The Big Picture: Where Are We Now & Why?
Vern Peterman · Oct 20, 2002
Personal Finance, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262248561842

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So here's Paul directing people who are involved with directing churches. So 1 Timothy 1, 3-4. As I urge you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation, rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. Or, 2 Timothy 3, 3 and 4, For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.

Or, here's Titus 1, 12-14, One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. How'd you like that description? Okay, especially after eating. This testimony is true. For this reason, reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth."

Now what we find is every culture has its myths. Every culture. And we might be tempted to think that myths are something, we'll relegate that to some ancient culture or some existing culture that we might call or describe as primitive. Every culture has its myths, but if we look at it here, and this is the word that's used there by Paul in each of these passages is mythos.

It has the definition here, compliments of Zodiates, commonly rendered as a tale or fable or that which is fabricated by the mind in contrast to reality. It is the word from which mythology is derived, mostly used in the New Testament denoting a fable full of falsehoods and pretenses.

So why would I bring this up with respect to money? And that's because of the fact that a myth is something that seems human beings just have to create. It's a falsehood that, lacking the truth of scripture, men seem compelled to generate. And we might look back on it and say that's somebody else, but our own culture generates myths. And what are these myths? They're falsehoods, pretenses. They're just simply not true. Now, let's look at some of these modern myths in the financial realm. Here's number one. Turn to page eight there, your second page in the section.

The myth is stated this way, sufficient money or the things it buys will make me adequate, love, fulfilled, at peace, satisfied, etc. Okay, ever heard that? Okay. Do you recognize this myth in our culture? You got it? According to a 1997 survey, 51% of the Christians, now this is a startling statistic, 51% of the Christians and 54% of non-Christians believe that no matter how they feel about money, it is still the main symbol of success in life. How about that? Yes, it's an American myth, yes.

The same survey showed that 19% of Christians and 20% of non-Christians, how's that for a big difference, believe that you can usually tell how successful a person is by examining what they own. So compare this modern myth with some insights from Scripture, 2 Corinthians 3, 5, and 6.

Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything that's 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." Where's our adequacy? Our adequacy is from the Lord. Our adequacy is from God. He made us adequate. It's His doing, not the bucks or the things that bucks supposedly provide.

How about Galatians 5.22? What do you see there in bold in those words? Is that what people hope to get out of money? A lot of people do. They want love, joy and peace out of that money.

1 John 3 talks about how great a love the Father has bestowed on us. The Lord loved us so much. He gave us this great love. See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us that we would be called children of God, and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is."

You see, just the message of Scripture is contrary to that myth. So it's really a question of which one are you going to listen to, right? So let's boil it down to the principle here. Neither money nor things can provide the things the world says it will. It simply can't deliver. It can't deliver. And money and the things it buys are fleeting and temporal. Only belief in and fellowship with the Lord, beholding Him, can provide what modern mythology falsely offers to fulfill through money and possessions.

Does it make sense? Make sense? This myth, myth number one here, that gets delivered full force from our culture, doesn't it? It really gets delivered. Myth number two. If I made or had more money than I do now, that would be enough. Why is that a myth? Can anybody tell me why is that a myth?

What's that? It's never enough. Okay. Why isn't it enough? Ah, and why is it you always want more? Okay. And? Greedy. Because why? Yes, that's the key. If you think about it, myth number one says, if I have this stuff, then that's going to deliver. Right? So what is myth number two, which is based on myth number one? Myth number two says if I had more than that to get there, it's not going to.

Suppose you are desperately thirsty. Desperately thirsty. And someone comes up to you and says, hey, I have two tons of potato chips. And it doesn't matter how many potato chips I offer you, it's not going to take care of the thirst. And that's obviously an analogy, but that's the picture here. Myth number one offers you something it can't deliver on, so what happens is we say, the problem must be that I need more of it. But more is never enough.

