Man, the Bible reads in verse number one of Proverbs 22 there, a good name is rather
to be chosen than great riches and loving favor rather than silver and gold.
Now this chapter has really a lot of verses that deal with money in it.
And obviously that's kind of a big theme in the book of Proverbs in general, because
in a book about wisdom, one of the things that we need to be wise about in our lives
is money when it comes to how to make money, because there are a lot of wrong ways to make
money.
And then there are also a lot of ways for people to be foolish with their money and
waste their money.
So there's a lot of financial advice in general in the book of Proverbs, but especially
in this chapter, it seems like money comes up a little more often than even in some
of the other chapters talking about riches versus poverty versus how to get wealth and
so forth.
But it says in verse number one, a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.
And what the Bible is saying here is that rather than having a lot of money,
you want to have a good reputation.
It's not worth it to ruin your reputation in order to get money by being dishonest
or doing something sinful or wicked or humiliating in order to get money.
A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, but I love the second part
of this verse because it says and loving favor rather than silver and gold.
Now I think that a lot of times we kind of focus on the first part of this verse
because we all know what it means when it says that having a good reputation is better
than having a lot of money.
But what about that second part and loving favor rather than silver and gold?
What does loving favor mean?
What this means is that people love you is what that means.
Loving favor.
If I have favor in someone's sight, it means that I have grace in their sight.
It means that they look at me favorably.
They look at me positively.
When you think about guys like Daniel who are in captivity and the Bible says that
God had brought Daniel into tender love and that basically the master of the eunuchs loved
Daniel and he had favor with the master of the eunuchs.
He had favor with his master as a eunuch in Babylon.
And so when the Bible says here, loving favor is rather to be chosen than silver
and gold, don't just pass over that because that's a little bit different than the good
name because the good name is just your reputation.
You want to have a good reputation.
You don't want to be one where the Better Business Bureau has said that you're a scam
artist.
You don't want to call people on the phone and your number comes up as scam likely
when you call people.
So we all understand the first part.
What does this mean when it says loving favor is rather to be chosen than silver
and gold?
Well, I think a great way to illustrate this is to turn over to Luke Chapter 16 in
the New Testament.
Luke Chapter 16 and I'll put it to you this way.
I would rather have a network of people around me who love and care about me than
to have a big pile of money because if I had a big pile of money, that's going
to give me some sense of security.
But actually, I would feel more secure financially just knowing that I have people that love
me that could take care of me in case something goes wrong.
So I would rather have loving favor than silver and gold.
Now obviously, there's a spiritual component that integrity is the most important thing,
honesty and that a good name is rather to be chosen than gold and silver because
a good name means that you're doing things right and loving favor means that you're
doing things right.
But even just from a carnal perspective, it's just smarter to have a good reputation
than to ruin your reputation to get money, even just from a carnal standpoint, even
just from a worldly standpoint.
Likewise, is it smarter to cultivate loving favor with people than to just spend your
life making money and not caring about relationships and people in your network?
You see, when you drive down the road and you see one of these panhandlers out there
begging for money and they're telling you how destitute they are, first of all, many
of them or even most of them have chosen that lifestyle because they want to just
live outside and because it's Arizona, right?
I mean, you can do it here.
But they want to live outside and just do their own thing because they don't want
to work.
They want to take drugs.
They want to just be high for days on end or whatever.
But let's say they legitimately need help.
You know what that tells you is that they have no network.
They don't have a church.
They don't have parents.
They don't have siblings.
They don't have any friends there to help them.
If they really have nowhere else to go than to stand on the corner and ask for money,
what does that tell you?
That they don't have a mom, dad, aunt, uncle, cousin, brother, sister, friend, church
member to ask.
Now, here's the thing.
You don't want to be that person.
You want to always make sure that you're surrounded by people that can help you in
time of need and, you know, idiotic teenagers and young adults, they burn their parents
and they burn relationships with siblings and friends and church and people around
them.
You know, someday they're going to be in need and they're going to wish that
they had that network, you know, because that's a safety net in our lives.
Obviously, ultimately, we're relying on the Lord to take care of us.
But you know what?
If I ever ran into problems, you know what I'd start doing?
I start cashing in favors.
If I had financial problems, if I couldn't pay my bills, if I didn't have food to
eat, I'd start calling up family.
I'd be like, dad, help me out, mom, help me out.
I'd be calling siblings, you know, I'd be calling friends.
I'd even, you know, start calling my cousins if it, if it got bad.
Right?
Amen.
I mean, you know, you're going to, you're going to reach out to people.
And especially if it's someone that I've helped in the past, well, then there's probably
a good chance that they're going to help me.
Or if they're just someone who loves me, someone with whom I have loving favor.
I'd rather have that loving favor than to just have a silver and gold because guess
what?
These guys tend to make wings for themselves and fly away, the Bible says.
So look at Luke chapter 16.
This is a great little story told by the Lord Jesus Christ parable.
It says in verse one, and he said unto his disciples, there was a certain rich
man which had a steward and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his
goods.
And he called him and said unto him, how is it that I hear this of thee, given account
of thy stewardship for thou mayest be no longer steward.
So this guy's getting fired, but before he gets fired, he has to transfer the records
to the boss.
Because think about it, in your job, you've got all this stuff that you're responsible
for.
There's probably things at your job that only you know how to do.
And so if you were to get fired, they'd probably want you to kind of wrap things
up.
They wouldn't want you to necessarily just put everything in a cardboard box and leave
immediately unless you really did something bad.
Typically, they would want you to wind things down and kind of show the next person, okay,
these are the passwords, this is where the files are, this is how I left everything.
Okay, here's the account book.
And if you want to get your last paycheck, you're probably going to need to turn
in those type of records and timesheets and things and so forth.
