Money & Finance - Proverbs 27:23-27 - The Wise Family

There are certainly more important things in life than money, but that is not to say that money isn't important. Money is one of the most important things in life. It's not the most important things, and the important thing in the book of Proverbs tells us very clearly that there are other things that are more important. For example, a good reputation is better than money. All right, for example, wisdom is better than rubies.

The Bible talks about this when it comes to a family situation. This is not our passage for today, but I just want to make the point. Money is important. It's not the most important thing. There are things that are more important. Proverbs 15, 17 says this, it's better to have dinner of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf where there is strife in the house. Now, if I ever needed God to convince me of one verse in my life, that's it, okay?

I'm like, Lord, help my unbelief, okay? I am a carnivore. Some of you guys, okay, remember when the COVID shutdown happened, half of y'all bought ping pong tables and stuff? I went and bought two cows. I was like, man, I've got to raise these guys myself. People ask me, did we name them? We did name them. One of them was named Berg.

His name stands for hamburger, okay? And two weeks ago, he took that ride to freezer camp, as we told our kids, all right? So, you know, people have asked me, you know, so he's going off, you know, to the butcher. People have asked me, you know, are your kids like, man, are they like okay with this? Do they talk about this? I'm like, no, they never talk about it.

They're saving all those conversations for their therapists later in life, right? So, you know, this whole idea of like me looking at this passage and I'm kind of like, you know, I don't know, I'm sort of a carnivore. I really like the idea of a fattened calf instead of a dinner of vegetables my whole life. And yet the Bible says, what is it saying about vegetables and a fattened calf?

The whole point it's making is vegetables cost less money. It's better to have little money in a house where there's love than to have a bunch of money in a house where there is strife. I want to overly say this because the rest of the sermon is going to be about money. Not even just about giving, but about growing the wealth that we have.

And so I want to make sure I say, it is not the most important thing about life, and it's not the most important thing in life, but it is certainly one of the most important things. It is massively important that we understand wisdom when it comes to finance and handling things the way God has called us to do. So, if you have a copy of scripture, turn with me to Proverbs chapter 27, and this is where we're going to spend our time today.

If you have a copy of scripture in Proverbs 27, if you're taking notes today, let me go ahead and give you the big idea. Wise families know what to do with money and wise families do it. That's what wisdom is. Wisdom is not knowing what to do. Wisdom is knowing what to do and then deciding that you're going to do it. And this is something that our families in 2022 need very much because, and I'm not going to raise hands or anything like that, and I don't mean to be overly pointed right here at the beginning, but I would imagine across our campuses, right here at Regional, you know, if I just started to ask the question, I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable, if I just started asking the question, hey, how much strife in the home is related to finance?

What if I ask this question? What is your plan for planting seeds in the month of July 2022 that will grow into prosperity years and years and years from now? Do you have a plan for that?

Man, what does it look like to strategize and game plan around the budget? And debt and those types of things in the home? Are you feeling squeezed?

Are you feeling crushed? Or do you feel free when I begin to start talking about finances and money? And what we all assume is, well, I don't make enough to feel freedom in that. Well, maybe we're going to see a little bit different on that today. Maybe it's not about how much we make, it's about how we handle what God has given us.

And we'll be able to see some of that today. Are we keeping so much of our money and so much of our treasure that it really shows that all of our treasure and all of our heart is wrapped up in this world? I could ask another hundred pointed questions, or I could just say this, are we handling money wisely? You know, that kind of will get at all of it. And the passage I want to go to today comes right out of Proverbs 27, and we're going to dive into it. Now, most of my sermon, I'm going to spend half the sermon just telling you what this is, okay? And then the second half of the sermon, I'm going to have to kind of do a little bit because, man, when you think about the book of Proverbs, there's 100 things about money. I mean, we could go on and on about different things about money from the book of Proverbs.

I'm going to try to go one application angle in this passage. I hope you jump onto the Proverbs challenge starting this weekend. All right, we're going to read a chapter a day as a church, and I hope you'll sign on to that and jump into that. You're going to see the book of Proverbs talks about money a lot, all right? But for today, I'm going to try to explain this the best I can. And then we're going to get into this idea of living with margin, what to do with margin, and how our generosity really kind of shows maybe what we think about whose world it is and our finance and all that.

All right? Let's dive in, Proverbs chapter 27, here's what it says. Finally, a passage where I am not needing to do a lot of explanation, okay? All right, so finally, we get one that's just right off the bat super straightforward, right?

