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Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side. We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

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Uh this morning, um, not for any particular reason. I'm actually supposed to be fasting from social media, and I didn't, so I'm gonna confess that to you guys and on tape. Um I checked Facebook as all old people do this morning. Um and a memory popped up on my timeline, uh Facebook memory, which uh you might not even know what that means. Do you know what time hop is? Do you know what that means? Okay, it's like time hop, but just for Facebook. And it gave me a memory from nine years ago to the day, okay, which was St. Patrick's Day for you calendar nerds out there. Um and nine years ago today, this is wild. Uh I was in college, I was not following Jesus. I know nine years ago I was in college, that's true. I was not following Jesus, and I actually was in Milwaukee for the first time in my life visiting. Uh Iowa State, uh, my mom on a roll clones. Come on, we got two more in here, let's go. Four four alumni. Let's let's I I love that. Roll clones. Um, I was here in Milwaukee to watch Iowa State play in the NCAA tournament, and uh a memory popped up a video of me talking to the local news uh about Iowa State and their chances in the first round of the NCAA tournament. And the person definitely didn't think I was gonna like know anything about ball, and so I just talked for like two minutes straight. And on the news segment, they took like 15 seconds of it and actually put it on the air, and I just wasn't making sense um the way they cut it. Uh but I share that with you because nine years ago to the day I was drunk at Who's on Third, downtown Milwaukee, drinking PBR Tall Boys all day before that interview, not following Jesus whatsoever, and little did I know that nine years later, Jesus would have completely flipped my life upside down from that person who's in that video. Like, I used to be an alcoholic, okay, I cared way too much about sports, clearly, but in nine years, what God has done with my life, I couldn't have scripted. So that has nothing to do with my message tonight, but like I just think that's wild what can happen in a nine-year time span. From from a degenerate who uh doesn't have any direction for his life, to now I'm like sitting here getting to open God's word with you uh and talk about things that I would have never cared to talk about as a college student. Um it's it's incredible what God can do. Praise God for that. Um but tonight, uh, if you haven't been here at Saul Company, um, we are in a Proverbs series. And this is actually the last week in the book of Proverbs. Uh we've talked about wisdom, we've talked about work, uh, and we've talked about money. And uh and money can be kind of an uncomfortable topic. Some of you maybe may have just tightened up when I said money, to be honest. Um, maybe you're uncomfortable when you even hear the word, maybe you've had a bad experience with money in your upbringing, uh, maybe you've even had a bad experience with money in a church. Uh I know I've had some uncomfortable situations with money uh in my own life. Uh, and actually, before I went into full-time vocational ministry, my job was a financial counselor. So I worked with people with money every day for my vocation. Um, so I've seen a lot since uh then. But the reality is that money is actually talked about in the Bible in over 2,300 verses. That's 2,300 verses. And Jesus himself talked about money more than any other topic. Okay, so it might be uncomfortable, but it's something that we need to talk about and we need to get right. Okay, so tonight we're talking about this topic of money. And what I want to do is what I want to uh have each of us do is to come to the topic of money with like sort of a clean slate. Okay, so maybe money is uncomfortable for you to talk about. Maybe you've had a bad experience with money. What I want you to do is come into tonight with a clean slate. I want us to approach this with open hands and see what God and His Word would teach us tonight about money. Sound good? Okay. Specifically, I want to answer two questions about money with passages primarily from the book of Proverbs. We're gonna go all over the place. So if you're like waiting for the one passage, it's not gonna come. We're gonna go everywhere, all over the book of Proverbs. And I genuinely believe that if we go all into this topic with open hands, that if we receive what God's Word has to say about money, that tonight has the potential to change the way completely that we view money. Okay? So we'll be bouncing all around, like I said in the book of Proverbs. So if you're a note taker, it's a good idea to write like references down, maybe come back to things, but most of them will be on the screen for you tonight. Um and uh unlike a typical week here at SALT, we'll have more than one passage. So um the first question we're answering tonight about money is this it's whose money is it? Okay, whose money is it? Whose money do you have in your bank account right now? Whose money is it? Okay, think back to the first time that you got money that