Money Matters (part 3)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father in heaven, we are just so thankful to be here this morning to come and to worship you and to be taught from your

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Word, to be reminded of how good you are to us, how faithful you are to us. Lord, we would pray that you would bless each one here, that we would have as our mindset the idea that we would want to glorify you in all that we say and do and even how we think about our money.

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Father, I pray that you would make today a day that we celebrate Christ and him crucified, that we remember him fully and that we put off the things of this world and focus on what you have called us to focus on.

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We pray for your blessing on this time, in Christ's name, amen. Well, you know it's interesting,

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I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, an unbeliever, and I mentioned that I was teaching

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Sunday school about money and he said, well that's interesting and I said, well did you know that Jesus talked more about money than he did about heaven and hell put together and he goes, no

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I didn't know that, you know, so we had a nice discussion and I guess, you know, I kind of took away from that this, that what

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I'm trying to accomplish and what I hope that we get out of this is that we do a lot of things and we say, you know what,

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I wouldn't do that, you know, the old fundamentalist saying don't smoke, don't, or what is it, don't smoke, don't chew, don't go with girls who do, you know, so we tend to think of Christianity as a bunch of things to not do.

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What I hope that we get out of this is what we should do, how we should view our money, how we should think about our wealth, how we should really value what we do with what

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God provides for us, how we should honor him even in financial matters and we've been talking about money, about the love of money, different things, we're kind of building a biblical foundation for what we're going to practically apply but I also will throw out, you know, other practical things, just little hints what we're going to be doing as we go along.

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We'll talk, we'll talk, we'll start getting pretty practical here this morning but I want to talk for a moment about biblical stewardship, biblical stewardship and I'm going to start with a couple of questions.

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I want to ask you to put on your Roman Catholic thinking caps here this morning for a moment.

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Does God require Christians to take a vow of poverty? Well didn't

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Jesus say, sell all that you have and give it to the poor? Didn't he say, from those who have been given much, much is required?

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Well, he may have said something like that but it applied not to money but to theology and to truth.

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But did Jesus say, sell all you have and give it to the poor? Yes. So is that what we're to do and if not, why not?

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What's that? And Fred hits it right on the head because it's, money was an obstacle for that man because it was.

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And it can be an obstacle for many people but it's not necessarily an obstacle for everyone. And, you know, here, let's put it another way.

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Does selling all that you have and giving it to the poor, does it make you more holy? I mean,

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I think there are practical things. Let's say that someone had a particular object or a particular, particular amount of money or something that really was an obstacle to them.

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Well then I would say, another principle applies and that's, if something causes you to stumble, what?

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Just keep focusing on it. No, you know, cut it off, get rid of it.

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But the Bible doesn't require vows of poverty. The Roman Catholic Church requires it but that's a whole other topic.

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Does the Bible teach that Jesus was poor? I mean, after all, he had no place to lay his head.

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You know, it seemed like he was a wandering itinerant pastor, probably had to, he was homeless.

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He had everything he needed and, you know, the opposite of this is what? You know, the prosperity teaching where we get into, you know, he had a garment that had no hem which infinitely valuable and he had advancement.

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He had no place to lay his head but that's because he had advancement. I mean, if you ever watch TBN, you already know all that stuff and if you have, watch

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TBN and repent. So, I mean, those are just a couple of myths that are out there, you know,

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Christians and money. You either have to give it all away so that you can emulate Jesus or whatever.

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You know, the truth is that the Bible doesn't really tell us that he was rich, doesn't tell us that he was poor.

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I mean, if we were to look at it and we'll just look at this briefly, we would understand that he was probably what we would consider working class or middle class.

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By the way, what I haven't talked about a whole lot is most of this material that I'm rereading a book called

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Whose Money, I had to think about it for a minute, Whose Money Is It Anyway by John MacArthur.

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And so, I'm taking a lot of his principles and reformatting them and reorganizing them and that's kind of what we're doing.

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So, he was a builder. You know, we often heard carpenter but carpenters weren't just guys who went and hammered things together.

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They were involved in general construction and other things. They worked with all sorts of building materials from brick to wood.