All right, let's dive in. I know that many of us are probably not living in an agrarian type of, I don't know, maybe you're a farmer, maybe you're not a farmer. I don't know, I know some people at Mercy Hill do have goats, so maybe you understand this a little bit differently or whatever. But generally, I think when we read this, the main thrust of it is something like this. If you pay attention to your resources, they will grow and they will provide for you. This passage, I think, is trying to get us to see that there is something that God has set up in the economy of his kingdom, that when we understand the way that he has set up the financial system and the way that money works, that if we pay attention to it and we lean into it and we trust what he says about it, then we have the opportunity to see our resources grow and what we handle grow and create even an opportunity to build a life that honors him, maybe in a greater way because we're leveraging the things that we have. Now, that might be a little different maybe than teaching you've heard about money. I'm not sure.

I know this. I know sometimes in churches, anything about money gets shamed really fast. It gets demonized really, really fast. And that's because money can easily mimic and can easily become an idol in our life. And so the easy, the quick, I would say immature thing to do is to look at the danger of something and then just off the bat call it bad. So this has happened in churches.

This has happened, I mean, with other things too. Think about authority. Think about art. Think about sex.

Think about money. This is what happens in churches. People look at it and they say, man, I am tempted to idolize. So the answer to that is I need to demonize. We will demonize what we're tempted to idolize. But that is something that is pretty immature.

What we ought to do instead is say, no, no, no, I understand the danger of it. Some of the greatest gifts that God ever gave, some of the things that I mentioned, sex, authority, money. Great gifts from the hand of God. They certainly can become major idols in our life and we can begin to trust them over and against God. But that is not a reason to then say that they're not good. That is something that's immature. What we need is wisdom and maturity that holds the line and holds the tension and figures out the way forward instead of one side or the other. Demonize or worship it as if it is God and fall into idolatry.

Maybe you could say it like this. It's not God. Money is good. And I don't just mean forgiving.

Money is something that is a good gift. If we use it in a good way, it certainly can be a destructive force for evil. And it's something that we have to watch out for. The New Testament is very clear about that, that our heart can pine after riches. We can serve mammon. We can serve money. So it's very dangerous. But just because something's dangerous doesn't mean that it's not good. And so that's what we've got to try to hold the line with today.

Know well the conditions. Now I want to get into this idea of the economy of God's kingdom by saying this. This passage is not mentioning sow a seed of faith so that one day there's a massive windfall and God's rewarding you because you, you know, went out on faith and you did so. That's not what this is getting at. What this passage is getting at is saying, hey, no, no, no. When we focus on wisdom, on the way that God has called us to handle something, we can have a reasonable expectation of flourishing in that area.

And that's what this is getting at. I don't know if you lead anything. Maybe you're not even a believer. Okay. Maybe you're like, man, I'm here.

I've been coming a couple of weeks. Maybe you lead something. Maybe you lead a business. Maybe you lead a team at work or whatever.

This is leadership 101. It's coming straight from the scripture. I think what the Bible is saying is what we measure tends to grow.

Right? Don't you know that from business? What we measure tends to grow.

That's true of a home as well. When we are thinking about our physical health, our physical health has an opportunity to flourish. When we're thinking about our spiritual health, our spiritual health has an opportunity to flourish. Next in line, when we're thinking about our financial health, our financial health has an opportunity to flourish. Health is born always.

This is important. Health is born always from intentionality. I stumbled into health physically. No, you didn't. No one ever did that. Ever. All right? I stumbled into spiritual health.

Didn't happen. Right? If you have grown in your faith in the last five or 10 years, it is because you were providing building blocks through going to the Word, through going to times of prayer, and the Spirit has supercharged that. Like there is an intentionality to it. The exact same thing is true in our financial picture as well. What it's saying is this. Look what it said.

Give attention to your hurts. For riches don't last forever. Don't you understand? Proverbs 23 5 tells us that money can grow wings like a bird and be gone in a snap. And many people in this room that I'm looking at, certainly on our campuses, I can see people, especially if you live a little while, you're like, man, I know that. I know that's true. Right?

If you do not keep your hands on the wheel, and sometimes even when you do have your hands on the wheel, it can grow wings and fly away. And if that's true, then what the Bible is saying out of wisdom is, wisdom is to pay attention. Wisdom is to have your mind.

Think about these words when it comes to financial health. Wisdom, mindfulness, okay? Thoughtfulness.

It shouldn't be months and months and months, and I don't even know what the picture is. That's the opposite of thoughtfulness and mindfulness. What it's saying is pay attention, and when we pay attention to it, we have a reasonable expectation. Proverbs are not promises. I mentioned that last week. Okay?

