But Rather

So if you will turn in your copy of the Word of God to Exodus chapter 20. For those of you who remember when we started, which I think was about nine months ago, I did challenge everyone to memorize the Ten Commandments, which would specifically just mean memorizing the first 17 verses of Exodus. And so you've had plenty of time to do it if you set your mind to it.

And if you are like most people and you resolved to do it and then you haven't done it, you still have time. And as much as I thought, well, there's only three commandments left. This will be quick. I don't think it's going to be as quick as I hoped. Because God's commandment is exceedingly broad. But I want to read verse 15 to you. and then we'll flip over to Ephesians chapter 4.

Exodus 20, verse 15 says, You shall not steal. Seems simple enough. Turn to Ephesians 4 now. And as I've somewhat lamented from the perspective of verse-by-verse preaching, which is what most Reformed people prefer to have, when we're looking at these commandments, there's not a whole lot to look at in you shall not steal. If we did a word study on it, there's not that many words in the sentence even.

And so we have to go to many other passages in order to look at what these commandments mean. But in Ephesians chapter 4, we have a verse 28, right after Paul explains putting off your old self and the new life you have in Christ. Paul says, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

If you ask most people on the street tomorrow what it would mean to not steal. the most common answer I think you'd find is simply don't take stuff that's not yours. And yet in God's law the commandment to not steal has embedded in it and implied in it a number of truths that we need to understand including the positive affirmation of what we're supposed to do rather than steal. So for many of us we see thou shalt not and we think if you just don't do what it says not to do, you're doing a good thing, and you may be.

But God expects us to actually be doing, in a sense, the opposite of what he's forbidding us to do. So the opposite of stealing is not just not stealing when it comes to God's law, and as we just read in Ephesians chapter 4, it has to do with actually working and acquiring your own wealth. Got a quote from this man named Kaufman. Just to give you an idea of the variety of ways that we steal, some of which you may not have thought of.

The stealing which characterizes our day is evident in the following words of the vocabulary. So he lists them now. theft, fraud, dishonesty, larceny, swindling, cheating, embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, violations of trust, robbery, watering of stocks, excessive charges, padded expense accounts, inaccurate tax returns, double bookkeeping, the sale of damaged or worthless goods, obtaining benefits under false pretenses, non-payment of debts, bankruptcy, crooked auctions, lotteries, bingo games, gambling, purloining, shoplifting. All these are crimes and sins forbidden by commandment number eight.

They are not for the child of the loving father. That was Kaufman. One of the things I will add, I think he implied it here when he said sale of damaged or worthless goods or obtaining benefits under false pretenses. That includes purchasing something and pretending it's bad so that you can save money on it as well. So there's a lot of ways we steal, in practical words, steal stuff. the same guy Kaufman I really liked actually what he had to say about stealing the same guy said that there was six ways we acquire wealth according to God's word like inheritance and working for it there's a couple other you know getting a gift but he made a point even to add that gambling is not one of them and he included gambling and lotteries under the definition of stealing.

You also would have noticed things like misappropriation of funds, inaccurate tax returns. Those are just euphemisms for stealing, right? So instead of saying stealing, somebody came up with other words that they could use to feel better about it. We're also able to steal other things. You can steal the Word of God, in a sense, if you have the Word of God and you hide it from others to whom it should be freely given.

You can steal time. In particular, you steal time from God. God has given us time to be used and to be good stewards of And when we waste that time we are in effect stealing the time that God has given us time to be used and to be good stewards of and when we waste that time we are in effect stealing the time that God has given us In 2 Corinthians 9, we're going to jump around a little bit today.

But when I have a lot of scripture references, I'd rather you turn to them with me. 2 Corinthians 9.6. You may not be like I am, but my favorite sermons that I can remember personally attending were ones where I was forced to turn in my Bible a lot and I saw a lot of scriptures for myself. And then the Word spoke to me. But Paul says, the point is this, and I kind of love it when the Bible does that for us.

It kind of helps us out, right? The point is this, Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver. I want the sermons that we go over about stealing.

