, for time, this, this, this is the, the, this class is part of a series that we're working on developing here at Cornerstone called Equipping for the Journey.

And the idea of that is, is as, as leaders, leaders of a church are called to what? Equip. The saints for the work of ministry. And at Cornerstone, we've defined that as helping each other move from brokenness to wholeness.

And so this series of classes is designed to take different areas of life. And learn how we can live inside the gospel. Right? We want to take that, that, that wonderful gospel truth and learn to move from brokenness to wholeness.

What we want to do is learn how to live life inside the gospel, right? Hearing the call of Jesus, repenting, believing the gospel, following Jesus, and we'll talk more about that in a few minutes, get some scripture behind that because this is actually the way Jesus preaches the gospel. You want to say what, what's the gospel? Right, right out of the gate.

Right, right out of the gate. This is the way Jesus preaches the gospel, right? Behold the kingdom of God. God is at hand.

Do what? Repent. Now if you repent, what does he say to do? Says believe.

And what does he say next? Says follow me, right? Very, very simple. It's, it, it's a simple thing but it's, we're gonna find out that, that this believing that as Milton always says believing this gospels business is, is bigger than we ever imagined.

OK, what is the beginning of the journey from brokenness to wholeness? I wanna put some scripture behind this. I've been talking a lot. I just want to get some interaction here just a little bit.

in the Gospel of Mark, it begins with the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So if we want to wrap your mind around the gospel, it says, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger ahead of you to do what? Prepare your way, the voice of the one, crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make his path straight. OK, what questions come up from, if you were there listening to John, walking around saying this stuff about the way and whatnot, what questions would you have?

What would come, what would come to your mind? What does his way entail? OK. And you, yeah, there seems to be a lot of repetition of this, this way thing, right?

So what's this way thing? What is, what is the way? What other questions come up from, from this, from this passage? Imagine you're sitting there, this prophet John's running around dressed funky, What questions would come to your mind?

Yeah, who the heck are you? Yes, this guy, this guy is weird and people did ask that question, are you Isaiah? Are you the, are you the Messiah? Are you, are you whatever?

So there's that. He actually answers that. In there. what else?

What else would you get? Other questions would you have from this? Why does the way need to be prepared? what's, why, why prepare a way?

what do the preparations look like? why, why does he call it a, a, a way? that's a weird, weird way to talk about it and I actually like the language. what is meant by the word way?

the word is haos in Greek and it actually means Journey, journey, travels, movement, that's what it means. That's the journey. and early Christians, before they were called Christians, Christians was a derogatory term, little Jesus. they were called people of The hot ass.

They're people of the hot ass. They were people of this way that John had prepared. They were people of the The journey. Yeah.

All right. And we find that I'm not gonna go through this passage too much, I'm just gonna zip over it really fast. but when people, the question you would, I think, I think, I think you asked was how do you get the way ready? What does John say?

Well, a lot of what he says has to do with guess what? Money and possessions. You got 2 tunics? You got 2 tunics?

Give one away Right? are you a tax collector? Don't collect more than you're ordered to. Huh?

Are, are you, are you a soldier? Don't take money If you're a soldier, Be content with your wages. This is getting ready for Jesus. This is getting ready to walk the journey.

And if you're gonna walk the journey, what, what, what, what John is saying here, start thinking about your treasure. Because when Jesus gets here, he's gonna do the same thing. He's gonna start getting you to think about your treasure. How do we find the jersey, the journey?

How do we get on this journey? Well, Jesus explains that. Jesus shows up, and what does Jesus say? Jesus came into Galilee.

Preaching what? The gospel. And here's the gospel of God and what does he say? The time is fulfilled.

So something's been planned, it's fulfilled, it's referring back to what John was doing, right? One's coming, the way it's being prepared for him, now the time is being, is fulfilled, and he says, the kingdom of God is at hand. The hand. It's here.

So when you hear that, what's the question you ask? How, how do I get in this? I, I want to be part of the kingdom, right? How, how do I become part of this kingdom?