Nancy and I have done financial counseling, and we typically do it together for the last roughly 13 years. We've actually sat down with couples, and I never share in the context of anybody who would know. This is somebody in Nevada you've never met and will likely never meet, so feel free to share this. This couple made about $200,000 a year. They could not figure out how to make ends meet on $200,000 a year. Yeah, in Nevada where there's no state income tax.

They could not figure out how to do this. So, the key there, the snag is more would be enough, but enough for what? There's a disconnect, because enough never supplies what's needed. Because less never did either. And twice as much wouldn't either. It's like, you know, you're desperately thirsty, I offer you a ton of potato chips, and you say no. And I say, okay, two tons. It still doesn't get there.

Philippians 4, 11-13, I'm on page 9 now. Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means. So here's the not having anything. Remember we talked last week about some Christians say the answer is, well, don't have anything. But Paul says no. And I also know how to live in prosperity. There's the other ones who say if you're a Christian you're prosperous, right? In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

The problem with myth number two, which is based on myth number one, is it cannot deliver, because ultimately money is trying, according to these myths, to provide and fulfill for something that can never provide for and fulfill. and that's relationship with the Lord. Okay. Principle. Just as no amount of water will ever satisfy hunger, no amount of money or possessions can ever satisfy what only relationship and fellowship with the Lord can fulfill.

So our society believes these myths intensely. And what's interesting is You would think that after some decades somebody would figure it out and say, no, that's not it. But guess what? You'll see people 40, 50, 60 years old and they're still believing these myths. If you ask them if they believe in Santa Claus at that age, they'd tell you, oh, no, but they believe these myths, believe me. Okay, myth number three.

You deserve a break today, and a bigger house, and a fancier car, and new furniture, and seven different exercise machines to put in front of your big screen TV. How many of you have heard that one, right? You keep getting this, you deserve, you deserve, you deserve message. Our society just pummels us with that. What's a closely related one? I'm worth it. You ever hear that one? I'm worth it. And I noticed that one seems to be big on cosmetics. I'm not sure how that fits, but anyway. All right. So Romans 6, 20 and 23 has the answer.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free and with regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things for which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit resulting in sanctification and the outcome eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. What did we deserve? We deserved death.

Isn't it interesting how conflicting and contrasting the world's message is? The world says, oh, you deserve this and you deserve that. Well, the obvious question, it seems that people are afraid to ask them, if they can advertise you deserve it, then you ought to be able to walk up to the counter and say, okay, give it to me. But the advertising is intended, you deserve it, therefore you pay for it. What? What kind of sense does that make? The advertising at the face of it is a lie.

Ephesians 2, 1-3 delivers a similar message. It tells us in the end of verse 3, we were by nature children of wrath. If we get what we deserve, we'd be in trouble. We appeal to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, not on the basis of what we deserve. The Lord is giving us the truth. The myth of the world is trying to sell us something and tell us that the answer is not grace, but that the answer is stuff.

You've got to have stuff. If you don't have stuff, you're not going to be happy. But you deserve the stuff. And I deserve your money, right? So that's the world's answer. Principle, real eternal and priceless value lies beyond what this world can ever offer or what we can ever earn. While scripture never denies that believers can enjoy material things, the scripture doesn't say, oh, you can't like that stuff. The basis of our receiving provisions for meeting needs and fulfilling desires beyond our needs is God's grace, not what we deserve. The world keeps perpetuating these myths, and in fact, the world believes these myths.

If you come to somebody and you say, well, do you believe that story about Icarus and he put the feathers on him and had the wax and he flew up close to him? Do you believe that story? No, I don't believe that stuff. Do you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?

Nah, but they believe the myths. The world believes the myths big time. Isn't that interesting? In this modern, high-technology world, the myths sell really good. Let's turn to page 10 there. This modern mythology is so entrenched in our culture that people actually believe it. Unfortunately, a great many Christians have also been sold out on it.

