Financial Responsibilities of the Father, Pt. 1 (06/25/2023)

Thank you. Good to have you guys back safely.

Paul and Glenda, always praying for you when you're traveling. Jeremy is so great to see you.

I love your family. Ever since the day I met you. And this is great to see you here.

Good to see all of you home folks as well. And this is going to be good.

We kind of in between books. Normally we're in a book going verse by verse, but doing a topical study now until I decide what

I think the Lord wants us to go through. I have to be a little watchful because Dave and Ben both go through books in Sunday school too.

I don't want to pick the same book and everything. That was great Sunday school lesson day. The part in Samuel is phenomenal.

You could go back and do that for a year. Your lesson today could go for a year. I was thinking this is neat.

He's covering an introduction plus 11 or so verses in one Sunday school. And I'm sitting there chewing on one word up in verse 2 or wherever it was.

But I was listening. I heard the whole thing. Very good. You guys try to make it to Sunday school if you can.

It's phenomenal. Ben and Dave always put the study in and it's always great.

And I sit back there and grow from listening to them teach. So anyway, what we're doing right now on this topical study for a few

Sundays, talking about marriage and family. I hope you'll enjoy it.

I hope it'll be a big benefit for your marriage. And for your family, there's going to be some child rearing information in it.

And it's going to cover several Sundays. So we started out last

Sunday. It was Father's Day. So I started on the Father's first in the home. But we'll come and we'll cover the moms and we'll cover the children.

And then we'll specifically talk about some things to do with marriage. What the Bible teaches about how to have a strong marriage and child rearing.

How to have children raise up and call you blessed someday. And all of that.

We're going to cover all of it. And it won't take 11 years, I promise. But it will take about two.

No, I'm kidding. I don't know. It'll take a few Sundays. So you can be turning to Ephesians chapter 6.

And I will pray one more time to get started here. Lord, thank you so much for our service already.

Thank you for the beautiful music that we've heard. And we ask you to be with Matt, our new song director.

I know he's home with a sick baby today. And he's been very ill for over a week.

And thank you that he's better. And Lord, we pray for Winston that he'll get better quickly.

Thank you for all of us being here. And each person that you wanted here is here today.

And we thank you for that. Now teach us the lesson that you wanted us to learn. In Jesus' name, amen.

We have several points we're going to cover just on the father. And we covered one last week on the father must understand and pursue spiritual armor, spiritual warfare.

It's his job to handle that in the home. And a lot of people across America don't even understand it, don't even think about it, don't even know about it.

And yet it's always happening, whether you know about it or think about it or not. And the Bible puts the main responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the father in the home, where there is a father in the home to take care of it.

And if there's not, then it falls to the mother. And if not, then falls to the next and so forth.

But we talked about it pretty extensively last time. I'll just give you a taste of that for review.

Ephesians chapter six, verse 10 says, finally, my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

Verse 11 says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

And we know the word wiles means strategies. So Satan has a hierarchy, an army of demons and a hierarchy, and they all answer up that chain to him.

And there's spiritual warfare going on all the time all around us. There are also

God's angels, the ones that didn't fall, that are around us protecting us. And it's always great to be praying for protection for your family.

And I know you do that every day, but it's a serious matter. And all of this we talked about last time, all the different parts of the spiritual armor that we have.

Very important. Today, we're going to talk about the father must understand his financial responsibilities under God.

And there are very few churches across America that ever even touch on this, ever. I sort of grew up not going to church every

Sunday, unfortunately, but in and out of church. And then when Charlotte and I married from that point, we've been in church.

We've heard a lot of great preachers across America preach.

Back before I was called to preach, I had the opportunity to hear other preachers all across America preach.

But I haven't heard very many people talk about the financial responsibility of the father in the home.

And that's like everything else. If there's not a father, then it falls to the mom and so forth down the chain.

But where you do have a standard set up in the home, it falls first on the father.

And we'll talk about that today. And then probably that'll take our time today. But then after that, we'll get to more specific matters that have to do with being the husband, being a good husband in the home and child rearing, things like that.

So that'll probably be next Sunday. We'll start on that. And really, I saved the best for last because that is really where we're headed.

That's going to be something that will really, really help. It can actually change your marriage overnight if you want it to when we get into that stuff.

So that's where we're headed. This is important, though, and I couldn't leave it out. At Tradeway, we discuss these things an awful lot.

I was a businessman with two degrees in business before I got saved. And I got saved at the age of 24 driving home from graduate school just before I finished, actually.

But I was already running the family business. But it was about, well,

I don't know, at least three years after that, probably more. It was probably more like five years after that that I got called to preach.

I could give you the date, but I don't want to do the math. Well, it was 1983, I think, or four, whichever year

Brother Roloff passed away. Wasn't it 83? Oh, really?

Well, I've been preaching longer than I thought, a whole year longer. Okay, so 82. So that's when

I got called to preach. But isn't it true I sort of ran from it for a year because I thought it was just emotional?

Because it happened at Lester Roloff's funeral. He was one of the great preachers from a generation ago, old -time preacher, grew up in Dawson, Texas, took a milk cow to Baylor and milked the cow and sold the milk to pay for his tuition, got a

PhD in theology, and had a home in Corpus Christi for teenagers that were on drugs.

And his cure rate was around 75 % to 80%. The state of Texas was 20%.

And he was famous back in the day. And a marvelous preacher, still on the radio, old -time radio. If you look for it, you can find it.

But amazing man. But he was also a pilot. And he was flying with three young girls that were going to sing with him.

And he was an evangelist. So he was going out to preach at a big church and went through a storm, and his plane crashed.

And he passed away and went to heaven. He had preached a sermon at our church just a few weeks before that, and the topic was 12

Reasons I'm Ready to Go to Heaven. So all that was so interesting to me and Charlotte going through those times with this great man of God.

But I'm so glad that we had those times.

Anyway, so I ran from that. I thought it might be emotional because it was at his funeral that I felt the call.

40 other men felt the call at that same funeral and went down the aisle. I did not go down the aisle because I said, this has got to be emotional.

I'm not just going to do it because they're doing it. And so I sort of ran from that for about a year.

And it was a year later when I took some youth to Dallas to hear a great preacher, Johnny Popes, who was a fantastic preacher, preach.

