(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

And then the verse that I want to start out in tonight is verse number 9 where the Bible reads, He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. And what I want to preach about tonight is the subject of being wasteful. The title of my sermon is a wasteful steward, a wasteful steward. He also that is slothful in his work, and we know that's a bad thing to be a lazy worker, he says, is brother to him that is a great waster. He's saying it's the same type of person that tends to waste a lot. Look at Luke chapter number 16. Go to Luke 16, and then we're going to go to Ephesians 5, but head over to Luke 16. And there's a word in the Bible that comes up quite a bit, and that word is steward. And a lot of times in churches, you'll hear the word stewardship come up. And a steward is someone who is responsible for goods. So if a rich person has a steward, it's sort of like their accountant or the guy who manages their goods or manages their finances or keeps things in stock or takes care of the inventory. It's someone who's trusted with goods or money or items that he's responsible for. That's a steward. So when the Bible talks about not being wasteful, the opposite of that is to be a good steward, meaning that someone gives you something and you don't waste it, but you use it for that which is profitable or good. Now look down at your Bible there in Luke 16, verse 1. The Bible reads, and he said also 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. So when you're a bad steward, what did you do? You wasted the goods. You wasted the stuff. So that's what being a steward is. Verse 2, he called him and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward. So the idea here is that if we're a bad steward of the things that God gives us, God may take those things away from us because we're not using them, we're wasting them. And if other people, humanly speaking, entrust us with responsibility, goods, money, whatever, if we're a bad steward, that responsibility is going to be taken from us. So let's go through some areas tonight where we should not be a great waster, but rather we should be a good steward of that which we're given. Number one, go to Ephesians 5. Number one, don't waste your time. The most precious thing that we have is time. God gives us time, and we have only a limited amount of time each day, and we only have a limited amount of time in our lives. And we want to be good stewards of the time that God gives us and not waste time. Look at Ephesians 5, verse 14. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. What's he saying? In verse 14 he's saying, Awake thou that sleepest. Now this is figuratively speaking. Obviously whoever's reading this is wide awake while they're reading it. But when he says, Awake thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, obviously the person he's talking to is neither sleeping nor dead. But they are figuratively asleep in the sense that they're not doing anything. They're just laying there. They're inactive. They're idle. He's saying, get up, wake up, get out of bed, and do something. Awake thou that sleepest. And he says, rise from the dead. Why? Because often a church that's not doing anything would be figuratively called what? A dead church. And the Bible says faith without works is dead. So if we have faith but we don't have works, we're still saved, but we'd be a dead Christian. So he's telling Christians that aren't doing anything, hey look, awake from sleep. Rise from the dead. Let's get some life back in you. Let's get some life back in the church. Let's get some life in you. And Christ will give you light, he says. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time. See, the opposite of wasting the time is redeeming the time. The word redeem means to exchange for something of value. So if I take an empty bottle that's trash, but if it has a redemption value, I can turn that in for five cents. I can turn that in for 10 cents. So by redeeming it, it's not going to waste. It's going to be reused and I'm going to get five cents. I'm going to get 10 cents if I take it all the way to Michigan or Hawaii or whatever. So the point is that when we redeem the time, we're taking the time that we've been given and we're exchanging it for something valuable instead of just wasting the time. So the opposite of wasting time is redeeming time. Be not unwise, he says in verse 17, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. I skipped a verse, didn't I? The one about being drunk. What a waste of time. Getting drunk, wasting whole evenings or nights or talk about a waste of money, a waste of time, wasting your brain, amen, by drinking. He says, be not drunk with wine. We're in his excess, but be filled with the Spirit. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. So the Bible here says that we should redeem the time. Don't waste your time. Don't spend time being drunk and partying and wasting your brain. Spend time singing and praising God and doing something with your life. Winning people to Christ. Go to Colossians chapter 4. Colossians chapter number 4. And this is a parallel passage. And when I say parallel passage, what that means is that sometimes the Bible talks about the same thing twice, or maybe even more than two times. For example, the story of the Gospel is told four different times. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John will find the same stories in many cases, especially things like the crucifixion or the resurrection. So if we have two scriptures that are both talking about the same thing, those are parallel passages. Or sometimes the Apostle Paul will write similar things to one church that he wrote to another church. So a lot of the things that he wrote to the Ephesians, he wrote to the Colossians as well, but he uses a little bit different wording. So we can compare the two passages and their parallel passages. Same thing with 2 Peter chapter 2 and the book of Jude. Those are parallel passages. They talk about the same subjects. They talk about the same things. You could look at the books of the kings and the book of the chronicles and you're going to get the same thing. Well, here's a parallel passage with Ephesians 5. Colossians 4 verse 2. Continue in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving, with all praying also for us that God would open unto us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am also in bonds, that I may make it manifest. Manifest means explicit, plain, easy to understand. Manifest as I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward them that are without. Who are the ones that are without? Without what? He's saying they're outside of the faith. Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, outside the four walls of the church, and even outside of faith in Christ, just unsaved people, worldly people. He says walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man. Why? So that you can talk to them about the gospel, so that you can open your mouth with utterance, according to verse 3, to speak the mystery of Christ. When you get the opportunity, take that opportunity. Redeem that opportunity. Redeem the time. Don't waste it. So we should not waste our time, but we should spend our lives doing things that matter, reading our Bible, praying, preaching the gospel to the lost, singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs. There are a lot of good ways that we can use our time, and we shouldn't waste our time. Now there are 168 hours in the week. That's a lot of time. And in our modern society, we have a lot of spare time. More than people throughout history have had. Throughout history, housewives have not had a washing machine, and a dryer, and a dishwasher, and all the modern conveniences of just hot water on tap, cold water, just everything's just right there. And so they were having to wash everything by hand. And then when it comes to cooking, they don't have to kindle a fire or anything like that. They just flip a switch. They just push a button. They turn on the Instant Pot. They turn on the stove, the oven, the rice cooker, whatever. And they can make food much more easily. Getting food is easier. They don't have to go to multiple places. They go to one store and everything's right there. The supermarket, the grocery store, it's all right there. Many of the things are readily prepared and easy to turn into a meal. Also, they have a car to get them to the store and back quickly. So there are all these modern conveniences that make the wife slash mother's life easier. She doesn't have to sew her own clothing and make her own fabric. All she has to do is go to the store and buy clothing. And it's so ridiculously cheap if you go to Goodwill or Savers that it's cheaper to buy the stuff than it even would be to make it. Making it yourself would cost more money. The purpose for sewing now is a hobby. Or if you want to make something special, something unique that you can't buy. But by and large, women aren't making all their clothes. They're not making food. So what does that mean? They have a lot more time than they used to have. Also, we as men, we have more time than men throughout history have had because your average man only works 40 hours a week. Now, there are many who work 50, 60 hours. But the average today amongst men is just a 40-hour workweek, maybe a 45-hour workweek. That gives us a lot of spare time. Not only that, but we don't have to walk to and from work adding another hour. We just hop in the car, hop on a bus, hop on a bike, whatever, and we get there quicker. So we have more time today. But yet today, a lot of people, they can't seem to find time for the things that are important in their life. And I'll tell you why. It's because they're wasting time. It's not that there's not enough time in the day. There are 24 hours in the day, 168 hours a week. That means if you work 40 hours, right, and then you, say, sleep eight hours every single night, right, what's eight times seven? 56, right? So that's 96 hours right there, right? So that gives you another 72 hours when you're not sleeping and you're not at work. It gives you 72 additional hours to do other things. You say, well, you know, I've got to drive to work though. A lot of times you can multitask on that drive. One of the best things you can do is just have the Bible on tape or Bible on CD or Bible on the app. For example, the KJV RBG app has got our very own brother Dominique Davis reading the entire New Testament in audio. He's working on the Old Testament. But you can get Alexander Scorby. You can go on YouTube and just type in KJV audio Bible and listen to all manner of narrators on there. You go on LibriVox.org and get the King James Bible. Plenty of ways to turn your commute into a Bible time every day. And then, you know, at least consistently five days a week, you're getting your Bible in on the drive. I mean, even just 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back every day is going to get you through the Bible like one and a half times in the course of a year. That's a lot of Bible that you could do. So you can make use of that 72 hours. You say, well, I need to spend a few hours with my family. Okay, let's give you two or three hours a day of family time. You've still got another 50 hours in the week to do things. You know, I mean, there's just a lot of time, folks. It's just that we often waste it. There's time to read the Bible every day. You know how long it takes every day to get through the Bible once a year? It's 15 minutes. There's 15 minutes in your day to read the Bible. I don't care how busy you think you are. You've got 15 minutes. Now, if you can do it, first of all, you could do it on audio on the drive and get it done. Or you can just sit down for 15 minutes and instead of the magazine, instead of the TV, instead of the internet, instead of the computer, you can just pull out the Bible and read it for 15 minutes. That's not a lot of time. You can find time to pray. You can find time to read the Bible if it's important to you. You can get it done. You say, well, church is so demanding. Okay, well, church only takes place for about four and a half hours a week, right? If you go to all three services, the services are less than an hour and a half each. So if you go to all three services, that's like four and a half hours. You know, add some drive time. I get it. But we have the time to spend an hour out soul winning. And we can still have time for ourselves. And people often ask me, you know, how do you get so much done? But, you know, I just wonder, how do other people get done so little? Because I'm not even that efficient. And I'm thinking to myself, I could do more than I'm doing. You know, but why? Because of the fact that we all have time that we waste all the time, myself included, yourself included. We need to redeem that time. Make good use of your time. And, you know, start scheduling out your time to where you make church a priority, where you make soul winning a priority, where you make reading your Bible a priority, and then you got your job. And I guarantee you, if you make those priorities in their proper place, you will have plenty of other time for the things you need to do. You'll have time to have family time or be with your friends or whatever you're trying to do. Now, when it comes to not wasting our time, I'm not saying that we can't ever have any leisure time or recreational time. Because that can be profitable to have a little bit of leisure time or recreational time in order to enjoy life, recharge our batteries a little bit. That can be profitable. But there's an excess of leisure time sometimes, number one. And number two, when we take leisure time or time for ourselves, we should pick activities that are profitable activities and not just complete and utter waste of time. So let's think about this for a minute. Let's say you want to take some fun time, some leisure time. And I'm not one of these