0:00 people say about money. We want to hear your heart and we want to know what you think in Jesus name. Amen. All right. So, we're going to continue uh talking about money. We're on number six. I don't know how many we're going 0:14 to do in total. I think I when I started I planned to do two or three and I just felt like felt like it was good to keep going uh because it um because it's important. And as we look at through some of these Bible verses, we'll see uh we'll see why it's 0:29 important. So, just to recap what we've done so far, first of all, I said that uh money is like a a silo of a barn in that it allows you to when you harvest, when you do all your work, you harvest, you can't eat everything all at once. 0:41 So, it allows you to save it for later. So, it's it's the biblical definition of money really does encapsulate everything that money is. It it it allows you to store. It's a silo. And we talked about giving particularly um not letting the 0:55 right hand know what the left hand is doing and and some possibilities of what that means both internally and externally. We talked about debt and particularly that as Christians we're called to have no debts except to love 1:08 one another. So we want to be very careful to avoid any debt when it when uh in in our walk with the Lord. Talked about discipline being a fruit of the spirit and how we need it to to manage money. And I think everybody here, 1:21 especially if you're o over 30 or 40, I think you'll agree like discipline is a critical component of uh of handling money. And so we talked about that. And then most recently, we talked about possessions. And particularly uh the 1:35 condition of disciplehip in in Luke 14:33 that in following Christ as a disciple of him, we we can't have any possessions. And uh unfortunately, that sounds like a bad thing, but it's actually a wonderful thing. We're set 1:49 free from having possessions and we're free uh to possess the one who loves us and gave himself up for us. So, we're going to continue um looking at money this morning. As I said, I said every time that we do a lesson on money, we're 2:04 going to look at two verses. The first one was Matthew 6:24. Everybody remember it? No. Okay. That's why we're that's why we do it every time, right? This verse says that no one that that the decision you're going to have to 2:18 make that every human being has to make is whether they're going to love God or love money. And it's very interesting because everybody thinks that the two opposing forces in this world are God and Satan. It's not. Our hearts are 2:31 going to go after one of these and they're going to they're going to forsake the other one. So, we want to take a look at that again. And as we're going through this, you know that this is my goal. Well, I want you guys to all 2:42 love God more as you as you look at money. I want you to hate it more so that your love for the Lord increases. And then the second verse that I said we would always look at is Luke 16:11. And it basically says, if I paraphrase 2:56 it, it says that the reason God allows money in the world is because it's a bit of a test to see whether he can give us that which is really valuable. And the godly men uh that I've met in my life and that I've read about in my life, 3:13 they all h seem to have this in common is that they were incredibly faithful in the use of money. We just coming back from Colorado. We were listening to the biography of Hudson Taylor. Man, I'm challenged by his life. He was a 3:25 missionary to China, but really what set him apart early on was the way he handled his finances. And this theme comes up over and over again. So, we want to grow in this. And don't worry about I don't think any of you have been 3:37 as unfaithful with money as I have. I say that honestly. So don't get discouraged if you your track record with money isn't great. Make a commitment going forward. Lord, I want to learn to be faithful with money. Would you teach me? Do you think he'll 3:50 hear that prayer? I believe he will. I believe he wants to teach us about money. So this morning we're going to focus on a different aspect of it. Um grabbing. Grabbing for money. Now, any any grabbers in the room? Anybody have a 4:05 tendency or temptation to grab for money? Okay, there's like three. Okay, this is just for the three of you. Everybody else, just sit tight. The three of three of us need to hear this. I'm one of the three, by the way. And 4:18 so, let's let's start with a hypothetical situation. Let's suppose that there's a couple of three-year-old boys at the back of the room while we're listening to the message. The three of us are listening to the message. these 4:28 three these boys uh one of them has a toy car playing with that toy car and the other three-year-old boy sees that toy car. What