Proverbs are not promises, but we have a reasonable expectation over the course of our life that when we plan these type of seeds through the passing days, we will reap and see a harvest of an opportunity for wealth in our life, physical wealth, money, to be able to grow. And that's not a bad thing. This is what churches do. We got to demonize it because we idolize it. All right?

No. What we need to do is stop idolizing it and calling it good and not God. That's what we need to get into. Now, what is the, you know, you think about the New Testament. This is a good thing that God would give us in his wisdom an opportunity to handle something in a wise way and to see it grow. So that we can leverage it for his kingdom, build lives that honor him.

All right? It's a good thing. Paul mentions this in 1 Timothy. What does he say in 1 Timothy 5? He says, hey, if somebody doesn't provide for their household, they're worse than an unbeliever. It is a good thing to handle money in a way that creates provision. It's the economy of God's kingdom. Pay attention to your herds and to your flocks. What else does Paul say in the same book in 1 Timothy chapter 6?

He says, hey, charge the rich in this present age to be generous in good works. There's an opportunity when we have things, when we have stuff to leverage, to be able to leverage it for the good of his kingdom. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing the way that God has set up the world and the economy of his kingdom. All right?

Look what it says. This is important too. And, you know, namely, to think about it, to be mindful of it.

And I'm going to get into maybe some of the mechanics of that here in a minute. But we are pointed to this fact. You know, even when we're looking at it, and this is important, God stands behind all of it.

That God is moving and directing. Man, is it possible that somebody handles money in a wise way their whole life? And towards the end of their life, there are things that happen in a broken world where the link between what they did and what they have in terms of flourishing is severed?

Absolutely a possibility. We live in a fallen world. These are not promises. They're proverbs.

Okay? The flip side. Whenever we have seen, man, we lean into wisdom and we see God growing something in our life and we see the things that we're handling grow. The point is God is standing behind it.

It's never outside of the context. Yes, there is human labor, but there is divine kind of nurturing and there is a divine provision. It is always set in the context of God standing in the background. This is what the Bible is trying to get us to see. That we cannot have a carefree attitude, nor can we have an all-consuming attitude. We can't have an out of sight, out of mind, nor can we be obsessed. Well, we've got to realize there's a part that we play and there's a part that God plays in standing behind it. And in that interplay and in that dance, when it comes to our financial health, there is wisdom. When we tend the flocks and the herds, when we believe that they are going to produce because this is what God's wisdom for us is.

What do I mean by that? Standing the flocks and the herds. Most of us aren't living in an agrarian life, okay? So it's like, okay, my money is not wrapped up in a flock of goats somewhere, okay? Maybe that's not right where you're at.

Okay. Paying attention to your flocks probably looks like having a budget meeting once a week or once a month with your spouse, right? Probably looks like having a budget. It probably looks like understanding where all the passwords to accounts and things like that are. Man, I think sometimes this stuff gets handed off and I don't mean to be stereotypical, but sometimes there are men in a relationship that, well, I kind of handle this part of our life.

No, no, no. This is a joint venture if we're married. Everybody has access to everything, right? And we're all learning and we're all trying to become people who are financially smart and wise so that if one is gone, the other is okay and all of that, all right? So it's kind of having those things.

It's paying attention. Man, it's realizing an employment situation that you have the opportunity to get a match and maxing it out. I mean, this is what I'm getting at, all right? I remember the first full-time job. I ever got. The finance guy at the church that I was working at sat me down and he said, Hey, man, this is how much the church matches when you put a little bit aside. You know, it's your first job, first full-time job. Okay, it ain't much, all right? But you put that aside and we'll match it. And I said, do I have to do that? And he said, yeah, you have to do that. I said, I don't have an option on that. He said, no. Subsequently, I learned it's illegal to tell somebody that, okay? You're not allowed to tell somebody that. But I thank God, right, that this brother was like, no, no, dude, you're 27.

Whatever you are, you're 25, 26 years old. Like you're going to do this and you're going to start this when you're 25. And that's just going to be the way that this goes. You know, that's just going to be the way that we do this. Man, maybe these are some examples for ways that we tend, ways that we pay attention to. But the point of this that it's getting into now with this idea of when the grass dies and new grass comes up is that no matter how much we pay attention and no matter how much we look at the flocks, don't we understand there is a God who stands behind it all.