people who doesn't have any fun in life, okay. So let's say you want to have some fun, you want to have some leisure, you want to have a hobby, you want to take a little time for yourself. It's 168 hours in the week, plenty of time for you to do that. And still work a lot of hours, read your Bible, go soul winning, do what you need to do if you'll manage your time. What are some hobbies that you like to do that are profitable to you? And here's what I mean by that. You know, for example, there are two possible hobbies you could have. One could be that you like to play sports, right? Who likes to go out and play sports? Put up your hand if you like to play sports, whether that's basketball, baseball, football, volleyball, soccer, hockey, whatever, right? See, here's the thing. You're blowing off some steam, you're enjoying some leisure, but here's the other thing. It's actually good for your body. So that has a profit there because when you read your Bible, your mind's going to be sharper. And when you go soul winning, you're not going to get tired as easy because you're physically fit from playing some sports. That's profitable. Okay, now let's compare with what most people's hobby is, watching sports. Now, what do you think is a more effective hobby, playing sports or watching sports? Now, watching sports, it's hard to really derive profit from that. So what I'm saying is, you know, spending three hours sitting in front of a ball game is probably not as good of an activity for your blowing off steam time or hobby time as maybe getting out and playing some sports, you know? Get together with some people from church and play some sports or people from your neighborhood or whatever, but at least if you're being active. Okay, how about this? Some people's hobby or recreation that they would choose is they like to read books. All right, that's pretty good. Who likes to read books? Lots of people, right? Okay, and here's the good thing about that. You're getting smarter. You're learning how to read. You're learning new vocabulary. You're becoming more intelligent. Okay, but then other people, they do what? They watch TV. Now, is that bringing education, intelligence, and reading prowess? No. In fact, it rots your brain. So we can see how even in our hobbies, even when we take time for ourselves, even when we need to blow off a little steam, it's smarter to choose things that are more profitable, that actually are benefiting us and making us a better person, not making us a worse person, not to mention all the garbage that's on TV, the sin and the wickedness and the bad influence. Okay, but what about playing board games? Who likes to play board games for recreation? Yeah, well, here's the thing. If you're playing board games, usually there's some kind of a mental component that's keeping our brains a little sharper when we play a game, but not only that, that could build relationships where you're spending time with your family and it could also destroy relationships. No, I'm just kidding. But you build relationships where you're spending time with family and you're being with your kids, you're being with your wife, you're being with your husband, and so that could help you have good relationships, make memories, have fun, have a good time. You know, so it's just good to pick more intelligent hobbies and even when it comes to reading books, try to read things that are a little more intelligent and, you know, and I'm not, you know, where you still enjoy them, but they're not just complete trash, just complete comic book level reading, you know, especially if you're an adult, you know, get into a little more serious reading, you know, where you're still entertained, but you're actually learning something, right? What are some other hobbies that people like? What are some wholesome activities and hobbies? Help me out. Put up your hand. What's that? Ham radio. Ham radio. Yeah, that's a good hobby. Haven't heard that one in a while, but that's... Do this. What's that? Are you demonstrating what it sounds like? Yeah, you know, ham radio. Hey, at least ham radio, you're learning about the technology and, you know, it's an intelligent hobby and it could come in handy in crisis. Situations, right? Don't you use ham radio in an emergency? The communications go down and, you know, you hop on the radio. You know, CB radios. You know, when I was a kid, my dad set me up this little CB radio station in the garage just for me to just go on there and just fool around with it and I would listen to the truckers as they would drive by and I would try to communicate with them and usually they were out of range because I couldn't really broadcast that part, but every once in a while I'd get somebody, you know, but anyway, yeah, it was something I fooled around with and learned a little bit about the electronics and no, I didn't hear anything weird. Back then, the truckers had a clean mouth, let me tell you. What else we got? Building models. Yeah, you know, little hobbies where you're building things. Catching lizards. Yeah, if you live in Arizona, that's a great... Or hunting scorpions, for example. Fishing. Yeah, I mean, that's something that is a skill. You're in the outdoors, you're getting some fresh air, you're getting a little exercise, you're learning about where food comes from and enjoying something that people have been doing for thousands of years, right? What else have we got? Playing an instrument. Playing a musical instrument, right? Because then you're getting smarter, you can use that to serve the Lord and so forth. Would somebody say hiking? That's good. Yeah, good exercise. That could also be good for friendships. Going hiking, going for a walk. Right, going for a walk. Because then you can talk with your friends, your family, your loved ones. You can talk to them on hikes. You can enjoy God's creation. You can get exercise. It's healthy, right? What do we got? What's that? Push-ups. Man, he's hardcore. Man, I do push-ups for fun. That's how I unwind. That's how I blow off some steam. I like doing push-ups too. I like that. Is that it? Man, we just have a church full of just people who just do push-ups, go hiking, fishing. Snow skiing. Yeah, that's kind of an expensive hobby, but it's a good hobby. I don't like being cold. Hunting. Yeah, there you go. You're learning a survival skill. Ice skating. I like ice skating. You know, believe it or not, there's a lot of places to go ice skating in Phoenix, Arizona. You can go ice skating in Phoenix in July. I've done it. And so, yeah, there's a place just a few miles from here where we go ice skating. There's whole ice hockey leagues all over the city. Isn't that bizarre? But it's out there. So, yeah, ice skate. What do you got? Riding your bicycle. Yep. Same thing. All right. Ditto. Skateboarding. Yeah, skateboarding is not a crime. Amen. What's that? Karate. Yeah, martial arts. I'm for it. He teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight. Shooting guns. There you go. Yeah, guns. Yeah, America. What's