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So, Jesus would have done a lot of those different kind of construction things. But getting back to that, you know, before he became a minister full -time, went into full -time ministry.

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But from the beginning, talking about stewardship again, from the beginning God gave man, generically, stewardship over the earth and its contents.

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Let's look at Genesis 1. Genesis 1, and again I forget, I don't have to turn there.

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If it'll make somebody feel better, I will. Genesis 1 verses 27 to 29, and would someone read that please?

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Yes, pretty. This raises up all kinds of issues when we think about, you know, the green movement.

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Maybe you all at home have a copy of the Green Bible. But look at the language there.

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Fill the earth and subdue it. That sounds like pretty powerful language.

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Have dominion over the fish. You know, so for any folks that are faithfully sending their membership dues to PETA, this kind of sounds like God says, listen, there's an order to things.

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There's mankind and there's animal life. They are not on an equal plane.

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You know, part of the problem you would have if you say, well, I, you know, I think the Bible opens the door to evolution.

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Well, there are all sorts of problems with that, but this would be one of them. Because if you believe in an evolutionary process, then you believe that somehow, you know, things just kind of come about.

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Maybe you believe that God superintended the process, whatever. But ultimately you wind up with something where, why is it that man has a soul?

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Why is it that man is an image bearer of God and nothing else in the Bible is discussed that way?

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No plant, no flora or fauna. I just wanted to throw that phrase in there. No flora or fauna, no animal, nothing is given the same respect, the same kind of dignity that human beings are.

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Not a single one. So if it comes down to, you know, a dog or a person,

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I mean, I, no one loves dogs more than me, but when I see those commercials, you know, where they say 10 ,000 dogs a day are put to death in Mexico city.

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Okay. I, you know, that's painful, but there are kids starving in Mexico city.

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So, you know, dogs aside, I feel bad for the kids. The kids are the image bearers, not the dogs.

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We are to be stewards of everything. We are in charge of everything, but that doesn't mean that everything has equal value.

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Listen to what MacArthur says. He says, we are to harness all of earth's power, beauty, productivity and rich capabilities.

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It is here to be exploited, studied, cultivated, tamed, used and enjoyed. Amen. He says the sin is not in enjoying the earth's bounty.

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The sin is in overindulgence and waste, flaunting your wealth and engaging in a self -centered, compassionless consumption.

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I mean, if all you think about is how to please yourself, how to get more, how to do more with what you have, then you're not thinking rightly.

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It is a stewardship. Everything that God has given us is a stewardship. In other words, something that we're going to be held accountable for.

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Now let's talk about how we are to obtain our wealth, how we are to get it.

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It's pretty interesting these days to watch how people think, because this being the political season, we're seeing more and more of this work its way out when people think that they're entitled to things.

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But how are we to obtain our wealth? What does the Bible say about it? It gives us a four -letter word that a lot of people don't like.

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Work. Work. Let's look at Exodus 20. Who knows what's in Exodus 20?

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The Ten Commandments. I don't know why. You know, in seminary it's like you have to remember different chapters.

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In Exodus 20, I had the hardest time remembering it was the Ten Commandments. And then for some reason I just focused on the 20 and somehow that translated to Ten Commandments.

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I don't know. Twenty -gauge shotgun, Ten Commandments. But Exodus 20, verses 9 and 10.

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And if somebody would read that please. Now keep in mind this is the Ten Commandments. I'm not a

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Sabbatarian and that's not the point I want to illustrate. But let's look at verses 9 and 10.

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Go ahead, Eric. Okay, so six days of work.

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How many of us work six -day work weeks? Not very many of us. Why is that?

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What's that? We deserve the weekend. Everybody's working for the weekend.

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For those of you who are children of the 80s, young adults of the 80s

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I guess. Why else do we have five -day work weeks? Or if you're from Europe, four -day work weeks or three -day work weeks.

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What's that? Unions. That is exactly right.

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And one of the main purposes of having a five -day work week or like in France I think they have a maximum 35 -hour a week work week one of the main reasons they do that.

