This is one of six video sessions are designed to help young men understand some of the basics necessary for their lives as providers and churchmen. They cover areas of time and money management and matters of career selection. The teachers in this series are local church members who are. experienced in their areas of instruction.

We're here to talk about stewardship and particularly to speak to younger people to sort of help them begin rightly in the way that they think about money and how they handle themselves with it. And it's a whole matter of stewardship. Here's the problem with stewardship. The stewardship of anything is affected by a lot of things. It's affected by our sin, It's affected by our background, the people we are with.

It's affected by just either wrong or right thoughts that we have swimming around in our minds, pressures in our culture. And so, but it's really important to get started early thinking rightly about stewardship. And I think we both have had experiences that prove that, that things that you hear or are attracted to early on can either be really helpful or really harmful. When I was graduating from graduate school, I had just taken a job with IBM in New York, and I had an uncle who came to me and said, hey, you've got this great job. If I were you, I would buy the biggest house that I can.

I would buy a boat. I would buy the fastest car. And that was his advice for me. And at the same time, my sister came to me and gave me a book by Ron Blue called Master Your Money. So this was a real fork in the road.

In this book, Ron Blue talks about how to manage your finances by God's principles, by what's taught in the Bible. And I'm very thankful she gave me that book. When I first looked at the book, I was kind of disappointed. This is the gift you gave me? And looking back on it, it's been one of the best gifts that I was ever given because, as you said, starting out down a wrong path or being given wisdom from the world which says, buy the biggest car, buy the biggest boat, buy the fastest car, buy the biggest house you can get, is just not good advice.

And so I'm very thankful that she gave me that book. Yeah, that's so important. As a young businessman, I remember particularly, there was a man that I ended up in business with, I was so thankful for him. Because he introduced me to a lot of really right thinking about finance, running a company, the purpose of everything. And those times are real helpful.

I pray maybe this series could be helpful to somebody in that sense. Our whole goal tonight, our whole goal in this session is try to give some details of what it means to be a faithful steward. 1 Corinthians 4 says it's required of stewards that they be found faithful. So we're going to try to capture that. And It's all in the whole context of personal finances.

So why discuss personal finances in the whole context of faithful stewardship? Well, the Bible has over 2, 300 verses on money alone. So if you, just to try to put that into context, the book of Psalms has 2460 verses, 2461 I think. I looked it up yesterday. So if you took all the verses on money and put them into one book, it would be the second largest book in the Bible.

The average size of a chapter in the Bible is 26 verses. So if you took these 2, 350 verses and put them into average-sized chapters, That would be 90 chapters. And so, the Bible says a lot about money, and Jesus Christ spoke about money more than almost any other subject. So, if God has this much to say about money, we should pay attention. Amen.

It would be a wonderful study just to itemize those various things. I mean, we know the Bible says that money is blinding, that the love of money can cause you to be pierced with many a pain. It's also a blessing. So there are so many different categories and contours of Scripture helping us to deal with money and what to do with it. You know, why money?

There are many reasons and those verses would reveal them. I've often thought that God has given us money to teach us something, and that is that God provides. For most of us, God has provided. Often we haven't been able to see beyond a paycheck, you know, particularly when you first get married, you know, you're so poor. And that money and the lack of it in your pocket is a proof of God's faithfulness.

He does own the cattle on the Thousand Hills, and he does take care of his people. So money is put there for us as a sign for many, many things, and one of those is just a sign of his faithfulness. Now let's talk about why God has so much to say about money. So I think there are spiritual reasons why God talks about money so frequently. Luke 16 11 says, if therefore you are not faithful in the use of worldly wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?

And one thing that leaps out to me about this verse is God is not equating worldly wealth with true riches. These are not the same thing. He says, if you're not faithful in the use of worldly wealth, who will give you the true riches? Right. So there are many spiritual reasons that we should consider what the Bible says about money.

What else? Matthew 6 24, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. So money is a terrible master. Money is a tool.

