Text: Matthew 6:33; II Corinthians 9:8
Last Sunday morning we began talking about God’s plan for His people to be financially free. There are two verses of Scripture that I want to read again just as a platform for what we’re going to say this morning.
The first one is a culmination of all that Jesus has been talking about in this particular chapter about our attitude toward material possessions. And there are several attitudes that God wants us to have.
Number one, He doesn’t want us to worry about them…when He says, “Take no thought…” He doesn’t mean to not make any plans or to not take any thought to what we’re going to eat or drink, but the word there means don’t be anxious…don’t worry about it…because after all, these things are what the Gentiles seek after and for you and for me to be uptight and nervous and anxious and worried about material necessities of life is to live a life of a pagan. And it’s also to serve mammon and not serve God.
The second basic attitude is that He wants us to know that all things come from our heavenly Father. And if the heavenly Father clothes the lilies of the field and if He’ll feed the birds of the air then much more and we need to underline that in our Bibles and more so in our hearts much more will our heavenly Father take care of us. And then the climax comes in that thirty-third verse of Matthew 6…
Matthew 6:33:
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The word “added” is instructive. It means that things will be just a natural consequence of my seeking first the kingdom of God. They will be added to us.
Then the other verse is 2 Corinthians 9:8:
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you that ye always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work.”
Now, I just want to recap one minute of what we said last Sunday morning. Remember I gave to you a definition of prosperity…the Bible’s definition of prosperity…and when we talk about being prosperous in the sight of God…being financially free…we’re not talking about having a million dollars in the bank, which is alright to have there, I guess, if God has so blessed you in that way. It is not tearing down your barns and building greater barns in which to store your possessions, but according to the teachings of the Word of God and especially Matthew 6 and 2 Corinthians 9, that what God has promised every believer is three-fold financial freedom.
1) That all our needs will be adequately supplied. We will not lack or be in need of anything. Whatever we require, we will receive.
2) That we will be able to meet adequately every financial obligation. There won’t be any past-due bills… “please remit” or “we’re going to burn your house down if we don’t hear from you in the next three days” or “disregard this notice if you’ve already sent us in a ten thousand dollar check.” God never intended for His people to be under that financial burden and if we are under it, then somewhere we have missed God’s plan for us…to be adequately able to meet every financial obligation.
3) That we will be able to give generously to every good cause.
Now, if you have those three things in your life, then you have what the Bible calls prosperity. And you have financial freedom.
As I mentioned last week, being prosperous as far as God is concerned, isn’t having forty cruses of oil but it’s having one that never runs dry, because then you don’t have to watch the other thirty-nine. You won’t have to look at the stock market every day and see if they’ve decreased in value. I’d rather just have one that never runs dry than have forty over here that I have to watch to see if inflation gets to. What God has promised to give to every believer is not forty cruses of oil but one that will never run dry.
Now, all of these promises have very definite conditions upon them. There are two kinds of promises in the Bible. One is an unconditional promise. That is God promising to do thus and so regardless of what we do.
The promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit was unconditional.
The promise of Jesus Christ coming again is unconditional.
Then, there are promises in the Bible which are conditional. This is where God says, “If you do thus and so, I’ll do this.” Now, these laws or these promises, rather, regarding financial freedom are conditional promises! And we cannot expect God to bless us in His way if we violate certain spiritual principles. So, what I want to do this morning is share with you what I consider to be four Biblical keys to financial freedom and to Biblical prosperity.
There must be a sincere submission to the God from whom we receive all things.
There must be a submission of our lives to the will of God. Now, this is a condition upon which God promises to do certain things. For instance, in Deuteronomy 28, God said He would bless us…that He would open up the treasures of heaven and bless everything we do and we would be head and not the tail that we would be the top and not the bottom, that we would lend and not borrow. But, all the way through that at the beginning and the end of that passage, He said, “This will I do if you obey all that the Lord thy God has spoken unto you.”
There’s a condition. In Matthew 6:33… “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will added unto you…”
And so, the basic condition first of all is a submission of my life to God. What is submission? Well, submission in reality is my recognizing my total dependence upon God for all things. And the basic sin of man is a declaration of independence from God! That’s what prayerlessness is! That’s what faithlessness is!
The one thing that God tried to instruct man in the Garden of Eden was that man not only came from the hand of God but also man was totally dependent upon God for all his things…whether it was physical, or material, or spiritual, or financial.