There is a God who stands behind it all. Maybe some of you, you know, a lot of this sermon is going to be rattling young families in our church. We're dripping with young families, over 800 kids at Kids Week, trying to get people to kind of, hey, man, let's think about doing money God's way. But for some of you in here, it's like, man, I've been doing money God's way for a long time. And because of that, maybe there's passive income. Maybe there's different streams of income that are coming into your life.

Maybe the thought of even having to worry about it is a long time in your rear view. Hey, don't let that dupe you into believing that it's a refuge. Don't let that dupe you into believing something about God not standing behind it all. I'm going to read this a couple thousand years later because it, you know, now becomes this big giant agrarian metaphor. Guys, it was a metaphor the day it was written. This wasn't written to a farmer. It was written to a king's son. Okay.

All right. It was a metaphor the day it was written. And what he's trying to get us to see is, hey, when the winter comes, all the grass dies. But you know who flips the clock between winter and spring? Well, I know it ain't me, right?

I know it's not you. If winter doesn't turn to spring, all the flocks die. If the rain doesn't come, all the flocks die. We work and we labor and we pay attention and we know the passcodes to things.

And maybe we get accountability around our budgets. And we really try to sow seeds now that will be prosperous in the future, understanding that the passing days, that the time compounds things, we have an opportunity to have something later that we can leverage for the kingdom that we don't see necessarily by what we're putting on today. All right. Man, a gardener, you know, a gardener never thinks about, you know, a gardener doesn't judge the day by the harvest. They judge the day by what they planted. Right. And that's kind of what we're getting at. Man, what are we planting?

Yes, we labor and all that. But man, we got to realize that it's all in the context of what God is doing. You ever wondered why the Promised Land was called the land slung with milk and honey? Am I the only one that was like, what in the world could that possibly mean? I mean, am I the only one that could say that? I mean, I remember as a kid, I'm like envisioning like, okay, there's rivers of milk.

That's kind of cool. I like cereal, you know, or whatever. I don't know if you ever thought about it. It's like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory or something, you know, you're on the boat ride on the chocolate mill. It's like, no, what the Bible was saying, why does the land flow with milk?

Man, it flows with milk because God is providing fertility for the flocks that will graze it. And yes, our labor is what will capture these things. I understand. But God is providing the fertility. Let me just ask one question.

We'll move on. Do you trust your wealth as if it can never be taken away? Proverbs 18, 11 tell, this is good. Okay, man, the book of Proverbs is filled with stuff like this.

It's a little countercultural. Man, I think I think wealth can be used in our life to keep us from bad decisions. It can certainly be used to help us make bad decisions.

Okay. But it can be used to help us. Help keeping us from bad decisions.

Why? Proverbs 18, 11 says that wealth is a man's fortified city. What do I take from that? Yeah, have an emergency fund. Okay, it's a good thing. Like, man, there are things in the world that can happen. And wealth is something that can help us stay on our feet in the midst of that. But what the Bible don't say here is that wealth is a refuge like God is. Man, are we trusting our wealth as if it's God in our life?

And if we are, man, can we repent of that today? Look what it says. This is a weird phrase. Okay. The maintenance of your girls. Okay.

Evidently, the writer of Proverbs knows that girls cost a lot. Okay. And I'm living proof of that. I understand. Okay. Amen to that. Not what it's saying.

All right. What it's saying is that it's really reinforcing the whole point. The price of the milk maids is the point. The people who take care of the goats. It's making a very simple point. Even the people who care for the goat milk the goat live off of what the goat brings.

Man, if they care about it, if they pay attention to it, then all of a sudden it brings to them. That's kind of, I think, reinforcing the whole point of all this. All right. We got to get into this. Okay. Every single one. Listen, maybe it hasn't sounded like it so far, but I'm going to tell you, every one of these sermons in the Wise Family series, is super counter-cultural when you actually begin to think about it.

And I'm going to tell you why. Because what the Bible is saying, in general, it's not a promise. It is a proverb. In general, what the Bible is saying is something like this. And this is counter-cultural in 2022 in America. The Bible is saying there is a direct link between what you decide to do and what you will end up having. And that is counter-cultural in our society.

All right. In our society, we are filled with, no, no, no. There is excuse and there is economy and there is different forces that are pushing down and I can't ever get ahead. And there are many people, under the sound of my voice here at our campuses as well, if I just play it by what I see in the culture and the conversations I've had outside of the church, I guarantee you it's creeped into the church.

I want to leverage and build into a life that I might be able to honor God with in a different way or even in a fuller way because it's just the way that it is. Because the system is rigged. Because the fix is in. Because I just can't. And whatever it is, you just think, man, there's no way I can ever do it.