Look, if you're a shoplifter, I really hope you're convicted at the end of all this. and you quit, okay? I hope if you kids are taking things from your parents, your parents freely give you all these things all the time. They're happy to supply you with way more than you need, as a matter of fact. And so if you're sneaking things your parents have told you not to get out of the pantry or the cookie jar or whatever it is, then I hope those things stop.

But I'm more concerned that we all understand the purpose of why we actually have property and money and things like that. and one of the ultimate goals of it all is to advance God's kingdom. The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly. You want to reap an eternal reward and you want to see things happen to promote God's kingdom. If you pray, Thy kingdom come.

If you pray the Lord's prayer and then you don't practically invest any of your own time and effort and maybe hard-earned money to promote it, I don't think you're really praying that prayer. And so that's what I want us to make sure we're able to focus on, is that the goal of acquiring wealth, turn back to Ephesians 4.28, the goal of acquiring things, the goal of working, the ultimate goal is that we may be able to help others. Same man, Kaufman, he wrote, you are morally obligated to help a destitute neighbor. he says then may you shirk this responsibility by deliberately keeping yourself so poor that you will never be in a position to help anyone but yourself so he's confronting the false piety of people that think well i shouldn't make money because you know money He's the root of all evil.

And I should be more focused on God and some of those things. And certainly we're going to have to talk about the covetousness that causes us to steal. And I'm actually going to put up, I plan to put a couple ideas off until we get to the 10th commandment. Because the 10th commandment is already going to handle some of the deeper issues beneath the 8th and the 9th.

Okay. But on the flip side of the same coin where you don't want to make money because somehow you've decided, well, money's bad and I love God. This is what he's confronting. He says, by willingly avoiding the accumulation of an economic surplus, you are flaunting your neighbor's rights in two ways. He says, by deliberately risking the possibility that your own sudden destitution may throw a burden on him.

And by your willful improvidence, making it impossible for you ever to help him in case he needs it. And catechism will back me up on this, but if you love your neighbor, you will do whatever is lawful to actually accumulate your own wealth. There's nothing in the Bible that contradicts the goodness of accumulating wealth, of having an inheritance to give to your children and to your children's children.

In fact, that's what a righteous man is said to have. The Bible says that those who labor in preaching and teaching are worthy of a double honor, and it's specifically talking about paying them. These are things that the Bible promotes. Some of the richest people in the history of the world are the people we read about in the Bible, who God blessed with those riches.

The problem with money is not how much you have or how little you have. The problem is always your heart attitude about it. And for somebody to willingly not work or make themselves poor, they are threatening that their neighbor will have to take care of them. their family members will have to stop everything they're doing to go and help the guy out because, well, he couldn't make his house payment again.

And you end up being a drain on your family, on society and on your neighbors. So there's a goodness in making money. And there's also a temperance that you have to have with it. one final thought before we turn into before we look at these Ephesians verse and then all these verses of Proverbs about working is I don't want it to become an overly political sermon for there to be a commandment not to steal that presupposes the existence of private property that sounds really obvious to most people I think because it self In fact, in the history of the world, there's been no society that has ever flourished without private property.

There's been societies that have attempted forms of socialism or community, communal sharing of everything. communism is the old saying is communism is socialism with a gun to your head that's the big difference it's forced socialism upon us even societies that don't have the bible are utterly aware of this that's why everywhere you go there will be laws protecting people's private property there will be laws protecting people from breaking of contracts and lying there's family units in every society one way or another people figure out what works, and what works is the way God designed things. But we are in a society now where you will be increasingly told that the best thing for you will be to own nothing. And it's going to sound good the way people package it.

They're going to make it sound like everyone will be happy, and everything will work. and the irony of it all is that the people that want to create this kind of they'll call it a utopia somebody's going to own everything there will be somebody who gets to own all the things it's just not you and if anything, and I don't mean this disrespectfully it's actually a legitimate term the youthful idiots that promote this kind of thing they're the ones that I feel the worst for because they're going to lose all their stuff with the idea that they're trying to do something good and they're just being used by the people that want this stuff. Communism, socialism, all those things, they don't work because they're contrary to what God has said is the right way that we should do things. That includes the ownership of private property, and that includes the protection of it by a governmental unit instead of the confiscation of it.