And so, this is the first key and it is extremely important because in it you recognize that God is the total source of your income…not your employer…not your part-time job…not your stocks and bonds…not your investments. Those are the things that God chooses to use as a channel. In Deuteronomy 8:18, Moses is giving instruction to the people things that they need to remember once they get into the land… Moses recognized once they got out of the tight they were in and began to enjoy the luxuries of the land that they might have spiritual amnesia and forget some very basic and one of the things they needed to remember is this:
“Thou shalt remember the LORD thy God for it is He that giveth
thee power to get well.”
Proverbs 8:20-21… “I walk in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of justice, to endow those who love me with wealth, that I may fill their treasuries.”
Proverbs 10:22… “It is the blessing of the LORD that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it.”
And another verse that is familiar to us is
Philippians 4:19…
“My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory
by Christ Jesus.”
Now, that makes it very clear that God is to be looked upon as the Source. He does the supplying. I don’t do the supplying. My employer, which happens to be McArthur Boulevard Baptist Church doesn’t do the supplying. They are the channel through which God chooses to supply all my needs. So, if I really believe this…if I really believe now that God is the total Source of all my income and all my blessings that I will ever receive in life…that every good and perfect gift comes from God…then it is incumbent upon me to realize that I also must be submission to His will.
Matthew 5:5 says the meek shall inherit the earth. A meek person is someone who is God-controlled. A submissive person…submissive to the will of God.
So, that’s key number one…a sincere submission to the God from whom we receive all things.
There must be scriptural sowing in order to receive.
In 2 Corinthians 9, I believe beginning with the sixth verse, the Apostle Paul uses a figure of a farmer. And he uses the figure of sowing and reaping. For instance, he says in verse 6, “But, this I say, he that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly and he that soweth bountifully shall also reap bountifully.” Verse 9: “As it is written, he hath dispersed abroad (means he has sown abroad) he hath given to the poor, his righteousness remaineth forever. Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food and multiply your seed sown and preach the fruits of your righteousness.”
Now, the key phrase there is that He will multiply the seed that you sow. God cannot multiply seed that is never sown. And it may be that we are wanting God to multiply a seed that is still in the package that we’ve never opened and we’ve never sown.
Another way that the Bible speaks of this is not only sowing seed, but also of laying up treasure in heaven. I think that many of our prayers to God to meet our financial needs come back marked “insufficient funds” because we are trying to withdraw from heaven’s treasure when we’ve not made any deposits in heaven’s treasure.
So, Jesus has a great deal to say about laying up treasure for yourself and something that I had not realized until just recently that in Matthew 6, when He turns to that tremendous promise in verse 33 of supplying all our needs and adding to us all these things that that whole passage, if you’ll back up far enough, begins with this, “lay not treasure up for yourselves on earth, but lay up treasures in heaven…” and that whole passage begins with that command so that one of the keys of prosperity, of God adding these things to us, is first of all my laying up treasures in heaven.
In Luke 12, as He comes to the end of that parable about the foolish farmer, He says, “…so is everyone who lays up treasure towards himself and is not rich towards God…” So you have sowing of the seed and laying up treasures or making deposits in heaven’s bank account so you can make withdrawals later on.
Now, the promise that was made in Philippians 4:19 was made to them after they had given to Paul what no one else had given to him. And Paul said, “You once again gave to my necessities…” Now, here were a people who were sowing seed. They were laying up treasure in heaven. And then he comes back and makes that promise, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” And the only people to whom that promise is made are the people who have sown the seed and have laid up riches in heaven.
Now, there are two basic ways you do this.
a) …through tithing…
Somebody said, “I knew he’d get around to that sooner or later.” Well, I didn’t want anybody to be disappointed.
Malachi 3 says that one of the keys of God’s material prosperity is tithing. God says we’re to do two things basically when we honor Him with our tithes. Number one…He will bless us in a positive manner. He will open up the windows of heaven and pour out upon us such blessings that you and I will not be able to receive. Then, number two…He will bless us in a negative manner. He will rebuke the devourer which is among us. Not only will He bless us by opening the windows of heaven and pouring upon us new blessings, but He will take that which we already possess and bless it by rebuking the devourer.
