Well, my name is Bob Kedlesik. I'm one of the pastors here, and this is our series Stay Out, and it's really a series about being all in for God. So in Matthew 22, 37 through 39, Jesus has asked, "What is the most important commandment?" And he said, "It is to love the Lord your God a little bit some of the time in a couple ways." No, he didn't, you'd think that's what we wanted him to say. But no, he says, "You need to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength." And that means we need to invite God into even the uncomfortable areas of our lives. We talked about entertainment last week. How entertainment shouldn't be, obviously, if your entertainment is sinful, then that's wrong. Don't do that. But even neutral entertainment, we need to evaluate and say, "Is it helping me become a better person? Is it helping others? Is it bringing glory to God?" Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. That's what 1 Corinthians 1031 tells us, and so we're talking about different areas. We're going to talk about food, I think, next week, and then in a couple weeks we'll talk about politics. How do we bring glory to God and that? If you can bring glory to God in that area, man, you know, this is what we want to do. Every area of our lives, and today we're going to talk about money, which is potentially, yeah, I guess, potentially the most stay-out area of all, like, no, we don't want to do this. But Proverbs chapter 6 is a passage we're going to look at that has some wisdom principles about money, and here's one of the things that sounds super obvious, but what we're going to start with is this, working is good, okay? And you might be like, of course it is, like, what do you mean? But many people, I don't know, it may even be the majority of Americans would say that working is a necessary evil, because the goal is to get to a point in your life where you have enough money so that you don't have to work anymore, and you can spend the rest of your life doing whatever you want, having everybody else serve you, and being a leech until you're dying day. What is the goal of most Americans, right? I want to be able to retire so I can travel around and do what I want, or I want to be able to hunt and fish, or I want to be able to, I ask, like, what do the women want to do? And a woman like right here in the first service said hunt and fish, I'm like, okay. You know, whatever you want to do with the rest, you know, you don't have to work, and this is the goal. But is that what we were made to do in the beginning with Adam and Eve, God created them, and He gave them two jobs, we won't talk about the other one, but one of their jobs was you need to subdue and have dominion over the earth. This is you have a job as a human being to take care of the earth, is what He told Adam and Eve. And then Jesus doubled it for those of us who are followers of Jesus. He said the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. And that's all work is. Work is just serving other people with your time, and then they serve you back with money, right? And you're like, thank you, thank you. It's a win-win kind of thing. And so work is good. And here's what Proverbs says about work in Proverbs chapter 6, verses 6 through 11. It says, "Take a lesson from the ants, you lazy bones. Learn from their ways and become wise, though they have no prints." Oops. Can you click through this for me? There we go. I usually do it, but I'm having trouble doing two things at once now. "They have no prints or governor or ruler to make them work. They labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter. But you, lazy bones, how long will you sleep? When will you wake up? A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit and scarcity will attack you like an armed robber." And so this passage is talking about the goodness of work and how so many in the animal kingdom, including ants, they teach us beavers, constantly working, bees. They work so much. They have extra honey. You can take like 50% of their honey, it's extra, and you can eat it yourself, or bears can eat it. And because they work so hard, they make it extra for others. So God's animal kingdom is made this way, we were made to work and serve others, and this is a good thing. And even, I know some of you are at an age or you have a disability, and you're not able to take an 80-pound bag of shingles and go up a ladder on it and put it down. We've got some men that do this like, yeah, and you're not able to do that anymore. But you can work in other ways, and you can work in ways that aren't for money. That's what retirement is about. I look forward to a day when I can retire, and I'll keep doing whatever I can do to serve God, and write letters, and pray for people, and talk to people about Jesus, and maybe even preach, but I'll do it for free. But it's still work. Had a man after church tell me and mentioned three men who were in the first service that all three guys, they retired so they could have a full-time job, working for their sons in each of their sons' businesses for free. And really help them out in that way. And so we have 90-year-old ladies in our church who, yeah, they're not Walmart greeters, but they pick up the phone and call people and ask how they're doing and pray for them, and that's serving others, that's a ministry, that's work, and that's a healthy thing. So work is good. Don't listen to