The following message was given at Emanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida. Father, we gather today to meet with you through Christ, our Savior, by the power of your Spirit. And we meet together to join our hearts with one another as we worship as we hear from your word, as our minds are renewed, as we are continually being transformed all the more into the image of Christ. And so we pray for your help today. Lord, we pray that you help us to focus all of our mind and attention upon Christ. We pray that you help us to be attentive to one another and each other's needs. We pray, O God, that You would help us as we receive Your Word today, as we're praying, as we're singing, as we're reading the Scriptures, as we're hearing Your Word preached, that in all of these things, that our hearts would be filled with great joy in who Christ is and what He's accomplished on our behalf. that we would be all the more set on a great longing and desire to relinquish our sin. We pray, oh God, that you would help us and instruct us that we might walk as a godly people who are seeking a life of holiness. We pray that our communion with you would be increased all the more today. We pray for this time of instruction in Sunday school and ask God that you would make it to be useful to us. We pray for our children as they are gathered in their classes right now. asking, Lord, that you would be working your word into their hearts, that they would delight in Christ, that their joy would be found in Christ, that their longing would be to have true faith in Christ. And we pray for all of our teachers. We're thankful for their efforts, and we ask, Lord, that you would give them wisdom and much grace and patience with the children. this hour. We do ask for your help now, Lord, and we desire that all things that we do would be for your glory and for the good and strengthening of your church. And we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. This morning our session is on investing in the future. Next week will be the final session on this series. And that will simply be a time of Q&A with all four pastors will be up here. And so we need your questions. So email us your questions that you would like us to address with regard to personal finance and a biblical view of money, and we'll have a good time answering those next week. So make sure you send them in. That will be a lot easier for everybody if we just have the questions instead of trying to run around with a microphone spending time on that. So we'd love to get your questions. This morning we're going to talk about investing in the future. And I wonder, when you have extra income or extra money comes in, for whatever reason you don't anticipate it, what do you do with it? Are you budgeting for savings? We talked about that a bit last week. And what kinds of investments are you making to plan for the future? What plans do you have to leave an inheritance to your children or your children's children? And what are you doing to teach your children about the wise stewardship of the resources that God provides them even now and into the future? So this morning we're going to look at biblical principles related to savings and investing and leaving inheritance and training our children in wise financial stewardship. Now I'm going to tell you up front, I'm not going to give you any kind of investment advice. I'm not a stockbroker or a financial planner or a hedge fund manager. So I'm going to leave that to those guys, but we want to consider principles that are found in Scripture related to each of these areas to help us find ways to make the best use of what God gives us to manage as His money managers. There's many, many different ways to invest your money and to make it work for you. Just like every person's financial situation is different, we need to understand that investments are likewise different from person to person. We're going to cover a wide array of issues today and hopefully answer several common questions related to these things, but obviously this will be in a very general manner, but I want to offer some biblical support along the way. Now, there's a lot of texts that we could look at for each of these categories. We've already looked at a lot of them in several of the other sessions, so I'm not going to go back through those, but we have a sampling this morning that will help answer some of the questions that we're going to look at. So the first thing, and maybe this seems obvious to all of us, but why is saving money important? Why can't we just spend it as we get it? Well, if you've been an adult for more than about 10 minutes, you've encountered expenses that you weren't planning on, you weren't expecting to come your way, or maybe you overshot your budget in one area because something was more expensive than you anticipated. So then what? Well, it's never wise to spend every dollar that you make. And the Bible gives us wise counsel with regard to savings so that we're prepared when our assets are not what we might have assumed they would be or our expenses exceed our projections. Consider Proverbs 6, verses six through eight. It says, go to the aunt, oh sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. And so, if you think about what we do with our money, something like a shopping binge or some kind of lavish vacation or eating out every night, that could be fun for a while. I'm sure it would be very fun for a while, but when... When these things are done without any regard to liabilities, we're managing our resources poorly and we're presuming upon God, we're presuming upon others to bail us out if things don't work out the way that we anticipated or that we didn't plan for. And so lack of planning today is going to set us up for financial failure in the future. Saving is an important measure that we need to take, especially as you think about the cost of living that increases year after year, and we need to