Now, this principle of tithing is very important because when a person understands what it means and what it is, then he understands that unless he tithes he has no right to ask God to meet his material needs. You see, the basis of tithing is this… “The earth is Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” And therefore, it is not man’s. All things were made by Him and for Him. This earth was not made for man’s consumption and man’s glory, it was made for God’s glory. It is the Lord’s!
You know, you and I are tenants. The heavenly Father is our landlord. And to tell the truth, we’re just right now renting from Him…and it’s very interesting to look back in the Old Testament…even in Genesis and see how God always reserves something for Himself, in the financial and physical realm where man obtains his living.
Always! Without exception! God always reserves something for Himself, in the physical realm where man obtains his living!
For instance, in the Garden of Eden, He said, “You can eat of every tree except one. That’s Mine.” Now, where did man obtain his living? Out of that garden! And God reserved something for Himself right in the heart of it. And that tree was a tithe! That was recognition of God’s ownership!
Adam was not to think more highly of himself than he should and think that all of the garden was his and that tree was a constant reminder that the earth was the Lord’s, not Adam’s…and that God was sovereign and that he was in dependence upon God!
God always reserves something in the physical realm where man obtains his living! In the Garden, it was a tree.
In the week, it is a day! God reserves that day! And that Sabbath day is my tithe of my time to God…recognizing His sovereign ownership of time.
When they were in the land of Canaan, God says, “You’ll go through the cities, city after city, you will live off the spoils of that city, except one. There’s one I don’t want you to touch. You can touch every other city and spoil it…take all their goods…but there’s one there, Jericho, and you’re not to touch it.”
Jericho was conquered in a different way from all the other cities. They didn’t lay a hand on it…they just shouted and the walls came tumbling down. You see, God provides for His own. You don’t have to provide for God. And the tithe is the Lord’s. God will provide that if you’ll give it…pay it…you won’t have to worry about that.
God always provides. God planted the tree, not man. God chose the day, not man. God captured the city, not man. Their job was to be obedient in faith. And so, God said, “That city is Mine. Don’t touch it!” because God always reserves something for Himself in the physical realm where man obtains his living.
Well, when they finally got into the land, He said, “You will till the land for six years and you’ll let it rest every seventh year.” That’s the tithe, see? Now, did they obey God? NO! The Bible teaches that for 490 years they tilled the land without giving it any rest. How many years did they owe the Lord? They owed him seventy years! How many years were they in Babylonian captivity? Seventy! Isn’t that a coincidence. And after they were delivered into captivity, the Bible has a little cryptic statement: “Then hath the land her rest.”
You know, God has marvelous ways of collecting. Now, my tithe is my recognition of God’s sovereign ownership of all things. It’s not to finance the work of the church. It’s not to pay the pastor’s salary. The tithe predates the Law. The tithe is basically man’s recognition of God’s ownership.
Alright, now then, on what basis does God have a right to take my material goods and to distribute them to His children? I mean, when I ask God to give me some money, He’s going to have to come over here and get it from somebody else!
I mean, He doesn’t run down to the Denver office over there and makes some new money and deliver it to me by special angel messenger. Now, He takes the money that is already in circulation and distributes it. Tell me, by what right does God have to do that? By right of ownership! He is sovereign owner of all things. It’s not yours! He has a right to take it from you and distribute it in other ways.
Now, if I refuse to tithe, I am denying God’s ownership of all things…therefore, I don’t have a right to pray and ask God to meet my material needs, because I’m asking God to do something in prayer that in fact I am denying He has a right to do. And God will simply say, “You make up your mind….because day after day, week after week you are saying that I have no right to take the things of this earth and distribute them because you’re not tithing!” Alright, the first thing is tithing.
b) …through giving…
Malachi 3:10 speaks of “Will a man rob God? Yes, you rob Me in tithes and offerings.” You see, a tithe is not an offering. That’s not giving. Tithing is paying. And you owe that to God. That’s an obligation that God has put on us and when you tithe you’re not giving to God, you’re paying! So, besides the paying of the tithe is the giving of the offerings.
Now, let me just say a brief word about this. Luke 6:38 says we ought to give…that’s a command. And then there’s a promise… “Give and it shall be given unto you…good measure, pressed down, running over shall men give back into your lap. For of what measure you mete out to others, also will be meted (measured) out to you.”