you could do with whatever you want with, whether it was like allowance or like uh maybe a one-time gift, like a birthday money, earned money from like chores, something like that. Okay, you thinking about it? What did you spend it on? Candy, awesome. Okay. Where'd you get the money from? Parents, work, job? Okay. I remember one of the first times that I got money given to me with seemingly no strings attached. Okay, it was my birthday party. Um, I think it was my fifth birthday in kindergarten. It's hard to remember, 25 years ago, okay, long time. Um, I believe it was my fifth birthday, and my parents, they gave me they gave me more than one present. Okay, we were poor, but like not that poor. Um they gave me multiple presents, but I also got money on my birthday. Okay, not a lot of money. Like, don't, don't, don't lose it, okay? Uh, a crispy$20 bill. But keep in mind, this is the year 2000, Y2K. Okay? Yeah, that's why we're doing it. Um, not why we're doing it, it's just a fun theme. Um, but they gave me$20 to spend on whatever I thought that I could buy. Okay, obviously I can't drive to the store, so I gotta buy something at the store with my parents. Um, but I could spend it on whatever I wanted. And in that moment, my little five-year-old brain was going crazy on the possibilities that I could spend that$20 on. Okay, now you gotta remember it was literally the year 2000. Okay, stuff was way cheaper than it was now. All right, like I had tons of options. Okay, toys from Toys R Us, RIP, I don't think they're in business anymore. Candy, like Matthew, okay, used to be less than a dollar. I don't even know what it is now. It's probably like 20 bucks to buy a candy bar. I don't know, I couldn't tell you. I could buy sporting equipment, I could buy clothes, basically whatever I had my sights on as a kindergarten, I could probably get. Okay? And I distinctly remember for this birthday, for whatever reason, I received a football of some variety from each of my five friends that I invited to the party. And none of them talked to each other. They were just like, we're all gonna bring this dude to football. And I didn't ask for it. That's just what happened. Okay, we didn't have texting. Okay, our parents could call on a landline. That was the closest thing we had to communication. So I was swimming in pig skin. All right, I had a lot of footballs on hand. But there was a football that I hadn't gotten yet. Okay? There's a football that I hadn't gotten yet, and I really wanted it. It was the cream of the crop, it was the top of the line. You could play with it in the dark. Okay? Am I tracking with some of the guys in here? It was a night bright football. If you've never seen a night bright football, you probably have. It's the one that glows in the dark. Okay? That's the only one that does that, as far as I know. It had just come out, and if you had one, you were the coolest kid in school. All right, flat out. Nobody had a night bright, as far as I knew. And the cost was$19.99. Yeah. You better believe your boy was coping that, okay? After I got six footballs for my birthday, I'm definitely buying this additional football. Okay, but amongst the joy of dreaming about playing catch at 8 p.m. with myself because my brothers were already in college, okay, uh, at bedtime before dark, right? Yeah, we have a big age gap. You're doing the math. I remember my parents going, like, are you sure that's what you want? Like, you have five brand new footballs right here. Like, are you sure that's what you want to spend your money your birthday money on? And I don't quite remember how long I actually thought about their helpful question. It's been 25 years, but I do remember going, yup, and buying that football, okay? Like it was a quick decision for me. Now, why do I share that with you? Because when I was given that money, I was not thinking whatsoever about who gave it to me or what they thought I should do with it. After my obligatory, like, thanks, mom and dad, for the cash uh and throwing the birthday card to the side to hold that cash money up to the light, you gotta just make sure it's real. I wasn't thinking about whose money it was that I'd received at all. All I was thinking about was that I had money to do whatever I wanted with because it was in my hands. Okay, that was all I was thinking about. But the problem with my five-year-old self's line of thinking is that I had the wrong perspective on whose money it was that I was holding. Okay, I thought that it was my money to do whatever I wanted with, and while that might have been true like on the surface, uh, what was actually happening was I was being given that$20 bill to steward. Okay? Sure, it was a birthday gift, right? But that money, it wasn't actually mine to make a solo decision with. You might be thinking, how is that possible? It was literally your birthday as a five-year-old. Okay? Here's the truth about money it actually belongs to God. And not only money, but everything that you see around you. Money isn't the only thing. Everything in the earth and in and of the earth is property of God. You don't believe me? Psalms 24, 1 through 2, it should pop up on the screen for you. It says this the earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord. For he laid its foundation on the seas and established it on the rivers. Okay. David, the writer of this psalm, is trying to get us to understand something. He says, Because God created everything, that everything belongs to him. Okay? Everything. Now we can't literally talk about everything in the world tonight. Okay? That's unrealistic. You'll have to wait until heaven for that. All right, somebody much smarter than me is gonna talk about it. Uh, but one of the infinite number of the things that's in the world that belongs to the world, Lord, is money. Okay? See, my five-year-old mind couldn't comprehend this. I barely knew how to make change. I was probably still picking my boogers at that point. I actually was still picking my boogers as a five-year-old. That's true. Um, but luckily for us, we are much smarter than I was in kindergarten. Okay? We're adults, and if this is true, and if our money actually belongs to the Lord, we need to make some changes about how we handle his money. Okay, it's time to make some grown decisions with the money we've been given. However much or how little that is. See, a lot of us tend to treat receiving money like five-year-old me getting my birthday money and blowing it on something we actually don't need. Okay, but if you're here tonight and you consider yourself a Christian, we can't be treating money we get like a kindergarten anymore. If you're a Christian and you have any amount of money, you aren't supposed to make decisions with that money to only benefit you. Okay, but you are supposed to be making decisions based on what God wants you to do with his money. Okay, it's like this. Let me put it another way. Have you ever seen somebody win the lottery before? Okay, have you ever seen pictures of people like winning the lottery? They're like winning three million dollars before taxes, things like that, they go crazy. Okay, everybody wants to say that if I win the lottery, I'm gonna donate most of it to like good causes, or if I win the lottery, I'd pay off my debt and give the rest away. But like, how many lottery winners have you ever seen do that that you know of? Zero. Right? You don't hear about that ever. Person gives away an entire lottery check. That never happens. Okay, why is this? Because when they receive this influx of money, their sinful nature tends to take over. Okay, they start to get selfish. They start to think of all the things that they could get now that they've always wanted but never could before. They see zeros in their bank account and they start thinking like, I'm really somebody now. We tend to treat like our paychecks and when we get money more like lottery checks, okay, than checks of money that are supposed to be to steward for God. Like when we hit payday, when we tend to get selfish, we tend to prioritize ourselves and our desires. Yes, we take to we we tend to spend the necessary money on the things that we need to live because we have to, but we treat ourselves. Right? Often before we even consider giving some of God's money back to Him or the church or even other people in need. And here's the deal we have our priorities out of whack when it comes to receiving money. Okay? See, instead of treating money and payday like we won the lottery, we need to be treating payday like we're a money manager. Okay? In the finance world, where my finance bros at, Dax is here. We got another one? Anybody? Just oh yeah, come on, George, let's go. Okay. Uh in the finance world, there's a lot of different jobs and roles and responsibilities that you can choose from. I don't know what you two want to be, but it may or may not be this. If it's not, you should change it to this. Um, you can be a stockbroker, you can be a commodity broker, a financial advisor. There's tons of jobs out there, but there is one in particular that is different from the rest of them, in my opinion, and that is a fiduciary. You've ever heard that before? You haven't? Okay, okay. What do you think? You ever okay, you should, you're almost graduating. No, I didn't say a bad word, okay? But a fiduciary is a professional, this is the definition, who manages money or property for other parties. The fiduciary is legally required to operate in the client's best interest, not their own. Okay? This isn't a Jordan Belfort Wolf of Wall Street kind of deal here. Okay, this is someone who's looking out for someone else's interests above their own. See, as a fiduciary, you're actually given someone else's money and resources to manage or steward, and when you earn some gains, you pay yourself a set amount of the earnings that the owner has set for you. I'm not saying that you should only keep 3% of your paycheck in your regular job working at Subway or wherever you're working right now, like a fiduciary does, and uh live on the streets of Milwaukee for$5 a month. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that when we view money as Christians in the right way, God's money that we are managing, okay, we can be free to treat money like it's supposed to be treated, which is a resource of God's to use and to steward well, looking out for God's interests above our own interests. Okay, and this logic of looking out for God's interests with the money that we've been given above our own, like it sort of flies in the face of what the world has to say about money. The God's first money logic. It looks at the lottery winner mentality that the world has and it says, I refuse to treat God's resources like that. So if we're supposed to steward God's resources well, if we're supposed to do something with his money, what does he actually say we should do with his money? Okay, let's dive in and answer our second question. What does God say we should do with his money? If you want to open your Bibles, we're gonna be, again, be all over the place. Uh, but you can open them now. If you don't have a physical copy of the Bible, we would love to give you one for free in the connect area in the back. Um, those are available for you, and they're also in the pews. Uh, but the first thing that God says to do with his money is this that's give generously. Okay? Give generously. How many of you have heard this phrase before? It's better to give than to receive. Yeah? Come on. Yep. This phrase actually does come from the Bible. Okay? It's not just something that your grandma made up. All right. Acts 20, verse 35 says this, should be on the screen for us. Paul says, In every way I've shown you that it is necessary to help the weak by laboring like this and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, because he said, This is Jesus, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Okay, Jesus says it's more blessed to give than to get something. How many of you would say you agree with that statement? Okay, good. Some of you know that you're selfish. That's nice. Okay? I'm the same way. Uh we really want to agree with Jesus here. Okay, we really want to say on the surface that we always enjoy giving to others more than receiving ourselves. But what do our actions say? Okay, I'm gonna give some statistics that might bum you out about how we spend our money in America, okay? This might get a little dicey here. Keep in mind America has a large Christian population, people that claim to be Christian. And these statistics are about as current as you can get. Okay? You ready? In the entire year of 2024, Americans donated or gave a total of$592 billion to the entire nonprofit sector. Okay, this includes all nonprofits, including churches. Okay? Keep that number in mind.$592 billion. Seems like a huge number, right? Of that$592 billion in giving, roughly$136 billion was donated to religious institutions, okay, a majority of which are churches across various denominations. Okay? So we're looking at$136 billion in a whole year was given to the church or to religious institutions. Now, just in Q4 of 2025, my finance bureau is know what I mean, okay? That means October, November, December. Okay, it's three months. In 2025, individual Americans spent, get this,$16.6 trillion with a T in dollars on consumer spending. Okay, here's what that means. I'm gonna I'm gonna I did the math for you already. That means that they spent roughly 122 times more on themselves and their families in three months in 2025 than an entire year of giving over the whole country in 2024. 122 times the amount was spent on random goods and services than to give. Okay? Now I understand that not all giving can be measured by statistical analysis. Okay? I understand that not all giving comes across on the official books. I get that. But when we are spending 122 times more in three months on products and services than one year of giving, we might have a problem with our relationship with generosity and God's money. Our desire is to be people who give generously and who love giving more than receiving, but the numbers don't lie. And the reality is statistically in our actions and intrinsically in our souls, we have an issue with being greedy with God's money. And what happens when we get greedy? Proverbs 22, 16 says this oppressing the poor to enrich oneself and giving to the rich both lead only to poverty. Now, most of us wouldn't say that we're oppressing the poor to enrich yourself and giving to the rich when we make a purchase on Amazon. Okay? I'm not saying every single purchase is enriching the rich when we buy on Amazon, although it kind of is. Don't hear this as a political statement either. But when we choose to forego giving and only purchase goods and services for ourselves, we're doing just that. Okay. Money that we could use to give to others who need it. Goods we purchase for ourselves with money that we could have donated. Doing that in excess beyond our needs? Like that's a form of greed, as Proverbs says, that leads only to poverty. Not just monetary poverty, but spiritual poverty as well. Okay, so hear me when I say this. Jesus' heart by saying it is better to give than to receive was to push us away from the pursuit of greed and the accumulation of money and possessions and to draw us closer to the joy of giving generously. Jesus is saying giving generously is better than to receive. Jesus knows that the simple act of giving away God's money, money that he has given us to steward, is displaying God's own heart towards generosity to others. And when we give generously to others, we will find the same joy that God himself experiences