If you'd like to follow along with me, I'm going to be reading from Ecclesiastes chapter 4, verses 4 through 16. Ecclesiastes 4, verses 4 through 16. And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbor. And this too is meaningless and a chasing after the wind. The fool folds his hands and ruins himself. Better one handful of tranquility than two handfuls of toil and chasing after the wind. Again, I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone, and he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. For whom am I toiling, he asked, and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This, too, is meaningless, a miserable business. Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Better are poor, but wise youth Praise God for our youth. Amen. Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take warning. The youth may have come from prison to the kingship, or he may have been born in poverty within his kingdom. I saw that all who lived and walked under the sun followed the youth, the king's successor. There was no end to all the people who were before him. But those who came later were not pleased with the successor, and this too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we have just come out of a season where we spent a lot of money. We did a lot of things with money and possessions. We've been focused a lot on possessions in these last couple of weeks. And Lord, we're just saying about everything we do to honor You, let everything honor You. We want our spending to honor You and our dealings with money and possessions to honor You, Lord. And I think that there are many who are here who their use of their money these past few weeks really did honor You. And there are others, Lord, I'm sure, who we dishonored You with our money. And I pray that this morning, through this passage of Your holy Word, by the power of Your Spirit, You would come upon us as a church and teach us how to use something that in and of itself is worthless, it's just going to burn, it's temporary, and convert it to eternal heavenly dividends. Lord, we pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Think of how much of your life is devoted to making and spending money. Even if you don't make very much, you might hear that and say, well, the making part really isn't there much. But even if you don't make very much money, you're spending money all day long, all the time, right? You're constantly spending either your money or someone else's money. Every time you eat food, every time you drink water, every time you use plumbing, every time you use heat, you are spending money around the clock, even while you sleep. You're spending money. Your whole existence is made up of making and spending money. No matter what kind of lifestyle you live, whether it's frugal or extravagant, money is a huge, huge part of life, whether we like it or not. We've been studying through the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a wisdom book designed to teach us how to deal with life in a fallen, cursed, futile world. And we come to a section today in chapter 4 dealing with finances. Now let me just give you a quick review to get you up to speed here. The writer of the book, who refers to himself as the preacher, begins by warning us about the folly of trying to do the impossible, trying to get a grasp of divine providence and control life so that you're in control of all the things that come your way. That is an exercise in futility. And what he says to do instead is just trust God with all that stuff. Trust God with the stuff that's outside of your power and outside of your knowledge and wisdom, and just enjoy providence. Enjoy what God brings your way. How do you do that? By trusting Him, fearing Him, and living for His pleasure. That's the way to enjoy life. That's the recipe for enjoying life. Trust that what He's doing is beautiful in its time. And you can't see that beauty all the time. Very often you can't see it. time trying to see the unseeable, or try to figure out what He hasn't revealed, just enjoy what God gives you, enjoy life, keeping Judgment Day in mind, because the only way to have that gift of enjoyment from God is by pleasing God. That catches us up to chapter 4, verse 4, where we left off. The rest of chapter 4 sounds like something right out of the book of Proverbs. He's going to give us some wisdom principles because if you're going to live a life of enjoying God by pleasing God, you're going to need wisdom to do that. And so he keeps injecting wisdom in portions all through the book. Back in chapter 2, verse 13, he says, There is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness. The wise man has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. So wisdom can be misused, for sure. You try and use wisdom to gain control of providence and all the rest, then it's a misuse. There's most definitely a place for wisdom in life. And so we're going to find again and again in the book, he's going to give us these sections of Proverbs, wisdom sections to teach us how to make good decisions. Let me just give you a rundown on how wisdom works. One of the most important principles when it comes to living wisely and making good decisions is the principle of understanding relative value. Okay? Relative value. If you're trying to make a hard decision, it's not going to help very much just to know which things are valuable and which things are important in life. That's not enough information. That doesn't help because most of the time the reason a hard decision is hard is because you're trying to decide between two or three valuable things. Two or three important things. They're all important and so that's what makes it hard. If it's a choice between something really good and important and something terrible, that's not a hard decision. You don't need much wisdom for that. But in order to make wise decisions in life, you have to know which things, not just what's important, but which things are more important than other things, in comparison to other things. For example, is your time valuable and important? Yes. Is your health valuable and important? Yes. So what do you do if you have a decision between option A, which will cost you a lot of time but will preserve your health, or option B, which will harm your health potentially but save you a lot of time? Which one do you choose? Which is more important? You cannot make that decision wisely unless you understand the relative value of health and time. Which one is more important than the other? When you read the book of Proverbs, that's why when you read the book of Proverbs, you see so many of those, this is better than that statements. This is better than that. This is more important than that. The comparative kind of statements. So this is why when you're trying to make a hard decision and you write out a list of pros and cons, have you noticed that that doesn't always help very much? Sometimes you write out a whole list of pros and cons and you look at it and it's like, okay, this isn't helping. Because you might have 25 pros and only 2 cons and yet you see the cons have huge weight. They're very important and they might outweigh all 25 pros. It's not just the number on one side or the other. You have to know how much weight to assign to each pro and each con. Part of becoming a wise man or woman is getting to the point where your natural impulses and feelings reflect the proper weight of importance and value of various things. I'll give you an example of that. Suppose you're just getting home from somewhere, you did some errands, and you get out of your car, and you've got this folder full of really important documents and papers, and you've got your little two-year-old with you. And you get out of the car, and all of a sudden a big gust of wind comes and blows your papers all over the yard, and at the same moment, your little two-year-old runs out into the street with oncoming traffic. What do you do? You've got to make a decision to make, right? At that split second, you've got to decide, do you run after the papers and get these important papers, or do you go save your child's life? How do you make a decision like that? Do you quick whip out your little whiteboard and draw a line down the middle, pros, cons, and you go down through it? No, you