Introduction: What God Has in Mind...

We're looking at biblical principles of personal finance. What sort of thoughts do you have? Gee, I'd sure be good if we covered this, or I'd like to get this figured out. What are your thoughts? I'd like to know a little bit more about what the Bible says about debt. Debt. Okay. That's a good one. That's a real good one. Debt is very popular these days. It's all the rage. Yes, debt is very popular. Good, thank you.

Any other questions that come up on your mind? Things you'd like to pursue here? Proper planning. Do I just sort of mosey along and whatever falls out of the sky, that's what I live on? How do I plan? Is that a good idea? Not? And how do I do it if I do? So yeah. Good one. Okay. Giving. Okay. Yeah. What do I give to? And how? And how much? And how does that happen? What does the Bible say about that? Yeah. Yeah. Excellent one. Yes. Excellent point.

The rule of thumb these days that you hear is something around half of all marriages end up in divorce. Of those that do, American Bar Association says 89% of those who come for divorce list money as a primary issue in the divorce. You're talking numbers 9 out of 10. So huge issue, yes. Real important to get that settled. Funny, here's this stuff, this little piece of paper. Amazing to see this rip marriages apart. Isn't that something? Good point. What else? Okay, that's good for now.

I'm sure you'll come up with other reasons as we go along. Let's go ahead and start in your binder and I'm just going to be using that as a rough outline. The front page inside has an outline and what I intend to do is towards the end to briefly survey what we are doing next. I will get to that in a little bit here so that we see what is ahead of us. We will be proceeding every Sunday except for Thanksgiving weekend up through the second Sunday in December, so we will keep marching along here. What we'll do is this will be a general repeat of what was presented on the prior Wednesday night.

So if sometime you say, I can't make it that Sunday, you have a chance to come Wednesday night, if that works better for your schedule some week. The other thing is that we are recording these, so if that's helpful to you as a way to catch up, you can do that too, okay?

What you may be looking at is you say, Vern, why did you give me the one inch binder and less than a quarter inch of material? Well, that's just this week. In the front you're going to have the main material we'll be covering and then behind the red section there, there'll be an appendix and I'll be handing out material at least for the front section and probably for the back section every week. So this will get loaded up. There will be additional material.

And feel free to take notes on it, add paper to it, whatever is helpful to you. The idea is that when we're done, you've got something that's useful to you when we get through here. Something you can refer back to, keep looking at if you've got issues that come up, and maybe even use with somebody else. So anyway, hopefully that will be a real good resource for you.

Let's go ahead and start there. Introduction. What God has in mind. is the first part there. Money is amazing stuff. It gets people's attention. If I were to drive down Holly Street and open a window and just grab stacks of hundreds and just start leaving them out the window, dumping them out the window. You would get all kinds of attention. My guess is that would probably make the news and there would be people running out in the streets, cars would screech. It's amazing the attention money gets.

What's interesting too, and I quote Jerry Seinfeld here, he observes today's society about money. People relate to money and they gauge themselves by it. Have you seen that? Have you seen that behavior? People gauge themselves by money. It's the measure of society.

Now, one of the things that we'll be talking about here, Christians deal with this gravitational pull about money in different ways. Some Christians, on the one hand, deal with money in one way and some of them deal with money in another way. What are some of the extremes that you've seen or observed? about the way Christians approach money. What have you seen? What are some of the examples?

God wants you to be rich. That's right. There's one fellow, one of these televangelist guys. Every single passage has to do with how God wants you to be rich. It's amazing how often that comes up. So that's one extreme. God wants you to be rich. It's funny, the apostles never caught on. Now, what's the other extreme? God wants you to be poor. You definitely can't.

Money is awful. As a matter of fact, what do people say? Money is the root of all evil, right? Does the Bible say that? Okay. The love of money is a really important distinction. But Hal is right. There are people that are in that position. Boy, you can't have any of that money stuff. It's horrible. Terrible stuff. It'll corrupt you in a minute if it takes that long. So that's the other extreme. Why do you think there's so much extreme? Ah, that's right. Biblically, the Bible can't teach both, right? So what happens is the extremes are guided by human nature and not by Scripture. So what we want to do is focus on what Scripture says.