You have a tool in your tool shed. You have a hammer. You need to go hammer a nail. You grab the hammer, you drive the nail. That's the way we should view money.

But if you allow money to become your master, then you're not going to be able to serve God too. Because God says you can only serve one. Rick, what does it look like to serve mammon? We all have that temptation, and we've had it at different times in our lives. How do you explain what it looks like to serve Mammon?

I've talked with folks who had $100, 000 of credit card debt. Can you imagine that number? And When they get to $100, 000 of credit card debt, they cry uncle. Why didn't they cry uncle at 50? Why didn't they cry uncle at 20?

Or 10 or 5 or not even proceed down the path of just consumer spending. And with that $100, 000 worth of debt, they had nothing to show for it. There wasn't a shiny car in the driveway. It was all consumable things. I think that you can see being a slave to money in the way that you use your finances.

And that language of serving, you know, serving mammon, It implies a relationship. It implies how you relate to that thing. In the scripture that you quoted in Matthew chapter 6, you know, he uses the word serve. You know, I think you talked about this way that we end up serving mammon when we're in such great debt that we have really no flexibility to do anything. And we become the servant of that interest rate, basically.

Right. You know, there are other reasons that the Bible speaks about money and has so much to say about it. Let's talk about some of the practical reasons. Sure. Well, God has given us a blueprint for handling money in the Bible.

Isaiah 55, 8 and 9 says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. So, God's thoughts are much higher than ours on this subject. He has given us a blueprint in the Bible for us to follow. And we should pay attention to what he has to say as the sermon from this Sunday preached on this verse.

And Mr. Horne quoted, remember, I'm the stupid one in comparison to God. And he's talking about all of us. All of us are stupid in comparison to God. So, since God has given us this blueprint, we should pay attention to it.

The nearest star is 491 billion feet away from us. And he was saying, that's at least the difference between your wisdom and God's wisdom. So listen to God, humble yourself, order your life under his authority. And maybe, I mean, that's the practical reason why we should listen to the over 2, 000 verses of Scripture about money is because they are wiser than our thoughts, and they're meant to actually change our thoughts that we might pick up in any kind of background that we have, any kind of culture that we have, any kind of ideas we've cooked up on our own or learned from some consultant like your early consultant, you know, was trying to teach you to buy the biggest house of the baddest car, all this kind of stuff. You know, the consultants, The consultants should always be compared with the Word of God.

One of the most fundamental issues in the handling of money is the ownership of it. So let's talk about that. We talk about, in normal conversation, that's my money, or that's his money, or that's their money. But that kind of language can be confusing. Right, and how we view the money in our bank account or how we view the the paycheck that we get every two weeks says a lot.

So just for the folks here in the room, I'm just curious, how would you view the money in your bank account? Is it 100% yours? Anyone willing to raise their hand on that one? Or would you say it's 90% yours and it's 10% God's? Well, I'll go ahead and tell you the correct answer is that it's 100% God's.

So, but the question really is, we know that's the right answer, but is that really the way that we act when we're making spending decisions, making decisions on debt, making decisions on budgeting or saving? Are we really viewing it as 100% gods? Or are we viewing it as, well actually that's all 100% mine because I tithed on the amount that's there. So the rest of it's mine. And that really brings us back to that that principle of stewardship in that we that we quoted at the very beginning you know it's it's for stewards to be found faithful.

We don't own it we're stewards. Stewards don't own what they are controlling. They are managing it for the greatest benefit of the owner. It's hard for us to see ourselves that way. We want the money to just serve ourselves And so it's a big transition for us to make that God does own it all.

And really, I mean, how does God view anything? Or how do we view anything? How do you view your mind? Is it yours? Your eyes, your tongue, your feet, the places you go.

Who owns you? Who owns every part of your body? Of course, you know, God comes to us and says, you know, follow me, be my servant. And that means that he owns it all. And money ends up revealing who owns us.

And, you know, I think we can all recognize that there's always a struggle with our own will. And it's something that you are faced with every time you get a paycheck or you have some kind of infusion of cash. Who owns that? And every time you get some, it should just be a reminder of who owns that. And that's really the beginning of the whole matter of wisdom with money.