think long term with our savings as opposed to simply thinking about days and weeks. We should think rather about months and years. And so this illustration here that the writer of Proverbs gives about the ant is an important principle for us to consider. We never assume that leaner days are coming, right? We get a job, we make a certain amount of money, and we sort of adjust our lifestyle to that amount of money. and then in time we maybe get a raise or we get another job, our income increases and so our lifestyle continues to adjust with those increases. That's not necessarily a bad thing unless you are not saving because we just assume the upward mobility is always going to be there and that's simply not always the case. Things happen. You might lose your job for one reason or another. You may experience a pay cut, or inflation, or pandemics, or illnesses, or disease, or major expenses. There's all sorts of things that can happen. And so if we're not saving, we're not heeding the wisdom of the proverb. To consider the ant that, you know, they have tiny little ant brains, so they're probably not thinking about much else, but collecting, no matter what the circumstances are, continuing to prepare for the future when resources are no longer available because it's wintertime. I don't know how well this illustration works in South Florida, but If an ant goes out in Michigan in the middle of the winter, they're not going to find any food. And so continuing to store and prepare for the days of lean. So just because you have a steady income doesn't mean that you'll have it tomorrow. So it's important to save for tomorrow. Now there's three different, really three categories of savings that are helpful for us to consider. The first one is saving for expenses. We've talked about this a bit already, that the general wisdom with regard to our financial savings is if you don't have any savings at all to begin with, that as quickly as possible you should try to set aside $1,000, and with that $1,000 you have an emergency fund. So if something comes up and you really don't have any money at all, Instead of putting it on a credit card, you can use that $1,000 toward that end. And once you have your emergency fund established, your next savings goal should be 6 to 12 months worth of your monthly expenses. Again, if any of those situations occurs where you have job loss or something like that, you've saved enough to at least make it through the next 6 to 12 months without having to stress so much about, I need a job tomorrow because we don't have what we need financially. We need to prepare for that and so that's that's an amount of savings if you're thinking well How much money should I leave in my savings account as opposed to investing in other ways? Six to twelve months worth of expenses is a good place to go and the reason I mentioned That you don't want to oh, sorry here. We go again. No, what's going on today? I We don't necessarily want to leave all of our money in a savings account because if you've ever noticed in your savings account, the interest you get back is about two or three cents a month. Literally. So let's think about what our expenses are. And then from there, we begin to save toward that end. It's not going to happen overnight. But once you know your averages and everything you've worked on in your personal budget, you can get a number for what that's going to look like. You don't want to have to drain your accounts down to zero. So the more you're able to save toward that end, the better off you'll be when there are seasons when things are not going well. The second kind of savings is targeted savings. That's the sort of thing where if you want to go on a vacation, that you're planning for that and you're saving for that. You don't just go on vacation and figure out how to pay for it later, right? Saving for it so when you go on that vacation, you're not stressed about every dollar that's spent, but you've prepared for it. And it's something you can enjoy all the more and not pay for two, three, four years down the road. things like vehicles, or furniture, or tuition for school, or things that you might need in your household, a new couch, or a new stove, or whatever it might be, that you're planning and preparing for these things, and hopefully you kind of have an eye on what the needs might be up and coming, and so you're setting aside and setting aside until you have to pull the trigger on that need. If you need a new roof on your house, you're probably not going to want to try and pay for that without planning for it. These things can get very expensive, especially if you're a homeowner. So targeted savings is something you do to save toward a specific end. And a lot of people, we do this, have separate accounts to save for targeted things. So we have a separate savings account that we use for specific things versus our savings account that we're simply trying to maintain for household expenses. The third kind of savings is long-term, and in this we're thinking about something like retirement. You're not always going to be able to work most of the time like you are now in your career, grinding it out day after day. So you need to prepare for the future. Now that I'm 40 years old, it doesn't seem so far away as compared to when I was just starting to work at 16 and 20 years old. So the best way to prepare for your retirement is to start a long-term plan as early as possible, to save a little bit from the day you begin working. You start when you're 15, 16 years old at your first job, setting something aside for the long term. And again, it seems like so far away. Why do I care today about that tomorrow? But as you spend some time learning about savings, that money works for you. If you invest it well, it will continue to grow for you, and it compounds over time. The more you're able to do early on, the better off you'll be in the long run. Long-term savings, it can take on different forms, but it's best to, as I mentioned, not just keep this kind of money, long-term savings, in a traditional savings account. It's certainly not best to just stuff the cash under your mattress. Find a way to make your money grow and to work for you. And it's going to take time to do that, but it's certainly a worthy way of being a good steward of what God has provided. And we'll talk a bit more about that in just a moment. Now we have to think again about what do the scriptures say about something like savings. Is it possible that I could save too much? Or how much is enough? The Bible does give warnings about hoarding and storing, right? So does saving negate the idea that saving money is necessary and wise for all of us? Consider Matthew 6, verses 19 and 20. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal." So how do we know when we've gone beyond reasonable savings and we've gotten into a category of sinful hoarding? Well, motive is certainly one of the areas worth examining. I think that's important in most areas of the Christian life, but certainly here. What is your motive? Why are you saving what you're saving? Is it out of fear? Remember the rich fool of Luke chapter 12. He built bigger and bigger barns to store the grain that he really had no intention of using, but simply to have it because he was fearful that maybe one day things aren't going to work out and so I'm just going to keep storing and storing and storing. But the Lord said he was a fool. Remember why? Because he said tomorrow your life will be required of you. So hoarding is saving taken to an extreme. There's no intention of giving. There's no willingness to use one's resources to serve others. There's no targeted goal with a measured balance of how how much we actually need. And the idea here is that you might have plenty of resources financially, and you see your neighbor with a great need, there's suffering, there's some kind of significant need that you could easily alleviate with your resources, but you won't do it because out of fear or greed, you just continue to store up and store up. And so motive is a very important consideration with regard to this. But it's not sinful to stop working a nine-to-five job when you're 65 or 68 years old, or whenever you're preparing to do that, whatever the retirement age will be by the time you get there. It keeps going up and up. But how much do you need to see you through to the end? When you're 85 or 95 years old, are you still going to have financial resources? Are you saving so much money that there's no possible way based on your current lifestyle or even if it was somewhat elevated that you could ever spend what you have. Perhaps you should consider whether or not you're operating out of greed or fear or an unwillingness to be a cheerful giver. As a Christian, what God calls us to. This is not an easy question to answer really because the Bible praises those who are diligent in their savings. The Bible praises those who are preparing for the future, but also condemns any notion that we should go well beyond what we could ever consider necessary. And again, this is going to depend on your own circumstances, and it will differ from person to person and culture to culture. So we need to work this out in prayer given our own circumstances and we need to realize that we're often prone to just unreasonably fear our situation because we like to see the numbers grow and grow. It's fun when you get money in an investment and it continues to grow and you may not even be putting any more in, but it's growing faster and faster because it continues to compound, that can be fun, that can be enjoyable, and we can be very thankful for that, but it tends to be the case that the more we see it grow, the less we're willing to spend. So we just need to be careful and ask God to help us not to be overtaken by greed or by fear. It's wise to remember what the Lord said in Luke chapter 12 in verse 15. He said to them, And so again, the question is motive. I cannot tell you how much is enough, but I think when we approach the question in humility, we can see that our expectations often far exceed what's reasonable. Proverbs 11 28 says whoever trusts in his riches will fall but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf. And so we need to remember the Lord's promises. He will care for us. He will provide for us. And yes part of that provision is careful planning as we look to the future. But part of that too is that we're not living in a constant state of fear. We're not living each and every day assuming that we will have nothing at all tomorrow and the Lord doesn't have the means to provide for us. So we have to be careful that we don't have a misplaced trust in our savings accounts and in our investments. So should Christians invest? And from here I mean things like the stock market, or maybe someone's business, or in real estate, or any such ventures like that. Gold, silver, whatever it is you decide to invest in. Is that something Christians should do? Ecclesiastes chapter 11, beginning in verse one and two says, cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. And in the morning, verse six, in the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. Now this is very sound financial wisdom from Solomon here in Ecclesiastes. He's telling us to do what every good financial counselor will advise you to do, and that is to diversify your investments. And so here he's talking about cast your bread upon the water, The Bible is kind of using slang there, cast your money on the water. In other words, he's talking about these merchant ships that would go out and you would give your money or your product, whatever side of that exchange you were on, and the ships would go out to another and they would either acquire the goods or try to sell the goods. And then you had to wait for the ship to come back so that you could get the return on whatever it was that you were