this idea that the goal is to not work anymore. That doesn't even bring happiness many of the times. It's just short-term happiness, but not long-term. So work is good. In fact, it's so good that here's what the Bible says, and a letter Paul writes to it, "Church and Thessalonica, that struggled with the work ethic." Some of the people in that church, and he says to them, "Even while we were with you, we gave you this command, those unwilling to work, do not get to eat." And this man has since passed away, but when I was up in Johnson City at the church there, there's a man, Dave Raymond Dino, and Dave struggled with working, okay? One time he got a job, and he came to me, and he's like, "You know, I'm working, but it's just a lot." I'm like, "Well, how many hours a week are you working, or how much are you working?" And he's like, "I'm working, sometimes, you know, 12, 16 hours." I'm like, "Wow, that is a lot. I thought he meant a day. It was a week." And I'm like, "You're kidding me, Dave. Sixteen hours a week. You can't do that. Like, come on, you're like my age." And I was younger then, and you know, like, and the pastor happened to be preaching through the Epochom Thessalonians, and he got to this place, and he mentioned this verse, and David was furious. And he came to me because I wasn't the preacher, so he's going to, you know, think that I would be against what the preacher and the Bible said, and he's like, "That's not right. That's unloving. If you don't work, you shouldn't eat." And I said, "That's the Bible. Like work is important, and don't you have a sense of satisfaction when you actually do? Put an honest day's work in to help other people, and it's just such a big deal. It really is. And we need to exemplify that, and work as we're working for God, and not for your boss. Your boss may be a miserable person who doesn't deserve a full day's work, okay? But it doesn't matter. We work for God, and we work to imitate Jesus who gave his life to serve. And this is why, on July 28th, we are doing, "Don't just go to church, be the church Sunday," okay? And so for those of you who don't know what this is, we show up at 8.30 if you're a project leader, 8.45 if you don't have a project, 9 o'clock for everybody normally. We show up at 9 o'clock, even the late service people. On July 28th, you come at 9 o'clock, you get three things, a project, an optional donut, and if you don't want your donut, there will be children who will take yours and eat yours for you. Yeah. He'll eat it, just save it for him, he volunteered. And then you also get a safety orange t-shirt that says, "Don't just go to church, be the church." And then so at 9 o'clock, we come, we get the project, the donut and the t-shirt, and then we immediately leave, and then they'll have a lunch year afterward from 11 to 1 o'clock whenever you get done with your project, come back, can share what you did. And you say, "Man, we were painting at a fire hall, man, we were able to put in a handicap ramp for this elderly individual who was in a wheelchair now, and oh man, we were able to clean out this house for this family member who had passed away, and they were just overwhelmed by it, and the church rented the dumpster, and we were able to put stuff in it. So here's the thing, July 28th, we need about 35 projects in order to have enough for everybody. So that means we only need 29 more at this point. So just look around your neighborhood, go to wherever you, you know, if you're in Franklin Fort, or if you're online, you've got to figure it out yourself. Just look around. You've got a neighbor, and she has trees growing out of her gutters, okay? Just go over and say, "Hey, my church is doing this, and my pastor said I have to clean your gutters out." Or whatever you want to sell it, because people are like hesitant, they're like, "Oh, no. My daughter will get to it. Your daughter doesn't want to do that. Your daughter hasn't been here in months, but just to be the church, because we need to understand that Sunday morning, we're talking about what's true. If we don't leave here and actually go out and live what's true, through loving people, what's the point? This is completely useless if we don't take this with us. And so actually, the Elk Lake group is going to meet Marta Wells Reserve, the pavilion, at the Elk Lake School, for the lunch afterward. And so there's going to be projects in Elk Lake, and if you live in the Elk Lake School District, or in Springville area, let us know, okay, what we can do in the community. Some of these, there are a couple projects where we're helping some people from church, but in general, we have 364 days of the year to help other people in church. This is people that don't go to our church, that we have no reason to help, except that God loves us. He wants us to serve others. He wants us to live out the truth of God's Word by loving others. And so find those, and then contact the church office, or myself, or there's a sign of sheet at the Welcome Center right now for projects, not for signing up to do the projects, but just saying I got a project. And here's, we do have a bucket truck, and somebody else is going to head that one up. So anyway, lots of different, we do have some money, okay, if this project is going to cost like $5,000, we can't do that, alright, but if it's going to be $500, the church can put that bill, honestly, if it's more than