Let's talk about how the Bible explains this because there's a different terminology that the Bible uses about this matter of stewardship and who owns it. And we've talked about ownership of it. And for example, Psalm 24, 1 says, the earth is the Lord's and all it contains. So that should set that to rest. God owns all of that.

But there are other matters too. Let's talk about his control of money, Because the Bible actually pretty boldly proclaims that it's a God that controls the money. Right. In Daniel 4, verse 34, Nebuchadnezzar has lost his mind. He's been out in the fields eating grass like an animal because God chose to put him down because of pride.

And here Nebuchadnezzar says, I praise the Most High. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, what have you done? So God is clearly in control of every event. It is amazing to think that God moves money around.

He does it in different ways. He causes the economy to rise and fall. He causes various markets to undergo fluctuations. And what this passage of Scripture teaches is that it's God alone who controls the value of money, the value of real estate, the value of what you do, and he is absolutely in masterful control of it all. And so we should never really worry about those kinds of things because God is in control.

You know, God has his finger on the stock market and he's moving it wherever he desires. He's doing it for his own glory. And so control is one of the ways that God demonstrates his ownership of the money. And you know, Solomon in Proverbs says, you know, money is like a bird, it just flies away. And God's in control of that.

And God causes the ebb and flow of wealth in order to teach his people things. Sometimes it's to teach them about their foolishness and their sin that got them into their financial trouble. Sometimes it's just to teach them that He is their provider. Your job is not your provider. The nation state that you live in is not your provider.

God is your provider. So God's control of money is instructive to us to teach us that He does own everything. And there's also the whole matter of provision. We often experience fear of lack of provision. And money's design is to help us understand the source of our provision.

Matthew 6 33 says, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." So not only does he own everything, he's in control of every event, and he promises to provide for our needs. You know, fear of loss of money is probably one of the greatest fears that people carry with them. And that dull ache can follow you around. If you don't understand that God owns it, that God controls it, and He actually disperses it according to His own will. And so we can be at peace.

He's promised to His children, I will never leave you or forsake you. And so we can always rest that God's in control. It's difficult because we make so many mistakes. We're greedy, we're self-serving, we misuse our money, and so we receive the natural punishment from that. But God is so kind that he even uses our foolishness in order to glorify himself.

You know, if we've used our funds foolishly or selfishly, then something difficult might happen. And as a result, we're driven back to God, and He reminds us to follow Him, and He continues to extend His care for us, even if we don't have anything left. You know, we've talked about God's role with money. Let's talk about our role because there are these two aspects of the handling of money. God's sovereign hand and our responsibility.

That's the...it's not contradictory, It's the way God wired the world. But I'd like to sort of turn the discussion to our responsibility now and try to detail some of the particular matters of stewardship and how it's done. We want this to be very practical for people, and so I'd like to try to itemize as much as we can for the practical matters of stewardship and how it's done. Yeah, so as we talked about before, our responsibility is to be a faithful steward. I don't think we can emphasize that too much.

First Corinthians 4.2 is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. In looking at the parable of the talents, we see that the master gives five talents to one servant. He gives two talents to another servant, and then he gives one talent to the third servant, and he goes away. And when he comes back, he finds the two of the servants have been faithful. They've basically doubled the number of talents that they were given.

But the one servant had just taken it and buried it. He did nothing with it. He had no plan for how to deal with the resources. We'll talk a little bit about having a plan later. But Matthew 25, 30, This was the response of the of the Lord when he came back.

He says, he cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness. They will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So we see that there are severe consequences if you're not a good steward. And here the whole picture is multiplying what you've been given, increasing. The faithful steward was the one who increased it, and we often, because we've kind of grown up in a Marxist oriented mindset, that it's actually wrong to increase.