How do I get, how do I get in this thing? What do I do? What do I do? What does Jesus say?

Here's what you do. Right? Kingdom's at hand. Repent.

Change directions. and if you notice in the journey thing, I should have brought this up earlier. The first part of the journey is what? A complete change of directions.

That's conversion, right? That's conversion right there. That's the repenting part. OK, that's the repenting part.

so we changed directions. Then, then what? Believe what? Just believe?

Just believe, just believe. The gospel Right? And, and the thing is this, this is not just believe the gospel, it's present tense. It's a, a present imperative which means what?

Yeah, you all right, keep, I'm a Texan now, but, anyway, 88 months I'm a Texan that actually Texan say all y'all right now. Keep, you better do, do this all the time. Believe the gospel all the time and that's what this is, right? We're believing the gospel.

All the time. Now here they're also what, there are more bends and twists, right? But ultimately the direction is what? The opposite of that.

So in believing the gospel, that, that journey from brokenness to wholeness, I always like, let me see if I can do this, real, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, time is more important right now so I'm gonna, I'm gonna move. 00, next thing he says, he says, and he was going along by the Sea of Galilee and he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother, of Simon casting a net to the sea and they were fishermen and Jesus said to them, what? Follow me, that's where the journey goes. So on this journey, you are repenting, believing the gospel, and you're following me, OK?

And the kingdom of God is at hand. At that point, you are walking a kingdom path. This path is a kingdom path. You've just made a decision to walk into a kingdom, and that kingdom has a what?

As a king, so you made a decision to, to follow a king, and that king owns everything. And that king is going to use everything to transform you into something you have no idea how wonderful it is. Because that's where the journey goes. That king is gonna take you to a place that is more beautiful and more wonderful because he's there, and all of us will be there, and all of the gospel good our treasure has done.

Oh, beware. It will be there. Gospel use of treasure has eternal implications. If you don't believe me, read Randy Alcorn.

that, that guy writes so, he writes so well. He's, he's an excellent writer, excellent speaker. He doesn't get a whole lot on the practical of finances, but oh my gosh, does he paint the picture of doing gospel good with treasure. oh, so well, so well.

Anyway, what we have Jesus basically telling us, right? Hear the call of Jesus, that's a supernatural work, right? I, I don't see Jesus here doing anything, right? I don't see him anywhere, right?

It's a supernatural work. We hear the call of Jesus, the kingdom is at hand. I've got something for you. There's something more than what, where you're going is the wrong kingdom.

You're heading towards the kingdom of darkness, I've got the kingdom of light. so you hear that call of Jesus, and what do we do? Do the work of the Holy Spirit. We, we repent, we turn, we believe the gospel, and then we do what Jesus says, we follow him.

And we continuously follow him. One of the things that, that Milton often does that I love, he does this in the membership class. I think I hold the record for non-staff attendance at membership meetings. I, I, true story.

I go to membership meetings for fun. I used to be in charge of them, so I used to, I used to have to be there. I was in charge of setting them up. but I go now, I went to the last membership meeting.

I didn't have to be there. I was in charge. I'd, I'm, I'm not, I'm not in leadership anymore. I'm not an elder.

I'm cool. I can, I can go anywhere I want after church. I can go, I can go out to lunch if I want to, but I went to the membership meeting. Why?

Cause I gotta hear that gospel stuff and, and no, for me, Milton is like, he Oh, he just explains gospel truth and gospel community in ways that just That, that, that just fill me up. and our goal eventually is to take the gospel to every area of our lives. that's what we want to do, that's gospel. We want to take the gospel everywhere to our work, to our relationships, to the way we learn.

Can we, can we study in gospel ways? What does it mean to study if you're a student, what does it mean to study in a, in a gospelized way? the way we forgive, we have, the way we suffer, can you suffer in a gospelized way? temptation.