One of the things that we point out here is the Lord was not afraid to talk about money. In the last week of his life, and you'll see it on the outline in front of you, he talked about money a lot the last week of his life before his crucifixion on earth. He talked about money repeatedly. Most of the parables had to do with money, if not directly, indirectly, that he told that week. He talked about the cost of being a disciple. No servant can serve two masters. The rich young ruler. Zacchaeus, the tax collector. He drove out the money changers. You see how often money came up? The Lord was not afraid to address the subject. And we won't be here either.

Now, what is critical, though, is that we understand something. And that is church-age believers need to understand what is written for them and what is written to them. All of Scripture is written for us, but not all is written directly to us. In how to study the Bible, one of the examples we gave is, I've got to be careful about just grabbing Scripture. I've got to say, is that really directed to me? Otherwise, I can end up with, Judas went out and hung himself, goes out and do likewise. We don't want to get there. Principle number one.

Romans 8.28.29a And we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined them to become conformed to the image of His Son. The principle that we take in the area of finance is God's intent, predestined for each believer, is to use the principles, circumstances, and constraints related to money to conform us to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. A lot of Christians can end up with this idea that we give some money to the church and the rest of it is almost spiritually irrelevant.

Ever get that sense? It's almost like this money stuff doesn't really matter. It doesn't have any impact on me. So I give some to the church and as long as God is happy with that, the rest of it is spiritually insignificant. If we take this passage to heart, it says that money is part of the all things, right? God's going to use money to conform us to the image of Christ. That sounds almost weird, doesn't it? Now, how would he use money? I've just got this stuff, this paper, this bank account, bills coming in. How is that going to conform me to the image of Christ? What's going to happen with money that's going to conform me to the image of Christ?

Okay. Temptation to? Ah, okay. Yes. All right. There is going to be temptation involved. Good. What else is there going to be involved? The lack of it is frequently a real squeeze on people, okay? And it can make someone be just constantly concerned and worried about it. So here's an opportunity to cast all our cares on Him, plus some other things. But the lack of it can be... How about an excess? Is that going to conform you to the image of the Lord? Huh? Have no idea, right? Haven't been there.

What's real interesting is while our society seems to target, oh, I want to be like this rich guy, You look at the statistics, if you look at the charts on income versus divorce, the rate of divorce climbs with annual income. If you want to look at the statistics on suicide, the rate of suicide climbs with annual income.

The instances that come to mind, years ago I talked to this fellow who was an ambulance driver. And I asked him, I said, what are your main categories of ambulance calls? And I was thinking, you know, you know, going to here's somebody with a heart attack and here's auto accidents and that kind of stuff. He says, no. He says after nuts and drunks, he says the third category is suicide attempts of the wives in the wealthy part of town. That's the number three category of ambulance calls.

So what that's telling us, along with the other statistics, is what people tend to aspire to is not the sort of thing that's going to make them happy like they think. And it's amazing, all of our media, television, movies, magazines, everything else, even just the shop talk, seems focused on, boy, I've got to get more of this stuff, as if that's going to solve anything. The statistics show it does not.

But the Lord intends, unlike the dilemma that the world's in, the Lord intends to use money, whether it's the lack of it, the excess, the temptation, the difficulties that it comes, he intends to use it to conform us to the image of the Son. It is not a thing apart. It's as much as everything else, the all things, that the Lord is going to use to conform us to the image of the Son. It's a part of it, but it is a part. It's not a thing apart. It's not separate. It's not on one side. It's not relevant.

Let's take a look at principle number two. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20. You're not your own, for you've been bought with a price. Or the same message in chapter 7. You were bought with a price. Basically the principle here is, you are not your own, you've been bought with a price.

Since we are not our own but are Christ's slaves, then neither is the money we receive into our hands our own but the Lord's. There is a tendency for Christians, especially if we carry on this idea that money is sort of a spiritually neutral thing apart, that it doesn't matter, to sort of lose the value of that. But what this principle brings forth is If I am the Lord's slave, if I've been bought, if I've been purchased, then I don't get the income that I have to just spend on my own. One of the definitions of a slave in biblical times, it is somebody whose will is entirely subject to another.

