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Men, the title of my sermon this morning is The Financial Philosophy of Faithful Word Baptist Church. The Financial Philosophy of Faithful Word Baptist Church. You see, Faithful Word Baptist Church actually has a very different financial philosophy than the vast majority of churches out there. Even independent fundamental Baptist churches, even churches that go soul winning and churches that are King James only. We do things very differently here and I want to preach to you from the Bible where we get our philosophy from and why we do things the way that we do them. Now let me say this to start out. First of all, in 11 years of existence, our church has never had any debt. We've never borrowed any money. We've always just operated in cash. We've always been able to pay our bills. We've never had a fundraiser. We've never had a building fund or anything like that. Never stood up before the church and said, hey, you need to dig deep and give beyond your tithe and give more. Not only that, but our church always has an abundance of supplies and the materials that we need, Bibles, CDs, DVDs, whatever, to give out freely. We have lots of church activities. They're always free of charge and I want to give three reasons why I believe God has blessed our church and taken care of us, why we haven't had the financial problems that a lot of other churches struggle with constantly. Why have our finances been good? I believe it's because the way that we do things is scriptural and that God has blessed us. Number one reason why I believe God has blessed us and why the finances have been good is that we don't sell anything in God's house. This is a key right here. Look down at your Bible there in John chapter 2 verse 13, and the Jews' Passover was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves and the changers of money sitting and when he had made a scourge of small cords he drove them all out of the temple and the sheep and the oxen and poured out the changers money and overthrew the tables and said unto them that sold doves, take these things hence, make not my father's house a house of merchandise and his disciples remembered that it was written, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. This is probably the maddest that we ever see Jesus in his earthly ministry. If anybody wanted to point out an example of Jesus getting very angry and really blowing his top, this would be the story that they would take you to where Jesus literally makes a scourge of small cords and literally drives people out of the church with a whip. I mean with the whip he didn't drive them in a truck. I mean what it says, drove them, it's like a cattle drive. He's swinging a whip, chasing them out of the temple, flipping over the tables, dumping money on the ground which obviously is going to create pandemonium and so forth. I mean this is a pretty extreme incident in the life of Jesus Christ and I believe that it's here as a guideline for us. It's not just a cool story to just hear about and oh wow, that's interesting. No, no, no, everything that's written in the Bible is for our instruction in righteousness. It's for doctrine. It's for correction and a lot of people need to be corrected by this story because this story says not to make God's house a house of merchandise. Now define merchandise, that which is bought and sold, anything that's bought or sold. You can go to Revelation, don't turn there, but in Revelation 18 it has a whole list of merchandise and it lists just about everything you can think of because anything that is bought or sold is merchandise. Now notice what he says in verse number 16, and said unto them that sold doves, take these things hence. Now the word hence, that's kind of an old word, it means from here. Hither means to here and hence means from here. So when the Bible says take these things hence, he's saying take them away from here. Take these things hence, make not my father's house a house of merchandise. Now there's nothing wrong with selling doves. In fact the Bible explicitly taught in the Old Testament that if they were traveling a long way to get to the temple and they didn't want to have to bring their sacrifices with them, they could actually turn their animals into money, bring the money, and then buy what they need when they get to Jerusalem. That was actually something that God suggested. But the problem here is not the selling of doves, it's not exchanging foreign currency, it's not selling sheep or oxen. The problem is when you're doing it in God's house. That's why he said take these things hence. He didn't say don't sell these things, don't exchange money, he said no, no, get it out of here. It doesn't belong here. My house shall be called a house of prayer. You've made it a den of thieves. Take these things is what he's saying. Do it somewhere else. You see it's great for businesses to sell products, to sell doves, to sell anything. These are even spiritual items because obviously the oxen, sheep, and doves are used for sacrifices. But those type of things, whether spiritual or not, must be sold somewhere else. Yet how many churches today violate this principle by having a coffee shop in the church where they're selling coffee or they'll sell the preaching CDs or they'll sell Bibles. They have a bookstore in the back, the church bookstore, or the bookshelf or the book table where they're selling their wares. You say, yeah, well you have a bookshelf in the back, yeah, it's all free. It's all free. Take whatever you want. It's free and there's no suggested donation or any kind of a hidden cost or hidden fee. There's no inventory control tag on that stuff. I mean grab that stuff and take it and use it. It's free. Everything here is free. We never charge money for anything here because we don't want to make God's house out of some merchandise. Now when you preach on this and say this, a lot of people will say, well, you're splitting hairs. You're being nitpicky. It doesn't look that way in this Bible story. Seems like it was a pretty serious issue to the Lord and yet people say, oh, you get hung up on minor things. Well, if it's so minor, why did he flip over the tables? If it's so minor, why is he chasing people with a whip? Why is he so mad? Because obviously this is a big deal to God and just because we don't think it's a big deal, we better go to the Bible and figure out what he thinks is a big deal and he thinks it's a pretty big deal when you start selling things in church. Now, first of all, I don't believe that the church should sell anything or charge money for anything, number one, but number two, I don't think that the church members should come here either and use the church as a place to sell their goods, even the church members. Okay, here's what I'm talking about, Amway, Mary Kay, your vitamins and your Tupperware and your Pampered Shep and everything. Look, I've seen people come into churches