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Does anybody know why they do that? Why they limit the number of hours you can work? Because if everybody works less then more people have jobs.

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That's exactly right. I mean if we all worked, you know if the maximum number of hours that a police officer for example could work was 20 hours a week, that would be a lot more donuts eaten.

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But you'd also need a lot more police officers, right? You'd need double the amount.

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So if you cut down the amount of hours then you need more workers and so it keeps everybody somewhat happy.

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But then what's the flip side of that? If you have fewer hours that you work then you have more hours to do what?

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To have leisure which translates into to commit sin. So one of the things that in fact

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I think if we were to go back a hundred years and we were to go into the insane asylums and stuff like that we would find that there's a very small percentage of people who had serious mental problems.

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Today it's like everybody is clinically depressed. I don't mean everybody but it just seems like you know you walk up to five people and one of them is going to say that they've been diagnosed as bipolar clinically depressed.

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And I think that part of the problem is because we don't work enough. We have so much time to think and to contemplate instead of just worrying about what?

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Surviving. Eating. And God's design is for us to exhaust ourselves in work and then to have one day to kind of catch our breath before we start all over again.

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MacArthur writes this and I thought this was a great quote. If you want to be poor chase the wind or follow after unproven schemes and irrational dreams.

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Go after the get rich quick scheme. You know there's something that people used to believe and I think it's gone out of the vernacular and that is if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

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You know when Bernie Madoff was finally caught with his Ponzi scheme and if you don't know what a

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Ponzi scheme is I'll explain it briefly. Social Security. No. A Ponzi scheme is where the original investors get in on kind of like the ground floor and they get paid too much and the people will come behind him and keep investing.

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Well they kind of keep, you keep paying them off too and everybody's happy for a while until all of a sudden there aren't enough recruits to support all the people above it and the whole house of cards collapse and that's what happened with Bernie Madoff.

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Well why was it that Bernie Madoff's house of cards collapsed? What was it that got so many people to invest with him in other words?

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Why did he have so many people and so much money invested with him? Because he was promising results that nobody else got.

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He was promising consistently 10 -12 % return. It didn't matter what the economy was doing, Bernie Madoff was making money.

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I watched this guy on TV, there was an advertisement and he says, you know, during the Great Recession when the bottom fell out of the market, all my investors were safe.

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They made money. And I'm just like, okay, maybe that's true. But here's what I do know, without a doubt, if something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.

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Nobody ever in the investment world ever is perfect or right all the time.

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It's just impossible. Absolutely impossible. And if somebody tells you something that's a guaranteed way to get rich, to whatever, and it sounds easy, run the other way.

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Now, we will talk about in the future about ways that we should think about investing, about how we should look at it.

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And by the way, I don't think the stock market is gambling. It is gambling to do something like,

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I would equate day trading with gambling. What is day trading? Anybody know?

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Brian? Flipping stocks. You know, I buy 3 ,000 shares of Starbucks today because I'm rich.

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And hoping that I'm going to make a profit, you know, in a few hours. I've got a hot tip that, you know, their new breakfast chicken wings are going to go through the roof, you know, something like that.

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So, people do things like that. I mean, I knew a guy who basically was trading currencies and just about went broke.

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The problem is, you know, it's like this. Years and years ago, long before I was a believer,

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I still, true confessions, how many of you have ever been to Las Vegas? I drove through.

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Literally drove through on my way to my sacred hajj to Salt Lake City. And I put a quarter in the slot machine.

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That is the sum total of my Las Vegas, you know, casino losses in my life, 25 cents.

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But, you know, when I was early in my sheriff's department career, guys would go, you know, you can make a lot of money playing craps, this dice game, you know, and they started explaining it to me and I said,

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I don't really care. Here's what I know. When you go to Las Vegas and you see all those beautiful hotels, here's what you need to think to yourself is, how did those get there?

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They're based on the good odds that we have at the tables while we're sitting there, you know, pushing chips in.

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Oh, really good odds. Look at the buildings. Oh, they comp my hotel. How can they afford to comp your hotel?

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How can they afford to comp your food? How can they afford? They're making money on you, pal. And if they're not making it this time, they'll make it next time.