Therefore, I can't have separate money and separate life. It's the Lord's money. It's His. Okay, let's take a look here. Principle number three. Romans 12, 1 and 2, Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. where 1 Thessalonians 4.3 starts off with, For this is the will of God, your sanctification. Admittedly in that passage I just read, this is the will of God, your sanctification, he applies it to sexual purity. However, the general principle is that this is the will of God, your sanctification, isn't it?

Therefore, what that means, that goes right along with the first principle we laid out, but let's read it this way. The biblical use of money and our approach to it are founded in a biblical understanding of God's will. To understand the godly use of money, we must understand what God's will is and is not. Does that make sense? There is, on the part of some believers, well let me turn it this way. What are some of the perspectives that different Christians have about what God's will is? Can you think of what some of them might be? Anybody? Give everything to the Lord.

Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. What I'm shooting for is actually not even in the realm of money yet. And that's this. There are a number of believers who have the idea that God's will consists of a golden path through a maze. That the primary aspect of God's will has to do with, I've got all these forks in the road in my life. Lots of forks in the road. And if I'm following God's will, then what it means is making the choice that God would have me make at each fork in the road. So a lot of a lot of Christians would then think then for me to be in God's will I got to be walking that golden path Because all the other forks in the road, that's the wrong choice The truth is that scripture zeros in on God's will not as picking the golden path as if some External set of choices is really the primary issue You see that if if we think that God's will is simply external Let's make the right physical choice and trying to find that golden path.

If that's where we think it is, then we're missing out when we come to these money decisions. Because we'll be just looking at it, God wants me to spend it this way instead of that. We'll be looking for a formula, and here's the right percentage. You ever hear Christians talk about that? This is the right percentage to give, right?

That's not what God's talking about. Instead what God is talking about is does the will of God your sanctification? Don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. These are the kinds of issues, it is spiritual issues and heart issues and relationships with the Lord that count first and not does the money get spent here or get spent there.

See the difference there? Does that make sense? Jack? Well, the American Standard has a comma there, and it makes application again to our bodies, as he does it in context. Yes. If I understand what you're saying, you could put a colon there. Is that what you're getting to? Yeah. This is the will of God. You want to find out what it is? Your sanctification. That's the point. That's what the Lord is aiming at with your money.

That's the first point. The mistake that I would not want to make is to come to you and say we're going to learn about God's principles for handling money and then just start going into you do this and you do that and you do this. How's that different from legalism? How's that different from being very external and superficial? That's the point I think we want to get at here.

This money issue is not about just doing all the right stuff. In the same way, when Paul starts off writing to the Ephesians, what does he do? He doesn't just get out of the first verse and say, hey, I'm Paul, stop stealing. I'm Paul, quit lying. I'm Paul, quit getting drunk. He doesn't start off that way, does he? He takes three chapters first to tell them who they are in Christ.

And that's what we want to do as we look at the money principles here. We want to see what's the heart issue? What is the spiritual issue that's at stake here? That's what we want to look at. including answering this question of God's will, it is not to be finding the golden path as if it were simply an external thing.

If I spend my money the right way, then God will be happy. If I give God 10%, then God's happy. See the difference? That's different from saying, how is God wanting to use this in my life? How is He using this to conform me to His will? What does this have to do with my relationship with Him and those that He's put me in relationship with? See that? That's why I don't want to start off here saying, okay, here's your budget pages, and use these percentages, and, oh no, that'd be off on the wrong track, wouldn't it?

We want to first start off as Paul does and say, who we are in Christ. And money is the same kind of an issue. It's no different. Okay. Let's turn to principle number four. That's on page five. And by the way, I'm kind of breezing over this, but, you know, I do encourage you to read through this. Let me bring up another point here.

At any point, ask questions. When we get to the end, I'll ask you again if you've got any questions. The only stupid question is the one you don't ask. So ask them. At any point. Odds are, as we get along farther, you'll have more questions that come up. Feel free at any point to ask questions. Principle number four.

Romans 6.14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

2 Corinthians 3.5-8 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who has also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death on letters engraved on stones came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?

The distinction we want to make here is spelled out in this principle. The law given to Israel through Moses and the manner in which God has dealt with and will deal with Israel is not the same as his manner with dealing with believers of this age. The difference is this.