You know, you should be decreasing. Get poorer and poorer and poorer. That's the whole Marxist mindset is that wealth is distributed so that everybody's you know at the same level of poverty Christianity is different Christianity really promotes the idea of bearing fruit. And so part of stewardship is to consider how you might increase what God has given you. And it's a godly thing to do that.

And of course, this is also cast as a spiritual principle for bearing fruit spiritually but he uses this physical example and he does that for a purpose. And that purpose is that God's people would look at the things that God has given them and Multiply them not to keep them the same don't keep anything the same not your mind the same Not your capabilities that God gave you don't keep those the same Multiply everything for God's glory that you've been given. So expansion is actually good when it comes out of a heart of obedience. When it's just to glorify yourself, then it becomes a completely different thing. But God desires stewardship to include diligence for the multiplication of what you've been given.

And I think one of the things that we should be challenging young people to think about is how do you multiply what God has given you? How do you improve it? That's the whole matter of taking dominion. And you know Christians should not be like the Marxists. We should be people who are thinking about how do we expand what we've been given in every area of life.

In our church life, in our family life, in our financial life, everything, and that's the whole mentality of bearing fruit. And if we're not, well, we're thrown into outer darkness. And of course He's speaking of the heart that really just desires to glorify Himself. That's the heart of the problem with the unfaithful steward. He's just thinking about himself.

He's not thinking about his master. Well let's talk about debt. We happen to live in a nation where, well, there's a lot of debt. And there's confusion about what the Bible says about debt. I mean, you have received some counsel early on in your life, rack up as much Debt as you can.

So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the specific words of scripture that speak of it and what might be extremes on either side. Debt is discouraged. Romans 13, 8. Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Another one, Proverbs 22, 7, debt is slavery. Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender." In the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 28, we see a lack of debt is a result of obedience to God. God is speaking to the nation of Israel and he says, if you will diligently obey the Lord your God, all these blessings shall come upon you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. Also in Deuteronomy 28, we see the reverse, that having debt is a result of disobedience to God. And so, if you look at our country, we were a lender nation.

We were the largest lender nation for many years, But that all changed in 1986 when we first became a debtor nation. And we are now, we are the world's largest debtor nation. And so you have to look at, have we been obedient to God? Yeah, the Bible has quite a bit to say about that, and I think you've stated it well. I mean, I think, first of all, debt is not absolutely prohibited in Scripture.

At the same time, God warns about the dangers of debt, like in Proverbs 22, verse 7. But God also regulates the processes and the relationships in which debt is engaged. Like, for example, in Deuteronomy 29, God's people were instructed to lend money to strangers. And God was regulating that. In Deuteronomy 15, 1 and Deuteronomy 31, 10, you find that same thing.

You find that God's people were instructed not to engage in usury with their brothers. Exodus 22 25 makes that very clear. So lending in debt was lawful only under certain conditions. Limits were placed on collateral, actually, the taking of collateral for a debt in Deuteronomy 24 verses 10 and 11. So the Bible has a lot to say about debt.

It can come from unwise presumption, it can cause you to become surety for a friend which you should not do, you know co-signing for loans. The Bible speaks of honoring your vows and Ecclesiastes 5.5, so if you have gotten into debt, honor your vows, pay it off, Don't claim the bankruptcy laws. Fulfill what you have promised. We should ask the question of motives. Is it lack of satisfaction for what God has given that has caused us to get into debt.

Because the motivations matter, and often that's the reason. We're not content with what we have, as the Apostle Paul said. Paul said, I've learned to be content in abundance or in privation. And that's the right way to think about abundance and privation, to be content with what we have. My personal opinion about debt is that where recourse is covered by the capital, then it can be a blessing.

I remember one time my son and I were driving around with a real estate investor around here many years ago. I think he was maybe eight or nine years old. And we were looking at different properties and my son was in the backseat and I turned to my friend and I said, so what do you have to tell my son about debt? And he said, debt's like a fire. In the fireplace it can warm your house, but too much of it can burn it to the ground.