that? A recreational class. Taking some kind of a class. Like what? Cooking, painting, ceramics, pottery. Crocheting. Yeah, there you go. So, you know, there are a lot of things that you can do that are intelligent things or fun things, profitable things that are teaching you skills, making you smarter, giving you time with family and friends. There's just a lot of benefits to these things. You know, even just doing crossword puzzles, Sudoku, learning a foreign language, right? Personally, my favorite hobbies are running, learning foreign languages and listening to audiobooks. Those are my three biggest hobbies. What else we got? Anything else? Having a hobby business, right? Yeah, you know, whether that's breeding rats or... And don't laugh. My sister made a lot of money breeding rats. She had people that would drive from other states to buy her rats. You know, hobby businesses. You know, my wife has a hobby business that she does as well. So, what... Couponing. There you go. So, you're that person in the store that makes me wait. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, couponing. Why? Because, you know, some people, they have a lot of fun with couponing and yet they're saving money. So, there you go. You know, so it's not a waste of time. So, there are a lot of good things you can do. Now, let's think of some hobbies that are kind of wasting time hobbies. They just waste time. Yeah, it's the elephant in the room, right? Video games. Now, look, I'm not saying that playing video games is a sin, but I will say this. You know, God did not create you and put you on this earth to play video games. And video games tend to be addictive. Now, you know, if you play video games in moderation or whatever, God bless you, but it's a total waste of time. There's no question about that. And I tell you this, you know, when I was a kid, I was addicted to video games. So, I mean, I know that I need to stay away from video games because when I was a kid, there were times when I woke up in the morning and I went to bed at night and in between all I did the whole day, 16 hours of video games, besides just a few quick bathroom breaks and a few meals, you know, shoved down my throat. So, I'm a recovering video game addict myself. But anyway, you know, when I became a man, I put away childish things, amen? Now, I limit myself. The only time I will ever play any kind of a video game is if I am so sick that I can't get out of bed, sometimes I'll indulge in a video game, or sometimes if I'm on a super long flight on an airplane, because then you want to waste time, you know, just get me off this plane. So, I do that occasionally, you know, and I, you know, I pull out the video games from the 80s, amen? The real video games, all right? I don't know anything about these new games, you know, the most, the wildest I got was a Sega Genesis, 16 bits, amen? That was the furthest I ever went. So, the point is, video games are a waste of time, and if you're a grown man that's playing video games on a regular basis, I'm not even going to finish that sentence. You finish it in your own mind, okay? You finish it. I'll put it this way, no girl dreams of being married to a video game addict when she grows up, okay? I'll put it that way. So, you know, when you become a man, put away childish things, and don't waste your time playing video games, it's a total waste of time, it's not profitable, it's not doing anything for you. Obviously, watching TV, big waste of time, you know, just watching sports, big waste of time, you know, what else could just be kind of a time wasting? Yeah, gambling, casinos, I mean, total waste of time, right? Anyway, I'm not going to go on and on about it. We don't want to step, everybody's afraid because we don't want to step on people's toes of their precious hobby, but the point is, you know, even in your fun time, you can actually use that time to do something good with your life, right? So, number one, we're only on point one, so I got to hurry and blow through this. Number one, don't waste your time. Number two, don't waste your talent. Go to 1 Peter chapter 4. Be a good steward of what you've been given. God gives you a lot of time, use your time for good things. Don't waste your time. You want to know how some people tend to get a lot done? It's because they're not wasting a lot of time. And by the way, you can waste a lot of time on Facebook. There, I said it. Now, again, I'm not against Facebook. I'm not saying Facebook is bad, but you can sometimes get on Facebook and all of a sudden an hour went by, 90 minutes went by, two hours went by. Now, Facebook can be profitable because it can help you to spread the gospel. I know I put out a lot of sermons and preaching and things on Facebook, and it really helps with our church YouTube channel. Also, it helps you stay in touch with friends, and you can build relationships with people that you know in real life, amen? Not just, you know, 45-year-old men posing as teenage girls or something, right? Who knows who you're talking to? But, you know, real people, you know, you can keep in touch. You can build relationships. You can post scriptures and videos. I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm saying this. It can be a big time waster if you're not careful. So you better make sure that you get your priorities taken care of before you'd be fooling around on Facebook. You haven't read your Bible. You haven't cared for the children. You haven't cared for your husband. You haven't cared for the family. Haven't done your job. Haven't prayed, whatever. And then you're just on Facebook. Beware of it second and wasting your time and your life away because you don't need to see a picture of everybody's meal. And you don't need to know what your third grade classmate is doing right now. You know, you don't need all that. So be careful that Facebook doesn't waste your time. But number two, don't waste your talent, right? Don't waste your talent. God gives us all various talents and abilities. We all have strengths and things that we're good at. Use those things for the Lord. Look at verse nine. Use hospitality one to another without grudging. As every man has received the gift, even so, minister the same one to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Manifold means it comes in many forms. Manifold means it comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. The stewards of the manifold grace of God. So God gives different people different gifts, spiritual gifts. And also the Bible talks about people being gifted in the area of metal works or woodworking or working with textiles. God gifts people in the areas of music or whatever. And so use your talent for the Lord. The Bible says if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. If any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth. God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ to be praise and dominion forever and ever. Amen. So if you have the gift or the ability to speak