Money, Possessions, & Eternity

The Book of Proverbs

Part 3

Okay, where does God describe wisdom from above? I’ve talked about that verse every lesson. James 3:17. Oh, did you

know that James 3:17? It’s the very last section of James 3. James says but the wisdom that is from above is first pure,

peaceable, gentle, easily entreated.

James 3:17

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy

and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

18And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

Do you remember I showed you a chart that said that there are books of history and books of prophecy and in the middle

are books of poetry? Which grouping is Proverbs? Is it prophetic? No. Is it historical? Not really. So, it’s the middle

 one, the poetry. So again, whether that comes as a multiple choice or whatever, the easy way to remember is that it’s

not prophecy, it’s not history so it’s the other one.

God’s will for my character includes choosing His way. See, look at this God’s way instead of choosing man’s way. When

I was a youth teacher, I used to say only two choices on the self pleasing God or pleasing self. So, I have to choose

God’s way. So that’s His will for my character. Now remember what character is, character is when no one’s watching,

but God. He wants me to pause.

I remember parenting. We have two children. They’re so sweet and wonderful. They all had Naomi’s good looks and

personality. What they got from me was what? Do you remember what I told you? The sin nature. Yes. So almost all of

my kids did the same thing. They would be running towards something, grabbing something off the table at the our home like

a cookie before it was time or whatever. But just before they went to do that, they would turn and look at me. It’s

so interesting. I would smile and I would shake my head no, and that was a moment of choice whether they were going

to just take that cookie. You shouldn’t do that. You could see their little body. They would slump over,

and it was so hard. Did you know that’s what we’re all doing all through life? Our conscience is God’s ally. It’s inside

of us. When we’re running to do something, for just a moment, that little voice inside of us says, you sure you should

be doing that? Is that good? Do you think God would like that? That is our character. God wants us, in our character,

when our parents aren’t watching, or our boss isn’t watching, or our pastor, or whoever, our supervisor, we want to say,

I want God’s way. That’s the wise way.

Then, there are three major themes in Proverbs. The reason I’m giving you this is to see these answers are scattered

across ten Lessons, and you may never put them together if I don’t remind you.

One of the three major themes is fearing God.

What is fearing God?

It’s not thinking He is going to hit you. What is God going to do?

Do you remember Joseph and Potiphar’s wife? All of you know that story, right? Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Joseph was in

 a room, and Potiphar’s wife was in the room, Potiphar’s wife grabbed his clothes and started tearing them off of him.

What does Joseph say to her? How can I do this evil in the sight of God? Potiphar’s wife goes like this and looks around.

She says, where’s God? It doesn’t say that in the Bible, but that’s what was going on with her mind. She was not aware God

 was there. Joseph was aware God was there.

Being aware that God is watching is what the fear of God is. It’s not being afraid. Joseph wasn’t saying God’s going to

hit me. God’s going to slap me. He’s going to hurt me. He’s saying God is watching me. Knowing God is watching you is the

fear of God. It’s very healthy. It makes us, when we’re serving Him, rejoice because we know He’s watching. It makes us,

when we’re not serving Him, feel bad because we know He’s watching, and we don’t want to displease Him. Trusting God and

 obeying God.

So, the three major themes of Proverbs are:

Fearing God

Knowing He’s watching

Trusting God

Knowing He does what He says, and then making that choice. Like I said, my children would turn and look at me and

they had that instant to obey me, God wants us to obey Him. So, we’ll cover those in every lesson, but I just wanted

 to do that now.

Again, this chart I’ve shown you every time. You can keep adding to it like we’re going to talk today about a work ethic.

God’s way is that we are hard workers. Man’s way is that we are lazy. We get away with as much not working as possible.

This is our 8Th Lesson.

God wants us to be stewardship-minded. Steward, that’s an English word. Do you know what a steward is?

Someone who takes care of property that belongs to someone else. God wants me to look at everything in life

 as belonging to Him and I’m God’s steward. Okay?

We’re covering all the good stuff today. We’re covering money, work, and electronica, the gaming world.