that, talk to me, and maybe we can do it. And we have unlimited, unskilled labor for that day. We have a limited amount of skilled labor, also, depending on the projects, sometimes that helps. So work is good, and some people push back about working for money, like, oh, you know, the Bible says that money is the root of all kinds of evil, and that's not true. This is what it actually says in 1 Timothy 6, 9, and 10, but people who long to be rich, I have met poor people who long to be rich. In fact, I have made no connection, I've seen no correlation between how much money someone has and how much they love money. So there are people who are incredibly rich who love money, people who are incredibly rich who don't love money, and they use it to bless other people, and they don't hold on to it tightly, and then there's people who don't have any money, and they love money, and that's all they think about, and they want, and then there's people who are poor who don't love money. There's no connection, but this is the key. If you long to be rich, you fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin, and destruction for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and some people craving money have wandered from the true faith, and have pierced themselves with many sorrows, so that's what the Bible says about. It's not about having money, and even you look into the Old Testament, Job was called the most righteous man on the face of the earth. Was he rich? Yes. It says he had 6,000 camels, he had 14,000 sheep, 1,000 donkeys, and 2,000 cows to plow fields with, 6,000 camels in the United States costs about $60 million for that many camels. The guy was wealthy, King David, poor or wealthy, incredibly multi-billionaire, Abraham, poor or wealthy, he was wealthy. Now there were others like the prophets who were poor, who didn't have much. Jesus, in fact, he had two times where he sent his disciples out on their own to tell people about Jesus and about the kingdom of heaven before he was crucified. First time he sent them out, he said, "Don't take anything with you. Not a purse, not a dime, not a change of clothes like you are going out totally on faith. You're going to have to trust God to provide for you, you're going to have to ask people to provide for you," and he sent them out. And then he sent them out another time, 70 disciples at a different time, and he said, "Okay, on this one, you can take a purse with you, you can take your wallet, you can take money with you." And I think he was teaching them that sometimes we do have to step out in faith and just trust God. And other times we need to save and plan and be prepared for things to happen. In fact, this is what Proverbs says in that verses, those verses we read at the beginning in Proverbs 6 about ants, it says that saving for the future is wise. Here's verses 7 and 8, again, in talking about the ants, they have no prints or governor or ruler to make them work. They labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter. How many of you are aware that winter hits northeast Pennsylvania every year? I mean, you think, boy, it's really hot June, do you think we'll have winter again this year? Yes, and ants know this, how big are their brains? People act like winter is not coming. There's going to be fuel bills in winter. There's going to be extra expenses, and if it's not a literal winter and you live in a place like Guatemala, the land of the eternal spring, then there are figurative winters in our lives where you're in a car accident and now physically you're not able to work while you're rehabilitating, but then you're also out of car and then maybe at the same time your roof starts to leak and you have all these expenses all at once. And ants know that winter is coming and there's going to be times where you need money saved. 40% of Americans, it's these crazy statistics, live from paycheck to paycheck. If they didn't get paid their next paycheck, they can't pay their bills. And Proverbs is not saying that's sinful, it's saying it's stupid, okay? And there is a difference. There are very, very few people. Today I know that I've actually taken this vow of poverty, but they live in this way where I can think of an individual who never has more than, I mean, 500 would be a lot of money in a checking account for this person. Just gives it away, constantly giving to somebody, and if that's, if by faith you believe that's how God wants you to live, you're going to be rich in friends and they're just going to take care of you when you can't, and I guess that's the way it is. But for most of us who have not decided this is how God wants us to live, we need to save for the winter and just be ready for times when the car breaks down and the roof leaks and the refrigerator breaks all in the same week. And so that we're ready for those extra expenses. The key, here's some things about lies, about saving, number one, lie, I don't need a plan. If you don't have a plan, there's only three things you can do with money. You can spend it, you can give it to somebody else, and you can save it to spend and give later. That's all you can do. If you don't have a plan for that, I guarantee you, other people will come up with a plan for you and they will impulsively manipulate you to spend that money in ways they want you to. And so it is just so important that planning, I've talked with a lot of