don't have to do that, right? Does that mean the papers aren't important? No, they're still important. But you can instantaneously make a wise decision there without even thinking, with no thought at all. Why? How can you make a wise decision there with no thought? Here's why. It's because in your emotions, deep down inside you, it's ingrained, not just in your head, but in your bloodstream, this belief that my child's life is way up here, papers much farther down in the list of importance. It's just part of your soul, and you don't have to think about that. It's just so easy, that priority. Now, will we ever become so wise that all decisions are that easy? No, but the wiser we become, the more the relative value of things becomes clear in our affections, it becomes part of our bloodstream, part of our feelings. The more that happens, the easier it's going to be for us to choose the best of good options when we have hard decisions to make. If a person has to decide between two job offers, And one of them would be really good for their spiritual life and their walk with the Lord, but the other one pays a lot more money and is easier. Is that a hard decision or easy? Well, for a wise person, that's a piece of cake. That's the easiest decision in the world. Because he treasures his walk with the Lord and spiritual things so much more than money and comfort that he's like, oh yeah, that's a no-brainer. But for a person who's not very wise and who values comfort or money way too high or values his walk with the Lord way too low, for that person that can be an agonizingly difficult decision. And he might have to wrestle and struggle and pray and get advice and exert all the energy he has to try to figure out the right decision there. Whereas the wise person, it's just as easy as can be because those priorities are just part of his thinking, part of his feeling. See that? A huge number of the problems that we have in life come from either undervaluing or overvaluing money in our heart in comparison to other things. You'll never live a wise life or make wise decisions if you don't understand where money fits in the priority of values. You've got to know that because money is such a huge part of our life whether we like it or not. There are some things that are less important than money, and there are other things that are more important than money, and we've got to know what they are. If you get those priorities jumbled in your heart, you're going to run into all the same kind of problems that fools run into. So in verse 4, the preacher starts with something that's more important than money. He's going to tell us a priority here. And we could actually go all day talking about things that are more important than money. Lots of things are more important than money. If you just scan through the book of Proverbs, you can find a whole list. first and foremost, honoring God, right? Honor God with your money, so obviously that's more important than money, Proverbs 3.9. Righteousness and justice, godly speech, wisdom and understanding, truthfulness, humility, a good reputation, respect, a prudent wife, Proverbs 19.14, all those things, more important than money, more valuable than money. So you're thinking, I've got a prudent wife and she's costing me a lot of money. According to Proverbs 19.14, you're getting a good deal still, right? So when you make hard decisions, everything in that list should rate higher in your affections than money. They should weigh more heavily in your priorities than money. It is foolish to overvalue money. Money has value. It's more valuable than some things, but its value is limited. Money can protect you. We're going to see that in a minute. It can protect you from some things, but not from everything. Proverbs 11, 28, whoever trusts in his riches will fall. So the value of money is great, but it's limited and overvaluing money results in disaster in life. So, lots of things more valuable than money, but in this chapter, the preacher is going to zero in on just one particular thing that's more valuable than money. One of the most common mistakes we make in life is jumbling priorities with regard to money or possessions and people. People are more important than money. And that's what he wants to show us here. When you come to the point where you love money more than you love people, your life is going to become futile. Look at verse 4. He says, I saw that all labor and all skillful work is due to man's jealousy of his friend. This too is futile in a pursuit of the wind. Now, jealousy refers to a hostile attitude towards someone. Very often when people seem to have a great work ethic because they're hard workers, you look a little closer, you find out it's not a work ethic at all. It's just a desire to get ahead of someone else. You know, they're trying to get something. And that can result in hostile attitudes in both directions. You see somebody, he's making $20,000 more than you, and he's your same age, and you think, something's got to be done about that. That drives you crazy. He's got a boat, and you can't even afford a canoe, or whatever, and he's got this car, and it ends up driving a wedge between you and him in your relationship. One really sad commentary, I think, on the human race is the fact that you can go into any corporation, any business, and you'll see that All the salaries are top secret. Nobody's allowed to know. Employer does everything they can to keep that information secret. Because if employees find out what everybody else is making, you're going to have a riot. No matter what the numbers are, you're going to have a riot. You can have a guy who's happy as a clam making $18 an hour, and then he finds out the other guy's making $23 an hour, and now he's all up in arms and he wants to quit his job. I hate this job. So unfair. I'm out of here. And then he finds out, no, the other guy's only making $18 an hour. He's like, oh, okay, now I'm happy again. What is that? Nothing's changed in his situation. He just can't stand the thought of someone else's good fortune. That's just like the guy who worked in the field in Matthew 20. He's perfectly happy to do a full day's work for a fair day's wage until he finds out somebody else is getting that same wage for less hours and now he's unhappy. Why? Because, mark it, envy hates grace. Envy hates grace. They're enemies. Our culture is full of envy. It cultivates envy because our culture worships fairness. Fairness is not the same thing as justice. Justice is a wonderful thing. Fairness is just everybody gets the exact same thing. And our culture is all about fairness. Everybody's got to get the exact same thing. And they value fairness more than they value grace, which is somebody getting something extra. I don't want anybody getting grace. I don't want anybody getting anything extra. I don't want anybody getting anything I didn't get. And it's like we're a bunch of five-year-olds. Seriously, I mean, this is how children act. You give a kid a cookie, he's happy as can be. You give his brother two cookies, now he's miserable with his one cookie. Even though nothing changed in his situation. In fact, I really think, I believe, one of the great tasks of parenting is to teach your children to value grace more than fairness. That's a task. You have to teach them. You have to teach them to rejoice with those who rejoice. When our kids were growing up, I purposely sometimes gave each one of them one cookie and one of them two cookies just to teach them this. And when I did that, I would take the occasion to explain to them, I would say, okay, this temptation you have right now to feel kind of angry, That's called envy. And it's a bad thing. You've got to fight that in your heart. You've got to get that out because that will ruin your heart. Love is very different from envy. Love is happy when my brother is happy. It rejoices with those who rejoice and weeps with those who weep. Envy hates it. If your brother or your sister gets something good and you don't get it, and that makes him happy, your brother happy, rejoice with him. Be happy for him. And you know, you hear that and you might think, oh man, you'd never teach a kid that. Actually it wasn't all that hard to teach them. They latched on to it right away. They actually liked that. Even to the point