How did, how can you handle temptation in a gospel way? Right? very important and hopefully we will eventually have classes, journey classes that will deal with all this. How do you deal with, with temptation?

This is a very big problem on the journey. how do we deal with our anger, on the journey? Well, how does the gospel transform that? And, and Jesus wants the gospel to move us from brokenness to wholeness in all of those areas.

He wants us to make that shift. And I just messed up my screen again. Because I tilted this thing. OK.

OK. Do I want to stop and, yeah, I do actually want to stop and mess with this. Because I still have my screen up there and I can fix this really quickly. In slideshow, start slideshow.

Huzzah. See, I'm getting better. I've learned. Why treasure management is important.

that turn that we made. That repenting At that very point, what does our king do? Yeah, the angels are praising the Lord, but something else happens. A a financial transaction takes place.

What's that financial transaction? Yeah, exactly. God takes his most valuable possession. And he used, this is a bad word but I'm gonna go ahead and use it.

He sells his most valuable possession. You, you'll get what I'm saying here. Don't, please don't, don't, don't string me up for, for heresy. he, he sells his only begotten son to do what?

To ransom us. He separates himself, which for God is, that's the ultimate suffering to be separated from his son, separates himself from his son to pay off our debts. He invests his greatest treasure in us. So we, we are carrying that treasure.

Now, if you, if you read through the the parables, what do you always, when, when, when people are given treasure, what's always expected? Return, right? There's all kinds of ones like there's a whole bunch of parables like that, blah, blah, blah. I got blah, blah blah, went out and did blah, blah, blah.

They come back and what did you do with yours? Well, I got more of this and what'd you do with yours? I got more of that. And then what, what did you do yours, put it under the rock.

Hm. No, he expects a return on his investment, doesn't he? He wants a return. What's the return?

Don't look at the screen. What's the return God wants on his investment? Live a life worthy. You bet.

What's, what's, what's, what's God want for those those, all these things are true. What, what's God want for return of his vestment if you read my say says I think what he really wants is he wants us knowing Him in His true glory because he keeps on. Investing in us to move us from what? Brokenness to wholeness, and he wants us to know him, he wants us to, to know his true glory, and he wants us to experience true, full, and everlasting life.

That's the return he wants on his investment. So when God pours treasure into you, what do you want to be doing with it? Maximizing that that transformation. That's, that's gospel thinking about money.

OK. Why is, where am I going here? why is treasure management, important? It's a major theme of scriptures.

It's a quote from Randy, Randy Alcorn. it's in the notes, but it's just everywhere in scripture and for time's sake, I'm gonna keep on moving., our treasure and one of the most important, if, if, how do we If, if you want to love more, what do you have to change? You have to change. The most deep parts of you.

The deepest, deepest, deepest parts of you. That, that stuff that you're thinking about when nobody else is, that they're really ugly and some of the really good stuff. You gotta change that stuff it's way down in there. And what does Jesus say?

He says treasure management can do that. Put your treasure someplace. And your heart will go there. Very quick story, I went reluctantly on a missions trip to Uganda.

I hated it. I did not want to go back. In fact one of the last days, they said raise your hand if you want to come back and everybody raised their hand and I just sat there. So I said, I thought, I thought the whole thing was a joke.

I, I didn't enjoy the experience. It was just, it was just, it was just miserable. I didn't like it. I, I won't go into all the details why I didn't like it but I met a high, I, I, I, we visited a high school.

thawing I know, I'm interested, that's interesting. who want to do technology. So I don't know, I kinda like technology stuff. I've done a little bit of that and what I started doing, I started investing my treasure in that school.

My knowledge that God had given me over all the years of my teaching, I started investing my money in that school and guess what ended up happening? I ended up loving Uganda. I ended up loving those people. I was not a lover of Ugandans on the first trip.

I didn't leave that, I did not leave Uganda loving Ugandans. but 4 or 5 trips later. And quite a bit of treasure later. Very different relationship with the people of Uganda.

it, it changed. There's more change needs to go on, but I'm just saying that moving my treasure has that power and Jesus says that, he says, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. We're gonna be talking about, we're almost done anyway so I'm just gonna forget about it. budgeting, people who have about budgeting.