Another problem you have is when the government decides that they're going to enter the same race as everybody else, in a sense, in the business race, and then they make the rules, and then they can break the rules, and they can do whatever they want. And so that's why any endeavor that possibly could not be run by the government, you're better off if they don't. And so I'll leave that there and we can have a spirited discussion about the use of government and private property another time.

Ephesians 4, 28. Paul is explaining to the Ephesians, now that you've been saved and you've put on the new self, you've been forgiven of all your sins. You've been commanded, I think, multiple times by now to walk worthy of the calling to which you've been called. You've been elect before the foundation of the world. Christ loved you. It's why he saved you.

You've been adopted into his family. Here's what you're supposed to do. And he says, let the thief no longer steal. Verse 28. Just a reiteration of the eighth commandment. Let the thief no longer steal.

You'll remember when the guy was in the sycamore tree. Right. Zacchaeus. And when Zacchaeus got saved by Jesus Christ, his first response was he was going to pay everybody back even more than he owed them. Biblical law actually made restitution part of the punishment for stealing. So that if I stole $10 from you, rather than me sitting in jail and sucking $90 more a day out of you so you could feed me and give me a place to rest and give me free internet and whatever else happens there, I was supposed to pay you back about $40. so you got back your money you got a little bit more I felt the pain of wow I could have worked and made $40 myself instead I worked and didn't get anything except for the $10 I wasted and it was a deterrent from thievery and it would have hopefully helped people afterwards to realize well it's actually just more beneficial to work than to steal I don't want to get into the justice system too much but our society doesn't actually discourage theft.

In fact, most of you in here probably have credit cards. And when we use our credit cards, one of the things that we're happy about is that we have purchase protection. Because the credit cards will refund you all your money if your stuff got stolen or damaged or whatever happened, And then they just end up passing on the cost back to you through the little 3% that they charge.

And then those things go up. You have locks on your house. You have a security system. We spend a lot of money just to protect our stuff because stealing is real. We are in a church and we have a lock on our box of hymnals. You know what I mean? it's like you don't even think about it you just lock your stuff it's the society we live in the reason your communism won't work ever in this cursed world is because there will always be sinners who are lazy and those who aren't lazy but can't work for some reason and that destroys that kind of system Paul's exhortation says in verse 28 Ephesians 4 let the thief no longer steal He says, but rather, so the opposite of stealing, let him labor.

Let him work. He says, doing honest work with his own hands. Men are expected to work. You get saved, you're expected to work. You go to church prior to the Reformation and nobody put any value on work this is why there was almost no advancement in technology or anything good for 1 years or whatever, and 1,500 years in the history of Christianity even, because basically the Roman Catholic Church kept people in what was called the Dark Ages.

And something as simple as working hard and making a good product and selling it at a good price wasn't at all thought of as a good thing or even a command of scripture and then the reformers come along and they read the bible and the reformers start telling people work work heartily is unto the lord like the scripture says the old saying is the the guy calls martin luther yeah not on the phone he yells to martin luther hey i just got saved what should i do and martin luther says well what did you do before The guy says, well, I was a shoemaker. Martin Luther says, well, make a good shoe and sell it at a fair price. That's what reform doctrine gives us.

It gives us the idea that even your secular vocation is important to God. And it glorifies God. And the guy that makes shoes, sells them at a fair price and stays profitable, he's going to have money to support the church. He's going to have money to support missions. He's going to have money to support evangelism. He's going to have money to help the poor.

And that's the goal. Paul says, do honest work with your own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. That is our goal. On the contrary, do what you can to not be the person in need. there's nothing wrong if something providentially happens to you you get an illness something that you couldn't control occurs I get that people get old and they just need help every child in the room needs help there's a whole population of people on both ends of the age spectrum and even in the middle who have needs providentially given by God that the rest of us are supposed to take care of and so we should do what we can so that we can help others.

Turn to Proverbs 10. We're just going to take a little foray through Proverbs. If a young person wanted to go off to a university and get a finance degree, they'd be better off reading the book of Proverbs every day for a year. They'd know more and they'd understand better than what most people would be taught in these secular institutions today. So let's just get a couple ideas of money here.