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They know, you know, it's like gravity. If you throw the ball up in the air, you know, you might, if you throw it up,

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I don't know, a thousand, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times sooner or later, you might break gravity and get to the moon, but I doubt it.

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And gambling is like gravity. What goes up, must come down. So all those kind of things, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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What about government programs? What about government programs?

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By the way, I had a little dispute with one of my family members this week who's still Mormon. And, you know, it was all over Romney for his comment about I don't really care about the poor.

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And I'm just like, I go, listen, you should know better. I don't know how many of you know much about the Mormon Church, you know, solid family life and all this.

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But if you are down and out in the Mormon Church, they have a vast welfare system, a vast welfare system.

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I mean, they will literally come to your house and like drop grocery bags full of everything in it.

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Everything from toilet paper to orange juice to whatever, because they make it all.

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They make it all. And what they require then of people who are on church welfare is to do what?

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Work. It's a strange thought. Because they understand one thing, that work is required and that dignity, self -worth, the idea that you are actually pulling your weight comes from that.

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And I would say that the opposite is true, that if you don't work, you lose all that.

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But let's, you don't have to turn there. Listen to 1 Timothy 5 .8. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

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Now the context there is talking about widows. And it is talking about providing for widows in your own family, but I think the principle goes beyond that.

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The idea that if you, you know, it's no big deal if I don't work because the government will take care of us.

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Or, you know, I don't need to worry about, I'm the night clerk at 7 -Eleven and we get this government program and that program and so I don't need to worry about getting another job, trying to improve my lot in life because the government will take care of me.

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It's wrong. It's wrong from that standpoint. Now does that mean if you fall in hard times you should not accept any government money?

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I'm not saying that. You pay your taxes and everything else. But we need to not think that the government can take the place of personal responsibility.

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Ultimately, you know, we look at it from this standpoint. If from the time

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I'm 20 to the time I'm 60, I sit and maybe it's the best

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I can do and if that's it then that's fine. But if I'm the night clerk, I did work at a 7 -Eleven by the way, which is why

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I joined the army. You know, what does that have to do with it? Well, when

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I was looking at the barrel of a gun and going like this, I thought, you know what, I've had enough of this and I'm going to go join the army.

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So that's what I did. It's not fun being robbed.

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Just a little freebie this morning. But if that's the best you can do then fine, but if you consistently fail to look to improve your lot in life,

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I think you're missing the boat. You need to strive to provide for your family.

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Let's look at that a little bit further. Laziness is sin. Proverbs 13 .4.

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And you know I love these sluggard verses in Proverbs. Listen to this. The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

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I mean, if you expect to get money for nothing, you're probably not going to be successful.

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If you're out there working, then you will... And what also happens? You know, this is a principle that applies...

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I think it's important to teach our kids. If we give them money and expect nothing from them, if we give them cars and expect nothing from them, then how do they treat those things?

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They're worthless. I think not many of you know that I was pretty much a total academic failure.

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I had a... Out of high school, I got a free ride at the University of Southern California.

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I was not a football player. I was not a basketball player. I was poor, and I had good test scores.

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And I spent one entire semester at USC, and people said, well, what was the problem? And I said, well, they had different academic philosophy.

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And they go, oh, yeah, academic philosophy. Yeah, they wanted me to go to class and do my homework and stuff like that, and I didn't really want to do that.

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When I got out of the Army and I started going back to class, and I started paying to go to class, what happened?

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It was crazy. I even got an A in auto shop. What was up with that? Right, exactly.

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What we earn, what we sweat for... I remember telling one young man who was in junior college and paying his own way, you know, and was expressing some amazement that he was doing well there.

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I said, you know, after struggling in high school, I said, it doesn't surprise me because here's what I know. When you think about the floors that you swept, the pizzas that you made, all these kind of things, to pay your way into college, it changes how you view it.

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It changes everything. Work changes our mindset. If we have an investment in something, somehow it becomes far more valuable, and that's just the reality of life.

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Let's look at, please turn to 2 Thessalonians 3 verses 10 to 12, and if I could get somebody to read that, please.