Of course he was talking about debt that's covered by capital, you know, by an asset And I don't think he was promoting unsecured kind of debt. That's just an opinion. I know people have a lot of different opinions about that, but I think it's very clear what the Bible says. Debt is dangerous. I think you should just absolutely let that sink in.

And beyond that, you might have to suffer some pretty severe consequences if you get into debt. Anything else you want to say about debt? You mentioned presumption. James 4, 13-15 says, Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit. Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow, for what is your life?

It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that. That's the example that we see a lot of times with debt is there's presumption. Presumption is my job will continue, I'll continue to get raises, I'll buy this real estate, real estate will continue to appreciate. Everybody thought that until 2006 when the when the real estate market crashed And then they found out that real estate doesn't just go straight up.

It can come down. And so when there's presumption and you buy the bigger house expecting to get a raise, you're presuming upon God. And James is telling us not to do that. Rick, there are always two big issues that face us and we all have to deal with it. First of all, spending.

Everybody has to figure out how much they're going to spend. And then income. And the delta between those two things, or the lack of delta, is always the problem. So let's talk about spending. What are some of the most important things that particularly young people need to understand about spending.

Okay. So for the folks that are here, if you could walk away with one practical thing, this is it. Spend less than you earn. That's it. That's this whole talk.

This is the best you can do. That's the most creative. This is the most simple thing. Spend less than you earn. You're not the U.S.

Government. You don't have the ability to create money out of air. Spending more than you earn is only sustainable for a short time. And it's very dangerous. You don't have to be a math whiz.

I know someone who would max out a credit card and pay the minimum balance every month. So the amount of interest that was being charged was more than the minimum balance that he was paying. And he thought he was really putting one over on the credit card companies. Look at this, I'm paying the minimum amount. Well, if you add nothing to your credit card balance, the amount of debt you have is continuing to grow due to the interest.

So this guy was not a rocket scientist. He didn't even know basic math. So it's amazing what decisions people will make when their God is money, and things are their God. What else? I mean, that's so pivotal, spend less than you make.

We've talked about stewardship, and God owns everything, So every spending decision becomes a stewardship decision. Should I spend this money on this item? Should I give to this missionary? Should I spend my money here? Every decision you make becomes a stewardship decision.

Probably, I would say the second most important thing I could tell anyone about spending is to track your spending. Understand where your money goes. If you do this for a month and you find out that your $9 lattes at Starbucks have cost you $250 over the course of a month, then maybe you'll start making your coffee at home. So within the charts that I have, I have a link to a chart from Crown Ministries, which is called a 30-day diary. You can go to crown.org and you can search for 30-day diary.

You can print out a sheet of paper. And I've got a few here for the folks in the crowd. But on that, it's just a piece of paper and it helps you itemize and track what money you're spending on your groceries or transportation, rent, various items. And At the end of the month, you can total it up and you can figure out where did my money go this month. You know, you talked about credit cards a couple minutes ago.

What other advice do you have to young people about the use of credit cards? If you use a credit card, pay it off at the end of the month. So it has to be something where you're not using that to finance something. You already have the money set aside. You have a plan for your spending, and at the end of the month you pay the bill off completely.

Studies show that you spend one third more using credit. So for a young person, I would encourage them, use cash. You're going to spend a third less. Because if you go to the grocery store and you only have $100, you can't walk out with $130 worth of stuff. If you have a credit card, when I go in and I see the ice cream, I want to throw more ice cream in the bucket.

But you can't do that if you're going with cash. Talk about the envelope system that people often use. Right, so an envelope system is a way that you can budget. If you have a budget for groceries of, say, $300 for this month, because you're going to be eating a lot of rice and beans, but you take that $300 and you put it into an envelope, and when that envelope is empty, Well, you're done for the month. It's a way that you can keep yourself from overspending in certain areas.

Make sure you rethink those lattes. It does, yeah. Let's talk about budgeting. What advice do you have about budgeting? Well, you should have one.

You should have a budget. A lot of people view a budget as a nuisance. This is hindering me. I can't spend in any way that I want, but that's really the wrong way to look at it. A budget is simply a plan.