where it became a game for them. Where they were always trying to spot envy. They'd see somebody unhappy about someone else's good fortune, like, Envy! Envy! And they would try and point it out. And it was a game. And you know, just the other day, I was just riding in the car with Carolyn Nicole and she just brought up, kind of out of the blue, she said, Dad, I'm so glad you taught us that. And she went on to say, she said, I'm amazed at how many of the people I hang around, the people I see, how few of them have ever learned that. Everywhere I look, I see people who can't take delight in other people's good fortune. And she was glad to have learned that virtue because she saw how miserable those people were and saw how much happiness she had at other people's joy. I mean, if you think about it, just think about if you can only be happy when pleasant things happen to you, how often are you going to be happy? Not all that often, right? But if you can be happy anytime something pleasant happens to someone you love, I mean, we've got a church of 350 people here, right? So if all you need in order to be happy is for somebody out there to be getting something good, then you're always going to have an occasion to be happy because there's always somebody who things are going well for them, right? It just increases your joy so much. Just think about how much happier you will be in life if you're happy every time pleasant things happen to someone else compared to if you're just happy when they happen to you. Loving people more than you love stuff makes life infinitely more enjoyable. Infinitely more enjoyable. But Solomon looked around and saw the same thing that Carolyn Cole saw. Hardly anybody seems to understand this. He looked around and observed how much of a role rivalry and envy play in the workplace, and he found it to be absolutely pandemic. It's everywhere. It's like everybody, that's why they're working. When money becomes so important to you that you will sacrifice relationships for the sake of money, you have crossed the line into greed and covetousness. and your whole life will turn into a chasing after the wind. It's going to be futility. Proverbs 15, 16, better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil. Or Proverbs 17, 1, better dry crust with peace and quiet than a full house of feasting and strife. If you have strife It doesn't matter if you have a big house and lots of money. It's miserable. It's not worth it. You're going to be a lot happier if you have peaceful relationships and poverty than riches and turmoil. Relationships are more important. Keep that in mind. next time you and your spouse get into a fight over money or some purchase. It's not worth it. It's the wrong priority. Taking the right path through life is dependent on making wise decisions and you will make wise decisions when your priorities are set right in your affections. And one priority that just needs to be drilled into your frontal lobes and into your soul and your heart is When you have to make a decision between peaceful relationships and money or possessions, which is more important? Peaceful relationships are more valuable than money and they will bring you more benefits than money will ever bring you. And this principle applies beyond just money. I'd like to show you that it applies to everything that is the same value as money or even things that are less valuable than money, right? Because, obviously, if something is less valuable than money, that's going to be less valuable than relationships. So, what's less valuable than money? Well, how about comfort and convenience? Isn't it true that every time the book of Proverbs tells us to not be lazy, and instead of being lazy we should work hard and earn a living, isn't it saying, isn't it teaching us that money is more important than comfort and leisure and ease? Yeah, that's what it's teaching us. And we're going to see that actually in verse 5, in the next verse. So, in the scale of value, relationships are way up here, money is here, and comfort and ease is way down here. Okay? And we'll see that in verse 5, but before we go to verse 5, I just want to make this point. If comfort and ease and rest, if they're lower in the scale than money, then obviously they're way lower than relationships in importance, which means if it's dumb to sacrifice a relationship for money and possessions, then it's really, really dumb to sacrifice a relationship for comfort and convenience and ease. You see that? That means if you get angry or you respond in a way that's harming the relationship, every time somebody steps on your convenience or your comfort or your ease, that shows a perverted priority in your heart. You're valuing comfort and ease more than relationships. You're either valuing comfort and ease way too high, or you're valuing relationships way too low, or both. And this section, when we look at where we are in the context of Ecclesiastes, remember what happened in the first three verses of chapter 4? That was in the last sermon, but he's talking about the problem of oppression. It's one of the worst things in the whole world. The worst problems in the world is the problem of oppression. I don't think this is very far from that topic because oppression and injustice, aren't they always the result of somebody valuing temporal things above people? Some kind of temporal thing, whether it be comfort or convenience or money or some sort of temporal thing, they're valuing that above people. And that results in oppression and injustice, which is one of the worst things in the whole world. So we need to press into our hearts the proper value of relationships and money and comfort and where they all fit. So let's take a look at verse 5, because he wants us to understand money does have value and it is more valuable than comfort. That's what he's getting at when he says in verse 5, the fool folds his arms and consumes his own flesh. Very graphic verse. Cannibalistic verse. This verse, verse 5, is a complement to verse 4. While all the workaholics are over there just killing themselves trying to get tons of money and destroying all their relationships in the process, some people see that and say, well, I'm not going to do that. That's too much. Those people are crazy. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take it easy. I deserve a break today. In fact, I deserve a break every day. And so up go the feet on the coffee table and on goes the TV, and hour after hour after hour is wasted forever and he becomes a sluggard. Why do people do that? They do that because they value comfort and ease more than they value money, right? Which is a foolish priority. It's especially foolish because when you do that, you don't even get this thing that you're treasuring so much, the comfort and ease and rest and everything else. You don't even get it, right? I mean, do lazy people get comfort and ease? Do they have easy lives? Do people like that, do they just walk around just refreshed and rejuvenated and happy? No, they're always depressed. They're always depressed. Why? Because when you're lazy, you start to feel like a slob, and your life starts to feel like it's worthless and pointless, because it is, and the lazier you get, the harder work becomes. All work becomes harder and harder, so even the simple, easy tasks of life around the house become impossibly hard. You can't get yourself to do anything. Proverbs 15, 19 says, the way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns. When you allow laziness to slip into your heart, have you noticed that? Or just like the slightest little chore is so hard, you can't get yourself to do it. Whereas when you're working hard, you're moving, those chores are a piece of cake. Lazier you get, the harder everything becomes, and before long you run out of money, and your house falls apart, and everything is gone, and that's what he means by he consumes his own flesh. Because you can't stop consuming, right? You always have needs, and you don't have anything coming in, and so pretty soon you just cannibalize your whole life, and everything's gone. So just as it's foolish to overvalue money, it's also foolish to undervalue money in comparison to other things. Scripture actually has a lot to say about the value of money. It's very valuable. Money is