Budgeting is a gospel operation. Every, now, I'm, I'm not, I'm just gonna confess here that for most of my life, I have not budgeted and the reason I haven't budgeted is I didn't need to. I could be financial, it just wasn't that complicated. I didn't spend on very many things.

I didn't have a lot of, I didn't have any debts so I just didn't mess with it because it was just too many numbers to, to look at. I didn't wanna, I didn't want to hassle with it. I went, I, I've taken multiple finance classes. I've read multiple finance books, but it's to the budgeting part.

I go, woof, I got that down. I don't, I don't need that stuff. I can keep track of my, where, where money is and I know I just don't, just don't buy stuff. You look at your banking, you look at how much you got, you look at what, what it costs, and you just don't buy it.

What, why do I need a budget thing? No. When, when you, when you are doing budgeting, you are doing gospel work. I, I talked to a, a guy at the, at the man forum the other day, who he says he's a compulsive budgeter.

I go, oh, save me, save me. I, I, I'm, I'm just not into that, but he talked about his daughter's birthday coming up. And he says, my wife and I sat down and we made a decision about money going towards that birthday, right? Folks, that is gospel heart changing work.

That is a gospel conversation. That is moving you towards richness of life. That is finding out what you really want. What do we really want?

Budgets allow you to think through what you really want and they allow you to maximize your, your movement from brokenness to wholeness. It's not just about financial stability. God wants us to be financially stable. But he wants us to have true life.

More than that. There's times you'll mess up our financial stability to give us true life. Sorry about that. OK, we're running really low on time here and I want to allow just a little bit of time if people want to ask questions, criticize me, or, or whatever and I'm not sure exactly cause I crunched this thing.

I'm not sure exactly. I, I'm not, I actually I shouldn't promise you but I'm gonna promise you anyway. I will stop this from doing this next week. Yeah, OK.

Here's the transition I can make. back in 2008, Milton preached a sermon called the Gospel and Your Money. In that sermon, he gave seven steps, for, being able to do that, seven things to think about basically to help you think about, think about that. I sent that, that sermon out in the email of the people who registered for the class.

I will send that out and I will send out a link to a shorter version in case you don't want to listen to the whole sermon. I will send you out a link just goes to just the seven steps. I, I have the outline of that, sermon in your notes with all the verses written out from it. I was gonna go over that today, but we're out of time and Milton talks about it way, way, way better than I'm going to talk about it.

so if you can get a chance to listen to that, at least read over the notes or if you, if you can't get a chance to listen to the sermon. Your task for this week. Now for those of you who are already fairly financially organized, you may have a little bit of, this may not be as much for you, and my advice to you would be to be, start trying to change your gospel thing. Listen to the sermon very carefully, do some other things.

But there are two things that I want you to do. at least the servant who hid the rock or hid the, the, the money under the rock knew where the money was. When Jesus asked him, Where's the money, he said, it's, I got it, it's under the rock. Do where your money is?

OK. If, if you want your money to do gospel work, the first thing you gotta do is you gotta know where it is. Now, money also, money doesn't stand still. Money.

Moves around, right? It goes in, it goes into your bank account. It goes into your pocket. It goes to your deck.

It goes all kinds of places, right? Especially in our modern digital culture. We just all over the place. I can take my phone and point it at you and give you money or take your money or whatever, right?

So money is constantly moving and so in our modern culture, we've, we, we've got to be able to keep track of where our money is going. So your first task, and this is what, all the money management people do, so I'm not being a, a goofy person. is number one, make a list of your treasure. Start trying to figure out what your assets are.

Start with the really valuable things like cars and houses and stuff and just work through it. and if you've already done that, I, I would encourage you to start looking at things that you could, this is sound bad, that you could sell or give away. Just, just to think about it. Just think about it.