And I want to tell you something. If you think you can't, you probably absolutely can't. If you have that type of mentality, man, I can't.

It's rigged. Then you probably can't. But maybe today, Proverbs chapter 27 will reestablish the economy of God's kingdom in your mind and say, when you hear that your behavior will have nothing to do with future outcome when it comes to your economics and your wealth accumulation, what you need to go to is Proverbs 27 in your mind and say, I know it's not a promise. It is a proverb. But that thing that I'm hearing from culture is a lie.

It's a lie. What I can do, what the Bible is telling me is that if I will pay attention now, I'm not saying everybody gets rich by no means. And the idea of generational wealth, not having a bearing on future wealth and all that, man, I'm not getting into any of that. What I'm saying is if all you got is one little lamb and you think to yourself and the family thinks to themselves, man, all we got is one little lamb.

Man, we ain't never going to have nothing else. Look at all the people that got all them lambs. Man, they were rich. They were born with those lambs. The system is rigged. It's fixed against me.

I can never do anything other than what I'm doing. Man, who cares about this little lamb? Let's just go ahead and eat them and have one big party and then we'll just be in poverty the rest of our life. Or maybe another family kind of looks in and says, man, we ain't got but one lamb. We better take care of this one lamb.

Like we better feed them and brush them and walk them around and make sure he's healthy and make sure that he exercises and make sure he's got water every day. Like this lamb is going to be the greatest taking care of lamb that has ever been in the history of lambs. And then one day we're going to shear him. And one day we're going to take what we shear and we're going to take that and we're going to go, we're going to try to buy another lamb. And then we ain't got but two. And there's people that got 200,000, but I ain't worried about them because the fundamental point in this passage is to pay attention to your flock. That's what it said. It said, pay attention to your herds.

Think about what you have. And we focus on that and we, you know, nurture that. We trust God stands behind it all. But that is the point of what is here. And there are some of us in here right now telling you and you're like, man, you don't like this. You still think I'm trying to hit as hard as I can. What you're thinking is this sermon ain't for me. Andrew, you don't understand what you're thinking is, man, we've been paycheck to paycheck.

Now there's two ways that that looks that can look super middle class. Even though it's pretty much financed and what's going on is actually like, man, I actually do have a decent job, but where I've, it's always four things where I've chosen to live, what I drive, you know, how we eat and entertain, and then what we decide to do for our activities. We have made choices and these four things.

And that has put us in a position to be paycheck to paycheck. Never going to have nothing else. I'm always going to struggle. And what I'm gonna say is this. If you really believe that if you honestly believe that it will probably always be true. The truth of the scripture can confront that today. And you could say, man, I don't know. I can't worry about nobody else, but what I can worry about is what I have, where I'm at, what I have. Some of you might be in a different situation.

Maybe you got enough smarts. It ain't about financing a middle class to keep up with the Joneses. It's actually, it's actually more of a impoverished situation. And maybe what you're thinking about, maybe one of our campuses is like, dude, okay, I hear what you're saying, but like, man, all I've ever known is struggle. Like real struggle. Broken family, broken neighborhood. I don't know anybody that has ever not lived paycheck to paycheck.

I don't know anybody that has ever not been on some type of assistance program. I have a record, all of that. And here's the deal, okay? What you're thinking is, man, okay, but I'm the exception to this. And because of my unique set of circumstances that this is always going to be true of my life. I'm going to say, man, it's too late to start. Your circumstances never absolve us from the opportunity to say, God, I've got this one lamb. This is where we're starting, okay?

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to pay attention to it, and I'm going to trust that the economy of your kingdom, if we do the right things with it, that we have a reasonable expectation to see growth that will enable maybe building a life that we can leverage even now, no matter what your situation is, right? Man, I've got so much on this that I could say, but I'm going to skip ahead. I want to, I want to give you three.

All right. I want to give you three kind of quick. There's so many ways we can go with this, right? I mean, I think we've already hit what the passage means, but there's a few ways that we can go with it. And I want to try to stay in line with the passage the best I can. I want to give you three quick ways to apply this when we're done. All right.

The first one is this. Walk in wisdom by living with margin. The first thing that we've got to commit to today. If today is truly going to be, now for some of us, it's like, man, I don't buy it. I'm going to keep doing the thing I'm doing. I can never get out of it.