a gift from God that he meant for us to enjoy. We're going to see in chapter 5, verse 19, Ecclesiastes 5.19, Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work, this is a gift from God. That's important. And in chapter 7, verse 11, he says, Wisdom is as good as an inheritance. What does that imply? Inheritance is good. And verse 12, Because wisdom is a protection as money is a protection. Money can protect you. It can protect you from all kinds of threats in life. Money can protect you. Proverbs 10.15 says, The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. I mean, if you have money, you're protected. It's like you're in a fortified city. It protects you from starvation. It protects you from freezing to death in the cold. It protects you from having to go without the things you need. In many cases, money can even protect you from injustice. Proverbs 13.23, A poor man's field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away. If you don't have enough money, you're going to be vulnerable to injustice because you can have a great year financially, but because you're a poor person, someone comes and takes advantage of you, takes it all away from you, and you can't afford a lawyer or whatever, and you can lose it all. Proverbs 19.7 says money can protect you from being shunned by people. In Ecclesiastes 10.19 it says this, money answers everything. That's quite a statement, isn't it? Money answers everything. And I think the point there is Of all God's earthly gifts, money is the most versatile. Right? It can answer anything. It's got an answer for everything. You can use it for anything. You can use it to worship God, right? Proverbs 3.9. Honor God with your money. You can use money to win the lost. Luke 16.9. You can use money to take care of your family. You can use it to acquire things. You can use it to hire help. You can use it to influence people. In Proverbs 21.14, it says you can even use money to calm anger. You can use it for so many different things. Money is incredibly powerful. It's a powerful tool. It's a God-given tool that He expects us to use for His purposes. And so, if we do that, it can pay great eternal dividends. We don't want to undervalue money. If you undervalue money, your life will become futile. And if you overvalue money, your life will become futile. So, in verse 6, He gives us that perfect sweet spot. Better one handful with rest than two handfuls with effort in pursuit of the wind. So the guy working too hard, too many hours, he gets two handfuls. I mean, he's loaded. He's got lots of money. He's got two handfuls. But he's chasing the wind and he's miserable because there's no rest. The other guy, the lazy guy, he gets plenty of rest. But he has no handfuls, zero handfuls. He can't even pay his bills. And so what the preacher is saying here is if you want to enjoy life the way God intended, get a job, work hard, earn your handful that you need, and then stop working, go home and get some rest and invest yourself in relationships. That's the sweet spot. Now, you might hear all that and say, well, that's great on paper. I mean, that's a wonderful theory, but that's a lot easier said than done. Right? Because making decisions about how many hours to work and which things to let them go undone because I've got to invest in a relationship, that's not easy. That's not as easy as it's sounding here. I mean, sometimes it's incredibly complicated. And that's true. I mean, any pastor that gets up and preaches a sermon and says, oh, don't ever neglect your family for work, that's just over-simplistic. People who live with reality, who deal with reality, know that if you're trying to support a family, sometimes it's just not, you have to stay late. Sometimes you have to neglect your family to earn a living, otherwise you're going to risk losing your job altogether. There are times when you have to decide between things. And so I'm not trying to suggest that this is just an easy, simplistic decision every time. So you always just say, well, this is more important than this. So every time there's a decision that involves these two things, I'm always going to choose this one. It's not that easy. Many decisions we make are agonizingly difficult because they're so complex. So I'm not saying it's easy, but what I am saying is this. These decisions become less and less difficult. These hard decisions become less and less difficult the more biblical priorities and relative values become a part of your soul and are set in your affections. You see, some decisions are hard because God just simply made them hard. He wants them to be hard because He's putting you through that trial. But other decisions are hard for us only because our priorities are skewed. We just don't have the right strength behind our good desires. And that makes an easy decision hard. So a huge part of gaining wisdom is changing the way that you feel about things in comparison to other things so that those right priorities tend to fall right into the right slots by themselves. And so to help us with that, the preacher here is going to point our attention to the immense value of relationships compared to the value of career and success. And he wants us to see, he wants us to He wants career and success and money to kind of fade down to here in our affections, and he wants relationships to notch up, and so he's going to help us with that. Look at verse 7. He says, again, I saw futility under the sun. There's a person without a companion, and without even a son or brother. And though there is no end to all his struggles, his eyes are still not content with his riches. So who am I struggling for, he asks, and depriving myself from good? This too is futile and a miserable task. So we see some really nice car or some really cool truck or some big beautiful house or jewelry or new clothes or all that stuff at the mall or six dollar coffees or eating out more and more and more often. And instead of getting our greed for luxury and comfort and stuff under control, we just work more hours. We just go out and buy all that stuff and just work more hours. Work more, work harder. And it's standard practice these days now to just go out and buy a car that costs more money than what you have in the bank, and you just do what the federal government does. You just borrow money, you just spend money you don't have, you just assume, oh, that money, I don't have it, I haven't had it in the past, I don't have it now, but I'll have it in the future, and I'll be able to pay this off. And we get into payments, And so we have so many payments, we've got our house payment, car payment, and credit card payment, and payments for TVs, and payments for appliances, and we stack up so many debts and so many payments that we've got to get another job. And another job, we've got to work overtime, and we've got to find more income to cover all these payments. And we work, and we work, and we work, and we work, and we get income goes up, but spending goes up even more, and we get in even farther in the hole, and finally working so many hours, we have no relationships, and our marriage falls apart, and everything, and all the relationships we do have are so strained to the breaking point because we're so stressed out about our finances. And your spouse and your kids and your friends, they get so little of your time, and when they do get your time, they don't get your attention because you're worried about work. So those relationships dwindle down to nothing. And your wife's always on your case about working too many hours, and your relationships are falling apart, and it's causing nothing but problems. And one day, finally, you just ask, who am I struggling for and depriving myself of good? Why am I doing... I say no to recreation, I say no to sleep, I say no to... I run myself to death working all these hours and for what? The very people I'm working for are mad at me for how much I'm working. This too is futile and a miserable task. Why? Because it's futile and it's miserable and it's folly because relationships are more important than money. Is money important? Yeah, but not as important as relationships. If you go through life acting as though relationships are no big deal, that's folly. You're a fool. You're a fool. And he's going to show us, he's going to take