Are there things you have that you could sell or give, give away? I'm starting to do that myself. I'm starting to list out possessions and I'm getting rid of stuff. I, I've sold, I, I, I, I'm telling the truth, right?

I've, I've, I've sold a couple of bicycles and a drum set and, some other stuff and I'm probably gonna sell some more. I have too many drum sets. I got a couple more drum sets, and maybe another bike or so or whatever. and I've got other stuff.

I've got other stuff hanging around, that I'm, I'm looking, making a list and looking for things to get rid of. so make a list of the stuff you have and its value. And, and maybe start thinking about possessions that you could, you could get rid of. That, that was a, and that's not a weird thing.

It's common. if you look at Book of Acts, chapter 4 of the book of Acts, what are the people doing in the, in chapter 4 of the book of Acts? They're looking at their possessions, they're selling them, and they're bringing the money to the apostles, and I'm not saying you have to bring and give all the money to the elders or something like that. But, the, but they're bringing it, they're putting the money before the apostles' feet to do what?

To do gospel work, to build up their community and make sure that there's no one in their community that has any needs. No one in their community has any need. Whoa. Anyway, that's, that's going on.

That's your first task. The second task is more, and there's a, there's a sheet here, which I'm not gonna go into a whole lot of detail where you can, where you can start listing those out. You can list them by categories, how much cash do you have in the bank, how much do you have, invested for retirement or whatever. Just start getting an idea of all the The money that, that you have or all the resources you have out there, other real estate, automobiles, and, and go for the big things, first and, if you want to start getting down to, I, I have 5 spoons and 8 forks or, or whatever, probably not, but if you have like silver, really valuable stuff like that, that you might want to get into your thing and try to figure out maybe what it's worth if, if you can.

The next is a little bit more difficult and that's, and it's something I don't like doing. my dad did it and I just, I, I remember he'd always keep the receipt, always keep the receipt, always keep the receipt, always keep the receipt and having gone, spent a lot of time with my dad's finances, he had a A lot of receipts. oh my gosh, a lot of receipts. but he did that so he would know what.

He wanted to know where his money was going, what was it going towards? and you, you may find that there's some surprises out there, and this is part of the finding out is, is what you want, what you really want. and this is not a judgment call, you often get people, sometimes it's common in our culture when people ask you for money, they, equate it to cups of cappuccino or something. They will say, if you give to our, if you give to our ministry, it, it's only gonna cost you, one trip to Starbucks per week.

OK, well, Yeah, I, part of me goes, yeah, people wasting money at Starbucks. But you have to ask the question, what do you really want? And believe it or not, Starbucks is one of the only places in our goofy culture where you can have community with people other than the people you normally hang out with. there are some good gospel reasons to go to Starbucks, and, so it's OK just to have something because you like it.

Right? So, I, that's, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna say that. but it's, Starbucks really is, it's where, where do we go today to have, to, to meet our neighbors? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, they get to know you. They, they try out their new drinks on you and stuff. Yeah, my daughter was at, was at, was at, you go to the same Starbucks over and over again. You get to know the, the, yeah, the barista, and they get free junk, huh?

Does that happen? I don't. But anyway, I, I, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I've got no rules for what people spend money on. we live, one thing I want to communicate in this class is that we are inside the gospel, folks.

There is nothing but grace. We are not condemned, right? If you are messing up, this is gonna sound bad, mess up with gospel joy. Do not let it, do not let it drag you down.

I'm not saying it's OK to do it. I'm not saying it's OK to mess up. I'm just saying don't get in, don't get out of the gospel cycle. because what are, what, what What our flesh wants to do is it wants to knock us out of the gospel cycle.

Stay in that gospel cycle. If your finances are a disaster, Have, have gospel joy. You're not condemned. what I, I, I have, I've, I've confessed some of my, my financial sins.

I'll confess some more, on, I'll bring people back. The pain's got more sins., but, and, and, and I, but for me, I have to tell myself all the time. Roman's 8:1 is, is my verse, man. however I'm messing up, whatever stupid thing I've done that day.