So this guy's fired, but his boss is saying, you have to give an account of your stewardship.
You need to basically finish up your books and get everything documented and turn it
in because you're done being my steward, you're done working for me, so I'm putting
you on notice, you're fired, so get your house in order, and so forth.
And by the way, I get asked about this story all the time because it's kind of
a difficult to understand story for some people on the surface.
So that's one of the reasons why it's good to go over it.
It says in verse three, then the steward said within himself, what shall I do?
What am I going to do?
I'm fired.
What shall I do?
For my lord, take it away from me the stewardship.
Now what's a stewardship?
A stewardship is when you're put in charge of something,
you're given a responsibility.
This guy's in charge of handling his boss's money.
He's like his accountant, he handles his accounts, he handles debts and
credits and so forth, and so he's like, what am I going to do?
I cannot dig.
He's like, what am I going to do?
I'm going to go get some job digging ditches or something?
I just, I can't imagine myself working physically, is what the guy's saying.
I've been pushing papers for so many years that I can't really see
myself out there digging ditches because I'm just not a physical work kind of guy.
Okay.
And he says, to beg I am ashamed.
With all that stuff Pastor Harris has been saying from the pulpit,
the last thing I want to do is be down there on the corner of baseline in the I-10
with a cardboard sign, and I'm ashamed to beg.
I am resolved what to do, that when I'm put out of the stewardship,
they may receive me into their houses.
Who's going to receive them into their houses?
Well, we're going to find out.
So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him and
said unto the first, how much oest thou unto my lord?
And he said, a hundred measures of oil.
And he said unto him, take thy bill and sit down quickly and write 50.
So he begins to cook the books in the favor of the customers.
He's cheating and stealing from his master by taking a guy who owes him 100
and changing the records so that he only owes him 50.
Now the customer really likes this idea.
This sounds great to the customers, okay?
Hey, you know what?
We're giving you a discount.
You only owe half as much.
Great.
And then said he to another, how much oest thou?
And he said, a hundred measures of wheat.
And he said to him, take thy bill and write four score.
Let's just change it to 80.
Great.
Now, this is the perplexing part in verse eight.
And the Lord commanded the unjust steward because he had done wisely.
Now, notice the steward is unjust.
Is what he did right?
Here's another word for unjust, unrighteous.
What the steward did was unrighteous, unjust.
It was sin.
And they say, well, why is the Lord commanding him?
Notice that the Lord is not capitalized here.
See, a lot of people, they misread this as the Lord commended the unjust
steward.
God is not going to commend you for sinning.
What the Bible is saying is that the guy's boss commended him.
Because his Lord, because stewards have a Lord, they have a boss.
So that's why, look at verse number five.
It says, so he called every one of his Lord's debtors.
You see how that Lord is in lowercase.
You know, the King James editors here have put the Lord in lowercase.
Just to help you see here, we're not talking about God in heaven.
He does not praise sin or praise injustice, but rather the guy's boss,
the one that he ripped off, said, hey, this guy's stealing from me.
This guy's ripping me off.
But I got to hand it to him.
He's actually a pretty smart dude.
That was actually a pretty good idea.
He's actually a wise person.
So that Lord, not the Lord God, but this guy's Lord,
commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely.
For the children of this world, so when we talk about the children
of this world, we're talking about unsaved people.
We're just talking about unsaved people out in the world, not
people that are church people, but just the children of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
Okay, who are the children of light?
Well, the Bible tells us in First Thessalonians chapter five
that we are all the children of light.
We are not of the night nor of darkness.
Therefore, let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.
So the Bible tells us that we as Christians, we're the children of light,
but the children of this world in their generation.
So in their time, when it comes to maybe the things of this world
are wiser than the children of light.
What the Bible is saying is that we can learn something
from unsaved people, okay?
Obviously, when it comes to spiritual things, they're fools,
but we can learn something even from the children of this world, okay?
We don't want to sin like them.
We don't want to have faith or lack of faith like them,
but we can still learn something from them.
You know, in the words of Brother Hiles, he said,
every man knows something that I do not know.
Therefore, all men are my teachers.
So I could learn something about business,
or I could learn something about electrical work,
or I could learn something about plumbing,
or I could learn something about drawing pictures
or something from an unsaved person, right?
I would be like, oh, you're not saved.
You can't teach me how to install electrical, right?
But they could also maybe even teach you some things
about how to manage money or whatever.
And so here's a case where an unsaved heathen
is doing something sinful,
but we can still learn a valuable lesson from this.
Not that we're going to do exactly what he did
because that would be sinful,
but rather the spirit behind what he's doing,
there's something smart about it
that you could bring over into your Christian life.
So the Bible says the children of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light
and I say unto you, so now Jesus is gonna give us,
what can we learn from the story?
Not to be a crook, not to cook the books,
but rather, here's what we can learn.
Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness
that when ye fail, they may receive you
into everlasting habitations.
Now that is the moral of the story.
Now this is kind of a difficult verse at first blush,
so let me break this down to you.
What it's saying here when it says
make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,
what the Bible is saying is use your money
to make to yourselves friends
so that when you fail, they may receive you
into everlasting habitations.
So it's not right for you to go cook the books,
but one smart thing that you would do
is if you're prosperous, if you're doing well,
if you have money, then if you're generous
with other people, well the Bible says
he that giveth gifts hath many friends, right?
So there was a time when I was really prospering
in my secular job, doing fire alarms,
and I was making really good money.
So I would always try to make a point,
and I would think about this verse,
I would always try to make a point to always be buying
for friends and family and people
when I would go out to eat, hey, let me buy,
let me take a, because I had abundance at that time,
and then I always thought to myself,
down the road when I need something,
I'm gonna be ready to cash in some of these favors,
or I'm gonna be able to at least have people
that love me, that I have a relationship with,
that can help me out.