the next paragraph and show us a number of reasons why relationships are so important. He's trying to notch that up in our affections and so he's going to help us here. He's going to give us several reasons why friendships are so important. Let's take them one at a time. First, verse 9. Friendships are important because lots of tasks in life just simply require more than one person. Verse 9, two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts, a good return. Some tasks are fine for individuals. You just do it by yourself and it's just fine. In fact, some tasks work even better just by yourself. But there are other tasks where you've got to have help. Two people working can produce five times the output than just one person. And if you're doing one of those kinds of tasks, you're trying to do it by yourself, just simply because you weren't willing to put forth the effort and the struggle to maintain relationships? You're being a poor steward of your time. See, you've got to remember, you have a calling. God called you to do something in your life. He's expecting you to accomplish the things He's called you to do in life. And in order to pull it off, what God has called you to do, you're going to need some help. You're going to have to be wise about maximizing efficiency in your life in order to get done the things God expects you to get done. And there are some tasks that they're fine to do alone, but there's other tasks, many tasks in life that are much, much more efficiently done with multiple people. And very often, in order for those tasks to be done well, you not only need people to help you, but you need to have a certain kind of relationship with those people in order for it to work. Just an example of that is my job. God's called me to lead this church with a group of other pastors. He's called me as one of the pastors of this church. I can't do that job the way that God wants me to do it without the help of four other pastors at Agape and the deacons. But, here's the thing, just having them around isn't enough. It's not enough just to have them helping me. It's not enough for them just to be doing the work. I have to have a certain kind of relationship with them. If my relationship with them goes sour, what's going to happen? Well, our communication is going to break down and from there everything is going to become inefficient and we're going to become disunified and we'll be like ox and yoke together but pulling in opposite directions and all of our energy and effort just go into wearing the other one out. And we'll get nothing done. We've got to have a certain kind of relationship. So relationships are important for your calling. Secondly, Another reason they're valuable. Relationships are important for those times when you fall. And you need help getting up. Verse 10, if either one falls, his companion can lift him up, but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up. There are failures in life that we undergo, and we all stumble and fall, right? Right? We all do that. But there are some falls that God designed us to need help to recover from. But if you don't take the time to maintain relationships, and it's hard. Maintaining relationships is hard. There's heartache involved, no question about it. You get hurt, you get burned. I mean, it's hard. There's a reason why some people just don't, they just give up on it. But if you don't do that, if you don't invest all that, if you don't go through all the hardship of maintaining these relationships, then there's going to be no one there for you in those times when you fall and your recovery from failure requires help. They're not going to be there. And your recovery is not going to be what it should be. It's especially true of people who allow work to keep them away from fellowship at church, Christian fellowship. They work so much they don't even have fellowship. I realize sometimes you have no choice. I realize that. A man has to support his family. The employer says, look, you've got to work on Sunday or you're not going to have a job. And he doesn't have any other opportunity for any other job. And for now, this is a reality. He has to miss church. I understand. That happens. But very often it's not. a matter of necessity. It's more a matter of priorities. The boss is pressuring you to work Sundays, and it's not an absolute necessity, but you don't want to rock the boat, and so you just go along. I think God will honor these priorities in our hearts. I don't think. I know he will. He says he will. And I've seen it in my family. You know, one of the things that gives me great joy as a father is watching my children work hard. Over the years, each one of them have had, they've all had numerous jobs, especially Nikki. She's had lots of jobs. And all these jobs my kids have had, never once have they had to have a job that required them to work on Sunday mornings. That didn't happen by chance. It happened because every time, when they would apply for a job, they just simply said, look, I'm absolutely not available on Sunday mornings. You need someone who can work Sunday mornings? I'm not the candidate for this job. I'm not available. And some of their jobs, their employers would, after they were hired, they'd say, you don't have to work Sundays. And then once they were hired, they would start trying to make them work Sundays. They'd schedule them on Sundays. And they would just simply say, well, you know, I'll do it today. But if this is going to be the way it is, I'm going to have to quit. Because I'm not going to sacrifice that. They followed that wisdom principle that says fellowship is more important to me than money, and it paid off for them. All of them have had jobs, and they've all made plenty of money, and yet they've maintained strong friendships and relationships and fellowship in the church and ministry in the church, and so when they have stumbled and they've fallen, they don't just stay down in the ditch that they stumbled into. They are surrounded by a group of friends that lift them back up and get them back on the path. So we need friendships for recovery from failure. Then a third reason, verse 11, third value of friendships. He says, also, if two lie down together, they can keep warm, but how can one person keep warm alone? So we all know that. You lay down with somebody, you can keep warm, which almost seems to defy logic. I'm not even sure how the physics of this works, because if I think about that, you know, if it's cold, and Tracy and I try to stay warm by snuggling together, why is that any warmer than just me being by myself? Because, yes, I'm receiving body heat from her, but I'm also giving body heat to her. Everything I receive from her, she loses, and everything she receives from me, I lose. So you would think it'd just be a wash of heat, right? But it's not. Somehow, we both end up gaining more than we lose. And we both end up much warmer than if we were alone. Now you might hear all that and say, it's not a problem for me, it's not an issue, I have an electric blanket. Maybe you're warm at night, but please understand, he's not just talking about staying warm. This is a general principle about combined resources. Relationships are valuable because in many cases, where there is combined resources, that can create a kind of a symbiotic relationship where you each supply the other with what's lacking in ways that the end result is greater than the sum of the parts. You both end up with more than what you're giving. You end up getting more than you get. And again, we've got to remember, God has called you to do something in His kingdom. You have a calling, you've got a role to play, and you've got to be a good steward of your resources, and you're not going to be able to be a good enough steward, you're not going to be able to carry out your calling unless you maximize your resources by multiplying them through those kinds of relationships. For example, maybe God gave you the gift of knowledge. You have that gift, lots of knowledge. But in order for that gift to really have its effect, to really be fruitful, it has to be combined with this friend's gift of compassion and this friend's zeal. And you combine all three of those ingredients and pow, you've got awesome power in your ministry. It might be a hundred times more