Now the command is to give. Then, in the 2 Corinthians 9 passage he’s talking about giving. He’s not talking about tithing. There was a need…a benevolent need among God’s people. And Paul was saying if they would give generously and bountifully, then God would give back to them generously and bountifully. And this is the principle of giving. The New English Bible translates this like this, “Give, and you shall receive gifts.” There’s one translation, I can’t remember whether it’s the Living Bible or some other, but it says, “Give and you will get.”
And so, here is the principle of sowing seed or laying up treasure in heaven. The more I give away to the cause of God and the needs of others, the more God will cause others to give back to me. But, you know, we don’t believe that. I was studying this the other day and I said, “Lord, I believe that. I believe that with the same measure that I give You will cause others to give to me.” God said, “You don’t believe that!” I said, “Yes, I do!” He said, “Why are you using such a small measure then?”
What that verse really means is that the same size cup I use to dish out to you God will take that same size cup and dish it out to me. And if I really believed that I’d get me a bigger cup. There’s a principle of giving. The more you give, God says, the more you will get. You say, “Well, you’re talking about a low motive there. We’re just to give and expect God to give back to us?” I’m not talking about a motive or anything, I’m just giving you the facts of the Word of God.
I’m simply saying that God isn’t worried too much about inspiring us to a low motive, is He? God isn’t concerned about that. He simply made a scriptural promise… “If you will give, then you will receive.” And the more you give the more you will receive. And you’ll get good measure, full and running over.
Alright, those are the two ways we lay up treasure in heaven…by tithing and by giving.
And you know, it’s such a joy to preach and teach that people ought to give, not because the church needs money. When I speak on giving and talk about giving, I’m not encouraging you to give because we need money because I don’t whether we do or not. I mean, we’re having all of our needs met. Week by week God is meeting our needs. We don’t have to have “catchup” services here. You know what that is…that’s “catching up.” If we’re way behind in our bills, we just put a little “catchup” on the service. We have a “catchup” Sunday. You know, everybody is to double their tithe…giving a full day’s pay… We don’t have to do that because God is abundantly supplying all of our needs and I see no reason that He will not continue to do so if we’re faithful to Him and trust Him.
And so when I’m encouraging you to give, I’m not saying, “Give because we’re behind.” Paul to the Philippians, and it’s a beautiful thing, as he writes to these Philippians and he says he wants them to give here in this seventeenth verse here…
“Not because I desire your gift, but I desire fruit that may abound
to your account.”
See, Paul is saying, “Folks, I want you to give to my necessities not because I desire a gift…I just want to see you folks blessed.”
The NAS translates this, “I want you to have profit to your account.”
Then, he says, “God will supply all of your needs…” and the more I give to Paul’s necessity my account with God is going to be more profitable. And God is going to supply all of my needs.
But, now, let’s go to the third goal in financial freedom:
There must be sensible spending of what we do receive…
Now, here we are. You know, it would be so great if I could just trust the Lord and have faith and pray and then spend it any way I wanted to. And you know, that’s what some of us do! We spend foolishly, unwisely, violating the scriptural principles about possessions and it doesn’t matter if we get in trouble, we know God will bail us out…
This is where many of us are missing it. You know, we’ve heard one side of this… We’ve heard that if we’ll just trust God and give, then God is going to pour into our laps…well, yes…but, if you do not take the possessions that you have and take that which you receive and honor God with 90% as much as you honor Him with the 10%, then you’re violating the scriptural laws of God and He cannot and will not bless you! You see, I’m not only responsible and accountable to God for the 10%, I’m also accountable to God for the 90% what I do with it.
Luke 16:9…
Jesus said we’re to make friends with the mammon of this world…the mammon of unrighteousness. You know what that literally is saying? He’s saying, “Use your money in the right way. Take that mammon of unrighteousness (money) and use it in a right way and make friends with it.” The right use of our money! And what most of us need is not more money but just a new attitude to the money we have.
And there must be sensible spending. Now, there are three areas that we need to be sensible in and I think I can sum them all up in this…
a) Fixed expenses…
I’m not recommending here that everybody plans a budget in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Most of those don’t work. There ought to be some kind of a budget. But many people really don’t know how much they have to spend each month. There needs to be an itemized list of fixed expenses…house payments, car payments, insurance, taxes, cost of groceries each week…there needs to be some idea of fixed expenses!
b) Future expectations…
What you expect to need in the future…clothes, school supplies, a new car…
c) Fun extras.