You see, when I fall on hard times, man,
I wanna have people that are gonna help me out.
And what does the Bible say?
Give and it shall be given unto you, okay?
Now the Bible also says that it's smart
to do good things for people that cannot repay you
because then God will repay you.
So if you give unto the poor, you're lending to the Lord,
the Bible says, and then he'll pay you.
So it's always great to be generous with your funds
with people who cannot help you
because then God will pay you back for that.
That's what the Bible says.
But it's also good to be generous
with your loved ones and friends,
even if they can help you out,
because those are people that then in a time of crisis,
you could turn to those people,
and they're gonna be more likely to help you out
because you've already done a lot for them.
And again, you don't even necessarily always have to,
although this specifically is saying,
make to yourselves friends
of the mammon of unrighteousness,
that when you fail,
they may receive you into everlasting habitations.
But obviously you can also just do acts of kindness,
even if it's not spending your money to make friends.
How about just cultivating a relationship
with your mom and dad?
How about just cultivating a relationship
with your brother and your sister?
How about just cultivating a relationship
with friends at church,
with other friends and neighbors and people?
If you have loving favor with the people around you,
that's more of a security net
than a big stack of money in the bank,
where you're just some solitary old crone
with all your big pile of cash.
I would rather have people to rely on
than money to rely on.
I would rather rely on other people than to rely on money.
I'd rather have a network of people around me
that all love and care about me,
that don't wanna see me crash and burn,
financially or otherwise.
That's a better safety net than any financial plan.
And I believe that's what Jesus is getting at here
when he says, make to yourselves friends
of the mammon of unrighteousness.
And then the other part that throws people off
is it says that when you fail,
they may receive you into everlasting habitations.
This is not talking about everlasting
in the sense of like everlasting life,
like going to heaven or something,
because obviously making to yourselves friends
of the mammon of unrighteousness,
those people can't turn around
and then confer on you
some kind of a mansion in heaven or something.
That would be kind of an absurd interpretation,
wouldn't it?
Be kind of silly.
What the Bible is saying when it says
that they may receive you into everlasting habitations,
what did the unjust steward say?
He said, this is what I'm gonna do,
so that they may, at the end of verse four,
receive me into their houses.
Okay, so that I'm not gonna be in the street,
these people are gonna give me a place to stay.
I'm not gonna be high and dry,
because I'm gonna do this favor for them,
and then they're gonna remember that
and then they're gonna receive me into their houses.
So what the Bible is saying,
if we cultivate friendships, then when we fail,
if we are in need, we lack,
we crash and burn financially, so to speak,
they may receive us into everlasting habitations.
This is hyperbole.
This is him basically saying, hey, stay as long
as you want, you know, like they're not gonna say,
well, you can sleep on the sofa tonight,
but tomorrow you better figure something out.
That's not everlasting habitations.
Everlasting habitations is, sure, you know,
as long as you need to, you know,
you're welcome to stay with us anytime,
because you've been such a good friend,
because you've been such a blessing,
because you've been someone that we love and cherish.
You know, you're our son, you're our daughter,
you're our brother, our sister, our friend,
you know, we'll take care of you,
we're not gonna leave you hanging, okay?
So go back if you went to Proverbs 22.
Hey, that's the safety net that's so important,
and you know what, preaching this sermon tonight,
this is something that our society
really needs to hear right now,
because people don't value relationships right now.
They're more into just making money
and just pleasing themselves, and they're just destroying
so many relationships in their life,
and if you're smart, you'll keep a good relationship
with the people around you,
and you'll have friends and loved ones
to fall back on in a time of need.
Now, there are lots of other wonderful reasons
to have friends and family surrounding you,
but one good reason is also so that when you're in trouble
you have a network of people,
and you're not just high and dry.
So that's why a good name is rather to be chosen
than great riches, verse one of chapter 22
there in Proverbs, and loving favor
rather than silver and gold.
You'd rather have loving favor with the people around you.
You'd rather have people that are willing
to receive you into everlasting habitations
when you fail.
You'd rather have people around you that love you
and maybe even kind of owe you one.
That's better than a big stack of money.
The Bible says in verse two,
the rich and poor meet together.
The Lord is the maker of them all,
and so obviously God is not a respecter of persons,
and having money is not the most important thing in life
because you can't take it with you,
and whether you're rich or poor,
the Lord views you the same.
He's not a respecter of persons,
and by the way, the church is supposed to view you the same.
God condemns in James chapter two,
treating people better because they have money
and treating people poorly because they're poor.
Like I said, we should be generous and open-handed
and loving toward both rich and poor
because the poor people can't do anything for us,
but God's gonna bless us for helping them
because as much as we've done it
under the least of Christ's brethren,
we've done it unto him,
and then if we help people that are rich,
well, guess what?
They're gonna receive us into everlasting habitations
if we fail.
Verse number three,
a prudent man foreseeeth the evil and hideth himself,
and again, let's apply that
to what we've just been learning.
Realize and foresee the fact
that you may come on hard times.
You don't know if you are gonna get injured,
you're gonna get a debilitating illness,
your job's gonna become obsolete
when you get replaced by a robot.
You don't know what's gonna happen.
You don't know what it,
to boast not thyself for tomorrow,
for thou knowest not what a day shall bring forth,
and so foresee that evil,
make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,
cultivate loving favor with those around you,
and most importantly,
cultivate being in God's good graces
because that's the number one
most important safety net of all.
The Bible says in verse four,
by humility and the fear of the Lord
are riches and honor and life.
That's the right way to gain wealth.