when he gives to us. Proverbs 11 25 says this about a generous person. A generous person will be enriched. And the one who gives a drink of water will receive water. Proverbs is pretty explicit here in saying that if you're generous, you'll be enriched. That's not hard to read. We just read that together. And the word for enriched here actually means in the Hebrew to become fat. Okay? Weird, I know. But in that day and age in which this proverb was written, being fat was actually like physically, like overweight, okay? I'm not trying to be facetious here. Okay, it was a sign of being prosperous and having plenty. Okay? But the writer of this proverb doesn't mean that if you're generous, that you'll literally gain weight. Okay? That's not what he's saying. But what he is saying is that when we are generous, that we will have plenty. Okay, there's no scarcity mindset here when it comes to giving. But being generous and honoring the Lord with our money and possessions, it's not the only thing that Proverbs says about being generous and giving and the timing and the quantity or quality that we have when we're giving generously. Proverbs 3, 9 through 10 says this. It says, Honor the Lord with your possessions and the first produce of your entire harvest. Then your barns will be completely filled, and your vats will overflow with new wine. Okay, did you catch what it said there? It said, Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest. Okay? Anybody in here have close relatives that are farmers? Okay, you relating to the harvest a little bit? I saw you nodding. Yeah, you get it. Okay. Here's the deal. The first produce of your entire harvest, what that means is it's the best of the food that you grow. Okay, it's the best of the best. And it's also the first of the food that you collect. Okay, translation, it means that we need to be giving God some of his money back first and giving him the best that we can of the money you collect. So giving generously means when you get paid on the first of the month, like you should probably give a portion right away back to God. Okay? Generously giving, it means not forgetting to tithe and give charitably until the last minute on the 31st. Okay? That's not what giving generously means. It means not just giving a small portion of your leftover cash at the end of the month back to God, kind of like out of obligation, but giving as much as you can with the first cash you get right back to Him. You can answer that if you'd like. Giving generously requires intentionality with when and how you give God back a portion of what he has already given to you. And God's word is clear that it should be the first and the best of what you get. Okay, the third thing that God tells us to do with his money is this, uh, or the second thing is store smart. Okay, you might be a little confused on that one, on the title. Uh I totally get that. But in ancient Israel, they would have known exactly what I meant when I said store smart. Okay, back then there was a place of storage. You may have heard of it before in your Bible reading, called a storehouse. Okay, there's a there's a song out there, it's called Storehouse by the Grey Havens, kind of a banger if you've ever heard it. Okay. Uh in those times, uh, a storehouse would be a physical building or like a grain silo of sorts, uh, another farming reference for you. But basically it was like our modern day kind of like if you've ever seen those sheet metal storage buildings driving by a farm that you'd see driving around the Midwest. That's kind of like what a storehouse was. And the idea of a storehouse was simple. Okay, take some of the crops that you didn't use or didn't need to use, or the goods that you were saving, and store them there until you needed them. Okay, and you didn't touch them until the time came when you were actually in need. Okay, that's a storehouse. We see in biblical times there were famines, right? If you read Exodus, there's famines, there's droughts, there's plagues, there's all of these other brutal times where food simply doesn't grow. They couldn't just force food to happen. Okay, you might not have even had food on hand that was fresh. Enter the storehouse. Okay? Food and goods that were protected by the structure, okay, so that when the inevitable need arose, you had food. Like you had food that you could survive the tough time without having to ask other people for food and for goods. And this principle of food in the storehouse just isn't for, isn't just for grain and crops. Like that's not the only thing in principle that it's applied here. But it is often applied and attributed to the process of setting money aside through savings. Okay, see, we may not have famine or plagues in the exact way that the ancient Near East had, but we will experience tough financial times. Okay, I lived through the crash of 08, which some of you guys were like in diapers still, okay? But 08, that was a big deal, big financial crash. My dad lost his job. Okay, we lost a lot of his retirement and savings. Hard times came for my family. Okay, we will experience hardship. We will experience times where we don't seem to have enough, but if we set some aside to put in a storehouse, we might