Those are the things you don’t really need, but you think you owe them to yourself…an extra color TV for the bedroom, a boat and motor…
Now, let me just say this…God has never led me to give at the neglect of a financial obligation. In other words, let’s suppose I have $100.00 and my light bill is $100.00 and I go ahead and just give that $100.00 away and then I’m unable to pay the light bill, and it gets past due and they’re going to turn my electricity off and I hurt my credit rating and my reputation as a Christian is harmed. God does not ask us to give at the neglect of our financial obligations and our honest debts.
He asks me to give at the expense of my personal desires and wants and pleasures…these fun extras. Jesus sacrificed and gave Himself but He did not give Himself at the expense of the obligation of holiness and obedience. What He gave up was His own personal prerogatives, personal wants, personal desires. He sacrificed those and when the Bible speaks about your giving, not tithing, but the giving of offerings and giving to the necessities of others it’s not saying you’re to rob from Peter to pay Paul.
But it’s those things that you don’t need like cigarettes and cokes and movies and things like this that He is asking you to sacrifice in order that you may give. Now, in those three areas there needs to be sensible spending.
I have four things that I want to share with you about this matter of sensible spending.
a) There needs to be careful spending or careful buying.
You know, so many of us buy things we really don’t need. If you’re rolling in it and God has blessed you, you can go to sleep on this one…you don’t need to buy carefully. But, if He has not blessed you in this way, then you might want to listen.
One of the most important things is to eliminate from our buying those things that are not essential…those things that we don’t really need, and say, folks, we don’t need nearly as much as you and I think we do.
That’s one thing God has shown me. He has said, “Whatever you receive you require, whatever you require you receive.” I’ve learned that I don’t need nearly as much as I thought I did. And really most of us aren’t that careful in our spending. The greatest problem in people like us and I include myself is that we get under financial burden not because we don’t have enough money coming in, but that we’re not being good stewards of what we have and there needs to be a development of sales resistance.
Always sleep on it. You walk into Sanger Harris and you see this suit and you say, “This was just made for me. They had me in mind at the factory when they made this. And I look like a million in it. And it’s the last one.” Go home and sleep on it…not the suit…but sleep on the thought of buying it. It’s amazing how you change the next day. There must be sensible buying.
b) There needs to be creative spending.
Now, I’ll be honest with you, I hate to do this. I hope God just makes me a millionaire someday and I won’t ever have to worry about creative spending. It messes my mind up to creatively spend. But, it’s very important if you’re trying to be financially free. You know what the overall goal is, don’t you? To get out of debt. And if you’re trying to get financially free there needs to be some creative spending and by this, I mean shopping for the best price at the best time.
One of these years I’m going to do this… One of these days I’m going to take advantage of the best time to go Christmas shopping, right after Christmas. January is one of the best months to buy a lot of things. There needs to be some creative spending. For instance, buying groceries…unit pricing…it’s amazing the giant economy size isn’t always the giant economy size. You can look down there and it will have a price per ounce and price per pound and you’ll find sometimes you’re paying twice as much for some items when they break it down to unit pricing.
There needs to be some creative spending…waiting for the best times to buy…and things such as this.
c) There must be consistent spending.
Now, by that I don’t mean spending all the time. I have a feeling somebody said, “Amen. He finally got to what I do best… He got to my spiritual gift. I’m so consistent with my spending. There’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t spend.”
No, consistent spending means spending that is consistent with what you can afford. One of the greatest deceptions of our day is this…that we have been totally brainwashed into believing that being able to buy it and being able to afford it are the same thing. You see, there was a time when if you could not afford it you just didn’t buy it. And we have built into us that if we can buy it, we can afford it. And there was a time when that was true, but it is not true today! With credit cards and such as this, you can buy a lot of things you cannot afford!
And your spending and your buying must be consistent! Not only can you purchase it…wrap it up…drive it out today…take it home today… That is not the point! When you buy something that you cannot afford then you have violated a basic scriptural principle and you cannot expect God to bail you out of that situation.
A lot of us, it may be, have bought a lot of things that we couldn’t afford, and we knew we couldn’t afford them when we bought them and we’re praying that God will somehow get us out of this thing. What God will probably let you do is just stew and suffer there for awhile and learn a lesson. See, one of God’s greatest methods of punishing us, chastening us is just letting us have our way.