That's the right way to gain honor
and live a good life is by humility
and by the fear of the Lord, right?
Just humbly doing right in the sight of God,
that's the way to succeed.
This is what I mean, the first four verses,
they all contain the word,
well, one, two, and four contain the word riches,
and then verse three talks about foreseeing the evil.
You could apply that to a financial evil as well.
The Bible says in verse five,
thorns and snares are in the way of the froward.
He that doth keep his soul shall be far from them.
So God is gonna protect you and keep you safe
if you do what's right.
Wicked people are gonna fall
into all kinds of traps and snares.
Train up a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Of course, very famous verse.
I'm not really gonna spend a lot of time on it
because it's super famous, and lots of other sermons
have been preached about this.
Verse number seven, the rich ruleth over the poor.
Back to that subject that keeps coming up in this chapter.
The rich ruleth over the poor,
and the borrower is servant to the lender.
This is another verse that you'll hear quoted a lot.
The borrower is servant to the lender.
So again, it's not smart to put yourself in a position
where you're in a lot of debt, okay?
Like I said, it's smart to be open-handed
and generous with your money,
and to give because then it shall be given unto you,
and to take care of the people in your network
so that one day they might take care of you,
or so that one day the Lord might take care of you
if they fall through.
And look, even if I was a major blessing
to someone who's well-healed,
and then they turned around and said,
no, sorry, can't help you in my time of need,
I would still know that the Lord's gonna help me
in that case.
Because whatever goes around comes around,
and given it shall be given unto you.
But you don't wanna be in a situation
where you're borrowing money all the time.
Because this puts you in a situation
where you're in like a bondage, in a sense,
because the borrower is servant to the lender.
And it's really incredible if you go on Google
and just type in like the national debt clock,
and you can go to that website
where it shows the national debt clock
and it's just running up in real time.
But it has some other wonderful calculations on there
about student debt in the United States,
and also credit card debt in the United States.
And the numbers are astronomical.
The numbers are insane.
Americans, I'm not gonna ask for a raise of hands.
Americans have Boku credit card debt,
and Boku student loans.
In fact, there's more student loan debt
than credit card debt, which that kind of blew me away.
Because I would have thought that credit card debt
would be a way bigger deal.
But man, apparently student loan debt
is a really big deal.
And folks, it really doesn't make any sense.
And so I would never recommend you
to take these student loans.
First of all, the interest rates aren't low,
from what I've seen.
It's not like it's some super low or no interest,
or super low interest.
I mean, there's interest involved in these student loans.
And not only that, but for the most part,
they're totally unnecessary.
Because let's say you just really wanna go to college,
right, and you're just like,
hey, I really wanna go to college or whatever.
Here's the thing about that is that
if you don't have money, if you're a lower income,
there's all kinds of government subsidy
that's gonna pay for you to go to community college
and even pay for you to go to a four-year school.
Okay, but here's what they're not gonna pay for.
They're not gonna pay for you
to go to some Ivy League school or something.
So what you have is you have people
going to these insanely expensive schools,
really expensive schools,
so then they have to go into a lot of debt to pay for.
Or the government's already covering their tuition
because they're low income
or covering 80% of their tuition or 90% of their tuition.
So here's why they're getting the student loans
so that they can basically just have spending money.
So basically what they wanna do
is they wanna go to school and not have a job.
And they're probably only taking like three, four classes.
So they go to like three, four classes.
What are they doing with the rest of their time?
Just basically partying and just hanging out
and just playing and wasting their time.
And so therefore, they need all these student loans
to pay like rent, food, car, gas, whatever,
so that they can just go through the party life of school
and then when they graduate from college,
four years later, they've got $100,000 of student debt
racked up or $80,000 of student debt
and they've got their four-year degree
in lesbian poetry or whatever.
But I don't even care what,
I don't even care if they have the most practical,
effective degree ever.
Is it worth it to be 80 grand in debt, 100 grand in debt?
Because that's gonna be a pretty deep hole
to dig yourself out of,
especially when it's not really necessary
because if you make enough money
to where you don't get the federal aid and everything,
because look, I remember back in the day,
you know, even 20-some years ago,
when I went to community college,
when I was fresh out of high school,
I mean, even back then,
I was getting all kinds of government money
and government aid to go to community college
and now there's way more of it than there was back then.
Okay.
If you're making, but you're like,
well, I make too much money to qualify for that,
then just pay for it.
Or like when I went to Bible college,
when I went to Bible college, I worked full-time
and went to Bible college full-time.
Now you say, well, that's no fun.
That wasn't the party life, you know,
going to Bible college full-time and working full-time.
Yeah, but here's the thing about that though,
is that it's not fun to have 100 grand
in student loan debt either.
That's not fun either.
Now I know Joe Biden is gonna forgive
a lot of debt or something.
Did that ever even happen?
It got struck down.
That's a little carrot that the Democrats
are constantly hanging in front of, you know,
these people with the student loan debt.
But, you know, I wouldn't just count on that
because it got struck down
and it's been struck down many times
and there's probably strings attached and who knows.
But man alive, you know, racking up some insane debt
to go to school, folks, it's not a wise decision.
Yeah, but I can go to this fancy school, blah, blah, blah.
But hold on, hold up.
You can also make a lot of money without going to college
make a lot of money without going to school.
And even if you just really wanna go to school,
you could pay your way, you could get federal funding.
There are jobs that will pay for your schooling.
You know, I think I saw a sign about that up
at like Panda express or something.
But anyway, my point is, you know,
don't fall into this trap of going deep into debt.
Now let's talk about credit card debt.
Boy, that's an easy trap to fall into.
And look, let me tell you something.
When I first got married, you know,
I got into some credit card debt
just because I wasn't making a lot of money.