and they use church as a place to sell that stuff. That is not the right time and the place. There's nothing wrong with having a business, but you need to have a business outside of the church. This is holy ground and you need to treat it with respect and come here with one motivation and one motivation alone to serve the Lord and that's it. No financial or ulterior motives should corrupt God's house and this is a major issue with the Lord. That's why he got so mad. Now, when I was in Bible college, they taught us the exact opposite. Here's what they taught us in Bible college, charge money for everything. They said, charge money for everything because here's what they taught us. They said, well, if you give stuff away for free, people won't appreciate it. If you have an activity that's free, people will sign up for it and they won't even show up or if you give things away, people will just hoard it and take it and waste it and not appreciate it because they won't respect what they didn't pay for. They said, even if you just charge a dollar, even if you just charge $5, just charge something. Just always charge money for everything. Okay, that church where I went, where that Bible college was, they actually would charge you money for the invitations that you would use out soul winning. Like if you showed up for soul winning, you had to buy the invitations that you would hand out at 50 cents for a pack of 10 or a pack of 20 or whatever because then you'll appreciate them. But here's the thing, obviously there's truth in that in the sense that human nature is that people will appreciate things that they pay for and people tend to take it for granted and abuse things that are free. But here's the thing, I don't care what human nature says, I'm going to do what God said. If God said not to charge money, we're not going to charge money, period. End of the story. Because I'd much rather have people be ungrateful, waste things or destroy things or hoard things, I'd much rather have that than to get God angry with me. The most important thing is keeping him happy, right? He's the one who decides whether we succeed or fail. He's the one who pours out the blessings or gets angry and pours out his wrath. Look, God is the one that we're trying to please here. We're not trying to psychoanalyze people's behavior if we do it one way versus the other. They taught us sell everything and they practiced what they preached. You had to pay for everything. It's not biblical. I believe that one of the reasons why God has blessed our church and why our finances have been good is because we have followed this principle that Jesus laid down in John chapter 2 where we don't turn God's house into a house of merchandise. We don't sell anything, number one. Number two, I believe that the reason God has blessed us and why our finances have been good is that we give away so much stuff. We give away so much preaching and DVDs and CDs. Not only do we not sell things, but we give everything away. Go if you would in the Bible to Luke chapter 13. Luke chapter 13. Luke chapter number 13 and as you're turning there, I'm going to read for you. Actually you can turn to Luke 6 as well because we're going to look at two things. We're going to look at something in Luke 13 and we're going to look at something in Luke 6. But the Bible promises to bless those who are generous, those who give. And it's funny because a lot of churches will preach on this all day long to try to get people to give to the church, but then they don't practice it in the sense of the church being generous itself, right? I mean that's kind of a two-way street, right? Look at Luke chapter 6, 38, it says, give, we'll come back to chapter 13, give and it shall be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over shall men give into your bosom for with the same measure that ye meet with all it shall be measured to you again. So what the Bible is saying here is if you're generous and you give things away, that's going to come back to you. Give and it shall be given unto you. So that means if the church is generous, the church gives out a lot of materials, it gives out Bibles and flash drives and CDs and DVDs, then that means that God is going to bless us and the people giving us. It's funny, there was an interesting example of this even just this week, Brother Chris was on an airplane going on a missions trip, you know, because we've got people in our church going to different parts of the world. We got different things going on, especially the big thing going on in Guyana, but we got, you know, soul winners and preachers going to different places and doing work for the Lord and Brother Chris was on an airplane and he tried to give the gospel to the guy next to him on the airplane and the guy who turned out he was already saved, he's already a Baptist even, and, you know, he just told him, oh yeah, I'm going on this missions trip, I'm going soul winning and whatever. He didn't ask him for money or say anything about money and the guy just pulled out a $50 bill and was just like, here, let me contribute to your journey here, you know, let me contribute to your expenses on this trip. That's pretty cool, right? You know, God can bless us in ways like that if we're generous, you know, and as a church, as Faithful Word Baptist Church, I just feel like that's how we should run our finances basically that we should be generous and give and then our church gives away more than any other church I've ever seen, but yet we always have enough money and we never have any debt. So let's just keep it going. Let's just keep doing it. It's worked for 11 years, let's just keep on doing it. Look at Luke chapter 13 because I want to show you also the principle in the Bible of reaping what you sow and what just a little seed can do. Luke chapter 13 verse 18 says this, Then said he unto what is the kingdom of God like and whereunto shall I resemble it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and cast into his garden and it grew and waxed a great tree and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it. And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. So these two parables are teaching the same great truth. One tiny little mustard seed, if you plant it in the garden, can grow into such a great tree that all the fowls of the air will lodge in it. A massive tree comes from a tiny little seed. Also the leaven. You know leaven of course is bacteria in the dough and that bacteria is so small you can't even see it. I mean it's smaller than a grain of a mustard seed because it's microscopic. And yet you can take that little leaven and you can leaven the whole lump and you can put it in three measures of meal until the whole is leavened. Why? Because it multiplies, it grows and God's saying that that is what the kingdom of God is like. It's like a little seed that you plant and it grows into a giant tree. Or it's just like a little bacteria that can