Some people say, “Well, if the Lord let me buy it…” Don’t blame that on the Lord! The Holy Spirit does not have to lead you to do something that He’s already told you to do in this book! If you know it’s in this book, you don’t need a special leading of the Holy Spirit to do it! It’s already here! And to buy something you cannot afford is violating the principle of not getting into debt and to owe no man anything. And to be in debt simply means when your liabilities outweigh your assets. When you have bought more than you can afford to pay.
d) There must be cash spending…
I said a minute ago that the goal of every believer should be to get out of debt. To be in debt means to have obligations, financial and otherwise, that you cannot easily take care of…and you’re having to neglect other things to take care of…past due payments…
Proverbs 22:7 says that the borrower is the slave or servant to the lender. And oh my, isn’t that true? To be in debt is to be in bondage. Every believer ought to have as his goal to get out of debt. Now, I don’t mean to pay off your house, that is a goal, but there are some things we’re just going have to charge like a new home, but what I’m referring to are these charge cards and every time you want something you just go down and charge it and you don’t really need it and can’t afford it.
I believe the greatest cause of indebtedness and financial bondage is buying what we cannot afford. You know, I used to have this idea…I must can afford it or they wouldn’t have let me have it! I mean, they’re financial experts and if they think I can afford it, I must be able to.
Now, I have some reasons you ought to pay cash…
a) It’s scriptural…charging is borrowing money and getting into debt.
b) It’s cheaper…you don’t pay any interest.
c) It prevents past due bills…you can’t have any past due bills if you don’t have any bills and it frees you from the dread of past due bills coming in.
d) It prevents borrowing from the future.
e) It presumes upon the future. It presumes that you will be able to do something that you have no guarantee you will be able to do.
f) It prevents impulse buying…Most of us don’t have a great deal of cash on hand to buy anything…but our credit cards give us almost unlimited buying power.
g) You will learn the value of money. Credit buying’s side effect is failure to learn the value of money.
h) It helps you to be realistic in your buying.
i) It defeats this syndrome that says “I have to have it now.”
j) Credit buying eliminates the joy of anticipation. Those things that I have saved for and laid aside for and gone down and bought with cash are appreciated far more than what I’ve bought with that plastic card.
k) It will give a certain peace of mind that credit buying will not do.
l) It will give God a chance to provide it free. Some of the neatest times that I’ve had in my Christian life is needing something, wanting something, and resisting the impulse to go down and charge it and just waiting to give God a chance to give it to me from unknown sources.
It may be that God really wanted you to have that and wanted to give it to you. Cash spending also allows us to keep us from having some things God didn’t want us to have.
Aren’t there things you have bought and you wished later that God had violated your will and not allowed you to just go and buy? I would have been a lot better off. If we look to God for our expectations and as the Source of all things and say, “I’m not going to buy this and get into debt and I will not spend money I do not have because this is not what God wants me to do.” That’s what credit buying is…spending money you do not have…and that violates as far as I can see scriptural spending.
You know how you can know? You can ask God for a certain something you think you need and if He doesn’t provide it, you don’t need it. Give God a chance.
Now, of course there are time when using credit cards is acceptable…for business purposes…for business records. That way you can figure out your income tax at the end of the year. You’ll have a record of what you spent on business expenses.
We did something in our home that has given us peace of mind. We have gotten rid of our credit cards…
There must be a special savings out of what we receive…
Some people say that’s not living by faith.
2 Corinthians 12:14 says the child is not supposed to save for the parent but the parent is supposed to save for the child. Proverbs 19:14 says the same thing.
This means I think that this gives scriptural grounds for insurance…life insurance. I am to save for my children…I am to provide for my own and I don’t see any scripture that says we’re not to have insurance. Now, if you don’t believe you ought to have it, that’s alright, but you can’t come along and say it’s a sin for a person to have insurance, because the Bible doesn’t say that.
Living by faith is not living by presumption. I know some folks who don’t want to spend their money on insurance, but they want to spend it on an extra TV set for the bedroom. There ought to be a special savings out of what we receive, insurance, savings account, funeral expenses…whatever…some money laid aside.
Well, our time is up…
© Ron Dunn, LifeStyle Ministries, 2005