Proverbs 10.4. Specifically focused on working. The reason why people steal is first and foremost because they're sinners and they hate God, and by stealing, it's a chance for them to violate God. sometimes people also put themselves in positions though where they don't have the supply they need and it creates more temptation that is often because people are lazy Proverbs 10.4 a slack hand causes poverty but the hand of the diligent makes rich Paul said let him work with his own hands a slack hand will cause poverty a hand that won't work the hand of the diligent makes rich there's nothing in this section about being rich being bad some of the greatest people who have ever lived people we read about people who have made an impact on the world were people who had money do you know who builds hospitals? it's not poor people you realize that right?

People who have accumulated millions and millions of dollars through properly building wealth, they're the ones that actually are able to do those kinds of things. You know Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays? Do you know that? Chick-fil-A is closed every Sunday. Praise the Lord for that. And Chick-fil-A is still like the top fast food chain in the country or something like that.

How do they measure these things? because God blesses that kind of thing. But do you know that sometimes Chick-fil-A is open on Sunday? Did you know that? Yes, I knew that. You knew that? Okay, good.

Do you know when they're open on Sunday? They're open on Sunday after a disaster when they go into an area that just got hit by a hurricane or a tornado or something. I said disaster and then my mind went to Toledo. That's kind of funny. So anyway, Chick-fil-A goes into an area that just had a disaster and they give away sandwiches and they give away their wafer fries, waffle fries.

I don't go there enough to even know all the names, but that's what they do. They give away things to people who are in desperate need at the time of their need. That's what we're supposed to want to do. And you're not going to do it if you're at home trying to figure out how you're going to make your next bill pay. verse 5 he who gathers in summer is a prudent son but he who sleeps in harvest is his son who brings shame you want to disappoint your parents be lazy and don't work turn to proverbs 12 hopefully nobody wants to disappoint their parents proverbs 12 verse 11 a couple more verses to look at whoever works his land will have plenty of bread but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.

I'm sure you all know somebody who has tried to get you to join some kind of organization. It promises some very easy wealth. Work from home two or three hours a day and make $10,000 a month or whatever it is. I see the comments a lot when I go on blogs and stuff. There's always these commenters. I'm making $10,000 a day working from home only two hours.

You know, things like that. it's statistically impossible that that's going to happen to you. It's also statistically impossible you're going to win the lottery. So I know people say, well, no, there's really not a chance. You don't do anything with the statistical probability of things like the lottery or making $10,000 a day sitting around doing nothing.

It's just not the way things work. People have to work to make money. And in a culture of surplus like we have, some people have found some strange jobs where they can seemingly get rich for not seeming to do much. And I'm afraid it won't last very long. You're not going to have anything if you don't have people plowing the fields. Proverbs 12.12 Whoever is wicked covets the spoil of evildoers, but the root of the righteous bears fruit.

So we're to bear fruit. Verse 14, from the fruit of his mouth, a man is satisfied with good and the work of a man's hand comes back to him. These are promises from God. When we read the Proverbs, sometimes you see things that sound like if you do this, this will happen. and then we can all think of an exception. The Proverbs aren't 100% always this is exactly the result.

The Proverbs are general statements about how life works and the economy that God has created. Proverbs 12, 27, staying there. Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth. The picture here is a guy actually maybe caught something, right? He went out hunting, but he won't even cook it. So he's done some of the work involved, but he won't do all the work involved to actually be able to just eat what he caught.

You can apply it to your own life in a number of ways. I don't know many of you who have to go out and hunt right now for your food. I guess even the robbers, you guys have to go pick up eggs from the yard, right? Can you imagine picking up the eggs, carrying them to the door, and just dropping them in the trash? That's the slugger. He won't even crack them open to cook them.

It would be almost worse than doing nothing at all. Proverbs 13, 11, skipping to the next chapter. an important thing to remember wealth gained hastily will dwindle but whoever gathers little by little will increase it if you go home and you do an internet search and if you're a person in here that's a child you do that with your parents help and you search for lottery winners so people who have won millions of dollars and you search for their stories, you will find that nearly everyone who has ever won the lottery has had their life ruined by it. Most people, when they gain a large amount of wealth that is proportionally so much different from what they're used to, they don't know what to do with it and they blow it.