well, use that for the Lord by preaching or by soul winning or by teaching the Bible, right? If you have a musical ability, play hymns and songs of praise to the Lord with your musical ability. Whatever your talent is, whatever it is that you're good at, use that for the Lord. If you're a good computer programmer, video editor, photographer, woodworker, artist, whatever the case may be, use your talent for the Lord. Don't waste your talent using it for the world. Use it for the Lord and prioritize that. Number three, don't waste your education, right? The learning that you've received. Now, when I say education, I'm not saying that you necessarily went to this school or that school or got this diploma or this degree. You're getting an education every time you're in Faithful Word Baptist Church. You're learning the Bible. You're being taught things from the Bible. That's education. Every time you pick up a book and read it, that's education. You know, education is just any time we're learning things and people are instructing us and teaching us. That could be in a class. That could be in church. That could be just by ourselves with a book in hand. But if you would, flip over to Proverbs 12. Don't waste your education. I'm going to give you some verses on this. 1 Corinthians 4 says, Let a man sow account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. Paul says that he and his buddies are stewards of the mysteries of God. So there are all these deep things in the Bible. All these mysteries, all these profundities of knowledge. And Paul and his buddies, they understood them. God gave them all this knowledge and wisdom of the Bible. He said, We're stewards of that and we need to be faithful. So if you know the Bible really well, if you've learned a lot of Bible, you've learned a lot of doctrine, be a good steward of that by teaching it to other people and using it to serve the Lord. Don't just let all your knowledge go to waste. I guarantee you that there are people in this world who know the Bible super well, understand doctrine super well, and all that information just stays in their head. And they waste their talent. They waste their education. They waste their time. They're not using the gift of the learning that they've gotten. So number one, don't waste your time. Number two, don't waste your talent. Number three, don't waste your knowledge or education. Number four, don't waste food. Now, I'm preaching on this because the church picnic's coming up, all right? Don't waste your food. Proverbs 12 27 says, The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting, meaning he wastes his food. He hunts. He brings the meat home. He's got food in the fridge. He doesn't cook it. It goes to waste. But the substance of a diligent man is precious. Remember this morning we talked about being diligent? Well, when you're a diligent hard worker, you appreciate your substance, meaning that when you're the man who goes to work and brings home the paycheck and goes on the bank statement and sees those transactions at the grocery store, you don't want to see food go to waste, do you, men? Now, the kids don't necessarily have that understanding, do they? They're just like, I'm done. I'm full. Trash it. And look, this is one of those things that just really bugs me. You know, everybody's got their pet peeves, things that irritate them. You know, seeing food go to waste. And look, I'm not talking about small quantities of food, because the Bible says he that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. There's going to be a little waste. That's just the way life is, OK? But I'm talking about great waste. I'm talking about a bite out of the hamburger, and then the whole thing goes in the trash. You don't think that happens at the church picnic? It happens. Entire burgers are going in. Now, look, you need to teach your kids not to waste food. Why? Because you don't want them to grow up having no appreciation for food. You know, we teach them to pray and thank God for their food, right? But dear Lord, thank you so much for this food in the trash. That doesn't even make sense. If we thank God for it, it means we should appreciate it and be a good steward of it. If God gave you that burger, eat that burger. Now, here's how you teach your children not to waste food. Number one, you make their plate. Until they're smart enough to make a plate with the amount of food that they're going to eat. You make their plate, Mom and Dad. Why? So that you can give them the right portion. Then when they get older and they're smart enough to make their own plate. Now, here's the rule when I was growing up, and this is the rule in my house now. If you make your own plate, don't bite off more than you can chew. Don't have eyes bigger than your stomach. Put the food on your plate that you're going to eat. And if you don't finish it, it goes away. You know, sometimes my wife will load up my plate with just mega servings. Usually that's what I like. But sometimes she'll put a big serving. Just the other day, she made an amazing breakfast of sausage and gravy and biscuits and fried eggs. That's breakfast. All wives cook dinner. The truly hardcore wives are the ones who cook the breakfast, amen? That's a whole other level of being a wife when you're making a cooked breakfast. But I love cereal too, you know. But anyway, sausages and biscuits and gravy and fried eggs. But I mean, she just loaded my plate with more than I was able to bear. And so I ate as much as I could and I said, honey. I said, you know, I cannot finish this. And I handed it to one of the kids and I said, put plastic over this and put this in the fridge for me. I didn't put it in the trash. Now, when did I re-eat it? Didn't I have it for lunch or dinner? But wasn't it for lunch or was it for breakfast? Yeah, it was for lunch. See, I didn't say like, well, this is a breakfast. I'm on lunch now. No, you know, I had it for breakfast on one day. Then I flew to Vancouver, Washington. I preached. I flew back. I sat down to lunch and I said, honey, what's for lunch? And she said, you have leftovers. And she put in front of my plate sausage, gravy. I mean, it was just as good the second time. Might have even been better. And even had jalapenos in the sausage. So it was kind of a spicy sauce. It was really good. I'm kind of hungry right now. So I even texted my wife before the service on the way here. I was walking down here. I texted her like, hey, you want to go out to dinner tonight after church? I'm just really hungry right now. All right. So this portion on food is probably going to finish out the sermon. It's probably gonna take us all the way to the end of the sermon. OK, now here's the thing. Teach your children by putting the food on their plate that they can handle. And then when they don't finish it, box it up. Put it away. Pull it back out again. I don't want to eat it cold. Then eat it the first time. Or don't put so much on your plate. But don't have this culture of just, and look, it makes