And he preached a sermon on your life is but a vapor. And I pictured myself, this is funny because I'm 68 years old.

But back then I was in my twenties and I pictured myself being 70 and having run from that call my whole life and realizing

I no longer had time to do it. I pictured that that night in the motel by myself and I couldn't go to sleep.

And so I got on my knees and said, Lord, it doesn't make any sense to me. I'm running this family business. I'm an only child. My dad's already retired, you know, but I'll do it and got back in bed and slept like a baby and went home and told

Charlotte and my dad, I got called preach and I'm going to do it.

And they accepted it, received it very well, fully supportive. Thankfully, I had a mentor,

Dr. Irwin Freeman, who told me, don't go to seminary. I will be your seminary.

I got all the books, all the books they've got. I've got, I'll guide you through the books. You can study theology.

And then when he passed away, I preached part of his funeral and he, his wife gave me his entire library. Most of it's here at church.

Some of it's in my house, but so that's how I got to be a pastor. But the truth is, that's a long story to tell you this.

Because of that, I was a businessman and then a pastor. As I read through scripture, Old Testament and New Testament, I see business principles throughout the

Bible. Now, remember, I was not saved when I went through business school and the

MBA program, graduate program business, I was not saved yet. And so I was taught all these interesting management principles, economic principles, things like that through textbooks.

Right. I get saved. After that, I start studying the Bible. I get called a preacher. So I'm really studying the

Bible and I'm saying, well, there's the principle I saw in my management book at Baylor. It was in the Bible.

Years later, I came to realize that all of the schools on the East coast, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, you can name them

William and Mary. They were preacher schools. Harvard was a preacher school.

And, but they also taught medicine. They taught business. And so these principles from the Bible found their way into the business textbooks right there.

And they used to, even when I went to Baylor in 1972, maybe two years later, when

I took the first course in management, they, they spent a whole couple of weeks and maybe two chapters in the textbook talking about the

Protestant ethic and John Calvin and how it affected the entire economy of the

West and built the economy that we know now in the Western world. That's not now. And they talked about John Calvin was the great preacher.

You talk about Calvinism. He's the father of Calvinism. He's not really, he just studied it.

He didn't like it was taught 1600 years prior to that by Augustine. And then

Paul taught it 400 years or however many before that. But anyway, you know, the story there, but, but anyway, these books gave

Christianity and the Bible, the credit for why the Western economy is strong because those principles came from the

Bible. I find them everywhere. So I don't, I have not found that pastors preach on it very much.

Certainly not on Sunday morning, but since our topic is about the man in the home, I'm going to cover it in that context because that's the context it's found in, in the

Bible. And but normally we wouldn't talk about this on a Sunday morning, but the reason I'm going to do it, it will benefit you.

And depending on where you are at your stage in life, it might benefit your children and your grandchildren even more.

And that's fine. It's just my job to preach the truth. I mean, what you do with it, what your family does with it is up to you.

And I know in my family, four generations ago, my great grandfather was a junk dealer with a sixth grade education and our family was in complete poverty.

I have photographs of my family and the houses they lived in with dirt and front yard and just nothing.

They had nothing. And he spent his whole life deciding to change that. And he used some of these principles that are in the scripture and God blessed him.

And he brought wealth to the family. He only enjoyed it for 10 years and then he got lung cancer and died. But my mom, or actually his daughter, which was my grandma and her daughter, which was my mom and my family and my kids have enjoyed the benefit from all the work that he did.

And the principles in the Bible that he followed for four and five generations later, you can too, if you know them.

So if you go to church here, you will know them and just pray about how does this work out in my family, at my age, at my stage in life?

You know, sometimes it takes a couple of generations to, or even three to build wealth in a family, but God promises you're supposed to have it.

Now I get criticized for saying that, but I think if you'll just listen prayerfully, you'll understand why

I believe that and why I say it. Now I know there's TV preachers that preach, you know, you're never supposed to be sick and everybody's supposed to be rich.

And if you buy my prayer cloth, you'll be rich and that stuff. That's not what this is. That's not what this is.

And I think you'll see it as we go. So be prayerful about it and watch the scripture.

Don't don't look at me. Watch the scripture when I give it to you. And I'm going to give you about four questions.

I want you to answer for each passage we study here in a minute. And I think you'll find it can be totally life changing for your family for generations out into the future.

We may not even have generations. That would be even better if Jesus comes back, right? If he comes back, we won't need to know these principles at that point because we'll be walking on streets of gold.

Right? So, all right. So the father must understand his financial responsibilities under God.

All right, here's my first point. The only part of the

Christian faith. Which one can neglect and be called worse than an infidel.

By scripture. Is to not take care of one's family financially.

Now I want you to think about that a minute. The only thing that I can find in scripture, that if you neglected as a man, as a father.

And a husband. Where the Bible itself calls you worse than an infidel.

Is if you neglect the financial side. Of the wellbeing of your family. Now, how many times you heard that preaching church other than here?

Nowhere, right? I mean, it's just not, people don't preach it. I teach this all across America with our trade way people with, you know, anywhere from 50 to 200 people in the room from all different denominations.

And they're just like, they go, huh? And I'll put it up on the screen. I'll put the scripture up there and show. Not, not at first.

I'll ask him. Usually I'll have some preachers in the room and I'll have them raise their hand. I go over to him and say, Hey, can you tell me brother, can you tell me a place where it says if you skip next week's evangelistic meeting, you're worse than an infidel.

He'll say, nope, doesn't say that. Okay. And another preacher I'll say, Hey, can you show me where, if you don't tithe. You're worse than an infidel.

He says, I wish it said that, but it doesn't say that. And then I'll put that scripture up and everybody goes, wow.

Okay. So let's look at this. Look at a first Timothy five in verse eight. I mean, you have to, you, you have to get a grounding for this discussion or you'll go, why are we even talking about this?

But when you understand it's the only thing you can neglect where you're called worse than an infidel. And not only that you'll see it, it calls you something else, even a worse name than that.

Then you have to understand, well, you know, that moves this up the list of priority about what we ought to be talking about in church.

And I find it at the very bottom. Now I know the TV preached on my get rich schemes.