If you're not, if you don't have a budget, then you have no plan. Would you go to war having no plan? Would you undertake any major endeavor without planning? No. So budgeting is just simply, this is a plan for how I'm going to save, I'm going to spend, how I'm going to invest.

Again on Crown Ministry's website, crown.org, there's something called a Family Budget Guide, and it gives a lot of information regarding how you can go about setting up a budget. But the first step for being able to set up a budget is knowing where your money has been going. That goes back to the tracking you're spending that we talked about earlier. Let's move from budgeting and go to saving. While debt is really common in America, saving is all that common.

Not so much, yes. So the average person in the U.S. Saves less than 1% of their income. And the statistics that I've seen say that 35% of all adults have no savings at all. So saving just means that you're going to forgo an expenditure today so that you will have something that you can spend in the future.

And really this is difficult for a lot of people. It's delayed gratification. Now within my own family I see savers and I see spenders. I happen to be a saver. My wife happens to be a spender.

But we complement each other well. I think because of me, she's probably a little bit less of a suspender, and because of her, I'm probably a little bit less of a saver. And perhaps you can be pinching those pennies a little too hard. And so the mix has worked well for our family. But back to what I was saying earlier, delayed gratification can be difficult.

But let's look at what Scripture has to say about saving. Proverbs 21, 20, the wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets. There's a great example in scripture on saving, and that's Joseph in Genesis 41. Pharaoh has a dream of the seven fat cows and seven skinny cows, the seven fat heads of grain and the seven skinny heads of grain. Joseph gets called in to interpret the dream And he tells him, there's going to be seven good years, seven plentiful years, and then we're going to have seven years of famine.

And so you need to take 20%, set it aside, and save it for those years of famine. And that's what Joseph did. Parents understand this because you often notice that children come out of the womb that way. Some of them just come out savers and some of them come out spenders. Some of them cannot keep any money that they get, and others, you know, they just hoard it and they become the richest people in the family.

So how do you deal with that in a family? You know, with my own children, I can see several spenders, But one of my younger ones is a saver. He's saved up quite a bit. I think we need to educate our children on these kinds of things. That's something that I didn't really have an opportunity to learn as a kid.

I saw my parents model it, but it wasn't something that they specifically sat down and talked about. I saw my sisters, both of them were spenders, if they got a dollar, they ran out and spent it back when you could get something for a dollar. But not me, I would hold onto it tight and save it. But I think talking with your children and explaining these principles to them will really help them going forward in the future. And probably helping them understand this whole matter of serving God or mammon is helpful to both kinds, to both the saver and the spender.

Because that's the issue. I mean, you can be a saver and be serving mammon. You can be a spender and be serving mammon. And so, you know, how do you help your children understand what wisdom is and to help them abandon their foolishness? And those over 2, 000 verses about money are probably really helpful.

So children should hear the scriptures on the matter because they come into the world with all kinds of different inclinations and passions and those can overcome them if they don't have the Word of God. The best thing a parent can do is to teach the Word of God to their children so that they're thinking rightly So they can identify whether they're a saver or a spender. Are they serving God or mammon? So that their affections are being shaped by God and that they understand that it does belong to him. And the saver or the spender has to somehow relate to that issue, that it all belongs to him, whether they fall off one side or the other side of the horse.

Let's talk about giving, Because the Bible says a lot about giving. They're serving, saving. Now let's talk about giving. Giving with a proper attitude is critical. 1 Corinthians 13, 3, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, And though I give my body to be burned but have not love, it profits me nothing.

This is something that I would do with my children when I would come home from work. I would bring a bag of Skittles and I would give them 10 Skittles. And then I would ask, ask for one bag. And what I'm doing there is just monitoring their heart. Are they giving it grudgingly?

Or are they giving it at all? No, this is my schedule, go get your own. I did have my own. I just wanted to see what their heart was. And so I think that this is, God does this same thing with us.