have what we need when the time comes. Over 60% of the US population does not have$1,000 set aside in a savings account or emergency fund. Over 60% of people do not have$1,000 to their name in the United States. That's pretty wild. Some of you maybe have$1,000 right now, and you're like, I feel like I'm the poorest person in this room. Okay? That's incredible and not in a good way. We are so bad with money and spending that we don't even have the discipline to save$1,000 and let it be there until there's an emergency. That's like the whole country, guys. We spend and we spend and we spend and we spend and we can't seem to save anything. And this is a problem. And it reveals our true posture towards God's money, and it also reveals just how wise we actually are when it comes to spending and saving. Proverbs 21, 20 says this precious treasure and oil are in the dwelling of a wise person, but a fool consumes them. Okay, in other words, a wise person does not spend everything that they have. Okay, a wise person doesn't do that, but a fool spends everything, has no regard for spending and saving. Like, this can't be a pattern that we have if we want to manage God's money. We just can't do it. You can't spend everything that you bring in and ignore this principle of storing smart. Like, yes, we need to be generous givers, okay, at the first of the month. Yes, we need to spend money out of necessity. There's things that you need, there's rent, there's food, there's all these things, but we have to save some too. Okay, this could look like for you, maybe it's like you get paid weekly. Setting aside money weekly for you, maybe that's what you need to do. Maybe it's monthly. Okay, maybe you get paid once a month, twice a month, whatever. Maybe it's yearly, something. I don't know what it is for you, but we should be saving some money, okay, in these modern day storehouses called savings accounts. Okay? That's what a storehouse is basically now. All right, and specifically high yield savings accounts, okay? Don't get scammed by your big bank and make 0.1% on your interest. Okay, Giuliani's not here, but I met with Giuliani like last week to talk about his finances. And my guy missed out on$800 a year in his savings account from just not having a high interest rate like that he's getting. It's crazy. It's mind-blowing to me. Check your bank. If you're not getting at least 3%, move your money. Okay, that's not financial advice, that's fatherly advice for me. Okay. Um get your 3% to 5% from a high yield savings account. Anyways, uh, I know it's crazy, but if you don't set aside money in something that is actually going to grow, like a savings account or an investment account, okay, the money that you've been given won't grow like it could elsewhere. Okay, it seems obvious, but most people have no idea how much interest that they're getting in savings or even where they're sending it to or how much they have or any like anything like that. And that's why we have a whole country of people who don't even have a thousand dollars. That means that anytime that they have a thousand dollar expense, they're immediately going$1,000 into debt. Okay? Don't be that person. All right. Even though God designed the idea of the storehouse thousands of years ago, we can still apply this today because ultimately there will be things that come up, right? There will be expenses that happen. Uh I just spent$1,000 on our car today and had to use my emergency fund. Okay? That's a real example. Uh but if you store smart, okay, if you save money, if you put some money aside, you might just be ready for what comes next, like I was. Okay? Because if you don't, you might just go into debt, which brings me to our third thing that God wants us to do with our money, and that's dodge debt. You see the alliteration here? Yeah, I'm trying real hard tonight with that. Okay. This section, I'm gonna be straight up with you. This was the hardest one for me to write. Okay? Here's the deal. Y boy's in debt, okay? Like I got debt, all right? Like I work for a church, I don't make a lot of money, right? But I have more student loan debt than I make in a year kind of debt. Okay? Like that's where that's where we're at as a family. Okay, I have car debt, I have a little bit of medical debt, okay? I've had most kinds of debt in my life at some point or another in my 30 years of living. All right, but you want to know something? Almost all of this debt could have been dodged. Okay? Almost all of this debt could have been avoided in some way, shape, or form. And the reality is now that as a 30-year-old dude who hasn't been in college in 10 years, okay, I'm stuck with this debt until I pay it off. It is not going anywhere. Joe Biden couldn't save me, okay? He tried real hard. That's not a political statement either. I really wanted that uh student loan relief, okay? Uh didn't happen. And I despise having to make a payment month after month after month for things that really didn't even gain me much of anything. Okay, I got a degree, yeah, it was fun. Doesn't really do anything for me in my vocation now, all right? I probably wasted that money. But some months I feel like I'm never gonna get out of it. That's just true. I feel like