multiply and just grow and how does bacteria grow? Exponentially, right? That's what the Bible is teaching here. The same thing is taught in Matthew chapter number 13, okay? We don't have to turn there. It says pretty much the same thing. Well if you would the second Corinthians chapter 9. Second Corinthians chapter number 9. You say well you know what does this have to do with giving things away? What does this have to do with the financial philosophy of faith for Baptist Church? Well 13 years ago I was walking through a shopping mall in Illinois and that was in the days when I was in the fire alarm business. This is before I was a pastor and I did fire alarm inspections and I was at a Kohl's department store servicing their fire alarm and after I was done with the fire alarm I was heading out to the car. I'm walking through a shopping mall 13 years ago. I still remember that Chinese girl walking up to me with a toothpick, for example, with orange chicken on the end of that toothpick from Panda Express. Who knows what I'm talking about? She came at me with that toothpick of orange chicken. I didn't think anything of it. I just thought, you know, a little free bite of food, let's try it. You know I like to try things, right? I reached out and took that toothpick and ate that orange chicken and it was the best Chinese food I've ever had in my life. I took one bite and I was just a customer for life. I mean I tried that, right? I loved it. And I used to eat all different Chinese food places. Man, once I tried that, it was just, that's where I go for Chinese food, Panda Express. I know that might not be the coolest place to go for Chinese food, but that's where I go. And so I ate that thing and I was like, whoa, this is good. And I started eating it all the time. Like probably every week, you know, because I was driving around for work and I'd always stop in, get Panda Express, Panda Express, Panda Express. And then years later I became the pastor of a church and had big soul-winning events all over America. And guess where we had lunch at those soul-winning events? Panda Express. Right, spending $500 here, $700 there, $800 here. I mean little did that Chinese girl know that when she gave me that toothpick of orange chicken, she was making her company like $10,000 or something, right? Think about that. I mean that one little seed, that little orange chicken, it was like a seed and it grew into a great tree of like $10,000 in revenue for Panda Express. You say, why do you bring that up? Well, the Bible says in Job, it says, does not the ear try words and the mouth taste his meat? And here's what I do now. I walk around with this right here, this little flash drive and say, free sample? You like try some Bible preaching? You like some preaching from Faithful Word Baptist Church? And here's the thing. A lot of people might look at this and say like, whoa, you're giving away these flash drives for preaching? That's expensive. That's really expensive, you know, but here's the thing. This one flash drive filled with 25 hours of Bible preaching, I mean this could really change somebody's life. I mean, think about it. I mean, they could listen to 25, 26 hours of preaching on this thing. They're going to learn a lot of Bible. They could grow. This could cause them to become a zealous, soul winning Christian for life. Look, that toothpick with the orange chicken, wouldn't you say that was a pretty good investment? Why, are you just giving away free food? Yeah, but they know it's a good investment because if people try it, they're going to go, I never would have gone there, you know, or it might have been many, many years before I discovered Panda Express on my own, I might have never discovered it. There are lots of restaurants that I've never tried that I'm sure are wonderful, but it's when they came to me, they brought it to me. I didn't have to go to them. They brought it to me and they gave me that free sample, you know, and obviously that's a carnal truth, carne, amen, but it's a carnal truth, but the thing is, you know, it has a spiritual counterpart there because if you think about it, first of all at the church, we don't want to wait for people to come to us. The Bible says, go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, right? And here's the thing, it's never a waste of money when you're giving someone a sample. Why? Because you're giving them a taste and we want them to get a taste of the word of God, a taste of soul winning, a taste of biblical doctrine, not so that we can make money. We're not a corporation. We're not a Chinese food vendor, but we are trying to make a difference for the kingdom of God and we want the kingdom of God to be like that mustard seed that grows into a great tree and the Bible says the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he that winneth souls is wise. It all starts with a seed of the word of God that grows in a person's heart, that grows into a great tree of life and makes them a soul winner and then they go out and preach to others. This is a way to spread the gospel to the world. It's not about making money, it's about getting people to heaven. But it's a great illustration of what a sample can do. I remember when our church was brand new and we'd only been around for three, four months or so. We started making preaching CDs. We'd never made any CDs. We didn't even record the sermons for the first couple months, but we started recording the sermons and we started to put some of them on CD. So I made a bunch of preaching CDs and I was kind of thinking, I don't even know if anybody wants to listen to these because I didn't really feel like my preaching was that good. So I was thinking, I don't know if anybody's even going to listen to these. So I put up this little rack. This is when I had the church in my living room. So I put up this little rack of CDs and during the announcements and the church was small and during the very small and I would say during the announcements, hey, we got these preaching CDs here. They're free. If anybody wants to take a preaching CD, take it home and listen to it, then feel free to take those. We're not going to sell anything. And for weeks, nobody touched them. And I was thinking like, yeah, sure enough. Why put my preaching on a CD? So nobody touched them for weeks. They just kind of just were there. They sat there. And then one day Amanda came and she just loaded up. She's like, you know what, I'm going to take some of these to my mom. And she loaded up like a brown grocery bag. She just took like one of everything, loaded them up. And she brought them home to her mom. And guess what? Next Sunday, guess who was there? Her mom was there the next Sunday. Why? Because she got the sample. She listened to the sermons. She liked the sermons. And then she showed up for church. And I was thinking, that's the purpose of the preaching CDs, right? They're going to show people, get them to listen to the