That that's not what this is. This is talking about taking care of your family financially. Now it doesn't necessarily mean that you bring total wealth to your family, but there is some wealth that must be brought to the family or you're disobeying this.

So let me define wealth first for you. I'm going to define it technically in a minute, but let me just give you my definition of wealth.

Wealth is the money that you have left over at the end of the month. After you've paid all your bills. Okay. That's all it is.

It's extra money. It's money that you didn't really need because you paid all your bills. Now, if you put that in a,

I'm going to use the term savings account. That's not what I would do with it. But for today's sermon, unless you say you put that in a savings account every month and you do that for years, it will create wealth.

You'd be surprised how much, especially if you start in your twenties. So that's all wealth is now see

Hollywood. Once you think that every wealthy individual is evil. I find it interesting. Have you guys been tracking this submarine that imploded and killed five people?

You know that if those had been five poor people, they'd be having parades and funeral parades all across the country for them.

But because they were billionaires, now they're starting to ask the question, well, should we've even tried to save them?

Now you wouldn't have that question asked if they had been poor people. Why do you think it's asked if they're billionaires?

Anyone give me a thought on that? They don't like rich people. Why do they not like them?

They're jealous, but why are they feel that way? Because Hollywood, every movie you ever watched, the wealthy businessman is the villain.

Check me out. I'll be right on that. I learned that from, from brother Golden, Myron Golden, but I checked him out.

He's absolutely right. There's a theme there that the wealthy individual businessman is evil.

He's going to either destroy the ecology or people or kill people. And the, and the, and the poverty is the super, the poor dude is the superhero.

And the only exception is Batman. He was rich, but that didn't count because he can't fly. So he's not really a superhero, but anyway.

So there is a mindset taught by the lost world, that Christians should not seek wealth and should be poor to be spiritual.

You know why Satan teaches that? Because God uses money more often than not as a tool to accomplish his work in this world.

And if the Christians don't understand what the Bible says, that God wants every family to be wealthy.

If you're his child. And I know that sounds weird to you. Just go with me. If you don't believe that by the end,

I'm good with you. If you, if you can listen to what I'm going to say and then say, I still don't believe that I'm okay with you, but don't think it yet, even though you feel that way.

But if, if this Bible does say, that's God's promise to each family, then if Satan can come in and lie and say, no, that's not a promise to everybody.

It's just like, it doesn't mean that your blessings are going to be in heaven, not here, which has been taught by some good preachers.

Brother Otis believed that when, when I met him, I changed his mind on that one. But you know, if God wants wealth for his people and Satan wants poverty, then we have a problem because most of us are listening to Satan's message on that feeling that it just feels weird to even talk about wealth in church here.

Would you agree? It feels a little funny. It does. It feels funny. Now I'm not a billionaire yet, but I don't mind being one.

I don't mind if God made me one, I wouldn't be embarrassed about it. I would use it. You know, I wouldn't take that much, take care of my family.

I can take care of them with what I got now. I can use it to help others. Right? So people get that wrong mindset now.

So I'm going to follow down. You know, God said, let us come, let us reason together. That means logic. We need to use logic along with scripture and history and everything else to understand truth.

But you got to weigh the history and the science against the Bible, but still you look at it all did. So we're going to use a logical walk down through here.

So let's look at the first one. First Timothy five, eight, but if any provide not for his own.

And if you look at the Bible, that's not just the grammatical use of the third person, his, it literally means the man in this case, the man.

If the man, the father, the husband does not provide for his own, especially for those of his own house, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.

Now an infidel is a person who's not a Christian, but that's not nearly as bad being called an infidel as to be a person who denies the faith, because that phrase is a word is sort of a phrase that's used throughout the new

Testament. And everywhere you see the phrase, the faith, it's talking about the whole of Christianity, biblical

Christianity and its whole and a man who does not take care of his family financially has denied the whole of Christianity based on this one thing.

He didn't take care of his family financially. So why is it at the bottom of the importance list in churches?

As far as discussions, why would you guess that it would be? Who would want it to be at the bottom of the list?

God or Satan? Satan. Why? Because he's the God of poverty. Satan is the

Bible. Nowhere says that the wealthy curse God, but it says that the poor curse

God. So why wouldn't Satan want everyone to be poor? Does that make sense?

So that's not from God. That's from Satan that preaches this poverty is spiritual mother

Teresa syndrome thing and makes everyone feel weird about talking about money in church. Money is not evil.

It's neutral. It's what you do with it or don't do with it. Right? And besides that, if you're a

Christian, whose money is it if you have money in your bank account, it's God's money, not just 10 % of it, a hundred percent of it.

And if you made it through business activity, whose business is it? It's God's. It's not yours.

And if you don't understand that, you'll never become an entrepreneur. You'll be too scared. You'll be scared every night that you'll never get any bread to eat the next day because you'll go out of business.

It's scary being an entrepreneur, but when you understand it's God's business, it's not yours and you've seen him bless it in the past and you have that entrepreneurial fear.

You say, Lord, okay, forgive me. I mean, I've seen you, I've seen you bless every time where, when we were just about where we couldn't go any further, there was the month.

I've seen you do it a million times. So I'm going to stop feeling this way. I'm going to go right to sleep. And the Lord says, okay, go sleep.

God sound like a person who's been there and done that. I've done that this week. I've done that this week.

I won't tell you how much the note is that I just took out a while back a long time ago at this point, but I'll tell you the interest rate is 9 % at this point.

It was six when I took the note out. It's nine. Now it's supposed to be a short term note to do a well work over on our oil company, where we turn it, an old well that's no good into a saltwater disposal well, because our wells make water and oil and you got, you got to get rid of the water and the government's very strict on how you do that.

Can't just pour it out on the ground. Right? And it costs an enormous amount to have trucks come out to the lease and fill those trucks up with our water and haul them off for it.

It's just huge. It's the biggest expense we have. It may eat up half what we make every month.

So by doing this project, we can, we can legally put it down the saltwater disposal well at no expense.

The only expense is the cost of building, making the well do that. So I took out a sizable loan to spend that money to make the well do that.

And then someone complained. So it postponed the deal for maybe three or four months.

And I'm paying $19 ,000 a month on the note. Did you hear that?

Every month on that note? Well, what was supposed to have happened was that well gets done. We stopped paying the water haulers an enormous amount, which is like putting money in it.