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Yeah, go ahead, Bruce. And again,

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I mean, the application we could make to, you know, the whole idea of the government and stuff like that, and note well, this isn't talking about people who cannot work or who cannot find work.

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This is about people who, what? Won't work. Won't work and would rather spend their time doing other things.

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You know, we talk sometimes about, sorry ladies, about ladies and, you know, part of the curse for them is they want to be, the ladies, the wives want to be in control a lot of times of their homes and yet the

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Bible says submit to your husbands. Why? Because that's, it's part of the fall.

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Eve did not submit to her husband or actually she just kind of exercised authority over him and he submitted and things went, you know, they got tossed out of Eden.

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But for men, the default position is what? When it comes to work, what do men want to do?

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Avoid it. I mean, you'll find, well, and so there are two extremes really.

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Men go into, you know, they just work themselves to the death. But I think for most guys, if you could say, if you could say, you know what,

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I'm going to give you exactly the same pay and you could stay home and, you know, watch Oprah and eat bonbons all day.

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Yeah, you know, football on Saturday and Sunday, they'd be pretty happy. Did you have a comment, Bruce? Okay.

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Yeah, somebody that like has maybe investment income or some other way that they're making the money.

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That's a good question. I wanted to just finish that, this idea and then I'll get back to that in a second.

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But what did God curse Adam with? He said, you know, you're going to work by what? That's how you're going to make your bread is by the sweat of your brow.

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And so just like women don't necessarily want to submit to their husbands, that's why it's commanded.

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Men don't necessarily want to make their bread by the sweat of their brow. They'd rather find some other way to do it.

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Now, to Bruce's question, you know, what about guys who have investment income and therefore don't want to work?

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Well, there's nothing wrong with having a lot of investment, you know, income and, uh, and therefore not having to go work nine to five.

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I would say though that, uh, that man either ought to be involved in some massive amount of ministry or ought to be doing something else because idleness not only is sinful, but I would say idleness is, uh, a gateway to sin.

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You know, the more time we have in our hands that I think the more problematic it becomes, you know, so the

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American dream is what, you know, I'm going to retire at age. Well, I guess the

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French dream is I retire at age 48 and, you know, but, uh, which I guess I would have been retired a few years ago.

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But the American dream is, you know, you retire early, you go to Florida, you collect seashells, all that stuff. And it's just, it's not the biblical perspective.

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I mean, if you look at what the Bible says about retirement, you'll be looking for a long time because it doesn't talk about it.

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But the idea of just not working at all because you've got it all wired, uh, wouldn't be right.

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I mean, we, we, we are created to work as men. And when we don't do that, we're going to find something, uh, less edifying to do.

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So, uh, I would, if, if somebody were 35, 40 years old and said, I don't need to work,

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I've got all the money I can do, I'd say, find something else to do then. Cause it's not good for you not to work.

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Okay. Laziness is sin. We need to work. What's another? Can you think of other, uh, means of gaining wealth?

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I've talked about investments. So, I mean, that kind of gives away that, but saving is not a bad way of gaining wealth.

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You know, again, this is just counterintuitive to the American culture. We, I mean, it used to be if my,

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I can remember my grandmother literally kept money in her apartment.

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I mean, like under a mattress and you think, well, that's crazy. Who would do that? Well, somebody who lived through the depression and saw banks fail, right?

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But there was something about money that was reassuring. And so they kept it.

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Well, these days we don't need money because we've got credit cards. We just don't need it.

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We, but we need to save money. And you know what, one of the basic principles I hope that we, we get is to live on less than what we make.

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Live on less than what we make. And that's, that comes down to budgeting. If you have a budget where you say, okay,

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I'm going to give X, I'm going to save, uh, save Y or, you know, or they're the same.

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This is my rent. This is my food. This is my that, that, that, that, and you work that all out, then you will save money and you actually will live on less than what you earn.

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And what's the advantage of saving money? Is there any advantage to saving money? Is there any advantage to having, uh, money sitting in a bank somewhere?

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What's that? Brad says for an emergency fund. Exactly. Correct. Charlie, how do you get to the bank?