couples, premarital counseling, this is something I always ask couples to do, you need a plan of how you're going to spend your money. And I have heard all sorts of excuses, but you need a plan. If you don't have a plan, actually, if you've never gone through financial peace university, I encourage you to go through it. This is an online one, you have to shoot that QR code or remember bridgewater.church/FPU. A lot of our slashes are really pretty intuitive. So FPU, and that'll take you, online class starts next Sunday. And if you've never gone through it, I've gone through it four times, I've gone through it with some of my kids. It is incredibly helpful in coming up with a plan. And some people say, "Well, I don't have enough money to have a budget. No, you need a budget more than everybody else because you have a limited amount of funds and you need to really make sure you have a plan for where it's going. The wise have wealth and luxury, but fools spend whatever they get. Literally, it says fools gulp everything down. They eat it all." And that's literal sometimes, but more often figurative. You spend everything you have. And then when something happens, you're stressed, don't you hate it? Being stressed and worried about money and like, "Oh, I just can't." There is a solution. And it is not very dependent. Most Americans do not have an income problem. Some do, but most, on the other hand, most Americans do have a spending problem. I know of people who make over $100,000 a year and they live paycheck to paycheck. And they're in debt and they're in trouble financially. And then I know people who make less than $30,000 a year, who are saving, who are giving, who have no worries about money. And it is not an income problem for most people. And even if you do solve the income problem part, if you don't solve the spending problem, you will never, you will never have this in area of joy and peace. I'm telling you, when you think about money, you can think joy and peace. You don't have to think worry and stress. And it starts with this, where you have to have a plan and you have to learn how to save. And here's another lie about savings, it's okay to spend money I don't have. Just as the rich rule over the poor, so the borrower or servant or slave to the lender. Again, the Bible doesn't say borrowing is sinful. It says borrowing is unwise and it makes you a servant or a slave. I've talked about this before, but I have a mortgage that visions federal credit union. I am their servant. I serve them every month for, I don't even know how many hours, but certain number of hours I serve them and the check goes to them. I am not their slave because servants have options, slaves do not. If a servant doesn't want to go to work, you don't go to work because you're a servant. If you're a slave and you don't want to go to work, guess what? You go to work because someone owns you, okay, and thankfully we don't have legalized slavery in this country, but, well, direct legalized slavery. But we do have, if I owe more on my car than my car is worth, I don't have options. I can't like sell my car and get out of the servant relationship, right? I can sell my house and get out of the servant relationship I have with a bank. I'll be like, I don't want to serve you anymore. Here, I pay off my mortgage, you know, you get the house or whatever. I sell the house to someone else, I have a little bit extra. It's, I have options, but if you owe 20,000 on your car and you can only sell it for 10,000, they don't just own your car, they own you. And one of the biggest areas that is shackling slavery in our country is student debt, college debt, because no bank wants to trade the degree you have. Say, see, I got this degree, I'll give it to you, you give me my money back. No, no, they don't, they don't, they own you. And so the average college debt is $35,000, which is really low actually. That's the new, the people graduating now, it is way higher, $100,000, $200,000 in debt. I mean, and then you get married and you double it, right? I mean, it's crazy, but the average college debt is $35,000 and it takes 20 years for people to pay it off. Which is better? Graduate from college going straight through at 22 years of age with a debt that will take you 20 years to pay off and you'll be debt free with a college education at 42 or just pay for it as you go. At 26, graduate at 28 with no debt. So a college degree at 28 is no debt or a college degree takes you till you're 42. In fact, millennials who are in their 30s now and some in their early 40s and some in their late 20s, millennials are not buying homes like their parents did. At their age, most millennials' parents had homes and they don't. Why? Because they already have a mortgage. It's their college debt because someone manipulated them and had a plan for them and many of us parents went along with it or even pushed them to do it. No, this is how you do it. This is important. This is what you know and I'm not talking to those who have already done it and you're feeling guilty. I'm talking to those who are in this right now, who are faced with this right now. But just take some time and don't become a slave. And if you are in debt, then just work it off as fast as you can. Like get rid of it. Do whatever you can. There's a man sitting right about where Dylan is in the first service, Craig. And Craig at one point, he came to me and he was in