It's like we're saving that money. So it's like we're making that money and that pays the note. Right? Well, they hadn't finished the well, because guess what?

Just two days ago, was it two days ago at night, one night, like 930, my field superintendent sends me a text says, well, got bad news.

We just found a hole in the casing. It's going to expand the cost of the project and it may make it where it won't even work.

And I got to go to sleep. Like he sends me that at 930. I made the mistake of reading it. Now, if it had been an email,

I don't read my email until the next morning for that reason, because I own three businesses and I get news like that often, you know?

And so I read it the next morning, but that one, it was a text. And so I read it. So that night

I did a lot of praying. So did Charlotte when she found out about it too. And it looks like the

Lord's resolved that. But my whole point is this, what if you laid there at night and you thought, well, you know, if I can't pay that note back, the bank's going to own the entire oil company, which is a fact.

Okay. So you lay there at night and you try to go to sleep. If you didn't understand that that oil company belonged to God four generations ago, when he gave it to my great grandfather and that all the money that ever comes from it is his money.

And it's to be used in his kingdom. You couldn't go to sleep. So entrepreneurs are people that want to be one, have to learn this information.

Now there's other ways to make money for your family. You can do it by working for another company and that's fine.

You don't have to be an entrepreneur. That's not what this message is about. Most of the

Bible people that we read about were entrepreneurs though. And sometime in fact, when our country started 90 % of all the people own their own business and now only 10 % do.

So that's changing over time where we work for the boss more, but it's okay if we do, but still these principles still hold, you know what's even better than working for the boss is working for the boss, but also pray, praying about the

Lord to show you some entrepreneurial thing on the side that you can do to put a little extra money than you need every month, which is starting to create wealth, you see, and you'll follow these principles.

So the first thing we see is if we don't take care of our families financially, we are worse than lost people.

And we have denied the Christian faith because it's part of the Christian faith. It is a large part.

Maybe it's the only one where you're called an infidel. If you don't do it, it's a really big part of the Christian faith is the finances of the family.

Do you think most, most American Christians think of it that way? I don't think they do. I don't think they think it has anything to do with the

Christian faith. What do you think? I don't think they, they don't think it has anything to do with it, but it's a huge part.

Now here's the second, here's the second point. First point was it's the only thing where you're called worse than an infidel.

If you don't do it. Second point is this. God commands us to create enough wealth that we may lay aside for our children and our grandchildren.

Now you can't tell me that if you take everything you make every month and you pay the bills and you're pretty much out of money, if you had to buy a set of tires for your car, you'd be in trouble because you didn't budget that.

I've been there. Tell me about it. Right? You never budget for tires, but they do wear out.

All right. So then you put it on the credit card. Now you're behind instead of creating wealth. Now you're paying debt. That's the opposite.

Right? And I'm not saying that's bad. That's good. God created. It's good. It has its purposes beyond the scope of this message, but I could preach a whole message on why debt is good and how to use it.

Right? Not today. Probably never on Sunday morning, but at some point it's in the, it's in the

Bible. The Bible talks about all these things, but here if we're supposed to have extra left over every month and be saving that so that before we die, we can leave money and inheritance not only to our children, but our great, our grandchildren, then we have to create wealth.

Can anyone tell me where you don't see that? I mean, if you're living hand to mouth every month, how can you obey this scripture?

Now let me read you the scripture first and then we'll talk about it. Second Corinthians. I'll give you a new Testament and an old

Testament. Second Corinthians 1214 for the children, not to lay aside for the parents, but the parents for the children.

Okay. So the parents are supposed to lay aside for the children. Proverbs 13 22 a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children and the wealth of the center.

I'm going to leave that part off. I'm going to cover that later. The second half of that verse, a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children.

So now we're out to the next generation. So now look, I got five kids and the people they married are like my kids to me.

All right. And I've got 12 grandchildren and one on the way. Now, how are you going to obey that command?

Cause it's a command. It's it's in the imperative. It says, God doesn't say this is a suggestion. God says, do this.

You lay aside for your kids and grandkids. How am I going to do that? If I don't create some wealth, can anyone see a way

I could do that without creating some wealth? So would you agree? God is commanding us to create wealth.

And if we don't do that, we are worse than an infidel. And we denied the faith. Is there any problem with my logic?

And you know, in our church, it's fine for you to speak, say something if you disagree. Okay. So, so if you're following my logic,

God does command it, but most people don't know about it. Would you agree? Most Christians don't know about it, but he does command it.

Are you okay if you don't know what God says to do and you just don't do it? Is that okay?

Or does God say study to show yourself approved unto God and means you're supposed to know what the Bible says when you meet him and you face him and you have the judgment seat of Christ and you answer for everything you do in your body as a

Christian, you're not going to lose your salvation, but you might not have as wide of a street of gold in front of your house, right?

Based on how we live. So aren't we responsible to know what the Bible says? Shouldn't we know first Timothy five, eight, second

Corinthians, 12, 14, 15, and Proverbs 13 22. And if once we know it, we're even held more accountable for it, right?

So here's the question I want to ask you. If God does command us to create wealth as the men of the church and the men of the families, would he not also show us how to do it?

Would God ever command you to do something and not teach you in this book how it's done and help you do it?

I've never seen anything he's commanded me to do where he doesn't help me to do it. So I think the answer is yes, he would.

All right. So my third point then is this, the father must understand.

I'm talking about the father of the family, not God, the father, the father and the family must understand that if God commands us to create wealth, he will also teach us how and make provision for us to succeed.

And that provision will be found in this book and by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

Two things. It's always to the water and the spirit. The water is the water of the word of God, the

Bible and the Holy spirit. It's where this provision will come from. So it's, it's a spiritual thing and most people think it's a physical thing.

Isn't that interesting? Most people think seeking money is evil and it's a physical thing. It's just money.

You can't take it with you and it's bad. And God says, no, it's a spiritual thing because I've commanded you to do it for your kids and grandkids.

I'm going to help you do it. And the information's in the Bible. And if you don't read it and study it, you're not a spiritual person.

You see, you see what I mean? And what I meant, and I make sure you don't read something into that. What I'm saying is if you don't study the

Bible with regard to everything, not just this, with regard to everything you don't study and ask the

Holy spirit to teach you, you are not a spiritual person. So if you are a spiritual person and you're studying the scripture and asking

God to teach you, when you come to these financial passages, you, you and God together will deal with that.