powerful than if all three of you were just operating on your own. So this principle of combined resources having an exponential benefit. Fourth reason why relationships are important, verse 12. And if someone overpowers one person, two can resist him, and a cord of three strands is not easily broken. So it's strength in numbers. You just take a thread and you can easily just break it. Try this sometime. You take the three strands of it and you can even begin to break it. It's amazing, the difference. And the point here is there's strength in numbers, there's safety in numbers. If you maintain relationships, you're protected. You go out walking in a scary street alone, you're vulnerable. You go out with a group and you're protected. You're safer. And it's not just talking about protection from a mugger or being attacked physically. Friendships protect you from all kinds of threats in life. You might get really, really sick someday. I mean, like, really sick. And you're going to need good friends. You're not going to be able to handle it without good friends. You know, there was a time, Tracy, with all three of her pregnancies, each time when she got pregnant, she had such extreme morning sickness that she actually had to be hospitalized. And she was sick all nine months, the whole nine months. Just real, real extreme. And so the third one, when she conceived Josiah, she was so sick she couldn't even begin to take care of Nikki and Faith. I mean, she couldn't even hold them. And at that time I was working, trying to support the family on minimum wage, delivering pizzas. I couldn't take time off. And we didn't live anywhere near family at that time. But we got by. How? Well, it was because Tracy had cultivated some wonderful friendships with women in the church who just came over, picked up the girls and took them all day and just took care of the kids while I was at work. Friendships, like I said, friendships are hard. They cost a lot of sorrow, a lot of consternation, a lot of trouble. But there are times in your life where threats will come up, and you're going to have to have a network of friends to survive that storm in your life. And it'll be worth it. It'll be worth all the consternation, all the trouble, and all the hardship. It might be sickness. It might be a financial threat. You know, some real calamity hits you and you're in desperate need, and it's more of a need than just one or two buddies can handle. They can't help you. You're going to have to be surrounded. But if you surround yourself with a whole church family who knows you and loves you and they're part of your life, then they can help carry you through a crisis like that. It might be a time of discouragement and depression, you know, in your life, and you're going to need help. It might be a crisis that requires wisdom beyond what you have. You don't know the answer, your buddy, your best friend, that other friend, they don't know the answer and you're going to need a network, a larger pool of friends for someone to have the wisdom that you're going to need. But if we get so caught up with making money and chasing after possessions that we neglect relationships and we're sacrificing that, then what we're doing is we're sacrificing a treasure that is worth immeasurably more than the money that we're so in love with is worth. If you don't have strong relationships, being rich is not all it's cracked up to be. And he's trying to warn us about that. And not only is that true about riches, it's also true about power and fame and success in the world's eyes. Look at verse 13. Better is a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer pays attention to warnings. Literally, who no longer knows how to receive teaching. He used to be teachable, but now he's reached the top, he's older than all these people around him, and he's got more experience, and so he's no longer teachable. He started out humble, verse 14, he came from prison to be king, even though he was born poor in his kingdom. So it's an amazing success story, rags to riches, obscurity to fame and power, great story, until he ruins it at the end by becoming unteachable. Verse 15, I saw all the living who move about under the sun follow a second youth who succeeds him. There's no limit to all the people who were before them, yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. This too is futile in pursuit of the wind. You're better off to be a wise nobody than the most famous, powerful person in the world who lacks a teachable spirit. It's such a sad thing to see this happen. You know, there are people in the church with so much potential, so many gifts, and they could just do so many things, but it's all wasted because their pride makes them unteachable. Every conversation with them is just them giving instruction, them giving their opinion, them giving advice, and it never occurs to them, maybe this person I'm talking to has something to offer me that I could learn from. They get so puffed up with their own knowledge, they can't learn from anyone, or they can only learn from certain people. You know, just people that have a higher position or more formal education than they have. And the more education they get, the smaller that pool of people gets until finally they get their PhD and they can't learn from anybody. Certainly not this, you know, this dumb farmer with an 8th grade education. And yet that farmer has learned some things on that farm that this guy needs to learn and could greatly profit from, but he can't because he can't receive any teaching from somebody with poor grammar. And eventually, he becomes a fool. He misses out on what he could get and he becomes a fool because there's so few people that he can listen to. And this isn't a new topic. This is the same thing he's talking about. What is he doing? He's valuing other things more than relationships. In this case, not money. In this case, it might be power or fame or success, but it's the same principle. You have your money and your power and your fame, it'll get you nowhere. Well, he's got a lot more to say, a lot more principles about money that we're going to cover as we get into the next chapter and later in the book, but for now we're out of time, so let me just leave you with this. Let me ask you this question. What percentage of your income should be set aside for honoring the Lord? What percentage? Isn't the right answer a hundred? A hundred percent? I hope you're not thinking ten. A hundred percent. Every dime you spend, every dime you save should be spent or saved for the purpose of bringing glory to God. Everything you do, whether you eat or drink, everything. Spend money, save money, everything for the glory of God. Amen? That's what our money is for. That's why He gives it to us. So what you do with your budget is really of great, great importance. It's not something in the background on the side that's not part of your spiritual life. It's right there in the middle of your spiritual life. Your goal should not be to just find a way to pay your bills. It should be to bring pleasure and honor to God, not only through the way that you earn and spend, but also through the priorities that are present in your heart when it comes to your earning and your spending. And I know from experience that in a group this size, there's multiple people in this room where your finances are a mess. They're not bringing glory to God, they're interfering with your glorifying God. Instead of being a powerful tool to honor Him, they're a tool that's just distracting you from honoring Him and causing problems. You know you're not honoring God in your budget because it's not set up according to wisdom principles. And maybe you don't even know what the wisdom principles are. And I just want to let you know, and maybe you're not aware of this, but we have some counselors here at Agape who have spent a Tremendous amount of time, years of time, compiling, studying through biblical principles about money and compiling all that and they would be more than happy to meet with you, sit down with you and take a few weeks to help you walk through those principles, understand them, get them ingrained in your heart and set up a budget for you that will reflect those biblical principles in the way that you use your money. So that the flood of blessing from God can come back into your life. And all you have to do is call the office and make an appointment, it's free. So I want you to know about that, because that's a tremendous resource. But whether you take advantage of the free financial counseling or not, or you just do it on your own, either way, let's all do this. Let's all make a goal for 2014. We're going to really, this year, we're going to really use our money, a hundred percent of it, to bring glory and honor to God. And we're going to work to set these wisdom principles about money in our hearts, in our affections. so that we bring pleasure to God in the way that we feel about these kinds of decisions. Let's pray. Lord God, we bless Your name for Your generosity to us, for Your kindness. Thank You for giving us the money that You give us, the wealth, the possessions. Thank You especially for the relationships, friendships, family relationships You've given us. Lord, teach us to value them the right way. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. All right. About ten minutes left before we dismiss. Any questions about the sermon? So where does charity, giving to charity and helping people fit in with the priorities of money? And here's what I'd say. Now the long answer to that question is a whole sermon that I preached titled Wallet Worship, which is in the Worshiping Church sermon series on foodforyoursoul.net. And I would urge you, if you haven't heard that sermon, that's an important...in fact, that whole Worshiping Church series is real important, but that wallet worship one goes into detail into that question. But the quick answer is, Scripture calls us to help the needy, right? We need to help the poor. We need to give...especially, Jesus said, these brothers of mine. in Matthew 24, referring to believers. Anyone who does anything to these brothers of mine did it to me, as far as giving to the poor. So, brothers in Christ who are poor, we especially need to make sure we're taking care of them. And so, we have a system for that. We have, normally we discourage, I was just telling the Agape 101 class, we discourage designated giving in this church because all it does is bypass the whole leadership process and everything. But two areas where we encourage it is with missions and with Benevolence and the reason for that is we want you to know whatever money that you have set aside for helping the poor Goes to the poor right and so so you can designate your giving benevolence and if anytime you write benevolence on your check that will go into a separate fund and it will never be touched for paying any bills or anything else it'll only go to helping people in need that way you can stand before God on Judgment Day and When he asks you Did you do what I said? Did you help the poor? You don't have to stand there and say, well, I think, you know, I gave money and put it in the box. I think some of it might have went to the poor or may be paid for the plumbing or something. I don't know. You know, you don't have to worry about that. You can say yes. Yes, I mean I gave to support your church and I gave to the poor. I like to do it through the, you can just directly help people out obviously. I personally like to do it through the benevolence fund to the church because I've found in my life that when people are in need, typically my little 50 bucks doesn't go very far to help them with their mortgage payment. Whereas if we give through the church we can combine all our little 50 bucks and then we can help with larger needs. Yeah, this is similar to some of the questions that came up last hour. You always have these things where it's like, how do you make hard decisions? You know, this person is right in front of me, he has a need and should I take this 50 bucks and try to help or should I give it to the benevolent or should I, you know, how do I make all these hard decisions? All I can say is, they call them hard decisions for a reason. And so, There's no simplistic formula I can give you. All I can say is, the more you study biblical principles, and they start to affect your heart, so this is this important, and this is this important, and the right importance is attached to the right things, the more, when you hit one of those hard decisions, and you're praying, God give me guidance, it'll fall into place, and you'll say, ah, I can see, you're guiding me this way, and it'll help so much that your affections are set right. So, all that to say, Learn Scripture. Get the principles of Scripture deep in your heart. And then when these hard decisions come, they'll be at least easier than they would have otherwise been. Okay, so are there some indicators in life that would let you know Okay, I must be out of balance because of this happening. I really think the book of Proverbs is loaded with things that will help with that. Off the top of my head, I would say from this passage, when you get to the point where you read his words, who am I doing this for? When you get to that point where you're just like, wait a second, who am I doing this for? Why am I killing myself to work this hard? And the answer isn't right there. Because sometimes you ask that question, like, well, because I've got to support my family. But if it gets to the point where it's causing so much problem for your family, and you say, who am I doing this for? And it's not a clear answer. Because if your wife's standing there, she's like, certainly not me. And your kids are there, and they're like, I don't know who you are. And you're just like, well, why then? And at that point, maybe it's time to say, well, what if I didn't work this hard? What if we downsized this house and what if we got rid of that boat and got rid of that vacation, you know, time share and sold some of this stuff off and simplified our lives. And I get this job instead of that job. And I come home at five o'clock instead of nine o'clock and actually have a family, you know. But if you can see how you ask the question, who am I doing this for? And there's answers. They're like, I'm doing it for my family. I can see they're benefiting. I can do it for the church. I'm doing it for these purposes. And these are good purposes, godly purposes, honoring God. Then I think God wants some people to really work hard. Lots of hours. So I realize that's not much of an answer. Yeah, there's times when you say, I've got to sacrifice this portion of this relationship at this moment for the sake of money. You've got to do that. That's why I said this isn't simplistic. There's times when I would have to make a decision as a pastor, okay, I need to give up some sleep to minister to this person all night. And it's going to be hard. The next two days are going to be hard for me to recover from a night without sleep, but it's worth it. I got to do it right now. This is a big need. And there's other times when I say, you know what, this person has a great need, but I'm just going to have to say no this time. I've got to get some rest. And that's going to benefit everybody in the church if I get some rest now and I just have to do that. And you say, well, how do you know when it's one and when it's the other? And again, it's just the more these principles set the priorities in your affections, the more you'll be able to make those hard judgment calls of when, okay, now I need to stay late and work hard at work and come home at ten o'clock. And now, no, I just need to say no and let it go undone and get home to my wife. Those hard judgment calls, how are you ever going to know how to make those? And there's no simplistic formula. It's only the more your affections adjust to the priorities in Proverbs and the rest of the Word of God, the more when you seek God's wisdom in those case-by-case calls, you'll tend to be able to make them right. Right. Yeah. And you don't know where the other person is. So that's another reason why when you're counseling, one of the good approaches is to take Solomon's approach, where he doesn't really tell us which thing to do. He just says, look how valuable relationships are. Just look. Look how valuable. And look how valuable money is. Pretty valuable, but not this valuable. And he just shows us the value, and we can do that in our counseling. We say, well, let me show you the value of relationships. Let me just remind