I'm being ruled by my debt at times. Okay, I manage the money for our household, my wife never thinks about it, all right? But I think about it often, and that's a garbage feeling. It's terrible. Okay, Proverbs 22, 7, it says this the rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is a slave to the lender. Okay, the author uses really harsh language here when it comes to taking on debt. Okay, and at times when you have debt, it can feel like you're never getting out of it. That's like every other day for me. But here's the thing about debt: it doesn't go away until it's paid. No matter what kind of debt it is, it doesn't go away until it's paid. And that may seem obvious, but in today's culture of excess credit cards, buy now, pay later, garbage, okay? Extreme car prices and housing costs on the rise, we need to understand this that debt will not go away until it's paid. Okay, if God gave us all the money that we have to steward, if God actually paid our spiritual debt through his son Jesus, why would he want us to take on more of it willingly? He doesn't. Okay, most of the things that I mentioned that plague our culture with debt are not necessary to have. Okay? Again, I'm not like a full Dave Ramsey guy, but he does have a point about credit card debt. We usually can't control ourselves. Okay, you don't actually need a credit card. You can build credit in other ways, okay? Just gonna put that out there. I have like six credit cards. Don't do that. It's stupid, okay? Um you don't need, definitely don't need, buy now, pay later, okay, to buy some sneakers. Don't do that. If you don't have the money for it, don't buy it. Okay, you don't need a brand new car. If you're in college and you're driving a brand new car, figure out what you can do to sell that thing and get a used car. Okay? Just live with it. You don't need to live in a super nice place, especially when you're in college. I lived in disgusting places when I was in college and saved a lot of money. Okay, you don't need to be in a brand new apartment building. Move out, get a new lease. Okay. These things are nice to have, okay? Don't get me wrong, they're really nice to have. All right? I've had all of those things, but they're not necessary to have or to purchase. Okay, they're not necessary. You see the difference? Nice versus necessary, especially if you don't actually have the money in the bank, which most of you don't. Okay? If you're still in school, you don't have the money. All right. And when you're managing God's money, you can't be reckless with debt. Okay, my 18 to 23 year old self that took on more loans than I can even comprehend right now as a 30-year-old. I could not conceptualize that I was being reckless with debt. I did not get it. People told me, my dad told me many times, okay? And I didn't care. I didn't listen. Okay? And he I definitely at that time could not understand that I was managing God's money. Because good grief, I would not have made some money decisions that I made with it if I knew that that was true. But if I understood that, I would have had my world kind of turned upside down before I went into all this debt that I still deal with today. Okay? But even though I am in debt, even though I haven't saved as much as I could, even though I haven't been as generous as I could have been because of that, I can do the last thing that God says to do with his money, and that's this. I can trust him totally. See, each of us are at various points with money. Some of you are broke as a joke, all right, just like me. All right. Some of you maybe actually have a little bit of money and you don't tell anybody about it. That's cool. Keep it under wraps, all right? You don't need to tell people that. Okay, some of you have a bunch of debt already. Some of you are like me. You're getting ready to graduate and you're like, yikes. I was kind of hoping that student loan relief would come quickly, but it's not, and it never will. Okay? Maybe you're freaking out right now about that. Okay, some of you have had bad examples growing up with money. Like you were taught poor habits with money, like you, you were poorly educated. Okay, maybe you never once thought about it being God's money that He gave you to steward and not your own. Maybe it's the first time you're hearing that tonight. Here's what's true for each of us in this room. We can totally trust God when it comes to money. God always gives us what we need. Okay, for some of us, it's a lot in certain seasons. Okay? I'll never know what that's like. All right? That's fine. For some of us, it's a little in a season. Okay? But for all of us, it's just right. Proverbs 30, 8 and 9 says this. It says, Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me. Give me neither property or poverty nor wealth. Feed me with the food that I need. Otherwise, I might have too much and deny you, saying, Who is the Lord? Or I might have nothing and steal, profaning the name of my God. God knows exactly how much we need when it comes to money and possessions. Like He knows when we have too much, He knows when we have too little, and ultimately He knows what's best for us in every season of life. No matter how much we think we know, He knows more. You may have heard this one before. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6 says this. It says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways, know Him, and He will make your paths straight. Not only can we trust the Lord with our finances, but we can trust Him with everything that we have. And as a result of that trust, as a result of reliance on the Lord, it's that He will make our paths straight. Or in other words, if you trust in the Lord with your whole life, He'll lead you to where He wants you to be. Which is much better than where you want to be. But here's the thing if you don't have Jesus, like if you're sitting here and you haven't trusted in Christ, literally none of this money advice from Proverbs is going to be worth pursuing for you. Okay, sure, you can make money decisions that are biblical if you don't have Jesus. Yes, you can actually implement these things. That's fine. That might help you avoid bankruptcy or whatever you're trying to avoid down the line. But it's all for nothing if you're still spiritually bankrupt. Okay, money, like all the other things in this world, eventually it will decay. Eventually it will fade. It will vanish like dust in the wind. And the truth of the matter is that you can't take any of it with you. None of it. No matter how much you have or how little you have, and even more importantly, it cannot and it will not save you. See, the goal of the tr of the Christian life isn't to build up treasures here on earth, but it's to build up treasures in heaven. Like the goal of the Christian life isn't to become monetarily rich, but rather to become spiritually rich. And the only way that this can be done is through a personal relationship with Jesus. Like there's no other way. You can't do it any other way. And the thing about a personal relationship with Jesus is that you actually don't have to pay him anything. You get to pay him nothing because Jesus has already paid it in full. Okay, if you have debt spiritually, which all of us do, he's paid it. Okay, how great would it be to have your physical debt removed, right? How much greater your spiritual debt gone? And you had to do nothing. You had to pay nothing. Jesus did it for you. It's paid in full. And the only thing that we can do is tell him who he is. Okay, he's Lord of the universe and believe in what he has done. He's been raised from the dead. Easter is coming soon. That happened. That's real. Jesus rose from the grave. And if you have never trusted in Jesus, if you had never confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you need to do that tonight. Like tonight, you can go from being spiritually bankrupt to spiritually rich. Okay, no matter your money situation, no matter if you're gonna be in debt the rest of your life, like I might be, I don't know. You can be spiritually rich and free through Jesus. You don't need to make a deposit, you don't need to pay off any extra debt, you don't need to earn it with any works, you just need to come to Jesus in faith, and you will be his. Your eternity will be sealed, and you'll never be spiritually poor ever again. No matter what happens with money, you're good spiritually. And the beauty of this good news, it isn't that it's just meant to stay with you. Right? If you've received Jesus, it's not meant to just be just for you. It's not a personal message for only you. It's meant to go through you to the next person. And every one of us in this room knows someone who still needs to hear the good news and is spiritually bankrupt. So, what would that look like? If all of us, everybody in this room who have gone from being spiritually bankrupt to spiritually rich because of Jesus, what would happen if we all brought this good news to those around us who need it? What if we were brave? What if we had the conversation? What if we shared the good news with those people who need it? What would it look like if this room full of Christians would actually take the good news of Jesus to the ends of our campus? Okay, to the ends of our city, to the boundaries of our state and the borders of our country and beyond. What if we did that? I think if this were true, we would see the world changed. And the spiritual bank accounts of billions go from bankruptcy to overflowing with spiritual riches. Let's pray. This room, Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for how you have caused us, if we have trusted in you, to go from spiritually in debt, spiritually bankrupt, hopeless, to now spiritually rich because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Lord, thank you that you don't require a payment from us. God, you don't require anything because Jesus paid it in full. God, I pray that you would use this room. Lord, you did it with 12. Why not do it with 70? Lord, reach the world with your good news with the people in this room. God, I pray that this will be true of us tonight. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

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Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast. To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE. And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 10 a.m. at 2308 East Bellevue Place. Grace and peace.