Do you know that some of the highest paid people that any of us have ever heard of are NFL football players and NBA players and that they have a higher rate of bankruptcy and debt by their mid-20s than most of the population. So the people who made the most money end up broke. And a lot of it's because they were never used to that kind of money. They never learned how to manage that amount of money.

And so when it came into their property, they didn't know what to do with it. I'll tell you what, anybody in here, if you ever get rich, like not one day at a time, if you ever have a windfall, hire a manager. Hire somebody else to manage your money for you like Potiphar did with Joseph. Someone who will help you take care of it. And you can afford it if you have that much money.

But it says in verse 11, whoever gathers little by little will increase it. If you will gather little by little, your wealth will increase. And what do they say? A penny saved is a penny earned, right? Some of you don't have the means to gather little by little much more than you do. I'd venture to say that a lot of us in here probably could work harder and maybe find a better job.

Or, you know, there's more things we can do sometimes. Sure. But there is a point where you're only making what you're making. You're only getting what you're getting. Well, finding ways to not spend as much money will be the same as earning more when it comes to acquiring wealth. finding honest ways to not spend as much money is one of the challenges of the Eighth Commandment.

Turn to Proverbs 20. We're just going through Proverbs, looking at verses that have to do with working hard to acquire wealth, and we going to end up on some things about the sluggard Proverbs 20 verse 4 The sluggard does not plow in the autumn He will seek at harvest and have nothing The principle here is that there is an idea that if he didn't plow in the autumn, there's not going to be anything to harvest later. Some of us need to think about, what do I need to do today so I can eat a year from now? what do I need to do today so that it's April in Ohio I'm not an expert on these things but I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be planting stuff in about 6 weeks if we want to be eating stuff in about 10 or 12 weeks some of you gardeners in here can explain the details but I know that you have to think about it while it's still cold and salad doesn't sound good you have to start thinking about it so that you can have some good salads in the summer and some vegetables and things like that.

The slugger doesn't plow in the autumn though, but it says, but he will seek. So he still expects to get something. He's sitting around being lazy, not working. And then he still expects some kind of fruit given to him. And this is, in our culture, it's now called a welfare state. And if it doesn't make you a little angry that you're paying for it, maybe you don't understand the Eighth Commandment.

Because it's actually thievery, what's going on, where people who are not working are eating. The Bible says if a man will not work, he should not eat. not even supposed to help a widow in the church if she's young enough to work she's supposed to be taking care of her family and her family's supposed to be working with her it's a serious thing working in God's eyes and we should take it seriously Proverbs 20 verse 13 love not sleep lest you come to poverty open your eyes and you will have plenty of bread look I'm all about rest you need your rest today's the Sabbath I hope you're resting I hope you'll rest today I hope you sleep every night I hope if you need a CPAP you get it or whatever the different things that have to happen for you this isn't about not sleeping at all because there's people that think that and they just burn themselves out but this is about the guy that just wants to sleep all the time maybe instead of love not sleep it should say love not video games maybe that would be a nice way to compare it more contemporary version it doesn't have to do with whether you sleep or not I love my sleep God gives his beloved sleep it has to do with the fact that you'd rather sleep than work but you want to wake up and you still want to eat verse 14 he says bad bad says the buyer but when he goes away then he boasts and here's a guy that's lying about what he's buying so that he can save money it's it's wicked that's a nice commandment too turn to proverbs 21 25 The desire of the sluggard kills him for his hands refuse to labor. Ultimately, the slouch won't eat because he won't work in a just society.

It's only a backward society that would actually support those people. All day long he craves and craves, but the righteous gives and does not hold back. So while the sluggard doesn't have anything because he won't work for it. And he just sits and craves more and more even though he's handed things. The righteous man will continuously give and give and give.

And he won't hold back. It's implied that it's because the righteous man works. The righteous man has to give. Proverbs 24. More verses about the sluggard. I pass by the field of a sluggard.