me sick to see people just throw away food. Look, when I was a kid, my dad used to take me to Long John Silver's. And I stopped eating fast food a long time ago. But I'll tell you, there's only one that still tempts me. And it's Long John Silver's. You know, none of the other ones are a temptation to me anymore. But that Long John's, I haven't eaten there in probably five, six, seven years. But man, it sounds good right now. But my dad and I would go to Long John Silver's. And we would go with a buddy. We'd go dirt bike riding. And he had a son that was a little younger than me. And these people were great wasters. The dad and the son would both order way too much. And my dad and I had a strategy. We said, hey, we're going riding with, I'm not going to name the names to protect the innocent. But I said, hey, you know, we're going to Long John's with them. Let's just order the bare minimum. Let's just make a show of ordering the bare minimum. We're just going to get the two chickens and the two fries. We're going to order the cheapest thing. Because we know we're going to be able to eat all their food. Because they're not going to fit. So we would walk in and we would literally, I'm not, this is a true story. We would walk into the Long John Silver in Tracy, California after dirt bike riding. And we'd walk in there. And we'd just be like, just two orders of the cheapest thing on the menu. Which was just two chickens and fries. And they would order like these $9 platters. You know, this is back when that was a lot of money. They would order like these gigantic platters that we had never ordered. That we only dreamed of. These big platters. And we would end up just grazing off of their plate. Because we'd be like, hey, you going to finish that? And we'd put it on our plates. And then he that gathered much had nothing over. And he that gathered little had no lack. There was an equality. It was like the manna. So the point is that, you know, I hate food going to waste. And God said, don't be that guy who doesn't roast what he took in hunting. Don't be that great waster. You know, the substance of a diligent man is precious. He understands the value of the work. Especially if you're eating healthy. Organic food's not cheap. And so, don't waste it. Teach your children how to waste it. So when you go to the picnic this Saturday. This is what it's all about. It's all about the picnic, okay? When you go to the picnic, don't put a giant burger on your kid's plate. When you know they're going to take two bites out of it. Cut that thing in half. Cut it in quarters, right? And give them what they actually can eat. Why? Because it's the church's money. And whatever we don't eat at the picnic. Now the IRS gives us two options. Or three options. If we have a church activity. The IRS has three options what we can do with the leftovers. Number one, we can throw them in the trash. That's allowed. Number two, we can serve them at another church activity later. Or number three, we can donate them to charity. Those are the three. You know what we're not allowed to do? We're not allowed to send it home with you. So no doggy bags from the church picnic, okay? Legally, we have to either eat it at the activity. Number one, you know. Otherwise we got to throw it in the trash. But here's what we do. We don't like to throw things in the trash. And we don't really know what charity is interested in our leftover burgers. So what we end up doing is, what we usually do is whatever extra burgers or buns or fries, we serve it to the soul winners at our soul winning time. So we'll pull it out the next day at church and say, hey Scott's, 1.30 soul winning time. We're gonna have a little barbecue. Or we'll feed it to volunteers at our church that are down here cleaning. Or working or whatever. You know, but we don't like to waste things. And do, oh it's the church's money. Blow it all. No, no, no. You know, we want the church's money to be used for the Lord. We want it to go toward good uses, toward getting people saved and getting the gospel out. And we don't want to, you know, yeah we want to buy CDs, DVDs, flash drives. But don't waste those either. Right? Use them. Give them to people that are going to watch them. Use them. And don't waste food. Don't waste anything. You know, don't waste food. Okay. And lastly this, don't waste money. And this is kind of similar to the point on not wasting food. Why? Because if you're wasting food, you're wasting money too. Because food costs money. Go to Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15. Luke 15. And while you're turning there, I'm going to read for you from Proverbs. You're turning to Luke 15. Proverbs 23, 20 says, Be not among winebibbers, among riotous eaters of flesh. For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. Now I want to point out the phrase, riotous eaters of flesh. Winebibbers and riotous eaters of flesh. Now with that in mind, Luke 15, verse 11. And he said, a certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with what? Riotous living. So we see that when he's just blowing money and wasting it, partying, that's called riotous living. And then we have the what? The riotous eater of flesh, the winebibber. These are people who just want to have a party in their mouth all the time, and they waste money on junk food that they don't need for nutrition. Don't waste money and calories on junk food and drinks. I got to cut out a little out of my sermon for sake of time, but go to 1 Timothy chapter 3. 1 Timothy chapter 3. Now look, a lot of people, they waste a lot of money, and they waste a lot of calories, because today, let's face it, a lot of people, they take in too many calories, right, for what's going out. There's more coming in than there is going out. This is a problem today in the United States of America. It's a big problem. It's something that most people are dealing with at some point in their lives, just because God has blessed us with such an abundance, which we ought to be thankful for. We've been blessed with such abundance, but we need to be good stewards of that abundance, and not waste money and calories on junk food. What do I mean by wasting calories? Just empty calories. Just calories that have no nutrition, no vitamins, no protein, no fiber, but they're just sort of empty calories that provide a party in your mouth and just harm your body. They're not really doing anything for you, and also, they're a waste of money, okay? Now, junk food, obviously, it costs money. I mean, even fast food, you say, oh, fast food's cheap, but it's really not that cheap. I mean, how much is a fast food combo these days? I mean, what if you go to Wendy's and get the combo? It's not 10 bucks. You know, you could spend up to like 10 bucks, right? Does that sound right? Eight bucks, maybe six bucks, but I mean, it's more money than eating at home any day of the week. Is it making you a better person? Is it making you stronger, healthier? Is it good for you? No, it's not really doing anything