debt more than his annual salary. And he paid it off in a year and a half. And half his annual salary went to child support payments. If you had told me that, I would say that is mathematically impossible, but he did it. He sold his Mustang and then he had no car. And a friend said, I got a truck that the mice ate it out, the wires. If you can get that thing running, it's yours. Him and a buddy went over and for like a hundred bucks, they were able to get this truck up and running. And now he had a truck. At one point, he lived in a camper because he couldn't afford rent so that he could pay off his debt. And you know what he did? At the same time, he decided he would start giving 10% of his money away and started giving to the church. It was crazy. Half your money goes to child support, 10% goes to the church. How can you pay off that much debt? And in a year and a half, he was debt free and he's been debt free ever since. And every so often he'll come to me and he'll say, this man is struggling and just recently he did this. And he said, can you anonymously give him hundreds of dollars? He works at Diaz cabinets. He's just a day laborer. He makes like 15 bucks an hour. And he's generous now. It's amazing how God has, but it goes to this debt thing that when he got in debt, he realized this is wrong. This is stopping me. Some of you, I know you want to be generous. You can't because of debt, just get out of it as quickly as you can and so that you can be free. And then finally, it's fine to make the minimum payments. If you have $6,000 in credit card debt, this is a couple months ago when I look this up and you make the minimum payments, you will pay it off in how many years on average? 25, $6,000, 25 years and assuming you make the minimum payment, never do more, never miss a payment and get charged extra for it, you will pay $16,000 for that $6,000 that you spent. And that's the average, okay? That card debt, just get out, there's the snowball, how many of you heard of the snowball method of paying off debt? So most of you know this. You pay off the smallest debt first, so you have this $100 debt, you pay that off and then you roll what you were paying on the hundred toward that $500 debt and then you pay that off and then you roll what you were paying on the hundred and the 500 on the $8,000 debt until you pay that off. Now if it's a math problem, that is not the right way. I wanted to be a math teacher at one point, this drives mathematicians crazy. If you're a math guy, you say you paid the highest interest rate off first. But here's the problem, it is not a math problem. The reason you're in debt is not because you don't know that 2 minus 3 equals negative 1. Pretty sure you all know that, right? That is not why we get in debt, we get in debt because people manipulate us emotionally and psychologically, and debt is an emotional and mental problem, it's not a math problem. And so this is where the snowball like method of paying off debt understands that it is a psychological and emotional problem to pay off debt. And you get that first $100 debt paid off and you have this little boost. Yes, this is working, you know, and then you get the second debt paid off and you can get that other little boost. Yes, and now I'm tackling the big one that's going to take a while, or there's an even bigger one down the road that's $50,000 and it's got this crazy interest rate or whatever. But if I started with that one, I'd get so discouraged and I don't feel like I'm making progress that I give up and quit. Wisdom, wisdom says have a plan with your money and be like the ants, save for the future. And then finally, giving is a fun essential. Proverbs 11, 24 through 25 says, "Give freely and become more wealthy. Be stingy and lose everything. The generous reprosper, those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed." It's so true. Like generosity is not something that you have to do, it's something you get to do. And again, God models this for us. He is generous to the evil and to the good. He makes it rain on everyone's farm. And so he just models the spirit of generosity that we need to follow in our lives as well. We need to give in ways that don't encourage dependency. In the Old Testament, I wish we had a system like this today. It was gleaning. They said, "When you harvest a field, don't go back and pick up what you missed the first time. You leave that for the orphans and the widows and the poor." So it was a work program that provided for people who didn't have jobs. They still had to get up early. They still had to go out in the field. They still had to do work. And then some, like the story of Ruth, Boaz notices her working hard, and he says to the guys, he's like, "Drop a little for her. Drop her out, and make it a little bit easier." And so just this, and it is. It's important to be a giver in our lives. God has designed most of nature to be generous as well. Anyone who says money can't buy happiness hasn't given away enough yet. I think that's really true. And I don't know who Alex Hormozi is and if he stole that from somebody else, but I do know another guy, Jesus, he's a pretty popular speaker in his day. And he said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." And he is definitely onto something there that we need to reflect in our own lives, that generosity toward others. And here's the last thing, and this is, I don't