Here we go. This hour I call Money, Possessions and Eternity. Proverbs 8, let’s turn there in our Bibles.

Proverbs 8:18-21

18 Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness.

19 My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.

20 I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment:

21 That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.

So, Proverbs 8, here we go, verses 18, 19, 20, 21.

My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, to endow those who love me with wealth, that I might

fill their treasuries. Wow. It might surprise you to know that money is a big topic in the world. The world revolves around money. In fact, I read the news from Bloomberg. Bloomberg is the premier financial authority in America. In fact, Mr. Bloomberg himself is worth 60 billion dollars. Do you know how he made it all? By building a little device that sits on the desk of stockbrokers that shows them everything going on in the world affecting the markets. It shows the market in India, the market in China, the market in Korea. He put it all in one place, he was the first one to really do this.

It’s the Bloomberg service so that they can see when a storm keeps the Korean fishermen from fishing, or when a frost

causes the bananas to die in Honduras, or when some terrorist event cuts off an oil pipeline. It was just news that

helped money traders.

Money is big. So, guess what? The Bible talks a lot about money. What it says is money is an indicator of our spiritual

heart. How you look at your money determines your spiritual condition. Jesus, talked about money more than anybody else

in the Bible. Most of His stories, most of Jesus’ stories were about money. If you think about it, the parable of the

talents, that’s money. Jesus is always talking about money.

God wants us to think about money and possessions in light of eternity. See over here, God’s way is us thinking about

 eternal things, what’s going to last forever, versus humans, they only think of the temporal, the moment.

In fact, there’s a saying, seize the moment, or live for the moment, or in America they say, you only go around once.

You only get one chance so let’s just live for the moment. God says no, My way is that you be wise and live for eternity.

 So, what does that mean? Let’s keep going in Proverbs.

Look at Proverbs 3:9.

“Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:”

God is watching our choices. Verse 9.

Proverbs 3:10

“So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”

Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty,

 and your vats will be bursting with wine. Did you catch that? God was watching and responding to the choices they

made with their possessions, their money. Seeing if we honor the Lord with our possessions.

How much are we to give back to The Lord in our Tithe? It would be very legalistic to give 10%. That’s the tithing from

 the Old Testament law. So we, under grace, wanted to exceed that. The Lord demanded from all of the people in the Old

Testament, 10 percent of everything. He demanded it. There was a lot more on top of that. Actually, the whole Levitical system is 30 some percent of their income because they had to give the seventh year to the Lord, they had to give the first fruits to the Lord, they had to only cut their fields in a circle and leave the corners for the poor people. If you add all that up, it’s 30 percent of their income.

 I would suggest we give 11%. We could have been praying about it, but praying was nor part of our life then. I have been praying about it now because of this Proverbs lessons I am teaching. Why don’t we do this; why don’t we give, next month, 12 percent and the next month 13 percent and we’ll keep increasing how much we give to the Lord every month until we go, oh, we can’t pay that payment. We don’t have quite enough money in the checking account. It would have been the greatest joy for us to have start our marriage that way. But we did not because we were lost and worldly people when we where married.

We are obeying the Lord now.

Do you know we do not buy new furniture for our house? We buy it used. We rent our home. We buy used cars. I am not saying

this is for everyone. It is the way we do things now. It amazing to set back watch what The Lord God Almighty will do if

we obey him and do his work he has given us to do for him and pay our Tithes the way he wants us to do to his Church.

Now, I’m not saying what the charismatic television preachers say, if you send me $100, God will give you $1,000.

That’s what they say. You send me $1, God will give you $10. No. What I’m saying is, God said that. God said it,

this is God speaking. Verse 9, He said, If you honor me with your possessions and with the first fruits. Do you know

what that means? Give God the beginning of your crop before you know how much is going to come in. Do you understand

that? That’s trusting Him. Do you remember the three things?

He wants us to obey Him and trust Him. Do you remember that? That’s what He’s saying.

This the last part of Lesson 8.