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Uh, Charlie said, you know what? I had true confession.

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I, I, I get nervous. I had a $50 bill this week. I get nervous if I have,

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I, I don't like to have money. I just, I, well,

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I'm like the, I'm like the anti, you know, depression mindset because if I have, if I have a hundred bucks,

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I'm like, Oh, nobody knows

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I have a hundred dollars, you know, a hundred dollar bill. I'd just be like, I'm just, it just,

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I remember once, uh, we were selling, we were selling our arrow star, very fine vehicle, three transmissions later, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

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But the guy comes up to the house, he wants to buy the arrow star. Uh, he gave me, that was a lot of money.

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$1 ,100. Oh, where was I? Okay. Saving.

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That's just a lot of money. Brad mentioned an emergency, emergency fund.

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Listen to Proverbs 21 20. Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man's dwelling, but a foolish man develops it.

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In other words, save something for a rainy day. You know, we know that saying, but what does it mean? I mean,

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I, I tend to think, you know, it's like, uh, maybe we save our chocolate for a rainy day for when it's really bad and we'll just, what's the advantage of an emergency fund, a rainy day fund.

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I mentioned this before, but I think, I think it's something that we need to mention over and over again. Uh, if you, if you have an emergency fund, when emergencies come along, then you don't have to charge on the credit card.

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And I'm going to talk about credit cards in just a moment. So I'll kind of skip over that, but is there something wrong with earning interest on your money?

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I mean, I loan money out all the time for 30, 35 % interest. That would be wrong.

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Okay. Let's just, you know, and this is a true story too, you know, because I, I, I never was a drinking guy even when

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I was unsaved. And it was so amazing being in the army, uh, cause I can remember literally the day after payday,

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I mean, we're not talking weeks or the day after payday guys coming up to me and saying, Hey Steve, can

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I have $5 for whatever? And you know what I would usually say to him?

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I wouldn't say no. I would say no, but you can borrow 20.

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I mean, that's what they go. Why'd you let me borrow 20 and you won't let me borrow five.

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Why do you think I did that? Not only would I, I wouldn't remember five bucks, 20

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I'd come down and track him. I'd track him down. I go, you bet I'm going to get my 20 bucks back. But guys had this mindset in the military that, you know, payday was just the day to get broke.

36:06

And, uh, you know, it was all gone after that. But back to the point, it's not wrong to earn interest.

36:13

This is a minor point of a parable that Jesus taught. Listen to Matthew 25, 27, uh, when he's talking about the, the, uh, yeah, the town.

36:27

Well, yeah, the talents, the shrewd, uh, servant. Yeah. Anyway, then you ought to, when he's, when he's dressing down this one guy who just buried it in the ground, right?

36:37

He says, then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers. And at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest.

36:46

There's nothing wrong with earning interest. Again, that's a minor point of the parable, but it's in there. Jesus wouldn't have said that if it were sinful to do that.

36:56

But saving and investing for future needs is wise. And it's also something that most people don't do today.

37:04

And people say, well, you don't understand my situation. We don't have enough to go around all. Yes, I do.

37:09

Because I've been there, done that. And here's what I know is we consistently think we, we live in the terror of now and we don't think longterm, we need to think longterm.

37:24

I mean, nothing has brought that, uh, more home closer to home to me than dealing with my own mom's situation where, you know, not only wasn't their money saved up for future needs or whatever, but she also, and, and, and this is fairly critical,

37:41

I think there was no, uh, she wasn't married. She had no, uh, power of attorney.

37:48

So if nobody has the right to do this or that or the other thing in her financial matters, then it all just kind of sits nowhere while somebody has to go and get the legal power to do that.

38:02

And literally what happened is she had a few stocks. She didn't have much, but what she had, uh, it just so happened that when she, when she had the brain aneurysm, it just so happened to coincide with the stock market going down by 50%.

38:16

And so by the time I had control of these things, the stocks that she had by the way were high risk stocks, which is not the place you want to be when you're older.

38:28

Uh, and, and it was just really bad. We, but we need to, we need to think longterm.