doing. And he's saying, you don't know. You don't want to put all of your money on one ship because that ship may not make it. And so you need seven or eight. And so you diversify, you spread it out. So to answer this question first, yes, I think it is wise, I think it is biblical to find ways to make your money work for you, to increase what you have, not just by working more and earning more, but by earning interest and things of that nature while you invest it. And so the wise, and we'll see here, the biblical way to approach investing is to put money into different sectors. or to use a modern proverb, to not put all of your eggs in one basket. So for example, perhaps you put some of what you earn into the stock market, and maybe you put some into gold and silver and precious gems, and then you put some money into real estate, you put some money into a money market account, and on and on we could go. Again, there are many different ways to invest what you have. But that way, if you're in all these various sectors, if, say, tomorrow the stock market crashes, which in our current economy is an ever-present danger, or if the housing market crashes, all of these kinds of things, they can crash. The price of gold could plummet, something like that. then all of your assets are not tied up into one area. And maybe that area would take years, decades, and maybe never recover. Or it might take a very long time to recover. But if you're diversified, if you have your resources in all sorts of different areas, protected in that you're not going to lose everything all at once. So some investments are more risky than others, of course, so it's not only wise to diversify what you invest in, but to also, what any financial advisor would tell you, to diversify your risk. You don't want all your money in a very high-risk investment. Some can be high-risk, high-risk, high-reward sort of idea, and others to keep low-risk. It's within itself diversified a lot so that your chance of losing what you put in is not as significant. So we need to think about risk in addition to diversification. Now remember, we looked a few weeks ago at Matthew 25, and the parable of the talents. I think this speaks directly to this idea of investing. Remember the master gave the talents to his servants, and so one gets ten talents, one gets five talents, and one gets one. And the one who had ten, he invested those ten talents in some way, and he returned ten more. The one who had five, he invested those five, and he returned five more. And the one who was given one, he buried it in the ground, and when the master returned, he simply gave him that one back. And I think it's important to recognize there, with regard to our finances, Yes, the parable has a much broader meaning than financial investment, but what we do see here is that the two who returned money on their investment, talents on their investment, they were praised by the master, right? And he said, you've done much what I have given to you, and so much more will be given. And to the one who simply buried it in the ground and returned the one, he said, what's been given to you will be taken away, and it will be given to those who know how to use it well. And so, there's a lot that could be said about that parable, but I think there is a principle there that's telling us to not just sit on it. In other words, we need to put it to work. We need to find ways to increase what God has given to us to fulfill His purposes as He calls us to be His money managers. Sorry, I skipped a slide here. What about this question? Investing maybe is confusing to you or it's scary to you. You don't have any idea how to do any of it. And the second you start to look into it, you see there's all kinds of opinions. There's all sorts of people who want to take your money to give you advice on how to spend your money. There's a lot going on in the world of investment. So why not just save cash? I don't want to mess with all that. I don't want to learn a whole new vocabulary. I don't want to do all that. I just want to save cash. Well, cash should certainly be a part of your investment strategy. As I said, especially with your emergency fund and those 6 to 12 months of expenses, you want that readily available. but I do not believe it is wise that it should be your primary investment once you have achieved that savings of 6 to 12 months of expenses in your account. As all of us are seeing, all of us are experiencing right now, whether we realize it or not, because of how our monetary system has been developed and continues to be manipulated, the value of cash is diminishing drastically. In fact, faster than we've seen in a very long time. So $100 today is not going to be worth $100 in five years. And certainly is not. I read something the other day and it was, I think $100 today buys what you could have bought for like $4 or $5 in the early 80s. And so you see how quickly, that's not that long ago. in 40 years or so that the value of the dollar has plummeted. So if you just keep your cash as your savings plan, you're investing in a depreciating asset. In other words, the cash becomes an asset that is worth less and less as time goes on. You want to invest in things that are worth more and more as time goes on. So you can think of most Now again, the economy's all upside down, but most vehicles are considered a depreciating asset. As you drive it, you put more miles on it, you have dings and dents and all that sort of thing, and the value decreases over time. Again, don't think of the current economic situation as normal. It's not. You can sell a used car today, five years after you bought it, for more than you bought it. That's not normal. But the dollar is like that. It's a depreciating asset. And so we don't want to put all of our money into cash. So think about what you could buy 10 or 20 years ago with that $100 that you have today, and you should be able to see why shoving your cash in the