is that other three-year-old boy going to do? He's going to grab it, right? And what's going to ensue is uh 4:46 this is what I've noticed. Uh I mean hypothetically, this is what I imagine that uh whenever one of those boys realizes that, you know, there's a a tussle, they immediately scream or cry, right? That's what they've been 5:00 conditioned to do. Uh I see something. I want it. I CAN'T HAVE IT. [screaming and groaning] AH, and then what happens is whichever parent of the boy comes over first does a wonderful thing for their own kid very often and does a terrible 5:18 disservice for the other kid. Right? You guys know where I'm going with this. The parent of the one of the boys says, "No, no, no. You give that to the other boy." And so their kid learns the lesson that they must not grab. They 5:32 must give it up and give unto others. Meanwhile, the other kid gets the haha, right? We don't mean to, but we're evil parents sometimes, evil fathers, and we we think we're doing the right thing by giving it up, but very often, um, you 5:44 know, we're actually doing good for our kid and kind of hurting the other kid. You guys agree with that? Yeah, maybe. Right. It's a complicated, By the way, you parents that are in this stage, I I've already been through it. My 5:55 youngest is nine. Good luck. Right. Because it's it's hard to know what to do in that situation. But one thing we see with those three-year-olds, they have no inhibitions. They do ex They know they see it. They want it. They 6:06 don't try to hide it. It's those of us that get older that know that we can't act like animals and just grab and and scream and and go tell mom or dad, right? We have to be a little more refined in our grabbing. And that's what 6:18 I want to look at this morning. that you know if you saw me and Benoy having a tugof-war over something in the back you you're everybody's eyebrows would raise like what is going on with those two but what the Bible does what 6:33 this book incredibly does is expose me through these stories of others in it in in its pages and we're going to look at some examples of scripture of grabbing and I have no intention of judging anybody in any of these stories I I have 6:50 every intention of judging myself. And I've already had to go through this exercise and I get to go through it again with you. As I read these stories, I recognize that I in my flesh have a tendency to grab. I also have a tendency 7:04 to not want you guys to realize that I have a tendency to grab. I want you guys to think of me a certain way. I don't want you to know that like, yeah, if I see something, if I can get away with it, if I can snatch it, then I will. 7:18 But the scriptures will expose that if we'll let them. So let's start. Let's go way back to the beginning and to Eden, right? And you guys know this story. God lays down some laws and he says, "Listen, do not eat of the 7:32 fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." But this one verse, as I read it, I realize that the Bible is living and active. It is not ancient history. It describes very well in this one verse exactly what happens and why I justify 7:49 myself to grab something that the Lord said not to grab. And grabbing is not like stealing. You know, if I said if I if my message this morning was hey, don't don't steal any money, I think we most of us would be okay, I hope, right? We don't it's not 8:04 stealing. Grabbing is where we bring something within our boundary and we feel entitled to do it. And what happened to Eve is she listened to the argument of the devil. The devil had to kind of go at her a little bit. Get her 8:17 to distrust what God said. If you listen to Hannah this morning, what she was saying when she shared her vers uh verse, she described it very accurately. Right? Satan likes to get in there and convince you, hey, I know what you heard 8:31 God say, but that's not the whole story. That's only part of it, and that's not quite right. He needs to soften you up a little bit. And then once he's got you softened up, then you'll take another look at the fruit on that tree 8:45 and you'll see it. It says that Adam looked or it said that Eve looked at it and it says she saw that the tree was good for food. It'll be good for me to eat of that tree, right? This will actually work out if I grab it. If I can 8:58 get a hold of that and I can eat it, it will be good for me. And it says it was desirable. It appealed to the the lust of her eyes. I love Zach Pune's definition of of lust in the eyes. It says,"I everything that I want for myself that I 9:15 look at and I want it." That's what the lust of the eyes are. And in this case, Eve looked at that fruit and it was desirable. And then she even goes a step further. She recognizes in her own wisdom, if I eat of that fruit, it'll be a