I am not condemned. I'm going back to my father and I'm gonna be in his presence and I'm going to enjoy him and I'm, and I'm gonna keep on, I'm gonna keep on keeping on. and then, I'm gonna keep on believing the gospel. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna believe the gospel.

I'm gonna keep on believing. Anyway, the next thing you want to do is you want to track your spending, save your receipts and get some chart. I've given you one here. If you like spreadsheets, use a spreadsheet.

There are all kinds of these things on the internet. I'm a lazy person. what I started using is mint. And I've got some, I'm also a technology person so I've got some questions about security and stuff like that.

There's some very good reasons not to use technology to keep track of your finances. there's good reasons just to use pencil and paper. I have, I can't remember too many stories about hacking people's notebooks. but I started using Mint and I really like it.

and it's given me some insights into where my money's going, where I'm going. Some of them have been blessings where I've looked at it and going, what, I thought we spent a lot more money on that. And we don't really spend that much money on that. I've had grumpy feelings inside of me about something that I don't need to have grumpy feelings about.

We don't spend too much money on that. so it, it, it does that, yeah. It's a software program. it also ties into TurboTax and there's a number of those programs out there.

Mint is recommended by, by, Compass Ministries which are the people that we are basically using their, their materials to undergrad the financial part of this class. it's not, it's just to go to mint.com and you get an account, you can download the app. I haven't, I don't know if I'm gonna use the app or not, but, it's, it's a good way of, of, for me, it's been, it's been very, very good because I'm lazy. but it, it plugs into my bank account, it plugs into my credit cards.

It categorizes stuff and adds it all up for me. my next trip, my next step is to hook it into my, my retirement account stuff and figure out what's going on there. And so you get this, this, this, this map of where, where everything is right in front of you and for a lazy person like me, it's, it's very nice. And if there's a lot of interest in that, we can get it, find some people who already use it.

Get together a group and, and whatever and help each other out. I, I think it's a pretty easy program to use. and there are other ones out there. I just happen to mint free.

This doesn't cost you anything. You can go on and use it. They will try to sell you stuff, there's things on there for different kinds of investments and things like that, and well, I just ignore all that stuff. we're gonna talk about investments later.

I've driven a couple of financial advisors to the almost to drinking. Yeah, I ask a lot of questions. and Yeah, and I, and I don't, the bad, the thing that I really don't like too is I'm not really interested in making a lot of money. So just to make money requires what?

Using your financial people. Better returns require more what usually? More risk. Yeah, you go, yeah.

Higher, more risk, higher returns, lower risk, lower returns. We'll talk about it a little bit when we get to that, that side of things in terms of it, what, you're, planning for the, the longer, longer, longer type term. I don't have any stock tips or anything like that, but, we'll talk about that stuff. All right, let me go ahead and pray and then I'll, I'll be here because I want to make sure people want to leave and go pick up their kids can do that.

make sure you've signed it on the sign-in sheet. If your name is not on there, please place it on there. That way you will get all the emails for the class and I'll send you all the stuff I've already sent out. you can email me back and ask me questions.

My phone number, I don't know if it's on this stuff, but I'll email you out my phone number. Yeah, feel free to call me. It's my cell number. You can call me and ask me questions, about stuff if you want to.

you can write me cri critiques of how I messed up and, all that stuff. Let me go ahead and pray and then I'll, I'll hang out if people have questions. Lord, thank you just for your, your wonderful and kind grace to us. I thank you for this time that we've had together.

I just pray that, That your work, would be done, here. I just pray for everyone during this week, give them just rich times of just, even just a little bit, sitting down and, and, and thinking about the treasure that you've given them and, where it's going and where they would like it to go and what they would like the future to be and to pray about those things and have those conversations with spouses and with children and, this would be a, it would be a rich week of, of, of gospel progress, through thinking about treasure.

Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.