What happens is The income level of people is limited, even though really, compared to time and compared to geography, we live well. We live well. The average person here in this room lives better than the kings of centuries back. We live well. And yet what happens, our income is limited.

We keep getting these myths forced upon us. And so some people are able to make a lot of money. But a great number of folks are not able to make the money, and so you see this kind of teeter-totter, this seesaw on the diagram? What people do if they can't get the money is they opt for the possessions. And what does that mean? They accumulate lots of debt in order to have the possessions, because why?

Our culture tells us if I've got the stuff, that's what everybody's going to measure me by, and they're not looking at the debt. So stuff is going to fulfill it. I'll have money, but if I don't have money, I'll have possessions. At least I'll have the stuff. So that's the message that our culture passes along. It says, you've got to have this stuff, and if you don't have this stuff, you're not going to be satisfied.

And you're going to be terribly dissatisfied, as a matter of fact. When I went through business school, one of the courses that they had us take was advertising. And one of the instructors just came right out and laid it out in front of me. He says, advertising is designed to make you dissatisfied. It's designed to make you discontented.

Why? Why would they do that? Make you buy. If you're satisfied, you're not going to buy, right? So if they make you dissatisfied, you're going to put out whatever you feel is necessary in order to feel satisfied. So the advertising is designed to make you dissatisfied.

That's right. As long as your mouth is going on our brand of gum, right? Yeah. Okay. So what's happened? Most of America, most of America has been sold out on this. Well, the answer must be to get more stuff no matter what it takes. We've got to have the stuff. Visa ads and that sort of thing, have you noticed what they'll do is they'll say, You know, this costs this much, this costs this much, but this is priceless. The message there is, whatever it costs, whatever it takes, you've got to do this, because that's priceless, and so I just put it on the card. If it's priceless, why don't they give it to you for free? But they don't do that, right?

So what happens, if you notice the graphs there in the middle of the page, The U.S. savings rate, because we've been selling meth, right? So what happens? Americans have to go and spend more, and spend more, and spend more. And the truth is, I've been getting these messages bombarding me, telling me I'm dissatisfied. So I have to, have to, have to spend the money to get the stuff, or I won't be satisfied.

And so what's happening? The U.S. savings rate is like a jagged ski slope. It's going downhill. It so happens that this chart cuts off and it started to come back up now that the stock market has started to plummet, and we'll get to that in a minute.

But what's the other thing? They haven't just quit saving. Americans, on the whole, look at the next graph over, household debt as a percent of disposable income. Look at what's happened. Not only has the savings rate gone down, But accumulation of debt, massive, massive accumulation of debt.

Now why is it? It's because of the myth. It's because the message that Americans have been given is, you've got to have this stuff. You've got to have this stuff. If you don't have it, you'll be short. You'll be dissatisfied. You'll be unfulfilled. You just have to have it, whatever it costs. Whatever the price.

So what's happened is we have as an economy, as a people, having bought into this myth, we've accumulated in the United States, and this statistic, by the way, is a little dated. It's actually gotten a little bit more than that, but I wasn't able to get an update on it. Earlier this year, the figure was $30 trillion of debt is the total debt in the United States. That's government, commercial, and private debt combined. So it's huge. It's grown 50% in the last five years. That is huge, massive.

If you look at that percent of household income committed to debt, we're at a stall-out point. Jack knows what I'm talking about. We're at a stall-out point because you can only take on so much of that stuff. Let me give you an analogy. If I come to you and I say, We're going to give you a wonderful, wonderful multiple course steak dinner. We'll even throw a lobster on top of it. We'll give it to you for half off.

You go to the restaurant and you say, well, that was a really good dinner. They come to you and you say, that dinner was really good, wasn't it? Did you like it? Oh man, that was great. Right now, I'll give you another dinner for ten cents. Are you going to take them up on it? You get to a point where you just say, oh, I enjoyed the first one, but I just, I can't handle it anymore. And then you say, well, some people will take them up on that. So they come with the next one. They say, the next one's a penny. How many people can take them up on it? After a while, you get to a point where you just, you're gagging on that stuff. As good as it is. What? Yeah. I might ask for several at that price, right? Yeah. The point being, though, that we get to a place where we just can't handle anymore, and that's the place we're at.