for you, so that could be a waste of money. But let's just forget for a minute about the junk food. I don't want to get on your junk food tonight. I don't want to ruin your night. I don't want to get on your fast food. Let's just not even talk about the food, right? Let's talk about the real problem, the drinks. You want to talk about a waste of money and a waste of calories. It's not even the junk food. It's the drinks. I'm going to spend the rest of my sermon talking about drinking tonight, and I'm not the kind of drinking you're thinking of, not alcohol. I'm talking drinks. Look, the drink is where they nail you financially. It's so much cheaper to buy the, even if you go to fast food, even if you go to restaurants, just to order water, you save a ton of money. And the stuff that they're giving you, the drink, you know why they often throw in the drink and the combo? Because it's completely worthless. It is worthless. It is a syrup that is made from high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, and artificial flavor being mixed with carbonated tap water. Okay? So what you're paying for is tap water with a little bit of poison put in it. Okay? It's not good for you. It's providing no nutrition. It's junk calories. It's making you gain weight. Look, many of you today, if you say, I need to lose a little weight. Many of you, if you just ate the exact way that you're eating right now, don't change anything, except just start learning to drink water with your meals. You will lose a ton of weight. I had a friend, he said, I lost 20 pounds just from cutting out sodas alone. I didn't change my diet at all, but I cut out the sodas. I cut out the drink. But look, it's not even just the sodas, even the juice, even milk. Lemonade juice. And I know it hurts me to say it because I love milk. Look, the milk, the juice, the coffee when you dump in all the cream and sugar, the frappuccino, the caramel. I mean, you don't need that stuff. You're wasting a lot of money buying that stuff out and about. You're adding so much. Look, we went out to eat the other day and made the mistake of, you know, because we were in this Mexican place that had all the authentic tacos. And so my wife just splurged and bought everybody one of those Mexican cokes because they don't have high fructose corn syrup in them. They have sugar in them, which is a little better. But then I got the bill and I'm like, whoa, why is the bill so expensive? I'm like, I walked in and asked how much it cost and it sounded pretty good. And she's like, well, it was the cokes. Why? Because the cokes added, well, I have a big family. The cokes added like 25 bucks. It's like, what in the world did we spend 25 bucks on these cokes? And I'm like, next time, no cokes. Look, you hemorrhage money on these drinks and they're what's making you overweight. More than anything is the drink. Plus you can eat the same calories in food and drink the calories. You'll gain more weight from drinking calories because it just, there's no chewing. There's no digesting. It just, it's just being, it's like just mainlining sugar straight to your bloodstream. And it's not just the soda. It's the juice. It's the lemonade. It's the milk. It's just, it's just drinking so many calories. Now look, if you're skinny and you're trying to gain weight, hey, drink up, not the Coke, but drink milk, you know, that you may grow there by. Amen. But you know, if you're overweight, you know what, listen to me, if you're overweight, you should only drink water ever again. And look, I know that sounds crazy. I know that sounds radical. And look, I'm not going to police you. I don't care what you drink and eat. I'm not trying to ruin your day or your life or anything like that, but I hope that your one joy in life is not drinking. Not talking about alcohol now. Now I want to close on this point here about the drinks. And look, I'm just trying to help you. You can walk out of here and take what you like and discard the rest from this sermon. Okay. I'm just giving you some things to think about. The drinks are making you gain weight and they're draining your bank account. Look, there's a place right down the street here that I really like to eat at. It's called Pita Bistro. Who's ever been there? It's less than a mile from here. Yeah, you're all at Wendy's when there's a healthier option right down the street called, you know, but anyway, Pita Bistro, it's in the parking lot with Panda Express. It's like less than a mile from here. It's got the Greek food, you know, we're going back to the Greek and they've got the Yiro and the K-Bobs and they've got lentils and rice and tzatziki and feta and it's really good. I love it. Okay. But you go down there and you can get, and it's nutritious, it's healthy. Look, you go down there, you can get this nutritious, healthy pita. They load that thing with meat. They load it with vegetables. They load it with whatever you want. It's $7.50 and they load you up. I mean, that's not that bad, right? But the drink, they had these really cool drinks. They had this drink. The first time I went, I didn't look at the price and I saw that there was this special ginger drink and I'm like, Ooh, I love ginger. It was ginger and all these exotic fruits and I was thinking, you know, this is going to be healthy. You know, it's going to be good for me. It was $5.95. So, I mean, you're getting the whole meal for $7.50. The drink is six bucks. Now I know that's an extreme example, but still it makes the point. And when you're, man, when you're in Germany, every drink's like five or six bucks just for a Coke. It's crazy. It's just a waste of money. Now, I want to make this point because when it comes to 1 Timothy chapter three, is that where you're turned? The qualifications for the pastor and the qualifications for the deacon, people who want to justify drinking alcohol, they get really hung up on this. Because they have this thing where every time it says wine in the Bible, they think it's booze. When in reality, the word wine in the Bible means just any kind of fruit juice. It's not even always grape. It could be juice from a pomegranate, an orange. It could be grape juice or any other juice. And it can either be alcoholic or non-alcoholic. And it's based on the context. And anybody can just casually read scripture and see that many times fruit juice is being called wine in the Bible. And they're not using the word juice about it. They're using the word wine. It talks about wine being inside grapes in a cluster of grapes. Obviously you don't, you don't have to get carded when you buy grapes. There's no alcohol in them. So that's a perfect example in Isaiah 65. So they get hung up on this and sometimes I've been made fun of because this is what they'll say. They'll say, Well, you know, if you can't drink at all, if we're supposed to be teetotaling, which I don't believe in any alcohol, Amen? But they say like, Hey, if you're not supposed to drink, then why does it say the pastor is not given to wine and the