I was living paycheck to paycheck,
unexpected expenses came up
and I ended up getting into credit card debt.
And man, it was such a pain in the neck
for so many years
because once you're in credit card debt,
it's so hard to get out of it.
And so I was in a lot of credit card debt.
In fact, when I, I'll just,
let me just confess my faults this day.
You know, when I started Faith Forward Baptist Church,
okay, first of all,
I had like $7,000 of credit card debt,
which might not sound like a lot now,
but you know, back then $7,000 was more than it is now.
So I had like $7,000 of credit card debt.
And this is before the mortgage collapse.
And so back then lenders were doing all kinds
of shady things and they were lying to you all the time.
And so not only did I have $7,000 of credit card debt,
but at the very last minute,
as I was buying my house here in Tempe,
at the very last minute,
they just changed the deal.
And it was like, oh,
you gotta give us another four grand
than what we had agreed upon.
So then guess what?
I had to borrow the four grand.
And so then I was 11,
when Faith Forward Baptist Church held its first service,
I had 11 grand of credit card debt.
And I wasn't even sure what the status of my job was,
because my job was in Illinois.
And I moved to Arizona and my boss had said,
hey, maybe you can start a branch in Arizona,
but it was kind of like, is this gonna work?
I don't know.
So that was a little stressful, okay.
Now I have no regrets because of course,
starting Faith Forward Baptist Church was super important.
And so I started the church, but thank God.
And for the first four and a half years of the church,
I did not get paid by church
because obviously the church was small.
And so I was working full time.
And so I didn't take money from the church
for the first four and a half years.
I was putting money in to the church
and I wasn't getting paid.
I was just having to do both.
But thank God, I was blessed in my secular job.
And within like a year and a half,
I was able to pay off that credit card debt.
But I had struggled with that credit card debt
for years leading up to that.
And it's just, it's such a burden.
And so you've got to think about that
before you just start racking up credit cards.
You've got to live within your means
and cut expenses and figure out a way
to pay those suckers off.
And so I'm not trying to make this a big sermon
about getting out of debt,
but it's kind of a heavy weight upon you
or a burden upon you or a load on you to be in debt.
And it should be avoided as much as you possibly can.
Obviously we live in a debt-based economy.
So it's kind of hard not to have any debt.
Like for example, buying a house,
gone are the days when you can just kind of
save up and buy a house.
Good luck saving up and buying a house in Tempe, Arizona.
Right?
I mean, the houses are hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And so by the time you save up, inflation is gonna,
yeah, it's just probably not gonna work.
So, you know, but here's the thing,
borrowing money to buy a house actually makes sense
because there's actually something backing up the debt.
There's collateral, is that the right word?
Not a financial guy.
Is that the right word?
You've got the equity in the house.
And so therefore, buying a house is,
you know, it's a secured debt,
not something where, hey, we ran the credit card
at a restaurant and we ate food
that we eliminated less than 24 hours later.
And we literally flushed that money down the toilet.
Now using a credit card for that
is a little different than buying a house
that you live in and it's an investment
and you own the house,
so that's kind of like money in the bank, as it were.
Or buying a sensible vehicle could be money in the bank
if the vehicle's worth what you paid for it
or something like that.
But just buying stuff like clothes, food,
and just putting that stuff on credit cards,
you know, that's a bad idea
because then you're wasting money on interest.
And by the way,
not only is the borrower servant to the lender,
but I'm trying to tie in some of these other verses.
Look at verse 16.
It says, he that oppresseth the poor
to increase his riches
and he that giveth to the rich
shall surely come to want.
Now this is probably not the primary application
of this verse, but I'll say this.
When you pay interest to credit card companies,
you are giving to the rich.
You're just giving your money to rich people
because the bankers and the credit card companies,
they are rich people
and you are giving them your money
and getting nothing in return.
They are usurers.
And it's ungodly the interest rates that they charge,
but that's what they charge.
In the United States,
they're allowed to charge legally up to 29.99%.
So anything above that is called usury
in the United States.
30% and above is called usury,
but they can charge you 29.99.
So if you read the fine print in your credit cards,
if you pay your bills late,
if you screw up and you get in bad graces with them,
there'll be a little fine print saying,
your interest rate is gonna go up to 29.99%
if you screw this up, buddy.
Okay, check it out.
That's usually what it says.
Or sometimes they'll give you a break
and it's like 25.99%, APR or whatever.
But that's insane.
I mean, the Bible talks about people
being charged 1% interest and calls it usury
in the book of Nehemiah.
So anyway, we've got these really high interest rates.
You got these bankers
and they'll nail you even worse with banking fees,
not just interest, but they'll hit you with the fees.
And so we wanna avoid,
I mean, look, we're preaching about proverbs.
We're talking about proverbs tonight.
We're talking about being wise.
Here's something wise for you to focus on.
Never overdraw your checking account ever.
Don't do it.
You don't wanna just run your checking account to the bone.
Don't be that guy who has a dollar and 43 cents
in his checking account.
That should never happen for any reason.
It's just so dumb because here's the thing,
one false move and you dip below zero,
you'll get hit with hundreds of dollars of banking fees
because then you go buy a stick of gum
and it's like $30 overdraft fee for that stick of gum.
And then you buy a bottle of water,
$30 for buying that bottle of water.
It's like, whoa, hold up.
I overdrew my account by $1.
Yeah, but it's a $30 fee plus another $20 fee.
There's a fee fee, the fee fee.
And it's like, it's just like fees on fees.
Look, I made this mistake in my life once.
One time in my life, I overdrew my checking account.
This is when I was much younger, I screwed up.
I overdrew my checking account, $160 in fees.
For overdrawing my checking account by like 20 bucks
or 15 bucks, boom, $160 in bank fees.