And that's what will create wealth over generations in your family. If you do the things the Bible says to do.

So let's continue on that thought. Uh, let's see. We got a little time.

Um, let's do this before we get into this. Let's, uh, let me give you a formal definition of wealth.

Last Sunday, Winston helped me preach. Wasn't that last Sunday? Or was it Sunday before last?

Two Sundays ago. He helped me know when it was time for the service to be over. Ada may be doing that now.

So I'm going to go to Webster's dictionary. Did you know Webster was a Christian man born again, believer,

Protestant believer. And he defines wealth this way, abundance of valuable material possessions or resources, or it can just mean abundant supply.

That didn't sound so wicked. Does it? Abundance of valuable material possessions or resources, abundant supply.

Now, one thing that's really fun to do, uh, when you're like studying the Bible is to do word studies.

I like to do them in the Greek and the Hebrew, but also in the English, because sometimes when

I look in the Greek and the, and the best word is the one that's actually chosen by the King James people.

Then I want to know more about it. I would look up the English too, which I've done here. What's really interesting is to study the etymology of the word, which means the history of the word itself, the

English word and go back as far as you go to where that word first started to be used and what it meant, because Satan will change languages to create confusion.

So language changes over time. Like, what about the word gay? Has that changed in my lifetime? Is that word changed?

I used to be a gay person, but I'm not now. Okay. You get that?

I hope you get that in the right way. I mean, you can't use that word now.

I used to be a happy person, but I can't say that now that way. Right. Make sure I clarify that. We do have broad listening out there, a group of people that don't know me as well as you do.

So, um, I'm going to take this word back. The oldest word that this came from is a root word in English wheel,

W E A L wheel like wealth starts that way, but it's just the first part of the word wheel.

We don't use that too much anymore. It can still be used, but here's what the word meant.

If you go back to around 1611 when the Bible was written in English, this version anyway, it meant a sound, healthy or prosperous state.

So that is the original meaning of this word. And it's a very good translation from the

Greek. If we find that word in the

Greek, it is exactly what the word means. It also means well being the word wheel is very similar to the word welfare in the old, old, old

English. It's the same root word for the word welfare. So it has more to do with wellbeing than it has to do with picturing a rich person that's got yachts and submersible submarines and you know, things he can afford to do that the rest of us can't do.

It's not so much talking about that as it is being in a state, a sound, healthy state of wellbeing in your family and maintaining that over several generations.

That's the meaning of the word wealth, by the way. And the word well in English comes from the same root word to be well, not just health, but welfare.

Welfare is another word akin to it in English. So it's an interesting study. Now when you look at the

Hebrew understanding of this, the best way to understand it is to track the word blessed.

Like when Abraham says I'm blessed or any of the old Testament saints, Job would say

I'm blessed. And in the old Testament, the wealthiest people in the world were God's people.

Solomon, David, Job, Abraham, you can go on even a lot. The carnal Christian, wasn't really a

Christian, but you know what I mean? God's person who was carnal, he was wealthy because he was God's person. And in the old

Testament, even the Jewish person of today understands that wealth is a blessing that comes from God.

If it's, if you're God's person. So if you look at the Hebrew mind on it, wealth was never a bad thing.

And today, if you really want to hire a great CFO for your company, hire a

Jewish person. If you want to find a good banker, find a Jewish president of the bank.

And because most of them, that's what they are. Why? Because they believe the principles in the old

Testament came from God and they follow those principles and they got money all around them.

Christians haven't been taught that, but it's there because the old Testament is ours too, isn't it? But it's all through the new

Testament. In fact, the first verse I gave you today was in the new Testament. Two of the first verses were in the new Testament.

So in Hebrew, when we want to talk about the concept of wealth building, I'll just give you a couple of examples in Genesis chapter one, verse 28.

So we go all the way back almost to the first mention of the word blessed. It's not, it's actually not the first, there's two other times earlier, but it's when

God told the animals, he said he blessed the animal kingdom and said, be fruitful and multiply.

So I didn't think that applied to you guys. So not counting those, this is the first mention of it for human beings in the

Bible. And God blessed them and God said unto them, this is Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.

Now what's interesting about that, most people when they read it and they see be fruitful, they take that in the terms of multiplying your family, right?

But if you think about what it is for a human being to be fruitful, it's much more than that. A fruitful human being is a person who builds, let me, let me keep reading.

You'll see it, but think about that's not, that's not sexual only. It's also being creative, being a person who's successful, who succeeds in the things that he puts out to do and who does things that change the world.

So listen to it and think about it. Be fruitful and multiply. This is the first command God gave humans and replenish the earth.

Now, how can you replenish the earth? If fruitful doesn't mean something other than just have a bunch of babies, but it also talking about having, we'll see in a minute, dominion over a world that's cursed.

And so the first second laws of thermodynamics say everything's going to fall apart. If you don't put energy into it, it'll just fall apart.

The earth will eat everything. If you don't put your energy into it, that energy is called being fruitful and replenish the earth and subdue it.

And you think about, I appreciate so much helping with these trees, but what if when storms came through, we just never did anything.

You know, if you looked at this place in 10 years, it wouldn't even be here. You wouldn't, because the roof would let the water through.

It would rot everything and just fall in. You have to be fruitful. It goes on and says, we're supposed to subdue it.

And then it says we're supposed to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowls of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Adam and Eve were supposed to have dominion over all of the, every the resources of the world.

You see this. And so this is, this is when God told him to do this.

The first thing he said was God blessed them. This is where the Israelite gets the idea that as you have dominion over things in the earth and you are able to replenish and build and create something, it's only because God blessed you.

It came from God's hand or you never would have done it. And God said, behold,

I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth and every tree in which is the fruit of the tree yielding seeds for more fruit, right?

I gave all that to you that you will have it for meat. And meat doesn't just mean, it means food, but your wellbeing, right?

And in every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, wherein there is life,

I have given every green herb for food. And it was so, and God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.

And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. And what did God do after the sixth day?

He rested, it was finished. And in that sixth day is where he told us that we're supposed to have dominion.