When you look at the savings rate, you look at the debt accumulation, that's where we're at. Growing at a rate of 50 percent every five years, if we were to go at the current rate, that's not sustainable. You just can't keep up with that. Here's another example of how this debt has impacted us. In varying degrees, you may be well aware, the stock market is, in the last almost three years, just kind of headed downwards. Here's the way the stock market looked about 30 years ago.

They had about $3 billion in what were called margin accounts. This is where you borrow from the broker in order to buy stocks and other investments. $3 billion 30 years ago. At the peak of the stock market, that figure ballooned to $250 billion borrowed from brokers to buy stocks. So what happened is everybody went chasing this thing, and, boy, I've got to get it, I've got to get more of these things, and they borrowed to the extent of some 80 times what it was 30 years ago. 80 times the debt levels of borrowed money for the stock.

That number since then has been cut in half. It's still huge, but that's a part of the overload. People get to a point where they just can't handle it anymore. Especially as the stock market has headed down, there's been a huge decrease in the appetite for borrowing in order to buy stocks. to the charts that Nancy handed out, and there's a page called Famous Market Manias.

While you're turning to that, let's ask a question. When people attempt to make money in a market, and especially if they see themselves... Has everybody got that? Now, one of the things that you see is that it is a human nature, and this is inclined to be that way from the sinful nature, for people to get all outside of rationality in trying to make money. And there's a name for that, scripture implies, and that's called greed, right? The story goes like this.

You have on the upper left-hand corner Gouda tulip bulbs. And you might be thinking, Vern, what are you telling us about tulip bulbs for? We're supposed to be learning about personal finance. I know, you're saving up for tulip bulbs because you aspire to having a great many of them, right?

No. My point in bringing it up is this. The story starts like this. The price of tulip bulbs started to rise a little bit, and some Dutchman notice, sharp folks, you know, they started to notice this. This is back in the first half of the 1600s, right?

They start noticing this, and then they say, no, the price is going up, maybe let's buy some more and see if we can make some more money. So instead of just buying tulip bulbs to grow flowers, they were buying tulip bulbs as an investment. Then some of them started noticing, you know, it's going up some more. And I tell you what, we've just got to get as many of these as we can. So they mortgaged their farms, they mortgaged their businesses, they mortgaged their houses, they went deep in debt in order to get more of these tulip bulbs. And guess what happened? that drove the price up, way up. You see how many times it went up? Tens of times the original price, way up there. Finally it got to a stall-out point, and notice what happened to the price after that. Boom. People lost their farms, they lost their businesses, they lost their houses, because of tulip bulbs. Now, you might say that sounds like a quaint old story and a bunch of foolish Dutchman, right?

But the situation is, and you'll see in some of these other charts, as you look you see a pattern of human behavior that says, go for this rapidly rising price and whatever it takes, go for it. Whatever it takes, do it. Buy it. And people going into debt, just like we see in our own stock market, people going into massive debt in order to buy up more and more of this stuff until it reaches to a point that's unsustainable. To like a stallout point in flying where you just can't get there anymore. And then all of a sudden the whole thing comes down.

It's a pattern that you'll see in these pages. You see on the first page and on the second page several different circumstances where it rises again and again. The nickname for this in the financial world is the shark fin. All right, now turn to page three.

What someone has done here is to draw a chart at the first part of the 1700s. This has the title Economic Results of Major Mood Trends. The first part of the graph there is actually an equivalent market based on the British market, and then around 1784 you see the establishment of the American stock market. And so what this chart is, is just a chart of the American stock market, and one of the things you'll notice on the numbers on the left, it's compressed.