38:34

We need to think down the road. Let's, let's talk about how we squander wealth, how we squander wealth.

38:45

And the number one way is of course, I mean, we could talk about wasting money, but the, the one that people don't really think about as being such a waste is credit cards.

38:57

Uh, I think we've read this before, but again, principles that bear repeating Proverbs 22 verse seven, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is the slave of the lender.

39:14

Yes, Fred. Yeah. Such a good point.

39:36

Uh, and I, and I'll explain it and I'll go into either even further details, but Fred brings up the point, you know, a lot of these, uh, furniture stores and it's not just furniture stores, it's almost everywhere you go.

39:47

You know, you can buy this and you can have an interest free for three years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Read the fine print.

39:55

That should be Proverbs 32 verse one or something. Read the fine print because if you don't, you're going to wind up exactly what

40:03

Fred was talking about because yeah, it's free interest free for three years, you know, as long as you pay it off.

40:10

Because if you don't pay it off, typically what the fine print says is then, you know, let's say you get to the end of the three years and you go, oh, it's three years and you, you borrowed $3 ,000 from him to buy that new, uh, you know, coffee table, some, some coffee table and you know how we don't have that, you know, but we do have 400 so that'll be a good payment.

40:33

Well then guess what? They'll take your $400 but they'll also calculate the $3 ,000 times the 23 % interest for the three years and they'll just add that on there and you'll go, you'll get your next statement back expected to see 2 ,600 and then what's it going to say?

40:49

It's going to be something, something more like 3 ,500. You know, you're going to wait, I sent you $400 and I owe more than I did before.

40:55

Yeah, because that's three years interest that you, you just got docked for. I remember, uh, when, when

41:01

Jen and I first got married, I went in and I bought a $3 ,000 a bed and we got it, you know, it was interest free, but it was no big deal because I knew, you know, she was still in the

41:14

Navy and I was working overtime. We were going to pay it off and all that. So it didn't really matter to me, you know, the details who,

41:22

Proverbs 32 one, I'd never even read it. And if your Bible has it in there, just tear it out.

41:28

But I didn't even, so I didn't even care about the fine print. It's just like fine, fine, fine. Let me have it. So about three or four months later,

41:37

I paid off. Happy times, right? Until I get the bill and it says, well, you, you still owe blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it was.

41:49

And I'm going, how can that be? Because I had something called the rule of, I think it's 78 and I had absolutely no idea what that meant.

41:57

And so I researched it. And basically what it means is they get to charge you the contract up or the, the interest up front.

42:05

And I was like, that wasn't very sweet. You know, that was not a good deal.

42:11

Read the fine prints, know what you're getting into. But credit cards are not designed to help you.

42:18

I know that's hard to believe, you know, but it's, it's kind of like the, the, uh, you know, when I was talking earlier about the casinos and all the beautiful buildings,

42:25

Visa didn't get to be some massive corporation by helping people. That's not what they do. They provide a service.

42:32

In fact, I just saw one of the worst services out there. This is even nowhere mentioned in my notes, because I have to tell you, if you are going to one of those payday cash, check things, stop, just stop.

42:46

You need to make an appointment with me right away. Just stop all that. Those places shouldn't even exist. You want to know the decline of our society is that those places do exist.

42:55

I mean, it's worse than a pawn shop, which is really saying something. Yes, Becky.

43:30

Well, again, it comes down to this. It, if you are willing to borrow money at any cost, then you're going to pay a high cost.

43:40

And, and, and we really need to be careful that, but you know, I have, uh, uh, just a couple of things then we'll close when it comes to credit cards.

43:49

You know, when we talk about working for the man, you know, we, we go to work all week and we work for the man and, and I, and I'm just like, well, who knew that the man was named

43:58

MasterCard, Visa, and Discover? Because that's the truth. Statistically, once, and this isn't always true and I've, I've, you know, we've beaten the odds on this ourselves, but once you get to a certain level of debt on a credit card, they know that you're very unlikely to ever pay it off.

44:18

And if you look at those minimum, uh, Visa payments or whatever or Discover or MasterCard, I want to be an equal opportunity abuser.