We're supposed to be fruitful and successful and have dominion. And the reason is because he blessed us.

And so it goes back to the very beginning pages of scripture. Genesis 12, one says, now the

Lord had said unto Abram, we're going to move up in Bible history. A number of years at this point, we're going to go beyond the flood to this side of the flood now.

So thousands of years gone by. And now we see the Lord saying this. Now the

Lord has said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from the father's house unto a land that I will show you.

And I will make of thee a great nation and I will bless thee. Now we're looking at this word blessing and what it means to the

Israelite. I will bless thee and make thy name great and thou shalt be a blessing.

Now there's a great, great thing to understand about wealth. When people bother you about it, you say, well, you shouldn't even be seeking wealth as a

Christian. It's not right. Just not right. The first thing you should ask them is who says

I have to keep it all. Great old acquaintance of mine said that once.

And I always thought it was fantastic, but God says it here. You shall be a blessing. That's what the huge proportion of the wealth you create is not even for your family.

It's to be a blessing to other people in the world. Genesis 24, 34 says, and he said,

I am Abraham's servant. And the Lord has blessed my master greatly. Now this is the one who went out and found the wife for Abraham's child.

Right? And he says, my master has been blessed. I want you to focus on the word blessing.

Here's what the Israelite meant by blessed. He's been blessed greatly by God and he has become great.

And he has given him flocks and herds and silver and gold and men, servants and maidservants and camels and donkeys.

So to the Israelite, the one that's blessed the most is the one that has the most camels, the most cattle, because he knew that that was not the product of his own strong, right arm.

Because any entrepreneur who's ever tried to dig a living out of this earth will tell you, you can't do it.

It's all stacked against you. You have the world telling you you're wrong. If you're a Christian to make the money, you got the business world saying we only like big companies.

We don't want little ones to make it. And you got Satan fighting against you every day. And the whole world is saying you're wrong to even seek the wealth.

So you can't do it. The only way it can be done is if God does it in you and with you holding your hand all the way and gives you the courage to try and to not quit.

And that's how it was for 90 % of the people in the Bible days, 90 % or more of them were entrepreneurial.

A lot of it was farming, but a lot of it wasn't. A lot of it was retail buying products at wholesale, marking them up, selling them at retail.

The Jewish people are the best at that in the world. They've done it for thousands of years and taught their kids and grandkids, the skillsets.

Don't blame them because they have more money. It's not them that did it.

It's just the principles in this book that they've had longer than anybody. And the whole world likes to, why do you think people hate

Jews? You know, there's so many groups that whine about things they've had to go through.

No one has gone through more persecution than the Jewish people in history of the world.

And you don't see them whining. You see them making more and more money because they use that money in many ways to put a moat around their castle and protect their home.

You know, about the second strongest military in the world is the Jewish Israel's military, second to the

U .S. Why is that? Because everyone in the world wants to kill them. So they've built, they've got their own nukes.

They don't talk about them much, but they've had them for, they've had them, I would say probably only the

U .S. and Russia had them first and then Israel had them. Maybe pretty close to that. Oh, that's a fact.

As a matter of fact. So, I mean, they take care of themselves. So all of these kinds of things come back though to God and God blessing his people.

Who do people misunderstand or even resist? Why do people misunderstand or even resist the fact that God's promises wealth to his children?

That's a good question. Why do people resist that? Because they do not understand the difference between an unconditional promise and a conditional promise.

So let's talk about that for a minute. Listen to this. You write it down if you want to.

It's a good definition. The promise of wealth from God is what

I'm talking about. The promise of wealth to his children is a personal, individual and conditional promise.

Three things, personal, individual to you and conditional. Now the word conditional means it's an if then proposition.

God says, if you do this, this, this, and this, and you find those conditions in the Bible, if you do these things,

I will make your family wealthy. People fight me against this all the time.

And, you know, I have people say, well, I can't be, it's just gotta be just a general statement. It can't really be a promise to everybody.

Well, we'll look at that in just a second, but God's promise of wealth to his people is personal, individual, and it's conditional.

And it's to the leader of each and every Christian household who generally is the man, the father.

It's his responsibility, but not to do it by himself. It's simply to hold God's hand, Jesus's hand, walk with him into the business

God wants you to do. That's what it is. So now we're just about out of time, but I can't,

I'm not quite to a good stopping place. So take a deep breath and give me a couple more minutes, because I can tell when you're worn out and you're already past that.

It's not your fault, just how it is. It's easier to stand up here than it is to sit down there. All right, so just wake up for a second.

Let me get you to a good stopping place. We're almost done. For each, now

I've got several passages I was gonna go through. I'm just gonna go through maybe a couple of them. We don't have time to do several, but for each of them that we go through,

I'm gonna get you to answer four questions after we read the passage. So pay attention. You gotta wake up for me just a little bit, because this is like homework, okay?

First question, is this, the passage we're about to read, for every one of them, ask this question, is this a promise from God to us?

Or you could even say from God to me. What is the promise or what are the promises?

If it is a promise, what are the promises? I want you to name them. We're gonna write them down. I want you to name them. Second thing

I want you to ask is this, is this promise to me as an individual, or is it just a general promise that might happen to someone else, but it's probably not gonna happen to me?

Okay, it's a good question, don't you think? Is it a general promise that doesn't really apply to me, it's just God throws it out there, or is it an individual promise to me as an individual?

The third question is, what are the conditions that must be met in order for God to fulfill his promise of wealth?

Write down the conditions, because I find that everywhere he gives a promise, he puts the conditions in the same verse or in the verses right around it.

And the fourth question is, can God lie? I want you to ask those four questions to every passage we look at today and next

Sunday. So I gotta give you at least one so we can have some fun here, okay? So turn with me to Psalm 128, verse one.

The quicker you turn to, the quicker we get done. Psalm 128, verse one.

It's only four verses. Psalm 128, one through four.

Here we go, we're gonna read it first, then we're gonna ask these questions. Okay, Psalm 128, verse one, blessed is everyone that fears the

Lord. Now, do you see that we have the word blessed there? What does the Hebrew think that means?

Is it just blessings in heaven or is it blessings in heaven and blessings on the earth? Is it just spiritual blessings on the earth and in heaven or is it also physical blessings like cattle, sheep, money?