If you really believe you'll never get out, you'll never get out. All right. But for some that are willing to be challenged by the economy of God's kingdom, through his word and what he says about money, if that's where you are, now we're at a starting place. Okay. And the starting place is, and there's a lot of ways we can go, but the first way I'm going to talk about is with margin here. Walk in wisdom, you know, by living with margin. Let me give you another proverb real quick.

Okay. The first principle I think in Proverbs is we're going to get into what you do with margin. But the first thing is, do you have any margin in your life? Do you have any margin physically? Rest? Do you have any margin spiritually? Are you filled up with so many relationships that you don't even have time to sit before God?

All right. Is there no margin? Is there margin in your life financially at all? And here's what we think. Man, we're like, man, I don't have any margin.

I'm month to month. We don't have any margin. We don't have anything that could compound into wealth, much less to be able to give away. And what we think is we have an income problem. And probably what we have is a lifestyle choice problem. What we think is we have an income problem. That's what we all think. That's what Evander Holyfield thought at the height of his fame worth $200 million income problem.

It don't listen. It don't matter how big the front door is at the back doors open. If you buy a $24 million mansion, you get divorced. You get on the hook to pay for every single one of your kids' private education and all of their college fund. And you get in a $500,000 lawsuit with a lawn care company. It don't matter that you are worth $200 million. You will get foreclosed on, which happened. You will lose it all.

All right. My point is this. Many of us right now, we look at that story with Evander Holyfield and we're like, man, I could never do something like that. Like if I had that much money, I could never in a million years figure out a way to end up squandering it. And yet, if you just dial the zeros back, we're doing the same thing. All it is is I've chosen a lifestyle and that lifestyle doesn't match with what my income could be if I built margin to be able to invest and give into that. That's really all that it is.

It's like I could never be Evander Holyfield, yet your mortgage is 65% of your take home pay. That don't work. It just don't work. It don't work on paper.

It never worked on paper. But keeping up with the Joneses can put us in this situation where we're like, man, I've got to live there. My point is this. We make choices in those four areas. Man, where we live, what we do, what we eat, what we drive. I mean, that really kind of comes down to it, doesn't it? We make those choices. And I want to call some of us today to commit to margin no matter what it means. And man, I'm just going to say that again. OK. Commit to margin no matter what it means. No matter what it means. That's what I mean.

No matter what it means. Sell a house, move into manufactured housing. Some people are like, man, I could never drive a car that's not less than five years old. It's like, well, that's your problem. You know, it's like, man, there's plenty of people that drive cars that are 25 years old and get on YouTube and learn how to be their own mechanic.

And you could do that. Man, it's like, man, we're paycheck to paycheck. We're struggling.

We're never going to get ahead. But there's a two week $10,000. Vacation in the budget. It's like, man, it was never worked on paper. And the problem. You know what? I talked to a buddy of mine about the sermon from last week. And he was talking about, man, it really affected him. And he was grateful for it and all that. And I said, hey, man, I've heard that a lot this week. I said, what do you think is the exact reason? I know God does what he does.

But what is the reason that last week's sermon kind of got into you the way that he did? And he said, man, it was because it was so simple. And that's how the Proverbs are.

It's like, man, we don't like it. Not saying it's easy. But it's not complicated.

It is a simple thing. Well, I could never do that. Well, let me tell you a couple stories of people who did. This year we had a refugee family move in. One of our families connected with them. They connected with them. And they started talking to them about finance. And this family moved into housing that was provided for them through governmental thing. It was a crazy situation they were coming out of out of the Middle East. They were working 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. in a chicken factory one hour from here, making less than $15 an hour. But you know what they chose to do? Not spend any money.

All right? It's like, man, our kids do a lot of activities if they're free. We eat things that we have cooked in our house exclusively. We don't take trips.

We ride the bus. Man, two and a half years later, they just saved up the money. They paid it for a car in cash. And they just put a down payment on a house.

It's just some of our people discipling to say, hey, actually, man, the God that we serve in the Bible loved his people enough not just to die for them and not just to bring, but actually to show them kind of the pathway when it comes to resources and finance. And this is what he said. Another story came out this week. One of our City Project students was talking about how I was going to use a story from the new book, Baby Steps to Millionaires.

But I instead used the story from her because it's the same story. She said, man, when we're single, single family home, multiple kids, single mom. We were kids. My mom, this is amazing.

She said, we were kids. My mom would buy us extravagant things to make up for the fact that we really didn't have a lot. Which, man, it's like, man, on the face of it, it's like, dude, I feel like I could totally sympathize with that, right? It's like, man, we don't have a lot. So when I get a chance to do Christmas, when I get a chance to do a pair of shoes, whatever, man, I'm going to do that.