And we went in and we fought with the bank
and argued and fussed.
And if you're lucky, they'll cut it in half or something.
I think maybe we got it to cut down from 160 to 180, okay.
And you say, well, Pastor Anderson,
it's easy for you to say, don't go into debt,
don't go out to eat on the credit card
and don't run your checking account so low.
That's easy for you to say,
cause you're 41 years old and you're established
and you have enough money,
but you don't understand how little money I have.
But here's the thing about that.
If you have very little money,
that's even more of a reason
not to overdraw your checking account
cause you can't afford that $160 fee.
And that's even more reason not to rack up credit cards
cause you can afford the interest even less than I can.
Folks, no one can afford this.
And here's what's funny.
There are people who go to a check cashing place
like every week and get advanced till payday.
So they're always like exactly one week behind.
So they're basically living on the exact same amount
of money as if they weren't in debt,
except they just also have to pay an extra interest fee.
Borrowing money doesn't magically give you more money
because next paycheck you're still in that,
you eventually are in that same position.
You know what it's like?
It's like people who consistently show up to church
five minutes late and they're so consistent.
Like if you're that consistent
about being five minutes late,
why couldn't you just move everything up by five minutes
and have the exact same lifestyle
and then you'd just always be on time.
Think about that.
I mean, there are people who like clockwork
walk in during a certain song.
It's like, well, you have got this consistency thing down
but you've got a routine.
All you have to do is just shift it up a little bit.
Just how hard is it instead of getting up
at whatever the time, just minus five minutes.
Just everything subtract five minutes.
Just change all the clocks in your house
to be five minutes fast.
And you would always be on time to church
as long as you forget that you've done that.
Let's be on it, let's be real for a minute.
Who has purposely set the clock in your car or house fast
so that you'll be on time places?
Put up your hand.
Hands all over the building.
God bless you, I see that hand.
But you know what?
That's a life hack right there, okay?
For people who are perennially late.
You know, Pastor Jimenez told me one time,
he told me this actually 17 years ago,
we were waiting for a guy who was late
and Pastor Jimenez told me, he said, you know what?
There are two kinds of people in this world.
And he told me this when he was 20 years old.
He was already a man of wisdom at age 20.
Pastor Jimenez told me this and I love,
I say it all the time and I got it from him.
He said, you know what?
There are two kinds of people in this world.
He said, there are people that are always on time
and people are always late.
And it's so true, like people who are late,
they're not late once.
They're usually late like 20 times
and then people who are on time tend to be on time
virtually all the time.
And it's super rare that late people are on time
and super late that on time people are late.
And I love that quote.
But here's the thing about being late,
it doesn't really make sense.
Because if you just shift your routine a little earlier,
you'd always be on time
because you just always have that buffer.
Well, here's what you got to do with your finances
is you got to make $500 in your checking account
be the new zero, okay?
Now it's hard at first maybe to get that $500 in there.
But once you get that $500 in there,
you're living off the exact same amount of money
as you were before.
Same amounts coming in, same amounts going out,
except that now running your checking account dry
means $501.43.
Whereas it used to mean $1.43.
So it's hard, you might have to go through
some really rough times or make sacrifices
or really struggle to get that $500 buffer in there.
But it's so worth it because then even when you screw up,
now here's what a screw up looks like.
Oh, there's $450 instead of the 500 minimum
that I don't like to go below.
Whereas it used to be a screw up was negative $50.
And here's $300 in bank fees for you.
Does everybody see what I'm saying?
You don't want to play with this.
The bank will find they do all kinds of voodoo.
Okay, so this is what they'll do.
At 7 p.m., you overdraw your checking account by $12.
They'll find some other transactions throughout the day
and they'll change the order
that they put them into your account.
So that instead of going over with one transaction,
you went over with three little transactions.
They'll move the $12 transaction earlier in the day,
they'll grab a $3, a $4 and a $5 transaction
and they'll run them through in a different order
because then they can hit you with 30 times three
instead of 30 times one.
Trust me, that is what they do.
This is not a joke right now.
I do not laugh, stop laughing.
I'm not kidding, stop, this is real.
I'm serious, they literally do that.
They will literally move things around.
When you pay, same thing by the way,
when you pay your credit card,
you'd think, oh, you know, it's like first in, first out,
they'll pay off the old stuff.
Oh no, they'll pay off whatever
is not earning them interest.
And whatever is earning them interest,
whatever's not in the grace period,
that doesn't get paid off unless you pay your whole bill.
They do it in their favor all the time.
You don't wanna let these bunch of J-E-W-S
get into you like this, okay?
You want the, you know what I'm saying?
The J-O-O-Z-E, you don't wanna give to them
because you're giving to the rich, okay?
So anyway, I hope you're listening tonight
because some people don't need this
and they're like, yup, that's true.
Pastors is right.
And by the way, a $500 buffer might not even be enough
depending on how much money is coming
in and out of your account.
I mean, how about Faithful Word Baptist Church?
You think we have a,
we just make sure we keep 500 bucks in the account.
Obviously, we're running a big ministry here,
big organization here.
We have a much bigger buffer than that.
When you have 12 kids and when you've got
all kinds of, just the grocery bill alone
can just wipe out that 500 bucks like it's nothing.
Yeah, we need a little bigger buffer than that.
But you know, if you're just starting out,
if you're a young person,
maybe $100 buffer is enough for you
because you're a teenager,
you're living at home or whatever.
But just get in the habit of having some kind
of a safety net or buffer
because you don't wanna pay bank fees
because you're giving to the rich.
You don't wanna pay interest on credit cards.
You know, it's not worth it.
If there's any way around it,
try to stay out of debt as much as possible.