There are people who are in the business of Christian financial counseling who will come along with a whole bunch of Old Testament laws and say that's the secret. One fellow, as I understand in this area, he claims to be a Christian financial counselor and the first thing he asks people is, are you given 10%? And then the next thing he asks people is, have you caught up with your back tithes? You don't want me to tell you that, huh? Okay, just check it. Yeah, I mean, this is laying down the law, okay? And we're going to be getting into this in more detail.

But the point being, God had a way of dealing with Israel, and there are some things about that that we'll take a look at because there's some insights to gain from it. But we're not under law. Taking something that was spelled out very clearly for Israel is no way to tell Christian believers of now, the church age, this is how to live. It's funny, they'll take something like that, but they won't tell people, hey, you've got to go out and slaughter a lamb once a year. It's funny, they'll pick and choose what they want to have people apply.

And I think this is critical here as we go through this. You will run across material that doesn't make this discernment. I went through the Christian Financial Concepts training for being a financial counselor, and there was a lot of good materials, but frankly this was one area where it fell short. And if you run across that material, Larry Burkett is the name you may have heard of, To run across that material is just to have one caution, that sometimes there's not a discernment in this area.

And some good things, I don't mean to knock it entirely, but just let's make sure that we don't get ourselves under law as if that's the solution. And one reason it's not the solution is because the Lord is not in the process of conforming us to the law, he's in the process of conforming us to Jesus Christ. It's not about what I do independently of God that I come up to God and say, God, are you happy? It's about what He does through me with His life. And that's the difference we want to make here. That's the distinction. Okay, principle five.

Colossians 3 1 through 5 and therefore if you've been raised up with Christ keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God Set your mind on the things above not on the things that are on earth For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God when Christ who is our life is revealed Then you will also be revealed with him in glory therefore consider the members of our earthly body as dead to immorality impurity passion evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry What's the alternatives here, folks?

Life of Christ? Self-life. Either the Lord's going to use money to conform me, or I'm going to go whole hog into greed and everything that goes with it. See the alternatives there? It's not a question of, you know, did I give to the right ministry, and did I give the right percentage, and did I spend my money in the right way? It's what's the life? What life is this based on? Okay? 1 Timothy 2, 3, 2 and 3, rather. An overseer then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.

And the next two passages that I quote come back to that love of money issue, including the one we talked about earlier. It's the love of money that is the root of all sorts of evil, not money itself. And this again comes back to the point. The problem is not with this piece of paper. It's a heart issue, not a paper problem. As a matter of fact, people use the term money problems. How much problems does this money have? It really doesn't have any problems. All the problems are something else related to this thing, isn't it? This is not a problem. It doesn't have problems. We have problems with respect to it. That's the point. Let's take a look at this principle.

The Bible talks about money a great deal, not because it is eternal and spiritual. This isn't going to last, but U.S. Treasury says they last an average of 18 months. These dollar bills, they last an average of 18 months, so not long. Not because it is eternal or spiritual, but because our perspective on money springs directly from our place of spiritual dependence. What are we depending upon? If we're depending upon these things, we've got a problem. We have a money problem. Our place of spiritual dependence is really the issue here when it comes to this stuff.

If we're loving and beholding money and the things it can buy instead of loving and beholding Christ, we'll be basing our earthly life on the flesh, reaping death rather than the life of Christ. Bottom line. There's nothing I can do beholding this stuff. There's nothing I can do that is going to feed the life of Christ in me. Life of Christ is in the believer because the believer is beholding Him, not this stuff. This is not a spiritually neutral issue, as flimsy as this little stuff is. It's not a spiritually neutral issue. It's a big one. But it's not because our focus needs to be on this. Our focus needs to be on the Lord and recognizing that the Lord is going to use this stuff in our lives. Now what I'll do is I'll have you turn back to the very front here. Biblical principles of personal finance.

What I'd like to do is just review what we'll be looking at in the weeks ahead because I think it's good for you to kind of get in your mind a picture of where we're headed. In looking and talking to some folks on Wednesday night, you may feel like, okay, Vern, let's get on with it. Let's get to the stuff. But I think the thing that we want to do here is make sure we lay the groundwork properly first. If I just say, okay, here's the formulas and here's the budget pages and here's the right percentages, we'll be missing the most important stuff. And that's what we just looked at and we'll be looking at early here. What God has in mind, we've looked at it this morning. This is the big picture. The next thing, the big picture, where are we now and why?