It's what's called a logarithmic scale. I won't fiddle with that. If that doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry about it. The point being This chart actually goes up a whole lot higher than what would show here if it were not compressed the way it is. We just wouldn't have enough paper. But one of the things that you see is this pattern of extremes.

It seems to be, if you look at the long term, built into the American way of doing things. drive it all up, gain high prices and everybody buying into things and a period of apparent prosperity and then a period of panic. And then we recover from it and we go into this period of prosperity and then a period of panic. And then this thing goes up and then you have this height of prosperity and a period of panic. And so now we've had close to three years in the American stock market where the thing has peaked out.

And only the Lord knows what's going to happen next. Only the Lord knows what's going to happen next. But my point in bringing this to you is this myth is long-standing. This myth is long-standing. One of the tendencies in American culture is to look at things short-term. But the reality is Scripture doesn't do it that way, does it? Scripture looks at things long-term. And what really impacts the economy is not all this highfalutin technology we have. I'm thankful to be able to push the button and make the overheads flip and all that.

But the truth is that doesn't change human nature, does it? Whether it's Dutchmen looking for tulip bulbs, whether it's people looking for an investment opportunity in the South Seas, or whether it's the Japanese thinking their market's going to go up forever, or whether it's the Americans thinking their market's going to go up forever. The tendency is forever to be dominated by greed until we get to a point where panic takes over. We're in no different circumstances than people have been in generations past because human nature apart from the Lord is unchanged.

Now, I don't bring this up to you to cause you to go into panic. Absolutely not. The reason I bring it up is because we've been through a period of prosperity and usually nobody questions that. All the nonsense that's going on here, everything from Enron to WorldCom to Martha Stewart and all the other nonsense that's going on, the M-Clone, all that stuff that's going on was going on before. But nobody thought it worth bothering until the whole markets started going into a panic. It's the mentality to gravitate towards the material things as being our stability and our adequacy and the place for love and peace. It's the myths that we talked about first that feed these frenzies of prosperity and greed and panic.

The Lord's call to believers is to be level-headed, to look at things long-term. To look at things long term, doesn't mean we're ignorant about the short term, but to look at things in the long term, to remember what human nature is and remember what God has done, and remember that He is the provider and He is sufficient. And that's what the world knows nothing about. Let's turn back here to our earlier pages.

One of the things that is causing a huge problem today, and we're seeing it in our business headlines and other headlines, is not only is there a tendency to believe in these myths that have been propagated, but there is also an abandonment of absolute truth. My brother read me, and I asked him to try to find it, and he said, boy, I can't. But he read it for me when we were over there working on my folks' roof.

It was a course description from a modern business university on business ethics. The course description dismissed outright. It says, we're not talking about honesty here. Hello? He says, we figure you've already figured out about that, but we're just going to present to you some issues and talk about how people go around sorting these things out. They dismissed honesty in this course description.

All right, now, let's look at this chart on page 11. Have you seen the statistic here? Let's look at this first one. This is a survey of the percentage of Americans who believe that moral truth is absolute. Done January 2000, this is the stock market peak, the percentage of all Americans was 38%. The figure by fall, just about a year ago, fall of 2001, was 22%. Massive, massive change. Isn't that just phenomenal? The massive drop in the belief in absolute truth. Does it make you wonder why we have these scandals going on? If you look at it, there is no sense in absolute truth, so it is only a question of what can I get away with? What can I get away with? What can I pull off?

It also goes into modern legal theory. Look at this summary of modern legal theory in the middle of the page. I'll read it for you. Society is never governed by law because people have to interpret laws and enforce them. Since people can interpret laws any way they want, people, not laws, are the real rulers. Law is no more stable than its latest interpretation or application. That is modern legal theory as taught in the law schools. How about that for absolute moral truth? That's just washout. Now, ultimately the problem lies in people not having a biblical basis to believe in absolute truth to begin with.