This is Proverbs 24, verse 30. I passed by the field of a slugger now listen to the description by the vineyard of a man lacking sense and behold it was all overgrown with thorns the ground was covered with nettles and its stone wall was broken down now we don't have a lot of vineyards or fields that we think of that way around here maybe but have you ever just drove by a house where you almost just want to grab your own lawnmower and cut it for them? Just so you don't have to look at it anymore?

He says, then I saw and considered it. I looked and received instruction. This is what a wise person does. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. Again, same thing. Do you prefer to work over sleep or do you prefer to sleep over work?

Maybe a better way to put it would be, do you prefer these things in reasonable and right quantities? Nobody go home and not sleep all week and say, well, Pastor Michael said sleep. No, there's a certain amount of rest that's absolutely necessary. Proverbs 26, verses 12 to 16. do you see a man who's wise in his own eyes there's more hopeful or a fool than for him that has nothing to do off the top of your head with money and working but it's in the context i want you to see this is a foolish man who's wise in his own eyes listen the sluggard says there a lion in the road there a lion in the streets Proverbs 22 I think says that also As a door turns on its hinges so does a sluggard on his bed The sluggard buries his hand in the dish.

It wears him out to bring it back to his mouth. And then we have a bookend to verse 12. The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. A sluggard is a fool. But one thing a sluggard will always have is an excuse. Verse 13, there's a lion in the streets.

I remember when I first read this, I was like, oh, wow, that must have been scary. Listen, there was no lion in the streets. He makes up that there's a lion in the street so he doesn't have to go to work. and I dare say that each and every one of us does the same thing in some respect whether it's our work whether it's evangelism whether it's showing up at church whether it's sending our money in to giving to the church giving to missions whether it's helping our parents we all have an excuse why we can't obey the clear command of God and the excuse is always big and scary and anyone that actually believed you would say well I wouldn't go either but you need to watch for the sluggards around you and you'll figure out who they are but watch yourself for it door turns on its hinges there's almost nothing that moves more than a door but goes nowhere Think about it.

Right? I mean, the doors here, they've moved a lot. They're in the same spot. The slugger turns over on his bed. It's almost like he's got to keep getting comfortable. He can't just get up and work.

Be productive. Maybe make enough to supply for somebody else. I mean, think about most people's lives. A reasonable life would be that you'd go to work and you'd be supplying for a whole family of people, right? And then the Bible expects you to be supplying for your church, to be ready to help your neighbor, to be ready to help family or whoever else that might come across you.

And at the same time, acquire a little bit of wealth so that one day you'll have more to give away. And so that when you can't work as much, you can take care of yourself better. You have to work pretty hard to do that. And now we live in a two-income society where if you don't have two incomes, you almost can't keep up with most of the neighbors. Which is a horrific evil, by the way.

The sluggard buries his hand in the dish, verse 15. It wears him out to bring it back to his mouth. Same as before, he catches his game. But here he is. It's like he's got a dish of food next to him. He reaches over.

He gets a handful of whatever. And he just drops it and falls back asleep because he's just so lazy. Don't be a sluggard. I want to make sure that we... I mentioned something here. The Lord Jesus Christ, in His earthly ministry, He never had what we would call a job.

He would have been the carpenter's son, and he would have in all likelihood done carpentry himself. Probably with his work ethic, made the best table you ever saw, and the best benches and chairs. But there was a point in time in his ministry when he said he didn't even have a place to lay his head. So we have to be careful that we don't malign the Lord Jesus because his life didn't exactly lay out the way I just described our life should with work and wealth accumulation and things like that.

And the apostles, they didn't even take a money bag with them on the one trip, right? And so I think we need to be somewhat reasonable to understand that there are people, including our Lord, who the Lord, who God calls to a particular calling where their mode of working does not make money. Jesus Christ, I will say without a shadow of a doubt, worked harder than everybody in this room combined.

He did more in three years than the rest of us will do the rest of our lives, even if we stopped sleeping and worked, okay? Jesus Christ simply didn't do a job that was made to make money. The apostles who gave up everything to follow him were on a special calling from God. And I dare say there's people today who are like that. There are people today whose work that they do with their hands, the labor that they dedicate to God all week long and maybe work harder than anyone else you know, doesn't happen to be financially profitable.