I'm going to go overboard because I want you to feel like you fit in. And I mean, we can all sympathize with all of that until the day that her mother, you know, all of us, oh, man, we're so compassionate about that. No. Forget compassion. I want wisdom.

And what the mom said, sat the whole family down and tells all the kids, hey, all of this stuff is going to stop. I'm not doing this stuff anymore with the extravagant gifts. We can't afford that. I want to build something for your future.

This City Project student is going to her senior year of college debt-free because her mama paid for it. That's kind of what I mean. It's looking at and saying, no, no, we will commit to margin no matter what it means because there's this prosperous thing that God might ask for. Have for us in the future. Second thing, and I got to be quick with this, walk in wisdom by investing the margin. OK. Now, maybe you didn't know this. I'm not your financial advisor. OK. That's not what I'm here to do. There's many of you in here right now that could opine in ways that I could not on this. But I will tell you, there's a very basic point embedded in this passage.

Here's what it says. You ain't got to be a farmer or a rocket scientist to answer this question. What is the point of buying another field with what you got off the goat? The point of buying another field is so that you take the goats and have more fields for them to graze on to have more milk, which leads to end up having more goats and more fields and more milk and more goats. Right.

This is just the very basic idea of something that compounds. And that's what it's getting at here. Man, I'm not going to get it. I mean, I'm not getting into where you should put your money. OK. You got plenty of ways to go figure that out on your own. But the point is that margin is supposed to make money, not just advance a lifestyle. All right.

The margin in our life is supposed to be used in some ways to think about that slow build like a gardener. The opposite of this is also mentioned many times in the Book of Proverbs, which is get rich quick schemes. Right. This is why I hate the lottery so much. About the only thing worse than losing the lottery is winning the lottery.

All right. You look at people and their lottery. You look at your life and you see kind of what it is. It's trying to catch a windfall rather than plant seeds for the passing days.

To plant seeds now that we will reap later. College students. Man, let me talk to you guys.

I know many of y'all are home. But I think the college students in this passage, because so many of you are concerned with what job to get in order that you can make the type of money that you want to make when you get out of college. And maybe what you don't realize is you should be way more concerned with the type of lifestyle you're going to set up than the amount of money that you make.

Because the amount of money that you make, not paired with the lifestyle that you have, it's not about what you make. It's about what you keep. It's about what doesn't fly out the back door through lifestyle enhancement. Right. In order that you would have margin so that that margin would be able to have an opportunity to grow.

And as it grows, we have a chance to build a life that we can leverage and invest holistically in all of our facets. Man, I'm way out of time. All right. So here's what I got to do. I got to bring us back to just kind of a decision point here.

Man, some of us, I think, need to just kind of decide. So much we can talk about in the book of Proverbs. Man, we can start getting into the idea of debt and co-signing stuff. I mean, there's just, you know, we can talk about a lot of things. But I think right here in this passage, it's very simple. Man, what do we do with the excess when it is provided?

And man, are we are we leveraging that in the economy of God's kingdom to be able to see it grow? All right. So decision time. Man, are we willing, no matter what stage and what background and where we're at in life and what whatever has been fed to us our whole life about how our behavior doesn't matter, it's always going to be the way that it is or whatever. Are we willing to lay all that down and say, nope, I'm going to stand on the word? Like, I'm going to, God, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to trust your path. I'm not going to trust my uncle Rick Rico or whatever that's broke. Okay.

And all his financial advice that he's given me. And I'm not going to trust the latest YouTube sensation and crypto and I'm not going to trust all this. What I'm going to try to do is stand on the word.

As if it's a garden, I'm going to plant things that will grow. All right. If we're like, man, I'm not sure I can trust God with that. I understand that because there's a lot of voices in our society, just like there's a lot of voices in the way we raise kids.

There's a lot of voices around this stuff in our society. And all I would do is I would say this, I would say, listen, go back to this verse Proverbs 27, 26, the lambs will provide your clothing. You know how I know you can trust God's way with money so that your your clothing will be provided because he's already done that one time through the ultimate lamb, right? Except it wasn't just for our prosperity, man. It was for our very life. Jesus Christ was the lamb that came and was slain so that we could be clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

And if there is a God who provided the lamb to save me, that I can trust him to provide clothing for me through me paying attention to the flocks and him blessing. Man, if you're willing to take that step today, you're willing to think about that. Man, I want to call you to think about financial peace. You guys can throw that slide up.