He's monitoring our heart based on what is our attitude towards giving. Yeah, it's interesting in that passage in 1 Corinthians 13, he says, it profits me nothing if I give everything I have. And he takes us down into the motivations of the heart. It matters why. And again, I think it takes us back to that fundamental principle that God owns it all.

Why? Why are you doing what you're doing? And what he's saying is that giving is unprofitable if there's no love in it. In other words, the motive matters. The motive of love is what matters.

So now you have money and love brought together into the whole matter of giving. And it's not enough to give. There has to be love. So the key to giving is love. And if someone would give properly, then they would love properly.

The fundamental problem with a lot of things that we do is that it's not rooted and grounded in love. There are other reasons that we do what we do. And here in this passage, you have giving that's connected with love. What else? What else do we learn from the Bible about giving?

Proverbs 3.9 says, honor the Lord with your possessions and with the firstfruits of all your increase. So the Bible is telling us that we need to give to God first. It's not, well, I'll get to the end of the month and see what I have left, and I'll give God the leftovers. Here, Proverbs is telling us, give to the Lord the first fruits of all your increase. So you have the food envelope, the rent envelope, the car repair envelope, the bottomless pit, and you have the giving envelope.

Right. And you should do that right at the beginning. Yes. Not after the car breaks down, before the car breaks down. Why is that?

It's showing a trust in God. It's showing that he's your provider. He's in control of every event, as we've discussed. So am I going to trust in him that I can give this skittle back to him? He's got his own bag.

He owns everything. He doesn't need us to give him any money. He already owns it all. He's just checking the attitude of our heart. Anything else you want to bring out about the Scriptures teaching on giving?

Two more verses. Malachi 3, 8 through 10. Here, a lack of giving is considered robbery by God. The verse says, Will a man rob God, yet you have robbed me. But you say, In what way have we robbed you?

In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me now in this, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the window of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough for you to receive it. You know, in this Malachi chapter three passage that you read, you know, one of the ideas here is that, you know, when you rob from God, He takes from you. That's what God does.

And, you know, He makes your pockets with holes, and it evaporates. So the whole element of trusting God in our stewardship is really critical. Give us some nuts and bolts about saving and giving, all these different categories that we've been dealing with. What's some sort of street-level advice that you have for people on these matters? So there are some practical steps that I would encourage each person to look into and to try to start to follow.

These are from Dave Ramsey. They're called Baby Steps. This is, you're already tracking your spending. You have a budget and you're following your budget. Where do you go from there?

So his recommendation is you save a thousand dollars in an emergency fund because your transmission is going to go out, your air conditioner is going to need to be repaired, your refrigerator is going to go out, you're going to have these emergencies that pop up. And If you're following your budget and you have just a miniscule amount left over, one of these emergencies can come in and just wipe you out. And then that's where you, that's where people turn to credit cards. Okay, I've got this emergency, I've got to have a new refrigerator, so I'm going to put it on a credit card and I'll pay it off when I can. And that is just a recipe for disaster.

The next step, he suggests, is to pay off all debt except for the house. So we're talking about car loans, student loans, credit card debt, any consumer debt, pay all that off, and in a few slides from now I'll talk more about specifics on how to get out of debt. The next step would be get three to six months worth of expenses saved. So this is critical for if you lose your job and you now have six months of expenses in which you can pull from in order to be able to tie you over until you can find more work. His recommendation is invest 15% of household income into retirement.

Following that, college funding for children. Start up a savings plan for setting aside money for your children to go to college. Then pay off the house early, making additional payments on your mortgage. You know, if you have a 30-year mortgage and you make an additional hundred or two hundred dollar a month payment to principal, you can knock years and years off of that, knock it down to 20 years or 18 years, and you save yourself an awful lot of money and interest. And then the last step that he gives is to build wealth and to give.

Now, the giving there, as we've already established, giving should be first. But here, I believe what he's talking about is giving additionally, giving above and beyond. So Rick, you've seen a lot of people over the years get into debt, get out of debt. What are some of the things that you've heard people tell you that were the most helpful things that they were able to implement in their financial life. The first thing regarding how to get out of debt is to pray.