you of the value of your marriage. And I'm not going to tell you which call you need to make here. I don't even know. You need to do that. It's between you and God. Let me just remind you of the relative value of some stuff. Yeah, it's hard to resist reading that last paragraph and saying, okay, who does he have in mind here? You know, because when it comes to foolish kings, Solomon actually had several to choose from, right? I mean, is that Saul? I could picture that being Saul. We don't know necessarily that Saul was a slave when he was young or anything, but it seems like that could have been Saul. It seems like in some ways it could be David, although he wasn't a slave either. Or Solomon. I don't know if he's got any specific person in mind, but boy, pieces and parts of that principle sure apply to Rehoboam. All these kings in Solomon's life, all of them, could have profited from reading that paragraph. Okay, so let me give you some investment advice. My opinions about investments are, you know, you can take them with a grain of salt. I'm not very knowledgeable about investments. I do have an opinion, biblical opinion, about ethics of a mortgage. In my opinion, I think it's different from all other kinds of debt. because typically a house appreciates in value and so it makes it a wise investment as opposed to borrowing money to buy a car, which depreciates in value. In fact, typically a car depreciates faster than you even pay it off and it really gets you into a financial mess. So I really think it's foolishness to borrow money for a car. I think it's much wiser to just buy a cheap car make payments to yourself while you're driving that car. And then once you get money saved up, you buy a little nicer car with cash and so on. Then you're not spending money on interest. But a house is different because with a house, you give them a down payment. you give them $10,000 and you get the whole house to live in. Right from the day, you've only paid for a fraction of it and they let you live in the whole thing and use it and treat it as your own. You can knock down walls, do whatever you want. And the whole time you're there, it's getting more and more valuable. So I think a mortgage is different from all other kinds of debt for that reason. So I don't think the warnings against the foolishness of debt apply to a mortgage, a house mortgage, in the same way they would apply to other kinds of debt. But if you're going to buy a house, you need to keep it long enough to where it would appreciate enough to where when you sell it and you pay the realtor fees, you're not taking a loss. So that's just kind of a basic wisdom principle. I agree with that, although you could reverse it too. And there are people who their money right now isn't even being used to glorify God. It's just being used for comfort. So the issue isn't don't invest because money now can be used for God's glory and money for the future is for comfort and ease necessarily. I mean, that's typically the way people think, but all of our money, the returns on our investment, our retirement, everything should be for the glory of God. 100% of our income should be set aside for glorifying God. So if I have a retirement fund, that retirement fund should be so I can glorify God when I'm too old to work. and use it as a tool to honor him when I'm too old to work. And that's a perfectly good thing to do. It's the attitude that you have towards that. So there's a lot of other wisdom principles. It's tempting to just go off on wisdom principles about money. If you want to study that more in Scripture, I did have a whole sermon on that in the Wisdom, Making Wise Decisions sermon series. So I'm not sure if that's even on the website, that one, but you can check and see if the one on money is on the website. And if it's up there, it's just a study of the Book of Proverbs, all the wisdom principles on money in the Book of Proverbs in one message. Oh yeah, and then in the worshipping church, the part, the sermon titled Wallet Worship, also has specifically, not just wisdom principles in general, but specifically using money to worship God. OK, so the question, where do you draw the line on spending money on your looks? Because you can really go crazy, right? Especially in our day with plastic surgery, you could just spend tens of thousands of dollars on your looks. And that's one extreme. You see somebody who's doing that, and they're getting surgery done every two years on their face and everything else. And you think, wow, you don't feed a lot of poor people with that. And it just seems like out of balance. And then the other end, you've got somebody that doesn't put any effort at all, and you're just like, oh, please do something, you know. You know, there's value to beauty, right? You can honor God with beauty. There's a reason for beauty. And Scripture speaks well of beauty, especially if you're married. And so you're right, you have to draw a line somewhere. You can't just take it to one extreme or the other. You've got to draw a line somewhere. And how much money is too much money for a dress, you know? Or whatever. And a haircut or something. And obviously, I can't just give a dollar figure, right? I can't say anything above $100 is too much. I can't do that. It's different for every single person. It depends on your income. It depends on your million things. So that's why When you learn wisdom principles, what you want to get is this sense of things being more important than other things. One woman might have a situation in life where she has to choose between these clothes, or this surgery, or whatever, and this ministry opportunity, and in her heart the priorities are set such that she's like, no, I like this more than this. And there's other times when that isn't even there, and there's just this, and she's got the money, and she doesn't really have to sacrifice anything of great importance to do this. She's like, OK, well, I'll go ahead and do this, because there is value to beauty. And so all I can say is, the more you get these wisdom principles and these priorities ingrained into your bloodstream of your thinking and your affections, the more those really hard kind of decisions will start to sort themselves out and become easier. That's a question you only get from someone in the youth group. You know when you're sleeping and someone draws on your face? Don't you hate that? Yeah, what do you do when... OK, if rest is all the way at the bottom of the priorities, this is a great question, if rest is all the way at the bottom of the priorities and relationships are way up here, then is there ever a time when you might sacrifice some relational investment to get some sleep? The answer, of course, is yes, because rest is still valuable. It's more valuable than some other things, and it's necessary. This is why I was trying to say, a preacher that stands up here and just says, well, whenever it's a choice between a more important thing and a less important thing, you always just choose the more important thing. That's overly simplistic and it's not helpful, because there's so many times we have to make a decision where we say, okay, relationships are important, ministry is important, but there are times when I, as a pastor, I'm thinking, okay, I have an opportunity to minister the Word of God to someone's heart or get some sleep. And I have to decide, I need to get some sleep. I don't get some sleep tonight, it's going to have repercussions for my ability to minister to people that will outweigh whatever benefit I get from ministering to this one person right now. So in this particular instance, I need to just say, no, I'm sorry, I can't, I've got to go to bed. But there's other times when I say, you know what, I'd love to go to sleep now, but this person has a great need, I'm going to stay up. I'm going to stay up all night, and it's going to be a tough couple of days recovering from that, but this is a big need, and I'm going to sacrifice some sleep. And sometimes it goes either way, and it's so hard. It takes so much wisdom to make those decisions. And again, there's no simplistic formula that I can give you. All I can say is, you'll tend to be able to make the right call in each specific instance much better when your affections are lined up with biblical priorities.