Again, certain things like vehicles and houses,
that can sometimes make sense.
I do not believe that it makes sense
to borrow money to go to school
or to borrow money to eat or drink and be merry
because those are not sound investments, okay?
So be careful with those things.
The borrower is serving to the lender.
That's a warning, right?
Now, some people will get up and preach,
it's a sin to go into debt.
It's a sin to borrow money.
No, that is not true.
That is not biblical.
It sounds good.
And who's heard that preaching before?
That just says borrowing money is a sin.
It's a sin to go into debt, period.
And a lot of people, when they hear that preaching,
here's what they end up doing.
They end up just renting for the rest of their lives
because it's impossible for them
to buy a house in this economy.
Normal people cannot buy a house in cash in this economy,
in this region.
Maybe in some other, you know,
and some guy in Mississippi right now is like,
I don't know what past friends are talking about
because, you know, my trailers paid off.
But here's the thing about that though, okay?
We're living in Phoenix, Arizona.
If you're living in Los Angeles, California,
if you're living in Sacramento, California,
you're not buying a house in cash unless you're wealthy.
You are rich if you can just pull out cash
and buy a house in this economy.
Unless you're taking money from the other house
you're selling, then you might not be rich.
But I'm saying if you're a starting out person
and you're buying your first home, 99.9%,
you're not gonna be able to pay cash.
You're gonna have a mortgage, okay?
But here's the thing about that.
These people that say,
oh, it's just a sin to borrow money.
First of all, don't add commandments
that aren't in the Bible.
The Bible does not say it's a sin to borrow money.
And the Bible, you know, basically feels bad for you
if you're borrowing money.
But it doesn't say you're wicked.
It says the usurers are wicked.
Okay, here's the thing.
People who think it's a sin, here's what they'll do.
They'll just rent forever.
Well, guess what?
If there's any way that you can buy a house,
as long as you know that you're not planning on moving
and that you plan to stay in that geography,
it is much smarter to buy a house than to rent.
Now, a lot of people, it's impossible, I get it.
So hey, if that's your situation,
if you can't buy a house, then hey,
you know, it is what it is.
You gotta rent.
I rented for a long time.
You know, you gotta do what you can.
It is what it is because hey,
it's not about the treasures
that we have on this earth anyway.
So if you're renting and you have to keep renting,
God bless you.
But if there's a way for you to buy a house,
it's smarter financially to buy a house
because you say, well,
but I'm gonna pay all that interest.
Here's the thing.
You're paying rent every month.
What's the difference between paying interest
and paying rent?
Because when you pay rent, that money's gone.
When you pay interest, that money's gone.
But here's the thing.
When I make my house payment,
part of the money goes toward interest and is up in smoke
but part of it goes toward the principle,
not only that, my house is going up every day in value
even if I don't pay anything because of all the inflation
and when you own a home, inflation is your friend
because your house keeps going up in value, okay?
Even without you even necessarily putting a lot of money
on the principle each month
whereas when you're renting,
inflation is not your friend
because six months from now, your landlord's like,
oh, by the way, I'm raising your rent by 300 bucks.
Oh, your rent's going up by 500 bucks.
Here's the thing.
I own my home.
I have a 30-year mortgage, okay?
Guess what?
25 years from now, my house payment's gonna be exactly
the same as it is right now.
Is your rent gonna be the same 25 years from now?
No.
So you can see how even if it's a little painful,
when you first buy a house, a little bit painful
and it's a little bit hard to make that house payment,
in the long run, that house payment's gonna seem
smaller and smaller as inflation kicks in
and you're making an investment,
you're putting money into something, okay?
And so I think it's appropriate in a sermon on Proverbs
just to give you kind of a little bit of life wisdom,
the type of thing that maybe your dad would tell you
or something that, hey, look,
if you can buy a home, do it.
Now, I bought my first home at the worst possible time.
Okay?
Guess when I bought my home?
When I started Faith Ward Baptist Church
because I had just come out of a situation
where I was renting and I had the landlord from hell.
He literally might have ascended
out of the bottomless pit, okay?
He was bad.
And so that was like my first experience renting a home
and, because I'd done apartments before,
but I rented a home when I was in Bible college
and it was the landlord from hell.
And so I was like, how can I start a church in my house
and deal with a landlord?
You know, what if the landlord says,
you can't have church in your house
and I'm gonna be in trouble, I need to start church,
you know, this is what I'm doing.
So I was like, I gotta buy a home.
I bought my home on December 22nd, 2005.
And if you know anything about history,
2005 is the worst possible time to buy a house.
I bought my house and it lost
in the next two to three years,
I think by three years later,
my house had dropped in value by about,
I don't really care.
I'll just come out and tell you how much I paid
for my house and how much it was worth.
I bought my house for $225,000,
which was a good deal at the time.
Like we looked at all these houses,
everything else was more, 250, 275.
I bought my house in 2005 for $225,000,
three years later is worth $80,000.
Okay, and I still owed a couple hundred grand
on this house.
It was worth $80,000.
Now, how do you think that made me feel at the time?
I bought a house for 225,000,
I owe 200,000 on it, now it's worth 80.
Houses down the street from us are selling for $63,000.
And some of you young people are like,
oh, for those days.
Yeah, but you know what?
You guys have the easiest time
in the history of America getting a good job.
There are more jobs now.
So you know, back then it was harder to get a job,
but houses were cheap.
So it is what it is, right?
There's always pros and cons.
My house is worth 80 grand.
But you know what?
I just said, okay, let's all calm down a little bit.
And you know what people were doing?
Everybody was like walking away from their house
or closing on their house, walking away.
But I just said, okay, let's just calm down
and let's handle this rationally, okay?
Our house is worth $80,000.