preaching, learn about the Word of God, get zealous, look, people today, they get complacent, they get comfortable, they get in a rut, and they need us to go to them and basically get them to understand the importance of serving God, the urgency of serving God. Let them know about the spiritual battle that's going on. Let them know that there is a way for them to get involved and do something big for the Lord that has an eternal lasting effect by winning people to Christ and so forth. And so, to me, I feel that it's a good use of our church's money to buy a bunch of CDs, DVDs, and flash drives to give away to people because it spreads the Word of God and it helps the church grow and it's a great investment. It's not a waste of money. I don't believe, because I know some people, that thought might enter your mind. I see some people cringe sometimes when they see how many of these we give away. They're just thinking, oh, that's a lot of money. But you know what? So what? Money is all going to burn up. This whole world is going to burn up. And so, I believe that God has blessed us for just giving stuff away, just being generous. I think that's why we've done well financially. I think it's a biblical principle. Here's a great passage. Are you in 2 Corinthians 9? This is a really great passage of Scripture. It's very deep. I couldn't even preach everything in the minutes that I have that's in this passage, but it's a powerful passage. Look at 2 Corinthians 9, verse 6, it says, But this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly. Meaning, if you sow a little bit, you're only going to reap a little bit. And he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give. Not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver. Watch this. God is able to make all grace abound toward you that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. Now that's a powerful verse. He says God is able to make all grace abound toward you. And the reason I discovered this verse and the power of this verse, I was driving around and I saw somebody had a bumper sticker with this verse on it in a false version. In an NIV or one of the new verses. And it completely twisted and changed the verse and I thought, that verse, that's not what that verse is saying. So then it caused me, you know, what the devil meant for evil, God meant for good because it caused me to really look at this verse in my King James and really grasp its meaning. I said, wow, that's a great verse. You know, I was even blessed by the devil's bumper sticker where he had this twisted, where it was a screwed up version of this verse that completely lost all the meaning and taught something contrary to what this verse is teaching. But if you have the real Bible this morning, the only Bible there is, the King James Bible, it says right here that God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, can sit back and enjoy the bounties of life. Is that what it says? It says, no, that you can have all sufficiency in all things. Why? Because you may abound to every good work. You see, why was it that brother Chris was handed that $50 on the airplane? Was it because he's going to go out and have a steak dinner? No, he's handed that $50 because he's going out to do work in a poor area and not live in a luxury hotel somewhere, but to actually go there and strenuously work hard for the Lord. Because Chris was going toward the work that he was doing. God was providing him so that he could do work for him, not so that he could consume it upon his own lusts. You know, the Bible says you have not because you ask not. You ask and receive not because you ask and miss that you may consume it upon your lust. You know, God's not saying, hey, it's a prosperity gospel where if you give, it shall be given unto you so that you can have jewelry like Mr. T and have a giant Olympic sized swimming pool and tennis courts and a giant mansion. That's not why God wants to bless you and give you sufficiency. It's because he wants to give you the tools you need to do the work of the Lord. And our financial philosophy at this church is we want God to bless us financially only so that we can do the work of the Lord. You see, we want to still have those Bibles and New Testaments and church invitations and flash drives so we can go out and use them to go win people to Christ and help them grow in the Lord and leave something with them so they don't forget about us and so that we can later disciple them and actually get them baptized and get them in church and teach them to observe all things that Christ commanded. It's about the work. The end all, be all is work. That's the end game of this verse. What's the verse say? God's able to make all grace abound toward you that ye always having all sufficiency and all things. I love all these alls. I mean, you always have all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work. That's the goal. That's the end. That's the motive. I love that verse. As it is written, he had dispersed abroad, right? That's generosity. He had dispersed abroad. He had given to the poor. His righteousness remaineth forever. Now he that ministereth seed to the sower, both minister bread for your food and multiply your seed sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness. What's the fruit of the righteous? The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he that winneth souls is wise. And God, he'll minister the seed to the sower. He'll provide the Bibles. He'll provide the tools. He'll provide the supplies so that we can sow more seed. He'll provide our food, obviously, yeah. Brother Chris, on his trip, he needs to eat three square meals a day, right? He doesn't necessarily need to eat foie gras and filet mignon, but he needs to eat nutritious food so that he can do what? Do more work. See, we don't live to eat. We eat to live, okay? And we don't exist here to make money. We exist to use money to win souls to Christ so that we can minister seed to the sower, right? And preach to God. Yeah, we need bread in our bellies, but we also need the supplies and everything. And God is going to provide everything we need, verse 11, being enriched in everything to all bountifulness which causeth through us thanksgiving to God. You see, the prosperity preacher, he'll preach verse 11 all day long, but he forgets verse 8 where the goal is work or he just gets another version that takes that out and just changes that to where it doesn't even mean that anymore. But that's a powerful passage. I mean, that's something you could meditate on for a long time, believe me. I did it. It's a great chapter. Go to Philippians chapter 4. So number 1, philosophy of faithful word Baptist church, sell nothing. Number 1. Number 2, philosophy of faithful word Baptist church financially, give away the preaching. Give away the CDs. Give away the DVDs. Look, every church I've ever gone to, they said, hey, a preaching CD is 5 bucks. Or actually back in my day, I'll