know, I made this one up myself, so I don't know if it's true, but saving creates independence from others. If you save money, you don't have to depend on others so much. You can depend on your own savings, but giving creates dependence on God. Because when you give, you are faced with the question, but what if I need it later? Well, what if, and you really, the only way to answer that question is I got to depend on God. And the truth is, there are different ways of saving as well, which is where Proverbs comes in, "He who blesses others and refreshes others will himself be refreshed." I remember one time talking about, this is just fascinating to me, read a study that women from birth are more likely to be fearful and anxious and worried than men. Now men are afraid of things, men do worry, men get anxious, sometimes it's just about different things. But they have done studies with babies about loud noises. And girl babies are more frightened and startled by the loud noises than men. Why? Because this world is a much scarier, more dangerous place for women than it is for men. That is true. It's unfortunate, but it's true. And so there is a hard wiring, a little bit in women to be just a little bit more fearful. But I was having a conversation with Becky, and she was like, you know, this whole, what happens? But what if we don't have, you know, this whole anxiety? And one of the things I shared with her is, we are rich. Not just in money, we're rich in friends. And if we lost everything we have, you guys would take us in. Ben and Cindy would take Becky, but not me, but, but they would, you know, someone would cares might take me in for a little while, then she'd be like, okay, dad, time to fly the mess, you know, whatever, right? I mean, and to be rich in friends, it really is a wealth. You know, to be able to have people that you can, in fact, I've told some people this, some people have come, and they're people I don't know in the community, and they're like interfaith told us to call you to see if you could help with a bill. And I say, yes, you can help and here's some way we can help, but here's how we do it. And one of the things I stress is come to church, because church is a spiritual family. And you will get, if you get to know people at church, if this becomes your, your spiritual family, if you have friends at church, they will help you and not just financially, although they will, but they'll help you with babysitting and they'll help you with, with other things that you need and with wisdom and with, with insight staff, they'll help you with, with, I see you're dating that guy, Ron, I know that guy. You don't want, oh, he's so sweet. Yeah, now, like they're going to help you. A spiritual family is going to help you in so many ways that money can't. You will be wealthy in ways that are more important than, than your, your savings account or whatever that is. So, so saving creates independence from others. And that is good. It is good to be able to say, you know what, I don't have to constantly be running and asking and, and, but then the other side is complete independence creates pride. I don't need anybody. I got, I got, and you know what, then you start thinking other people should be like that too. I'm not going to help you. You should have saved when you have the chance. I did. And I don't need anybody's help anymore. No, no, no, no. We need to be givers to create that dependence on God as well and realize that life, life is nobody, nobody got here all on their own. And God built that in, right? Some of the animals, they can take care of themselves from birth. Human beings, we are helpless for years. Someone's got to take care of you. And then you know what, the other end of life, it happens again. And it's sad and it's heartbreaking, but it teaches us humility. It teaches us interdependence and not just dependence and independence and it, and it teaches us and gives somebody else an opportunity to love you and to sacrifice for you. You know, this is a different subject, euthanasia. You know, I don't want him to suffer, don't, don't want him to be humiliated and to have someone change his diapers. You know what, it allows someone else to show incredible love. And I don't want that in my life. I don't want someone to show me that kind of incredible love when I get old. But I'll let God make that decision and I'll give whatever God takes me. I'm not going to take that, that choice of myself, generosity. We need to not tell God to stay out of my money, we need to invite him in. Just pray, God, I just thank you for the wisdom of your word. Lord, I just ask that you'd help us to be workers at whatever age or whatever ability we have to serve others with the time and the talents and the abilities you've given us. And Lord, I just, I just pray that you'd help us to, to just have the discipline to know how to save, to ask other people to help us to do that, to God just pray that a lot of people would be taking this financial peace university class online and just growing in that area. And God, help us to be givers. As a church, as individuals, as a nation, as a community, wouldn't it be awesome if somehow Montrose became known as the most generous community in the United States? Who would think out in the farmlands? But God, I just pray that we would become more like Jesus and follow you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