44:26

And you do the math on that, you'll realize that they have you on a 30, 40 year payment plan. They don't really care because as long as they're making,

44:34

I mean, think about it. How much interest do you get if you put your money into the bank at a savings account right now? 0 .01.

44:44

Okay. Now, how would you like it if I told you you could get 15 % interest on that?

44:52

How about if I told you that if the bank was a day late with your interest payment on that, that you could jack it up to 25 %?

44:57

You'd probably like that. You'd lose a day in order to get 25 % return on your investment.

45:03

That's what they get to do. I mean, I'd like to have, I'd like to give everybody in here a Steve credit card. I won't give you much of a credit limit, but you know,

45:13

I'm just going to charge you. I mean, it is unbelievable what we just willingly do. You know, we'll go to the bank and we'll get our one, 1 % interest or whatever, but then we'll pay the bank 15, 16, 18 % to borrow money from them.

45:27

Charlie. Yeah. Charlie was saying that GMAC, that is the credit arm of GM was making more money than a

45:48

GM cars, the, their actual manufacturing thing. Uh, it's not really surprising.

45:55

It's not really surprising. Uh, and you know, the truth is when you go to a store with a credit card, you spend more than probably what you planned.

46:04

Some studies say up to 80 % more. You know, that's why when you go into those places, they give you the credit apps and all that.

46:11

They want you to charge on their company credit card because they know that you'll do it. And then again, read the fine print.

46:18

You'll find out the stores charge how much an interest they're allowed to charge more than almost anybody. Uh, let's see.

46:31

Yeah, we'll do this. Talking about college here, you know, colleges actively not going to remember.

46:37

Think of this was weird. Even back when I was in college that they would have credit applications, but now they flood colleges with it.

46:45

Why, why would they give you credit, you know, credit card while you're in college, you stay with the card, you get, that's right.

46:56

You're a loyal customer. And because, well, I think there are a lot of other reasons. I think one is because basically what's that?

47:05

Your parents will pay it. That's one. What's that? Yeah. Well, they, they will give you the diploma.

47:14

Charlie, you're immature. I like that one. You're stupid. You know, yeah.

47:30

I mean, they're going to get their money out of you. And you know, especially today, people are graduating with a lot of, uh, uh, debt from their student loans and whatnot.

47:40

So either they refinance and they get some big lump sum loan, in which case Visa or MasterCard or whoever gets their money back.

47:46

Or what else happens? You know, they want to pay off the student loan because that's the really big thing.

47:51

And they just keep paying the interest on the credit card, which also works for the credit card company. They're, they're happy either way.

48:02

But I mean, literally think about it. If you are working to pay or to make the interest to pay for a credit card or something like that, you really are working for the man.

48:14

You're going to work not to, not for any good or service that, you know, you're, you're enjoying now you're working for some service or good that you foolishly borrowed money for in the past.

48:25

Joni. Yeah. They, they, they become professional students, which really doesn't, it doesn't pay the bills.

49:27

I mean, it's like, you know, there are some companies, uh, countries, England comes to mind where, you know, the, the government will pay you as long as you keep going to school.

49:34

And so you just keep going and going and going and you know, you can wind up with three or four doctorates and never have any job, never be productive in any, any means.

49:44

But boy, are you smart? You know, you know a lot. So yeah, I mean, it, it really is becoming a bit of a racket, isn't it?

49:51

Where the objective is to keep you in school, keep you piling up debt and really you wind up being a slave to it.

49:56

Well, let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, I just pray that you would make us a more wise stewards of what you provide for us that we would think, uh, not just about the here and now that even for those of us here who've made errors in our finances, who've gotten ourselves into difficulties,

50:13

Lord, there are solutions. There are ways out. We pray that you'd just give us a desire to think about money as if it is yours because it is yours.

50:26

Just give us the mind of Christ when it comes to our finances, when it comes to, uh, wisdom of how we make decisions and, and just understanding that all these things that you have given us, uh, you will demand an account of one day.

50:40

Father, I just pray that whatever we do, we would do it for your glory. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.