tell the truth, it was a cassette and it was 3 bucks. You know, preaching tape for 3 bucks. Man, I was hungry for those preaching tapes, but I just, it was like 3 bucks. I was poor. I could only buy a couple of them. I wanted to buy 100 of them. I wanted to buy all of them, but I couldn't because I didn't have the money. So I'd buy a few key sermons and then I'd keep like recording over them with other sermons that I was able to download on my dial-up internet back in the day, right, in the early days of the internet. But you know, they charge money, and you know, I remember the first time somebody said to me, hey, I want to pay you for one of these preaching CDs. You know, I don't want to take it for free. Let me pay for it. Every church charges it. I said, hey, how about this? I'll pay you to listen to it. I'll pay you to listen to it. Why would I charge you money? I want you to hear the word of God. I want you to learn this preaching. Philippians chapter 4, the third financial philosophy of faithful word Baptist church is that we want to spend our money on that which will reach the most people with the Gospel. That's got to be the financial priority, getting the Gospel to the most people possible. That's our function. We want the seed to go to the sower, and we want the word of God to be sown and the Gospel to be preached. That's the priority. Look what the Bible says in Philippians chapter 4 verse 14, not withstanding you've well done that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now ye Philippians know also that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as conserving giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity, not because I desire a gift, this is the key, but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. Couple things about the apostle Paul here. He wasn't a real popular guy necessarily with all the churches, because how many supporting churches does he have? So he's not being supported by 100 churches at $25 each, 100 churches at $50 each, right? He said well no church is communicating with me as concerning giving and receiving, you only, right? And he's saying look, it's not because I desire a gift, I'm not just trying to just get money from you so that I can just have money. He said I desire fruit that may abound to your account. Here's what I take from this passage, okay, because I've heard this passage preached many times, it's a popular passage, but here's what I take from it. I take from it this, that if we give unto the Lord, if we give unto a missionary, if we give to the local church, if we give unto the Lord, we want it to go toward what? Fruit that will abound to our account. I mean that's what I'm getting from this passage, everybody seeing that? He's saying look, I don't just desire to take your money, I'm not trying to just desire a gift from you, I desire fruit that may abound to your account and you know what? Any good steward of God's money is going to have the same attitude the apostle Paul had and say hey, if somebody gives me money, I want to make sure that it goes toward some fruit that will abound to their account. I don't want their gift to be in vain. If they give money, I don't want it to just go down the toilet and be waste, I want it to go toward getting somebody saved so that they can have fruit that would abound to their account, where God would reward them for the souls saved as a result of what they gave. That's what it says. That's the teaching. If someone gives money to our church, we want fruit to abound to their account, which is why when we prioritize how we spend our money at Faith Forward Baptist Church, we want to spend it in places that's going to result in people being saved, want to get the most bang for our buck. Now let me bring up, this isn't in my notes because I had three points and a poem, no I don't have a poem, but anyway, you knew that already though. But the fourth point, this is a bonus point that was not in my original sermon, a fourth principle, we don't hoard money, we don't save up any money. In fact, at the end of 2016, you know how much money was in our account? Zero dollars, zero, oh yeah. Every single year I drain the church's bank account to zero. Am I telling the truth? Brother Baker, am I telling the truth? Did we spend every, it was, yeah, zero. You say, well that's financially irresponsible. So I'll tell you what's financially irresponsible, going below zero. There's nothing irresponsible about giving it all to the Lord, giving it all to the work of the Lord, getting it all out there, doing what it's supposed to be doing instead of just having some gigantic rainy day fund. You know what, I don't need a rainy day fund because I'm living by faith. And so at the end of every year, and this is not a special year, every single year we spend all the money in December, we spend it all. We spend it all. Why? Because of the fact that we don't want to lay up treasure on the earth because where your treasure is there will your heart be also, that's why. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust is corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust is corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. Let me just give you in closing three financial black holes that most churches dump all their money into that we're going to avoid at Faith Forward Baptist Church because I gave you our philosophy. I gave you our priorities. Let me give you three financial black holes and what I mean by a black hole, a black hole is this idea of something that just sucks everything. It's just like an endless sucking, right? So this is three endless sucking black holes financially that churches will waste their money on that we're not going to spend money on this stuff, okay? Number one is the building, their building. I was thinking about this and I kind of had an epiphany earlier this year. I walked into a church building and I looked at it and I was like, wow, this is a huge church building. This is a major, you know, wow. But then all of a sudden I stopped and I counted the seating and it had like half as much seating as our church but I was kind of confounded for a minute because I was thinking to myself, why does this church building look so much bigger than our church but yet it has half the seating and I was just kind of perplexed like it's an optical illusion but you know what? I mean it just clicked that the ceiling was 50 feet high. You know what I'm saying? The ceiling was 50 feet high or maybe 40, okay I'm exaggerating, it was like 40 feet high or something but it was just a huge ceiling and I'm thinking to myself that's why this place just looks so huge, so grandiose, okay but guess what? That space up there is not doing anything for the Lord at all, right? What is it? All it is is just a bling factor. It's just a look at me factor, impressive factor. You know how high our ceiling is? Ten feet. Ten feet. I mean we've downgraded. Our last building had