It's both. It's both, okay. So remember the word blessed starts with that, so that's kind of the whole idea of this passage.

So blessed is everyone that fears the Lord, that walks in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands, happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of your house. This is allegorical, but ask yourself, what does that mean?

Thy children like olive plants round about the table. Jews love the Israelites talking pictures, even their words are word pictures.

So what is that picture? Your children are like olive plants round about thy table. Behold that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the

Lord. Four simple verses. So let's ask our questions. What are the promises?

Are there any promises? And if so, what are they in the passage? And you have to get a little out of order to answer because it mixes the promises and the conditions back and forth, but I want to combine them into groups.

So let's group all the promises here. And how many do you think there are? One, two, three.

I count seven in four verses. So what's the first one?

Blessed is everyone. So if you're a child of God, now there's going to be conditions, but if you follow these conditions, it says you will be blessed.

So that's the first promise. Now what does being blessed mean? It means you're going to have food to eat.

It means you're going to have plenty. It means you're going to have more cows than your neighbor. It means you're going to be wealthy.

Now you can't get that sitting and studying at five minutes at home. I have spent thousands of hours studying this topic since about 2010,

I guess. But as you study the whole of the scripture, you see this fall into place.

And the Hebrew mind already knows it. He just intuitively knows it from scripture, but the Christian has to learn these things.

So the first blessing, or the first promise is you will be blessed. What's the second? Second promise is you will eat the fruit of your own hands.

Now I want to get you to put that in modern terms. We have a group of attorneys that help the tradeway to provide things to our clients that help with this.

And the modern term for that is plantation. Now think about it.

If you put it back in their terms, isn't it true that you and your children, who you taught the skill sets, they're helping you in your family, agricultural business, and you've got maybe a couple of thousands of acres planted.

And you're going to eat that, of course, but you're going to sell it at the market so you can buy clothing and things you need.

Another donkey and whatever. A few more camels. All right.

And you plant that and it comes up and it's harvest time. Don't you think there have been times when the pagan hordes came through and just burn it all down and burnt your entire field and tried to kill your family?

Hasn't that been recorded in even Israel's history, right? So would you think that would be entrepreneurial fear if you're the man of that house?

But this promise says if you do the conditions, then I'm going to promise you will be the one that eats the fruit of your labor.

Now, sometimes they wouldn't come through and burn it, they would just kill all of you and they would take it. They would end up eating it and selling it and make the money, wouldn't they?

But this is a promise that that won't happen to you. You will be the person who benefits from all the work that you and your family did.

Wouldn't you say that's an important promise for any entrepreneur? It's called asset protection. It means other people don't get your stuff once you do the hard work to earn it.

You get it. You and your family and you and your kids and your grandkids is God's order of where that money should go.

You know that the wealthy of the world that don't know God, like Warren Buffett, you know what they're teaching each other to do and they're all falling in line, the

Microsoft guy, all of them falling in line is we're not going to give any of it to our kids. We're just going to disperse it all among the whatever of our choice.

That is totally ungodly. But what would you expect? They don't know. They don't read the

Bible. They don't believe it when they read it. All right. So now we've got two promises.

You'll be blessed. The second one is you will have asset protection. What's the next one? Happy thou shalt be.

How many of you would like to have a happy home life? Joyful. Now I know we all go through tribulation.

I'm looking at Sharon while I'm saying that lately because you've been through some lately and Viviana is going through a little bit of tribulation right now.

And many of us in the room, we all do from time to time. But generally over time periods in our families, wouldn't it be nice if we were predominantly joyful and happy?

And the Bible says, I promise you will have that if, but it's an if then, if you do this, this and this.

All right. What's the next promise? You'll be well, you'll have health.

Things it doesn't necessarily mean physical health as much as it means things will go well in your family. Now, I would like to be healthy.

And, but it means things will go well in your family. I think we can pray for God to heal.

Don't you still believe that? How many of us in this room have actually seen him heal someone or ourselves?

Raise your hand. Okay. Well, there's a great promise. But guess what?

It's conditional. It's not like you buy a prayer cloth from some TV preacher and you'll be healthy and wealthy.

It's not, that's not what it's talking about. All right. So what's the next thing? Your wife will be a fruitful vine by the sides of your house.

What's that a picture of? A happy marriage. The man of the house is not having to worry about where his wife is going and what she's doing and who she's doing it with while he's off working somewhere on the other side of the world making this money.

He knows that she's faithful and godly and she's building the family ranch, so to speak.

She's building the home and sewing clothes for the kids and even planting her own vineyards and making money on the side as well.

Proverbs 31 teaches all that. And he knows that. But it's conditional, gentlemen.

It is conditional. It's not just the promise that just happens to every

Christian. It's if you do this, this and this, then you will have a happy marriage. And what's the next promise?

Children will be like olive plants round about the table. So you'll have well -behaved children you can be proud of.

That is a nice promise. It doesn't happen in every family, does it? In America today, we got children going in and shooting other kids.

It's schools. That doesn't make the parents proud, does it? Makes them want to fall in a hole and die probably, you know, when that happens.

But there's a promise that doesn't have to be that way. And then what's the next one? It started with you'll be blessed.

Look at the last verse. Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that fears the Lord. So it starts with a blessing.

It ends with a blessing. And in between, you have all these things. So quickly now, the second thing is, okay, is this a personal blessing to you and me or just a general promise that might happen to somebody else, but probably not me, which

I've been told recently that that's, that all the stuff when I teach this stuff, that I'm misteaching it because they're not meant to be individual blessings for people.

It's just like a general thing God just says. Well, if you actually think about the logic of that, it's totally illogical.

Because if when God promises these things, it's not to me or you as an individual, but it's just kind of a general thing.

Then who is the promise to? Who is it made to? It's like not made to anybody.

And so God's not keeping his promises. So God's lying when you believe it that way.

But I understand why people want to believe it that way. Because if you, if you believe, well, it's not for me, then you don't need to strive.

You don't have to do the work that it takes and give up the stuff. You've got to give up to become wealthy because there's things you can't do.

I mean, you got to change what you do in your life to build something. Changes your priorities.

Most people don't want to do that. So they would rather believe, well, this doesn't apply to me.

I'm just going to do my little job and keep doing it and I'll have food to eat. But how do you know your job will always be there?