God is in control of every event. He owns all things. Pray and ask him to help you get out of debt. There's a great example in scripture on this from 2 Kings chapter four. This widow comes to Elisha and says, the creditor is coming to take my two sons as payment for this, as slaves, as payment for this debt that we owe because her husband is dead, she's a widow.

Elisha tells her, what do you have? She said all we have is this little jar of oil. And so he instructs her to go get every vessel that she can find. Borrow from the neighbors. Get as many as you can find.

And so they go into the room and just like the loaves and the fishes, God multiplied the oil here. And she pours out the oil into these vessels that she has, and the result is that she can now take this oil and sell it to pay for her debt, and then Elisha tells her, live off the rest. The rest is going to be her income. So God multiplies the oil for the widow, and the amount of oil that was provided was only limited by the number of vessels that she could find. She found every available vessel, and she filled every one of them.

That's really amazing. You know, God honors the slightest amount of faith as he did with that woman. And you know, I like the way you are saying start with prayer. Start with bringing it before God. And you know, bring it all under the authority of God, and then cry out to Him and see what He might do.

Kind of like with that passage in Malachi that you quoted, you know, God will open up the windows of heaven and begin with prayer. What else? If you're trying to get out of debt, I would say the next most important thing is no new debt. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. You're just making the hole bigger.

So stop digging. We've already talked about a budget. Establish a written budget. After that, you can list out your assets. You can sell assets, use the money from that to pay down debt.

List your liabilities. By having a list of your liabilities in front of you, you can see, well, I've got this credit card at 18%, I've got this car loan at 5%, I've got this student loan at 3%. Focus on the highest interest debts first. Knock those out. Another thing that you can do is consider a radical change in your lifestyle.

You don't have to drive a brand new car. You can drive a beater and save a lot of money. I know a guy that sold his 3, 500 square foot house, four bedrooms, three baths, and moved his family into a little 1, 200 square foot home. And he had a big family. They were crowded but by doing that they were able to get out of debt.

It was a radical lifestyle change. We talked earlier about use cash and not credit because you spend a third more if you use credit and then And then the last thing is don't give up. You didn't get into deep debt overnight. It took you time to accumulate it. It's going to take you time to get out of it, unless God chooses to do a miracle like you did for this widow and just right now provide you with oil to get you out of debt.

So Eric, we've talked about lots of different issues from stewardship to debt to spending to giving and all these kinds of things. So you've got a young person sitting in front of you and you want to give them just the top things they've got to grasp. What are those? What's sort of the consolidated list of what do I do now? Right.

Be a good steward. We talked about it. It is required for a steward to be found faithful. Be a good steward. Next, be a doer of the word.

James 1-22 says, be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. As we talked about, there's 2350 verses in the Bible regarding finances. You need to go read those. You need to go see what the Bible has to say about it, and then be a doer of the word. I've got a list of online resources that someone can take a look at from Crown Ministries, which is crown.org, Dave Ramsey, which is daveramsay.com, and then Ron Blue, which is masteryourmoney.com.

That was the name of the book my sister gave me when I graduated from college that turned out to be such a great gift. Amen. Well, Rick, I pray God gives us a generation of both spenders and savers who understand why they're doing what they're doing, that they bring all of their resources under the authority of God and see themselves not as owners but as stewards to try to deploy that resource that God gave them for God's glory to please Him in their saving and their spending and their providing. You know, we didn't even really talk about the use of funds for rejoicing that the Bible actually promotes quite a bit, but that we would have a generation of young people who don't fall into the traps of the culture that we live in. And there are some really significant traps, a lot of wrong thinking.

And how do we find ourselves with a generation of young people that view themselves as stewards, that view themselves as servants of God in the midst of a wicked and adulterous generation. Money is so blinding, it can be so harmful, and it can be such a blessing. And you know, I appreciate the passages of scripture that you've brought. I think those really help us to define how we ought to think about it. So thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. And let's pray for a generation of stewards. You