deacon is not given to much wine? Sounds like the deacon can have a Budweiser, but the pastor can't. Because the pastor is not given to wine at all and the deacon is not given to much wine. And then they'll be like, What's the Bible saying that he's not given to grape juice? And they'll make fun of this. But here's the thing about that. Okay. First of all, the word given to, if you're given to, it means you have a habit of that. I mean, that's what you do. That's what you're into. That's a strong word you're given to. You know what being given to wine is? I'll tell you what it is, because this is before Walgreens was selling cheap booze for 99 cents at the counter. And this is before you could buy a bottle of grape juice or orange juice or apple juice for a buck, two bucks, three bucks. Look, back in the Bible days, this stuff was made by hand or made by foot. They would stomp on the grapes. Human beings would stomp on it. This stuff was expensive. Have you ever tried juicing with a machine? It's a lot of work. Now try juicing without a machine. It's a crazy amount of work. And it's super expensive. You end up wasting a ton of produce in order to squeeze the juice out of it. This is before machines. Okay. So wine is expensive. In the Bible times, it was super expensive. And you know what? The guy who's given to wine is the guy who's given to luxury. He's given to luxury and money and frivolous, unnecessary things. And he's probably overweight, right? Because he's drinking a bunch of sugary drinks. Forget alcohol. The pastor who's given to wine is drinking a bunch of sugary drinks and he's blowing a bunch of money on something that is totally unnecessary by being given to wine. And the deacon shouldn't be given to much wine. All it's doing is holding the pastor to a little higher standard of being a little more austere, not just blowing money on riches and wealth. Wine and oil in the Bible are constantly used as a symbol of wealth. Wine and oil, right? So that's what this is teaching. Go if you were to Nehemiah chapter 5. Nehemiah chapter number 5. What the Bible is saying here is that the pastor shouldn't be a guy who wants to live a lavish lifestyle of luxury and he also shouldn't be a guy who's guzzling a bunch of liquid sugar and becoming like Eli the prophet who can't control his sons because he can't control himself. Nehemiah chapter 5 verse 17 says, Moreover, this is Nehemiah talking, Moreover, there were at my table 150 of the Jews and rulers beside those that came unto us from among the heathen that are about us. Now that which was prepared for me daily, because look, he's not eating this alone. He's got 150 people plus eating at his table. That which was prepared for me daily was tofu and salad. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, it was an ox, amen. One ox, six choice sheep. Also, fowls were prepared for me. So he's saying, look, we had meat. Now they had a lot of side dishes, but he said, hey, we ate a full ox every day. I mean, we killed an entire cow every day to feed this group and we killed six choice sheep and we had some Cornish game hens on the side. But watch this. Once in 10 days store of all sorts of wine. He's not saying, hey, every 10 days we got drunk. This is a man of God. He's not getting drunk every 10 days. No, he's indulging in something that is frivolous every 10 days. He's having some fruit juices, all different types of fruit juices. Why? Because it's fun. Because it's a little party every 10 days. But it's expensive. So it's not every day for breakfast. But look, today we don't want to pull out the fruit juice every 10 days. We don't pull out the sugary drinks every 10 days. I mean, we're having a glass of orange juice with our breakfast that we drive through and get the sandwich and the orange juice. Then for lunch, we got a 32 ounce Coca-Cola, right? We got the big glasses of milk, big glasses of soda, big Sprite and the squirt and the orange Fanta and the lemonade and the strawberry lemonade and the raspberry lemonade. Look, every 10 days drink up. But you know what? You're drinking that stuff every day. You're wasting your money and you're wasting calories. And I just made everybody mad tonight. And so let's end on a high note. Let me think of something nice to say to end here. Because that's the end of the sermon. Nehemiah five is just blank after that. So I better come up with something to lighten the mood a little bit here. Look, we don't want to waste our time, people. We don't want to waste our talent. We don't want to waste our knowledge, our education. We don't want to wait. Look, if you have a Christian upbringing, don't waste it. We don't want to waste our food. And we don't want to waste our money. Why? Because these are things that God gave us. And we want to be good stewards of these things. Good stewards of our bodies, our brains. Right? Well, is it OK to smoke pot? Don't waste your brain. Don't waste your body, your brain, your time, your money, your food. And look, I'm not trying to get up here and dictate your life to you and micromanage you. Do whatever you want. OK? But I'm here to get you to think a little bit about redeeming the things in your life and being a better steward. And hopefully, you can take something that you heard tonight and say, you know what? I think I can make a little better use of my time. I can get the time to read the Bible. I can get the time to show up for soul winning. I can, you know what? I can cut out my sodas, and I could act. See, I'm ending on that again. See, I was taught in Bible college to use the sandwich method. Start with something nice, and then get into all the rough stuff, and then end on something nice. But you can take that $2 a day or $3 a day or $5 a day that you're just drinking sugar. That's the money that you need to get out of debt. That's the money that you need to stop going into debt. That's the money that you need to buy the things that you need in life. And you know what? When you first start drinking water with your meals, you're going to miss the soda. You're going to miss the chocolate milk. You're going to miss the orange juice. But you know what? After several days of drinking water with every meal, you will get used to drinking water with every meal, and you won't even miss it. You won't even miss it. And you'll get used to just having a glass of water with your food, glass of water with your breakfast. If you have dessert, have a glass of water. You'll get used to it. And that alone will make a huge difference physically and financially. And I'm going to close in prayer on that. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, thank you so much for all the wonderful things you've given us, Lord. You've blessed us. We in America just have such abundance. We like kings. We like Nehemiah. We like the governor of Judea. Lord, help us to use our talents, our minds, our bodies, our money, our abilities to bring honor and glory to you and not to waste them. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.