And often that's people that labor for the gospel. People who labor at abortion clinics. And I'll tell you what, I find it to be somewhat, I have a dual thought about this. I find it sad how many men I know who are gospel preachers, who are regularly laboring to fight for the lives of babies and preach the gospel at clinics and go on the street and to campuses and they do gospel work and they preach at churches or maybe they pastor and I see them like crying out on Facebook for donations.

And I think it's sad that they have to sometimes, I think we should be more giving. At the same time, I think some people need to think it through a little first, make sure if they're going to make that plunge from basically bringing money into the church to needing to be supported by the church, that needs to be a serious consideration. I've known a number of people that I think just didn't like working or they just weren't good at work because of their own attitudes.

So they thought, well, I guess God's calling me to be a full-time preacher. And then they end up broke because they never get out of the house and actually do the work they're supposed to do. They just expect people to sign up for their Patreon and send them money that they're earning. So it's a very serious thing if you expect the people of God to walk out of here on a Sunday night to go home and then to wake up for the next six days and labor in this cursed world and have the United States government take a quarter or a third of what they made away from them to give to other people and then try to take care of their own stuff. and then you expect those people to give you money so you can sit around and be a Facebook evangelist or something like that, okay?

But I also think that we need to look out for people who are the kind of people who are worthy of double honor. And our confession even says it with chapter 26, paragraph 9, that we're to take care of people who do that. And the Bible's replete with verses about that. So finally, Proverbs 28, 19, and then one more passage I want to show you. Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.

You can end up actually making money and losing it in worthless pursuits. there are there's calculated risks to a lot of things we do I'm not going to say you're a bad person if there was a stock market crash and the whole country lost everything and you did too but there's things you can think about to mitigate those kinds of risks but a lot of times it's a worthless pursuit where people just spend money on frivolous things they just waste money you'll have plenty of poverty in that situation turn to ecclesiastes 5 a little american history for you a general history for you is that the the way that a lot of property is simply acquired is by cultivating it okay so so there's actually laws called called like squatters rights where if somebody leaves their land and isn't doing anything with it and you go and start taking care of it, it becomes yours. And part of it's because unused land doesn't help the rest of society. You're actually expected to take care of your land and produce something from it.

If you want to read about the pilgrims, the pilgrims experimented with a communist society. And what they found is that as soon as they gave each person their own parcel of land, the production just went way up because even people that said they couldn't work when it was communistic all of a sudden were working doubly hard when they got a reward for their labor. When the work of their hand was returned back to them.

But in Ecclesiastes 5, verse 9, it says, But this is gain for a land in every way, a king committed to cultivated fields, A leader who supports people cultivating their own fields. A leader who supports people working with their own hands, making their own money. That is going to produce a society that's prosperous. Verse 10. He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income.

This also is vanity. He says, when goods increase, they increase who eat them. and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes. But now he says, sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much. He says, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. If you will work hard and work heartily as unto the Lord, if you'll work six days a week, you'll actually enjoy the seventh one more. the Sabbath won't be a burden to you if you're killing it the other six and experiencing the effects of the curse.

But you work hard, even if you don't have a lot, you'll just sleep better. Part of it's just because you'll be more tired. Your body will just be ready to sleep. It's a natural thing. I think part of it is God grants His beloved sleep. It says the rich, his full stomach won't let him sleep. but I think it's a reference to the fact that sometimes when we get rich, we get a little lazy.

We sit around and we have servants that take care of us. It's harder to sleep. Just because we're just not tired. Our brains aren't ready to shut off at night. Speaking of the worthless pursuits in verse 13, there's a grievous evil that I've seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his hurt.

And those riches were lost in a bad venture. He called it a grievous evil. So keep in mind. when you go to work, it's an observance of the Eighth Commandment. You children are stealing when you're not doing all that your parents tell you to do, when you're not doing chores around the house. But the Lord Jesus Christ, who owns everything and yet freely gives to us, He offers forgiveness.

And so we come to Him and we ask for His grace. Father, please bless our time of worship today. Let it continue to be a chance for us to reflect upon the glories of Jesus Christ on His perfect work ethic, on His example for us. Help us to lean in on Him for His strength that we might become givers so that we might advance His kingdom. Amen.