mattress is not the best way to save. And again, I understand that investing is intimidating to the average person. There are countless options as to why we don't want to invest because if we don't know a lot, we can be reckless or we can be taken advantage of. And to be quite honest, the system is not set up for the average person to be able to jump in and do it at the same level as someone who is a hedge fund manager or whatever. They write the rules and they write them in order to work in their favor. But you can do it, and there are ways that you can do it, very simple ways that you can do it so that you can gain. You don't have to learn about calls and puts and cryptocurrencies and dividends and annuities and dollar cost averaging and key performance indicators and on and on and on. These are all terms that I think scare us generally as we think about it, but we want to be able to wisely invest our money and there are many Christian financial advisors that you might want to talk to that could be very helpful. They can help you figure out what you have, set a goal for where you want to be, and figure out how you can get there in a sensible way that meets your financial goals over time. Now, as you think about investing, as you think about the possibility of losing an investment or some sector crashing, we've all heard horror stories about that and people losing their retirements and everything else in their investments. And so some will look at that and say, well, how is this any different than gambling? How's the stock market or investments? How is this any different than going to the casino and just putting all my money on the roulette table and hoping that black 13 shows up? Well, no doubt, depending on what you invest in, there could be some topsy-turvy things that happen along the way, and it may make it seem like maybe it's no better than going to the casino. Now, of course, no investment is guaranteed. Hence, the importance of diversifying because every sector operates differently at different times. One of the major differences is that an investment has a tangible tie to some kind of asset. It's a business. If you're in the stock market, you're investing in businesses. You're investing in a piece of property in real estate. You have valuable assets like gold or silver or diamonds, assets that fluctuate, but throughout the history of time have never fallen off the face of the map in terms of their value. So if you have a lot of money, for example, tied up in real estate, And let's say the real estate market takes a big turn and property values plummet. What happens? So some might say, well, you've just spun the wheel and it didn't turn out in the long run. You lost everything. You gambled. But that's not entirely true because what do you still have? You still have the property that you invested in, right? So if you've planned properly, you can hold on to that asset and perhaps in time the market will rebound and you've not lost anything and hopefully in time you will have gained. And so in that sense, it's very different from gambling. If you spin the slot machine and you get zero, that's what you get. You get zero. If you buy a piece of property and the value decreases, you still have the property. If you've planned, you can prepare for those times of less. Or if your money's in the stock market, for example, and say the stock market takes a nosedive. As long as you don't take your money out of the stock market, you freak out, you see it's going down, down very quickly, and so you wanna try and recover everything as quickly as you can so that you don't lose more, As long as you don't do that, then you still own all of those shares. In fact, if you have more money, when you see it's at the bottom, you can buy more at a cheaper rate so that when it climbs back up, you'll have more of that. And so as long as you don't take your money out, you've really, in reality, not lost anything because you still own those shares. So just keep it there and wait for it to recover. Are all of our investments guaranteed to recover? Well, certainly not. But you can have a reasonable expectation that things in time will improve as you've wisely considered where you're putting your money, instead of it being a game of chance. In other words, investments are tied to businesses, certain sectors of the economy, real estate, assets, all sorts of different things that have value, as opposed to just playing a game of chance that you either win or lose, and more often than not, you lose. So with that, What do we do with that? So we're saving, we're investing, our money is growing. Is it all for me so I can retire and play golf every day and travel three or four times a year and go on all vacations with the Sullivans? Should I do that? Or is there another reason for me to be saving? Whenever possible, we should plan to leave what we are able to leave to our posterity. Proverbs 13, 22 says, A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous. God blesses us financially. All of us are financially blessed beyond anything that we could really... You know, it's easy to be in our circumstances, in our culture, and assume, I just don't make very much money, or you hear people all the time say how poor they are, but... If you put us on the spectrum of the world, right here and right now, we're all extremely wealthy. And if you look at that in terms of a historical timeline, we are the richest people to have ever lived by a very, very long shot. So we need to think about that. God has blessed us, but it's not so that we can live as lavishly as possible while we're on the earth, but so that we can be as generous as possible. We've talked about that already, but we can also assist our posterity in achieving prosperity. There's a little rhyme there. It can use that to build generational wealth. And in the future, Lord willing, they will use those resources for God's kingdom purposes as well. The proverb says