Did our house payment change?
Are we still paying the same amount
we were paying last month?
Yeah, okay, am I making the same amount of money
or less money?
I'm making the same amount of money.
House payment's the same?
Let's just pretend our house is worth more.
Who cares if it's worth 80,000 if we're not selling it?
Let's just pretend.
So I spent the next like 12 years pretending.
And so it was a very long pretend game
that lasted like 10 or 12 years.
But guess what?
Even though I bought my house
at literally the worst possible time,
peak of the market, right before the crash, guess what?
I then sold my house about what,
two and a half years ago or something like that?
And guess what?
I sold it for more money than I paid.
So if you hang in there long enough,
the Democrats and the Republicans,
the Republicans too, but especially the Democrats right now,
like they're gonna drive inflation.
You can rely, you know what?
Our politicians are reliable.
You can rely on them in the long run
to drive those housing prices up
even higher than they are right now.
I trust them so much.
I have so much faith in them
that they will devalue the currency.
They will print more fake money.
Read my lips, more fake money is coming.
You can trust.
So here's my point.
Even though I bought my house at the literal worst time,
do I regret buying my house?
Do I wish I had rented?
No, because then I would have nothing.
Whereas I had all that money I paid in
plus my house had gone up,
I was able to sell it for more than I paid.
And the money I had paid in was there.
And so then that allowed me to buy my next house
because it turns out 1,300 square feet with 13 people
is a little difficult.
So we got a little bit bigger of a house now.
So does everybody see what I'm saying?
Does everybody see the moral to the story here?
Is that if it's possible for you to buy a house,
even buying it at the wrong time
is better than not buying.
Now again, I'm not trying to make you feel bad
if you can't afford it,
but maybe look into whatever the programs,
especially if you're black or Hispanic
or Native American.
I'm not joking.
There are people in our church
who've taken advantage of programs like that.
And guess what?
Hey, if they wanna give you a better deal on your loan
because you're Hispanic, then que bueno.
You know, sí como no.
Why not?
So anyway, I'm just saying like look into it
for crying out loud because it's better,
it's a wiser, that's why I'm not gonna get up
and preach like, oh, don't go into debt.
First of all, that's adding to God's word
because the Bible doesn't teach that.
It warns you about the dangers of going to debt,
but it doesn't say it's a sin to go into debt.
It also doesn't say, hey, it's a sin to get sick.
It's a sin to trip and hurt yourself, you know.
If you're in debt, you know, yeah,
maybe it's because you did something stupid,
but just think, you know,
maybe it's not because you did something stupid.
The Bible talks about people getting really poor
and going into debt to eat.
So, you know, you can't just make this blanket statement
and you're doing people a disservice by telling them,
don't ever go into debt
because you're basically telling them in our economy,
de facto, don't ever own a home,
which is bad financial advice
because it's smarter if possible to own a home.
Again, if you're not in a position to do that,
you know, it is what it is.
I'm not trying to make you feel bad
because it is what it is, but you should try to.
Now, the other thing is don't buy a house
if you're not sure that you want to live here
because sometimes people will say this.
They'll be like, oh, well, you know, I'll buy a house
and maybe if I decide to move,
I'll just sell it in a couple of years.
Okay, would that have worked for me in 2005?
Because I'll buy my house in 2005, oh, 2008,
I guess I'll just sell it in 2008.
It'll sell for 80 grand?
And then the bank's like, okay, well,
you still owe us 120 grand or whatever
because you still owe 200 thou on the thing.
Okay, so no, whenever you buy a house,
it should always be in your mind,
I might live here for the next 30 years.
And if that thought is not okay with you,
if you're thinking like, well, no,
I mean, this might be temporary,
then maybe you should think about not buying.
But if you are comfortable with,
hey, I might be in this house for the next 30 years,
then a 30-year loan is appropriate.
If you're like, hey, I think I could do this
for the next 15 years, get a 15-year loan.
But if you're like, well, I might just move in two years
well, then, you know,
you might want to think that through and not do that.
But you know, if you're like, man,
who in the world in their right mind
would move out of Arizona?
Then you know what, I feel that, all right?
So you might as well buy a house, amen?
All right, so I spent a lot of time on that,
but I'm just trying to give you some good advice
because I don't want you to be borrowing a bunch of money
and being a servant to the lender.
But at the same time,
I want to give you sound financial advice
so you don't give to the rich
and so that you can be wise
about the way that you handle your money
and not be foolish and waste money, throw away money.
Obviously, we should be good stewards
of the funds that God allows us to come into.
And that's why the Bible says, you know,
he that is slothful in his work
is brother to him that's a great waster.
So if I can help you not to waste money,
well, buying a home might be a way
for you to not waste as much money.
And again, you know, it's not a one size fits all
because everybody's situation is different.
But anyway, that's my advice for you.
And I think that I also have the spirit of God.
Let's borrow and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much
for your word, Lord.
Thank you for giving us advice, Lord.
Help us never to be tempted to sacrifice a good name
in order to gain money.
Help us to cultivate relationships
and friendships with people around us
and not to sacrifice friends in the name of money.
Because Lord, if we're smart,
we'd rather have friends than money.
And Lord God, help us not to put ourselves into bondage
by unnecessarily going into debt
or taking on unsecured debt, Lord.
Help us to have the wisdom
and help us to have the money that we need.
Not to be rich, Lord.
I pray that none of us would be rich, Lord.
And I pray that none of us will be poor, Lord,
but that rather you would just feed us
with food convenient for us
and that we would just have the money that we need
to take care of our families and live a Christian life,
not about money, but that's about serving you
where money is not a big thing in our minds, Lord.
Give us neither poverty nor riches.
And in Jesus' name, we pray, amen.