a 12 foot ceiling. We've downgraded a 10 foot ceiling and you say well why is that? Because of the fact that we're not trying to impress anybody, we're not trying to build palaces. Look, Christ's kingdom is not of this world. It's not about building palaces, it's not about building cathedrals, it's about getting the work of the Lord done and you know what? The work of the Lord can get done in this building with a 10 foot ceiling just as much as if we had a 50 foot ceiling, we can get just as much work done for the Lord in this building. But yet these churches, they're so motivated to get into that giant high steeple few people cathedral of a building. What's the point? It's vanity. A vanity, saith the preacher, all is vanity. It's about having a building to use for the work of the Lord. It's just what we need to use. Yeah we need bathrooms, we need chairs, we need a place to meet, we need air conditioning or we'll die in the summer here when it's 115 out, right? It's not about a cathedral but here's the thing about these buildings, okay, they raise millions of dollars, they literally, I mean look, if we wanted to buy a building for our church just the size our church is right now, even if we were never going to grow again and we just stayed at this size, it would cost literally about 2 million dollars for us to get a church building that would accommodate this size congregation and the parking that we would need for these many cars. It would cost a couple million dollars. But not only that, you have to maintain it. And these churches literally, they have less people in them than we do. They're not even running 300 but they have this gigantic fancy building and then they literally have to have like a full time guy who's just a maintenance guy. Because it's a lot to maintain, I mean it's just constant maintenance. Here's the cool thing about renting in a strip mall, oh this church meets in a strip mall. Go somewhere else then, if that's what you care about you carnally minded fool. This place is about work, it's about the spirit, it's not about some building. But you know what's so cool, okay, have you noticed all the walls we've been knocking down and how we keep expanding? Guess who paid for all that? The landlord. We didn't pay anything. Knocking down these walls, knocking down those walls, building a new room here, put a window in there, the landlord pays for all of it. He'll put in a window for us, he'll knock down walls for us, he'll build new walls for us. Hey, we want a wall here, he'll build it. Hey, we want a big deep sink in there, sure. He gives us a deep sink. Hey, the faucets bust. His maintenance man comes and fixes it. Air conditioner is broken, he comes and fixes it. The lawn needs to be mowed, he mows it, sprinklers break, he fixes it. That's a pretty good deal. So we don't just have to dump all this money into our fancy facility and maintaining our palace, we just rent a building and the landlord does everything. It makes a lot of sense and we save so much money and we put that money into the work of the Lord instead of building a giant museum of, you know, where we have paintings of whatever Adam being created in the nude or something, you know what I mean? I don't want to spend my money on that. You know, I want to come into a building and you know what I like about this place? Yeah, yeah, it looks like an office space. Yeah, it's a place where people come to work, I like it. I like that about it. Oh, you're irresponsible, you drained the count. No, you know what's irresponsible is building a building with a 40-foot ceiling. That's irresponsible. You know what's irresponsible? Borrowing a million dollars. Borrowing 1.5 million dollars. We don't borrow anything. The first financial black hole that we want to stay away from is the building. And you say, well, I mean, you're eventually going to get a church building, right? Nope. We are going to rent until Jesus comes. We'll rent till Jesus comes. We'll rent till Jesus. Look, everything Jesus had was borrowed. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. He had to borrow the donkey to ride in on. Everything is borrowed. Even the preachers in the Old Testament, everything was borrowed. Remember that guy who was chopping down the tree with Elisha and the ax handle, the ax head flies off, and he says, alas, Lord, it was borrowed. No Bible preachers ever owned their own stuff. Just borrow it. Rent it. Rent till Jesus comes, and then we'll rent some more. We'll probably rent stuff in the millennium, amen? Rent. Why? Because it doesn't matter. Winning souls matters. Getting people baptized matters. Reaching the Word of God matters. Number one black hole is the building. Number two black hole financially is the Christian school. It's a financial black hole. All the manpower, all the man hours, all the resources, all the money goes into raising somebody else's kids. You raise your own kids. This is a church. This isn't a school. It's a church. And you know, study the Bible in Acts Chapter 6. It lays out what the workers of the church are supposed to be doing, the bishops and the deacons. And guess what? There's no mention of a Christian school in Acts Chapter 6 in the division of labor. And then number three, the financial black hole that a lot of churches are dumping money into is bogus missionaries. But I'm just being honest. I mean, three black holes that we need to make sure that we don't do, okay? So what are the things we should do? The three financial principles, don't sell anything. Number two, be generous. Give away, especially Bibles, preaching, you know, the seed to the sower, right? Principle number three is we want to prioritize our money toward bringing forth fruit unto the Lord, fruit that would abound to the giver's account. Prioritize people getting saved. And then the fourth bonus principle was don't hoard money. Don't lay up treasures on the earth. Don't take your talent and bury it in the earth. Use it. Use the money to do the work of the Lord. What are the three financial black holes that we want to stay away from where a lot of churches' money is getting wasted is number one, they're dumping it into a building. Number two, they're dumping it into the Christian school, which is not something that the Bible ever told us to do. There's no scripture that teaches it. And number three, they're dumping it into bogus missionaries. See instead of organizing their own fruit bearing ministry, they want to just throw money at some far away fruit ministry that they think is producing fruit when really it's not. Think about that. What do you think is easier, to actually go out and knock some doors yourself or just to throw a little money in an envelope and write missions on it, right? Now I'm all for giving the missions, but the problem is when churches are not doing soul winning themselves, they're not bringing forth fruit themselves. And then they just, well, we just, but we support all these