John 14.6, Jesus lays it out. Jesus said to them, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me. and John 17.17, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. It's unequivocal.

As we look at these statistics and look at what's going on in our culture, I bring this up not so believers will get all worried and concerned, but the reality is we need to recognize that the world is headed one direction and we're headed another. If we don't get that, we're going to be wasting our time dealing with the rest of some of these other issues on dealing with budgeting and all those things. The world is going to be headed in a different direction. It's going to give you advice that heads in a different direction. It's because it's based on a set of mythologies, whereas believers are called to believe in the spiritual facts. That's the day and night difference.

The principle here is the world, the flesh, and Satan offer no basis for truth. Only the Lord himself is the absolute truth and has revealed truth for us in his word. The truth in scripture is knowable. Okay, you say, Vern, that's great, all this stuff is fine, what does it mean? Here's some kind of practical terms here.

Though we will address the subject of borrowing in more detail later, the first step in approaching borrowing biblically is to reject the worldly myths about what money can do in one's life. Believers will be wise to discern what messages are based on worldly myths and what is based on the truth. Believers are called upon to believe the spiritual facts, the truths based upon scripture. The next point there, because the world bases its hope on earthly things and believes in and participates in the myths, the world will tend towards wild extremes in the realm of finances, standard of living, debt, prices, etc. The world will inevitably swing from one falsehood to another. Believers would be wise to take a more level-headed and long-term approach.

If you look up into concordance, you will find self-control and sober to be two words that stand out in the New Testament epistles. Self-control and sober. Self-control shows up where? Can you give me some examples? In Galatians, and what's the subject? The fruit of the Spirit, okay? It's self-control.

The verse I referenced there, 1 Peter 1.13, is basically, set your minds for action.

Be sober-minded, it tells them. Believers need to be level-headed while the world is going in wild alternation between euphoria and panic. That's what the world is looking at. We're instead to be level-headed and keep looking at what counts, and not be swung by the world's extremes that they've gone to based on their myths. Here's another one.

Technology changes with time, but neither unredeemed human nature nor the truth will ever change. Be cautious about financial advice, recommendations, and information, and I put that in quotes, that is not biblically founded or is not founded in objective and unbiased fact. Be cautious as well about viewpoints and information that are founded in commercial conflict of interest, herd mentality, that is, everybody's doing it, short-term perspectives, and that's important. or abandonment of absolute truth. Let me answer a question in our Wednesday night class. This question came up. Commercial conflict of interest. What are you talking about? Let me give you a for instance.

Have you heard of Standard & Poor's and Moody's? They do ratings on banks and bonds and things like that. There's a lot of good folks working there and I'm not knocking it per se, but the truth is the companies that they're rating pay them for the rating. If I come and I say, okay, here's your rating, you're about ready to go under, here's your bill for $500,000, what are they going to say? You can take your bill and stuff it, right? The reality is they have a conflict of interest in providing a rating, and then you get this rating and that's a problem. Let's take a look at some of the examples.

Stocks always go up, so keep your money in stocks. This view is often propagated by those who have a vested interest in you continuing to buy the stocks. And while the general path of the stock market index has been up, you notice that chart. If you kind of draw a line through it, it's up, isn't it? That's the general path. The problem is, while that's the general path, there are periods of time of significant and it takes a while to break even.

Turn back to this last page in the appendix. Keep hold of where you're at. Turn back to this last page in this chart here, Economic Results of Major Mood Trends. One peak that you see there is about 1929, there was a stock market peak. You see that? Now, draw a straight line horizontally across there and give me a rough estimate. How long did it take before those stock levels came back up to zero? What's that? Yeah, the bottom line is some decades went by. All right? And if you were to look at that and say, okay, some period of time before I actually get back to break even, If you're about to retire in 1929, what does that do to you?