Job security took a whack when COVID happened, didn't it? I mean, things can happen that that's not secure either.

All right. So is it a general blessing or specific? Well, let's take a look.

Look at verse one. Blessed is everyone. Now, in plain grammatical understanding, which you took 12 years of grammar, which

I think is silly in school, and you took 12, you took four more years in college or at least two, you've taken a lot of grammar.

So when it says blessed is everyone versus saying blessed are some people in some places, maybe.

Is it individual or is it just general? It's specifically to every individual, everyone.

So that's easy. How about all the different times it uses the word thou, T -H -O -U, for thou shalt eat.

Happy, you could put the word I in there. I shall eat. I will be happy. Things will be well with me.

I will have a happy, good marriage and a good wife. And I will have children that I'm proud of. So is that individual or is that just some thing

God throws out there that he doesn't mean? You see how ridiculous that is? And clearly in the context of this, it is to the everyone.

I mean, the scripture says it. Third point is, what are the conditions? All right, let's see what they are.

An interesting thing is there are seven blessings in only three conditions. So what are they?

Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord. That's the first one. You have to be a person that fears God. So basically you got to be born again and you got to be thinking about that God's watching everything you do, everything you say, and even everything you think.

Everything you think. So there's a lot of thoughts that you need to stop right there and I need to stop right there and say,

Lord, give me the mind of Christ. That's not the new man. I apologize. You know, cleanse me.

First John 1, 9, a thousand times every day, right? But a person that's walking with the Lord will do that. He'll take care of those thoughts.

If you have a bad thought, you take care of it right then with the Lord. He's your priest. You don't go to a human.

You don't tell your spouse. You just tell Jesus, you take care of it. And the Bible says he cleanses you from all unrighteousness instantly because he's already taken them away when he died for he removed your sins.

God the Father doesn't even see him anymore. If you ask God the Father, forgive me and say, what for? Check me out on that.

See if I'm right about that. I've been saying it 40 years. So I hope I'm right about it. But I think the scripture bears it out.

So the first thing is to be a person who knows God is omnipotent. He's all powerful.

He's holy. He cannot be in the presence of sin and he sees and hears every deed and thought you ever do and why you did it and the motive behind it.

And that creates a healthy fear of God, not a fear like the pagan God where he's wrathful, but a fear of a father coming home from work and the mother says, son, you know,

I'm gonna tell when your dad gets home, you're gonna have a visit with him that kind of fear. And that happened many times in my home.

And even in my kids, now that they have kids, it happens in their homes. I observe it. That kind of healthy fear of the parent is the same thing you have for God the

Father. Second condition. He walks in his ways.

Now, what's the difference between reading through the Bible in a year and I'm not against that.

I'm for it. It's great. Read the Bible through the year and walking in his ways. What's the difference?

It's applying it. It's kind of like with my kids.

I think they may have never thought about this. They probably have because they've heard me preach it though. But if they think about their life in our home when we were young and they were very young and growing up, we didn't have a lot of times where we just sat around the table and had what you would call a family devotion because I found that my kids got very bored with that, especially if you tried to do it every day.

But they had almost unceasing times when we would be anywhere, doing anything, fishing, playing a sport, working in the yard or in the field.

And I would point out to them, look at that. Look at that beautiful tree. Jesus made that. Or I'd ask them, who made that?

And they'd say, Jesus. And I'd say, look at the cloud. It looks like a whale. Do you see that? Who drew that picture in the sky?

And they'd say, Jesus. And so along the way, as we walked together, we talked about God and showed everything

God was doing. And then walking in His ways for we as adults, it's like we got to live what we believe the best we can.

Now we mess up and that's what 1 John 1, 9 is for. And we have to get right back up and go again and see how long of a season you can go without messing up next time.

That's the trick of a Christian life. Can I go a long season without that happening again if it's a sin?

You know what I'm saying? Or without that bad thought or maybe a hateful thought of a person who maybe treated me wrong.

Lord, I don't want to have that thought. Can I go a long time without having a thought like that again?

That is the life of a Christian. And that's what it means to be walking in His ways. And then what's the last one?

Look at the last verse. Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that fears the Lord.

It starts with fearing the Lord. It starts with being blessed. And it ends with fearing the Lord. And it ends with being blessed.

So you never see the promise when you don't see the condition. It's always there. Let's put it in the positive.

Every time you see a promise of wealth in the Bible, you will see conditions for it.

Now, you say, well, it doesn't promise wealth here. Well, we'll get to that, but we're out of time. But it does promise you will be blessed.

And to the Hebrew mind, it's always more camels than the next guy. Trust me on that. Go check it out if you don't believe me. It is talking about wealth.

So we want to build it over generations. Several, about three generations should get it done.

And I think with technology we have today, you can do it faster than my great -grandfather could. You don't have to spend a whole lifetime working in an oil field and figuring it out and then get an opportunity to buy the field like he did when you're 65 and then die when you're 75.

But you finally create wealth and you get to experience it for five years. It doesn't have to be that way now because of technology, but it might be that way, and that's okay because it's

God's business in your family, right? It's how he chooses to do it with you, through you. But one of the keys we're going to get to is you've got to do this.

You've got to duplicate yourself and your kids. I mean yourself, but also your business self, which means you've got to teach them every skill set you have and how you do it and what makes it work right and what makes it not work.

And you've got to delegate to them and let them do it. And don't just micromanage them.

Let them do it. They may not do it as good as you do at first, but they may do it better than you pretty quick.

So you've got to duplicate and delegate and teach every generation all the skill sets that you learned from your grandfather, your dad, and you devised, teach them that and teach them to teach that to others, which means their kids.

And all that's going on, then that's God's way on this. And so we've got a little more to talk about, but that's enough for today.

So let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you that you're a

God who blesses your children, who desires to bless us. Thank you for that great

Sunday school lesson where we saw God speak into David's heart, his desire to bless

David. And David had a hard time believing it at first, just like we do, but he received it finally.

And he realized it wasn't based on his works or anything that he could give God. It was based on God's love and his desire to give to his children, which is us.

And so Lord, help us to learn these things, believe these things, and to operate them into the lives of ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

And go with us, Lord, into our time of fellowship now. Bless it and bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus' name, amen.