There with financial peace. Hey, this is coming up, man. It's starting here in in just a couple of months. And I want you guys to be thinking about maybe it's an opportunity to jump in.

Hey, if that feels like it's too long, because it's like, man, that's like two months away or whatever it is, then here's what I want you to do. I want you to grab a campus pastor, whatever campus you're at, and just tell them like, man, I just want to be paired up with some people who have walked this road. We got so many people that have walked this road of financial peace. And we want to hook you up with it.

And maybe there can just start a little relationship there that will bridge you over to get all the way to that financial peace class starting in September. All right. Hey, last thing. And this is a conclusion. Third and final thing. Man, I want to call the whole church to walk in wisdom by giving generously. Okay.

Now, some of you are probably thinking, man, I knew you were going to get here. Okay. And that's fine.

All right. And I am going to get here because, man, how else can we declare before God that money is good, but it's not God? Other ways has the Bible given us, other than leveraging it for his kingdom and generosity, to be able to show, man, with what you have given me, I am going to honor you. Now, if that bothers you and you're new to Mercy Hill, take everything I'm about to say, I mean this, take everything I'm about to say and give it to the Pregnancy Network. Give it to Freedom House. Give it to Hannah's Haven. Very worthwhile causes in our community that we try to pump volunteers into.

Man, do that. Listen, our church is doing fantastic when it comes to financial health care. We're doing great things right now. And the last thing we need is a bunch of begrudging, non-cheerful giving. Okay.

All right. So if this is going to like make you some kind of way, then just take everything I'm saying and think about another organization in our society. But here's what I want to say. How else can we say, God, I am picturing with my life that you are standing behind. That if the rain stops, the flocks die. It doesn't matter what I've done.

That if the seasons don't change. How else can we say, God, I am picturing with my life that you are standing behind. That if the rain stops, the flocks die.

It doesn't matter what I've done. How else do we declare, God, it is yours. This is our generosity pathway. I just want to throw it up real quick.

Guys, we talk about this. The Bible talks about the tithe. The tithe is 10% of what comes into our house going back into his kingdom and into his work.

All right. Now, that was before, listen, you go back to the tithe. You go back to Jacob. You go back to Abraham. That's before the law was even written.

Okay. So you go, the tithe is like baked in. Man, you get to the New Testament. It's not even about the tithe. I mean, when you see what Jesus gave to us, it's like, dude, the tithe becomes the floor. Not the ceiling. I mean, it becomes like the absolute bottom. But some of you might be like, man, I don't know. I mean, how could I ever get there? And man, I feel crushed by all this stuff. I'm just trying to think about margin. Well, then you need to begin today.

You guys could take that slide down. You need to begin today. You say, well, how do I begin? Here's exactly how you begin.

Man, you know, one of those organizations, that's fine. If you trust Mercy Hill enough to leverage your kingdom resources, then I would tell you to do this. If you're in a crazy amount of debt and you're like, man, I can't fathom the thought of even doing anything like this. Okay, then at least do this. Go online, set up a reoccurring gift of $5.

$10. Man, start somewhere. Have there be a part of your life that is about paying attention to the herds and the flocks and doing things God's way and give yourself a mental reminder month in and month out of, man, I'm going to start this journey.

I mean, man, I would push you to go all the way to the tithe, but I know that, man, someone's going to be like, dude, that is so far outside of, man, start somewhere, all right? If you want to give to Mercy Hill today, you can do this. You can text. You can give online.

You can give in cash. Hey, but others of you in here today, it's like this. Others of you in here, you're not at that place where it's like, man, I need to begin and put a reoccurring gift. Man, some of you, God has blessed immensely. He has blessed immensely. For some of us in here, man, giving our tithe has become such autopilot.

We don't even think about it anymore. If we don't think about it, how honoring is it to God? God, I pray for those in the room today that feel a little shaken by the teaching in Proverbs 27. God, I pray that you would convince them of what you're worth. God, I pray for those in the room today that feel a little shaken by the teaching in Proverbs 27. Lord, I pray that your word says that there is a link between their behavior and what you might want to do in their life in giving them things that they can leverage building a life that glorifies you. God, I pray that you would convince some in this room that are like, man, this background that I have, and I could never. and to not use circumstances as an excuse for foolishness. Lord, I pray right now that there would be people at all of our campuses, maybe even today, that are seeing this and they become so convinced of your love for them. Maybe they even give their life to you, not just their money to you today. God, I pray you do a work through this series, in Christ's name, amen.