What about even now? We've had almost three years of stock declines. The reality is, yes, the market goes up, but... The market has periods of time when it goes up, and it has periods of time when it goes down. Someone put it this way. The stock market is mostly a bull. It's sometimes a bear. but it's rarely a cow. You can't just sit there and leave it and milk it. It's not designed for that.

Here's one of the changes that have taken place in our mentality as Americans. In the mid-1960s, 10% of the adult population owned stocks. By about 10 years ago, that figure had grown to 20%. Now the figure is over 50%. A massive increase in the ownership of stocks.

And of course that's one of the things that helps drive the price up. But then that reaches a point of kind of maximum impact and then it turns the other way. There are these pendulum swings that tend to govern things. And so what has that done since the stock market has moved downwards in almost the last three years?

It's maximized the pains. Because more people are impacted than ever before. not understanding that it is mostly a bull, sometimes a bear, and rarely a cow. That little thing will kill you. Important to keep in mind, these generalizations by somebody who's got something to sell are not going to help you.

We need to look at things realistically, and again, long term. Throwing a statistic at you, in the last 70 years, wait a minute, what happened? Why'd you cut it off at 70? You know? Because we're seeing something that hasn't happened in that long. Right now. We're there. Okay, next one. And by the way, these things that I've quoted, I have heard these quotes from people in the last year.

Since you are going to declare bankruptcy anyway, go out right now and charge anything you might want before I file. That's from a lawyer who was advising some people who were declaring bankruptcy. Guess what? That's fundamentally dishonest. I am going to buy this from you, but by the way, I'm not going to pay you. I am going to steal it from you legally. There are things that are legal that are not moral. This is one of them. And we'll deal with the whole bankruptcy issue later in more detail. I don't want to leave that aside. But just an example of where worldly advice will feed into it. Here's another one.

Go ahead and borrow all you can against your house. Your house will hold its value and you can deduct the interest. There's two things wrong with that. One is, are you guaranteed your house will hold its value? No. There have been eight times in American history when there's been a general nationwide decline in real estate values. There have been regional times otherwise. And again, I want to talk more about this debt issue later. I am not against taking out a mortgage. But the point being, that's not a good assumption. The second thing, you can always deduct the interest. But deducting interest is no bargain.

Let me give you a for instance. I'm going to come to Amy and I'm going to say, Amy, I tell you what, you give me $1000 and I'll give you $280 back. How's that for a deal? Sound like a bargain? Essentially a tax deduction should be used, it should be considered in your financial calculations. It should not make you override good sense. Question? Okay. Where it should be considered is, does this indicate something in what I can afford when I look at my budget? But it doesn't make me say all of a sudden, oh, I should just do that because I get a tax deduction. It's not that kind of a bargain, okay? Now, when I mention this all, I want to come back to the long-term point.

The world has got myths to sell us, and Christians, a great many of them by the statistics that I've read, a great many Christians have swallowed these. By the way, I showed you the statistics here on how many believe in absolute truth. The numbers for Christians are not much higher. Last statistic I heard, Christians, and this includes Christians of all categories, but Christians, something about 36% of them believe in absolute truth. of teenagers going to today's church youth groups, 9% believe in absolute truth. So this absolute truth issue is not a small one.

Believers need to recognize that they're taking a path different from the world, and to consider that at the outset. And to keep a long-term view based on a biblical understanding of human nature. Realizing that the world out there is going to cast you all kinds of advice depending on what the mass emotion is at the time. We're going to see things thrash all over in the economy from one extreme to the next. We're to keep a level-headed, even keel approach.

Not panic. but neither to get caught up in the world's euphoria, because they're getting euphoric because of their belief in the myth. Our attraction, our draw, is to be Christ himself. And he is faithful, and he is absolute truth, and he is steady, and he is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That we can count upon. and not the world's myths.

Let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks just that you are indeed one on whom we can depend. Though this world will go to one extreme and then the other, you do not change, and you are indeed absolute truth. We look to you to guide and lead us in this day and in the days ahead. We give you thanks.