that this is the way of a good man. In other words, he doesn't have the goal of going to his deathbed having expended all of his resources, but rather he's leaving what he can to his children and to his grandchildren whenever he is able. And he opposes this to the other man who's mentioned in the proverb, the sinner, who stores up his wealth for some specific purpose, and though he intends on spending his wealth to serve his greed, under providence, ironically, he has stored it up for those who serve God's kingdom, that eventually the ownership of those resources goes to someone else, to the righteous man. So the proverb assumes that the wicked have their, they have deceived themselves in assuming that their wealth is going to do something for them the more greedy they are. But they have this and this wealth may increase for a season. but they falsely assume that retribution is not bound strictly to a temporal order. In other words, the writer says that eventually the wealth of every sinner will be transferred to righteous people. It will endure forever. And how can that be the case? Well, in time, those who act in a righteous manner with their finances are going to make the wise financial decisions. And as they do that, in time, you see how the financial situation changes. A good family will successfully pass on to their posterity and to future generations. And so our goal shouldn't be to spend everything we have by the time we lay down to die. We want to be able to leave something to future generations. And Lord willing, they will be godly people themselves, and they'll use those and continue on the heritage, hopefully, that you have set down, that they will continue to use them in a godly manner for kingdom purposes. Paul writes to Timothy, if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. So when we're able to bless those within our family, we're fulfilling a God-given responsibility to do whatever is in our ability to look out for their well-being. And so if we have the ability to provide for our family, and yet we fail to do so, Paul's warning is a very serious one here. It's to act in a manner worse than an unbeliever. And so it's important, this highlights another important area, sort of related to our finances, is that all of us should have a will. Make sure your assets are directed where you intend for them to go and don't leave anything up for debate. I've seen many instances, and many of you are likely aware, that inheritances can cause a lot of conflict and a lot of harm and do significant damage to families. So it's important for you, with your assets, to identify where you want them to go, to designate where everything's going to end up when you die. And you'll be with the Lord Jesus, so you may not care so much, but You want to set your family up for continued unity and love for one another and so not giving them something without direction that will cause a significant amount of damage oftentimes. And so get a will in addition to straightening out your finances, that should be a part of the package. Now, what should I teach my children about finances? Sometimes I think we put this off and we put this off because our kids don't generally have any money, or if they do, it's a very small amount, so we don't really think about teaching them about finances until maybe they get their first job or until they've blown out their first credit card or whatever it is because they got it on college campus. So there are things we should be teaching our children from a very young age about their financial resources as they come in. Build those habits early so that they just work when they get to the place where they're actually making significant money. The first thing for all of us is that we want to teach them what we need to continue to teach ourselves, and that is giving. And so, I think it's important when your children get things like allowances or they have a part-time job and they're getting some income that you're teaching them the principle of giving. Before you spend any of this money at all, a percentage of this needs to be given. And so, bring it to the church, putting it in the plate, or however it is that you help them to give. But they're learning the principle that just because I made $100 doesn't mean I now have $100 to go spend on anything and everything that I want. A portion of this needs to go to the Lord. He's provided it for me. I am identifying my trust in Him and what He is providing by giving and trusting that that will go to His purposes. So that's the first thing that we should teach from a very early age. And even talking to our children as the offering baskets going by or as we're, however we're writing out our check, however it is that you give, that you're communicating that to your children, that they see the importance of giving and being, giving not just to the church, but in every one of your benevolence efforts as well. I think it's good from a young age to encourage entrepreneurship with your children. It teaches them responsibility. They begin to learn something about business and they get a business sense. They learn about planning and saving and spending and investing as well. I don't often use my children as illustrations. I don't want to embarrass them, but this is a good one, so I'll use that. Several years ago, when we lived in the Savannah area, we lived on a golf course, and the golfers would go by all day long. and my children were trying to figure out a way that they could take advantage of that. And so we brought them to the store, and they bought a bunch of Gatorade and water, and they made cookies and all sorts of things, and they filled a cooler with ice, and they stood back there. They figured out what the girl who rides around with the cart, what she charged for her drinks, and they charged a little bit less, and they made over $1,000 one summer just selling water and Gatorade. And I think Eva was maybe 11, 10 or 11 at the