missionaries. Okay. And then the missionaries they support, it's not an apostle Paul style missions. It's like we support 150 missionaries at 20 bucks each a month. That's not even worth the post. Why do you even put a stamp on that? That's not even worth putting a stamp on, send somebody 20 bucks a month or 30 bucks a month. It doesn't even make sense. And here's why. They have so many missionaries. They don't even keep track of what they're doing. They don't even know what gospel they're preaching. They don't even know what works are going on. They're just dumping all this money because here's a news slide for you. Ninety some percent of missionaries are bogus. They're mooch-in-aries. It's true. Okay. Count up all the churches in Phoenix and then tell me how many of them you want to go to. Well, I appreciate that, but I'm saying, but that's not my point. My point is count up all the churches and you'll find that a lot of them are bogus. Well guess what? The same thing goes with the mission field except even more so because they're so far away nobody knows what they're doing. And here's the thing. If I'm only given $25 a month, I don't care what you're doing. Now if I'm giving somebody $1,000 a month, I'm going to start caring what they're doing. You give $25, $50, $100, you're like, well, hopefully somebody will get saved. If not, it's only $100. That's the attitude, friend. It's funny, I sat down the other day and I know a lot about this subject of missions because when I was 18 years old, I spent three months on the mission field. Then I went back and spent three weeks on the mission field just spending a week at each pastor. So I visited a whole bunch of pastors on the mission field. I've been an independent fundamental Baptist my whole life. I've always loved missions. I've always read all the prayer letters. I've gone to the mission field since I've been a pastor. I've been to 15 foreign countries. So I've been, I've visited, I've talked to them, I've seen them. I'm telling you, I don't want to break your bubble here, but most of them are bogus. Are there good missionaries out there? Yes, but most of them are bogus, unfortunately. So I sat down a couple weeks ago and I just, I printed out a stack of missionary letters. I sat down and I read like 20 missionary letters in one sitting, okay, just, and I was looking for kind of patterns and things. So I just went online and just started printing missionary letters, printing missionary letters, printing missionary letters. Went through my email, printed letters, printed letters, and these are just random but they were all from, you know, independent fundamental Baptist missionaries. So I printed all these letters and I noticed one thing that was common to almost all of them. Okay. The first paragraph always contained these certain key words, okay. The first paragraph, busy, crazy, extreme, intense, exhausting, exciting, or schedule. Okay. So these are the buzz words that just kept coming up, like every letter I'm looking at. Because it was like every single letter, the first thing they had to do was convince you how busy they were. Like, oh man, there's so much going on. It's crazy. It's intense. It's just been extreme. I mean, it's just been so exciting. We've just been so busy. We're just trying to get out this crazy schedule. Why? Because they're doing nothing. So it's like they have to like front load it with all this, because then you read the whole rest of the letter and you never really find what, so what'd you get done? You know what I mean? So it's always like the first thing, oh man, it's been crazy. Oh, it's been so busy. Oh, it's been exhausting. Oh, it's just been intense. It's just been crazy. It was like every letter, I'm just like turning through letters, like intense, extreme, crazy, busy, busy. But then you read the rest of the letter and you can't find the stuff that got done. But then when I'd read the good missionary letters, which were more rare, they would actually give concrete, hey, you know, this is how many people we had in church, here's how many people got saved, we got some new people out soul winning, here's how many people got baptized, we started a new Bible reading program in our church where people are reading through the Bible cover to cover, 13 people finished it cover to cover for the first time. It was all like concrete, here's what we did. But then these missionaries, when they talked about the bad missionaries, how busy they were, I figured out what they're doing that we kept them so busy and extreme. They're just like preaching to each other. They're like, and when I was over there, they did this too. They just like preach to each other. Like they literally just have all these like missionary retreats where they just get like 15 missionaries together and preach to each other. And then they go to the other guy's country and we all preach to each other. We go to the other guy's country, we all preach. They're all running like 10 in their church or 20 or whatever. And then, but they're just all like preaching to each other, preaching to, cause they need all this encouragement cause they're so down and it's so hard and it's so busy and so intense. It's been so crazy. I mean, it's weird, but I brought one missionary letter today that just, this one kind of stood out from the crowd and not in a good way. So I read like 30 mission letters. This was my favorite. I got to read this for you. Dear pastor and church family, greetings in the precious name of Jesus Christ. In our door to door soul winning ministry, I knocked the door of a young man's home. He told me his name was Jonathan and asked me if I would like something to drink. I said, water. We sat down and began talking. He paid attention to what I was saying. And at the end of the presentation, I asked him if he's willing to receive Christ as personal savior. He said, no, but I'm willing to know more about the gospel before I make a decision. Thank God the seed of the word is planted in his heart and according to Isaiah 55, 11 said the Lord, so shall my word that go forth out of my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I pleased and shall prosper and the thing where to I sent it. Next paragraph. Then I went to the next door. The person that opened that door said he was busy. I handed him a flyer with an invitation to our church service and after that I knocked another door looking for a person that came to visit our church one time and when the door opened, his wife told me he's not at home. I also gave her a flyer and invited her to the church. And thank you so very much for your support both in prayer and financially. You've enabled us to continue with our soul winning ministry door to door. Some are saved and are faithfully attending our church services. Others say no to the gospel like Jonathan, but the seed of the gospel is planted in their hearts. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Now here's what's so weird about this. Here's what's so weird about this. First of all, somebody needs to explain to this guy that saying, nothing to write home about. Who knows that saying? Well it was nothing to write home about. Okay can somebody explain that to this guy? Okay here's what he said. So basically he tells about three doors he knocked. Why are you even telling us that you knocked a door and the guy wasn't home? He wasn't home. Then I knocked another door. She said, he's busy. I said, here's a flyer. I walked to the next door. Whoa buddy. Here's the thing about that. A real soul winner. Who's a real soul winner in here? Put up your hand if you're a real soul winner. Okay so this church is filled with real soul winners. Here's what a real soul winner would do. They would never come back to the church and tell this story ever. Okay look, we all go soul when we show up to soul winning times. Who has ever had somebody at our church walk up to you and tell you a story like that? Ever. Has that ever happened? So Lola, how'd soul winning go? Oh well, you know, I went to this door and the guy asked me what I wanted to drink. I said, water? I gave him the gospel. He said, no. I went to another door. They weren't home. I went to the third door. His wife said he's busy. I handed her a flyer. You'd be like, what? Get to the point. Because here's the thing. If you actually went soul winning even for one day, you'd have a better story than that. This is for a month. In one month. This is his greatest experience. In a month. And he tells us like every door that he knocked and it was three. I mean, we have seven year olds in this church that do more soul winning than this. We do. I mean, look, you knocked three doors and you're telling us every door. I mean, when I was reading it, it's like surreal. You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of like this, like that 50s beat poetry. Who knows what I'm talking about? Like I said, hi. He said, hi. He said, you want something to drink? I said, give me some water. I went to the next door. She wasn't home. But I left a flyer. It's like, come on, are you serious? But look, here's the thing. I don't know about you, I don't want to invest any money in this. I mean, we have people do this for free and it's called a warm up. It's called the first 20 minutes. It's called the first 20 minutes where you're kind of getting warmed up and people are kind of telling you no and you keep going and you're trying to find somebody. You don't just quit after the third door. And you know why it's three doors, by the way? Because it's not real soul winning. This is what it is. They get a contact card because he said one of the doors was somebody who visited the church. They get a contact card, they go to the contact and they knock the door to the left and they knock the door to the right and that's, they call it a day. That's soul winning to them. You know, look, this is not, look, this is a full time missionary. This is a guy who's getting paid to be a missionary, to evangelize. But see, this guy isn't alone at all. He's not alone at all. So the point is we want to make sure that as a church we're good stewards of the Lord's money because I believe, I believe that if we're good stewards of the Lord's money, God will give us more money, right? Because if you look, if I give somebody something and they do a good job with it, I'm going to give them more. So if we're a good steward of the Lord's money, he'll give us more money. If we're bad stewards of the Lord's money, he's going to say, well, I'm not going to give you any more money. Look what you do with it. You give it to people who write letters like this. I mean, maybe I was almost wondering like, is this guy just trolling? Like is he just trying to see if anybody reads the letter? It's so weird of a letter. You say, well, don't be hard on the guy. Look, you know why I'm hard on the guy? Because somebody reached deep into their pocket and made a financial sacrifice and they said, you know what? I'm going to dig deep. I'm going to skip a meal. I'm going to skip a vacation. I'm going to skip whatever because I want to give toward missions and I want to give toward the work of the Lord and then that's where it goes. Just circling the drain, soul winning. Circling the drain, Baptist Ministries is where it goes. So my point is, instead of feeling bad for this missionary because his letter got roasted, why don't you feel bad for all the people who gave him thousands of dollars? Maybe you should feel bad for them because they work hard every day and they're going to get to heaven like, man, I must have so much fruit to my account because I gave so much to missions and God's like, sorry about that bad investment. You didn't count very good spiritual broker. Pastor Edward Jones just didn't do it for you. Okay, so the point is we want to be a good steward of what the Lord has given us and I believe, I believe that Faithful Word Baptist Church is on the right track financially and I want to stay on that same track and I want to make sure that everybody in the church kind of in one accord that we all understand what the priorities are. Not to build a palace, you know, not to, you know, but to rather just let's get as many people saved. I mean, I don't know about you, isn't that where you want your money going toward fruit for the Lord? Souls saved, people baptized, lives changed. That's how I feel. I want you to feel the same way. I want to be in one accord. I want to have a biblical church that's about getting people saved and reaching people with the Gospel and look, I don't want to waste my money or your money or God's money or anybody's money into just a black hole of a bunch of bogus missionaries that we don't know anything about. You know, anybody that we give our money to, we should know who they are. We should get their plan of salvation. We should make sure that they're even preaching the true Gospel by faith alone and we should make sure that they're a doer of the work. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, thank you so much for all your blessings, Lord, and I thank you that we haven't had to struggle financially, Lord, or stress about the finances, Lord. Thank you so much for your provision, Lord, and I pray that you would continue to provide, Lord, and I pray that whoever gives to our church, Lord, that they would see much fruit abound to their account. Many thousands of people saved, baptized, and taught in the word of the Lord. Lord, I pray that you would please just continue to bless, Lord, and give us wisdom, Lord, so that we will be good stewards. Help us not to be foolish, Lord. Help us to be wise and to make good use of the resources that you've given us, whether that be a building or a van or chairs or songbooks or a camera. Whatever we have, Lord, help us to use it all for your honor and glory and for fruit that may abound unto all of our accounts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.