We'll be looking at three myths that the world propagates. We're accustomed to thinking of myths as being something having to do with an ancient society or some so-called primitive culture. But this society has myths. And there are three big myths that are sold to Christians. across the board and the world that are propagated to the point of agony.

What's the problem with a myth? Is a myth a bad thing? What's the problem with it? It's not true. If you look at an ancient culture, it's something everybody believes. And they go around telling stories about it, and the whole culture tends to be built around this myth. A myth tends to try to answer questions in a culture. The problem is, when that myth is false, it's horribly disappointing. And we have an entire culture that's sold out on those myths.

We'll take a look at those. The great divide is finances and your heart condition. There are some particular issues in people's attitudes and perspectives on money that I think are real important to sort out early. Real important to sort out early because if we're not careful, we don't catch these things.

They can kind of go along unquestioned. It's sort of like things that our culture believes or that even Christians believe that they believe kind of without even asking, you know, is this true? Is this right? How do I feel about this? So anyway, we'll take a look at that.

The whose money is it question. Dave's question on giving. What does scripture say about giving? If this fellow who is talking about make sure you give your 10% and by the way catch up on your back tithes. If that's not the right way to handle it, how do I handle it? Anyway, good question. We'll take a look at that. The Lord in a question in his last week before the crucifixion, rendered to Caesar that which is Caesar and to God that which is God. Should a Christian pay taxes? What should be their attitude towards it? How should I go about it? We'll take a look at that. Living within our means, the Great Balancing Act.

This is something I just want to spell out, during the 1980s, during the middle 1980s, Nancy and I had first gotten a spot where we had absolutely no debt. We had a nice water cache, no debt at all. And we lived down the Silicon Valley. Down the Silicon Valley, life moves very quickly. Houses are expensive and everyone must drive a BMW, okay? At least. Well, so we came away from there and moved to Carson City, Nevada after a few years down in the California Silicon Valley.

And we had accumulated a substantial mortgage, most of the value of the house, and about $20,000 in credit card debt. So we finally came to a point, you know, we'd better deal with this. And so we sat down and we figured out we had $20,000 in debt. In 18 months we got that all paid off. And then we were able to rapidly make some progress.

So one of the things we'll go over is how do I get things back in line here? And by the way, in getting that credit card debt paid off, you might have thought, boy, these people must have lived on crumbs and pennies, right? We went on the first vacation we've been on in a long time during that period of time. So at any rate, there are some neat things to come through it, and I guess Nancy isn't here at the moment, but you can ask her what she thought of that period of time. Anyway, God's view of debt. This is another question that was brought up. I think Amy brought up, I kind of put the slogan, maybe you've seen it on a bumper sticker, I owe, I owe, so off to work I go. What does God's word say about that?

What's the perspective? We'll be dealing somewhat with that next week, but this particular week we'll focus on that. Because I think it's not enough to just say, oh, this is bad or that's good. There needs to be some kind of principles and guidelines that are practical and helpful. So we'll look at that. I have down here the ANT principle, saving for what and how. This addresses the question that Josiah brought up, planning. Is that a bad thing? A good thing? How do I do it? What's biblical? What isn't? So we'll take a look at that. How do I save? How does that go about? What brand of mattress is best to stuff your money under? That kind of thing. Anyways.

Using money wisely. Spending less and having more. Of course, this is a matter of, we joked about earlier, I asked how many people had a problem with excess of money and nobody jumped up. So I assume that trying to squeeze more out of what you've got is of some interest.

So we'll take a look at that then. And then finally, the things that really count. We want to kind of bring it down to the bottom line and sew all the loose ends together at that point. And that'll take us into mid-December. Now, we've just started. We've got a lot more to cover. And I'm sure there'll be a lot more things that'll stir up questions. But right now, do you have any? Any questions come up? Questions about what we're going to cover? Totally blown your mind?

Okay. Alright. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that we can turn to you and we can We can look to you in this matter. It's something that is easily lost upon us or we can easily get lost among all the dollars and cents. But this touches on issues that really do matter. And we just look to you to continue to teach us and bring to heart those things that you want us to learn. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.