time. But part of that, as their parent, they thought I was mean, but we made them use that money to buy new inventory. We'll take you to the store, you need to, you have to buy the drinks, you have to buy the ice, you have to supply everything for here. You want to make cookies to sell, you have to buy all the ingredients and you can store them somewhere in the pantry. I could have charged a storage fee and everything as well, but we didn't. But the idea being here, they're starting to learn, what does it mean to work? What does it mean to develop some kind of business sense? Now I have to think about inventory, and am I charging enough to make up for what we've sold? How many units do I have to sell in order to make my money back? What do I do with the profits? Reinvesting. All these sorts of things. It's great. Maybe in the future, your child may not own their own business, but if they have a sense of how a business works, it's very useful when they find themselves in the workforce, and they will see themselves progressing in their career much quicker. I certainly want to teach our children about savings. I require that our children save, and we want to help them save as well. So putting a little bit of money in their account each month for them, but in doing so, helping them to set some financial goals themselves. And so again, when they get their money, you want them to give a percentage of that, but you also want them to save a percentage of that. Give, save, and then you can spend afterwards. Don't buy everything for them. It's easy to want to just buy everything that they want if we have the money. But if it's a want and it's not a need, sometimes it's best to make them save and to spend their own money on that thing, whatever it might be. Again, it teaches financial responsibility. If they just have a mindset that if I want something, I'm going to get it because mom and dad always buy it for me, They're not going to value money and its usefulness the way that they could if they were forced to save and to buy that thing on their own. I'm trying to rush through these. Sorry, I had more to say. Encourage them to work toward a career and not just a job. I've known a lot of people that they get later in life and their resume is like 42 pages long because they have a new job every six months. We want to encourage our children to have a career. It's easy for them to think that all is well because I have enough money to pay my bills, but they're never developing, really, a lot of skills, and so they're not earning in a career field that can be maintained for many years. Instead, they're hopping from job to job without any hope of escaping the most minimal pay. It's a real mindset. I don't want to do anything too difficult, so I'm just going to work this job, and if I don't like it after a while, I'll go to this one. Instead of developing skills, developing a set of knowledge, developing something that would be beneficial to others who own businesses or whatever, and I can work in that career field, whatever it is. You know, there's all kinds of sectors. People always pick on, like, fast food restaurants, for example. Well, I've known guys who've owned fast food restaurants when they started at the bottom, and they do quite well, and that was their career choice. Right? So that was what they chose to do and stick to over the long haul, as opposed to just jumping around all the time. So we want to encourage our children to work toward a career, not just a job. And part of that comes with teaching them the value of hard work. Proverbs 10.4 says, a slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. We need to teach our children the value of hard work. You want to do well financially, you wanna make as much money as you can so you can be as generous as you can. If that's the case, then it's going to take hard work. It doesn't just happen overnight. The Lord doesn't just give you money like little league teams hand out trophies, right? You have to earn it. Not everyone is a winner. And learning a good Protestant work ethic that is directed toward a career instead of a job is what our young people need. That they would learn that the harder I work, the more it does for me, not just financially, but in our relationships with one another, but certainly in our relationship to the Lord. We're all the more thankful for what we have as we work hard. To obtain it so we are past time, but remember next week will be Questions if you have any questions at all about anything related to finances Go ahead and send those in so we have them to answer for you next week Let's pray. Father, thank you again for our time. Thank you for your goodness to us, your kindness, Lord, as we reflect on how blessed we truly are, how we are truly rich, not just financially, we certainly are, but most importantly, Our greatest riches, our greatest treasure, is found in Christ. And so we're so very thankful, Lord, that the true value of what we have is something that cannot ever have a price put on it, because we have the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we pray, Lord, that you help us to think about these things wisely, according to your word, that we not operate out of a place of fear, that we not operate out of a place of greed, but that we operate out of a place of wisdom and with a great desire to do as much good as we can do for your kingdom's sake. And so we ask, Lord, that you help us to apply all of these things that we have discussed over the last six weeks, that we might be better, more equipped financial managers of what you have given us for resources. And we pray that you'd be glorified in all of our efforts. And we ask you to do this all in Jesus' name. Amen. We hope you were edified by this message. For additional sermons, as well as information on giving to the ministry of Emmanuel Baptist Church and on our current building project, you can visit us online at ebcfl.org. That's ebcfl.org.