wise thing 9:30 to do. That's what this says. And that's the temptations. Why do I wind up grabbing? because I've justified it by all these things. It'll be good if I grab it. It's a wise thing to do in this circumstance to grab. And the world is 9:43 right there going, "You're right, Josh. You got to grab the bull by the horns. If you want something, you got to take it." And so, I recognize that I have this in my flesh, and it's it's from my great great great great great great 9:54 grandma, right? I'm just like her in my flesh. But the Lord has done a work in my heart and given me strength to overcome this and wants to help me to overcome it. So, here's another story. If you've never read this story, I I re I recommend it 10:09 very much and I recommend reading it slowly. It's in 2 Kings chapter 5. It's the story of Gayaz. And those of you that know of the have read of the prophet Elijah, know that another prophet came after him, Elisha, who had 10:23 a double aortion of the anointing. And Gahesi probably was one that should have got a quadruple anointing of Elijah's uh spirit. But it didn't work out that way. Instead, in instead, we find a different story. So, what happens? It starts with 10:39 Non. He was a captain in the army of of Syria, but he was he was a leper and he had leprosy. And uh I'm just kind of summarizing the story for you, but there was a a Jewish girl in in his household and he said, you know, if you want to, 10:55 she said, if you want to be cured of that, you really should head to Israel. There's prophets there that can heal you of leprosy. And so he packs up all his money, all his wealth basically and heads to Israel and he sees the prophet 11:09 uh Elijah and Elisha tells him to go wash in the water and it works. I mean there's more to that story. There's some details in there. He's resistant at first, but he eventually does it and he's cured of his leprosy and he's very 11:22 grateful for his leprosy or for being healed of leprosy. And he offers Elijah the prophet. He said, "Thank you. I owe you big time. Look, I brought all my wealth with me. Let me give you some of it. And Elisha says, "Absolutely not." 11:37 So Elijah, you know, has a chance to grab right here, a golden opportunity. He did he did something for somebody, you know, he he could take it if he wants. And he and he overcomes that temptation to grab and he says, "No, no, no. The Lord will get 11:53 credit for this. I'll I'm going to take nothing." But his servant Gahesi says, "What on earth are you doing? This is a golden opportunity to to get something." And so without without uh Elisha knowing, he goes, as Non's heading out, 12:11 he catches Non and he makes up a lie. He says, "Oh, hey, hey, hey, things have changed. Uh, you know, we reconsidered your offer and we would like to have some of that silver and maybe two sets of clothing. Does that work? 12:25 And uh non says, "Oh, no, no, take double the silver. That's that's fine. Take it." And he goes and he tries to hide his grabbing. And Elisha sees it. Elisha said, "No, no, no, no, no. This is not a time for that. It's not a time for us to be 12:40 grabbers. It's time. It's it's it's not that season." And he says, "You that leprosy that non had will be yours and your children's and your children's and their childrens and their childrens and their childrens and their children." 12:55 Pretty serious thing to grab something. He felt entitled to it. He seemed justified. Hey, I'm the servant of Elijah. We we did some important work here. We should get some money for it. He grabbed. He grabbed. Here's another story. This 13:11 is probably the character in the Bible I most relate to. every few years. I'll tell you my testimony in Jacob. But I'll give you two parts of of Jacob's life where he grabbed. The first was a birthright. He stole it from uh Esau, 13:24 didn't he? Just for a He said, "Hey, I see you're in I see you're down on your luck. I see you're hungry. Just so happens I'm making some some food." Jacob sees an opportunity to grab the inheritance away from his brother and he 13:40 takes advantage of it. he grabs and then later in his life he he gets he gets a father-in-law who's kind of a a match for him and he figures out a way through his work to grab the good sheep and to gain his wealth. And 13:58 that's exactly what happens. If you if I encourage everybody, I don't have time to go into all these stories, but I encourage you if you're not familiar with them, write down these references and go back and read them very slowly 14:07 and see if uh see if we hit the points just right. But Jacob is able to through his work, through his craftiness, and his cleverness, he's able to get some more money for himself. right now. What's interesting about his 14:22 grabbing in both of these situations is it ruined his relationship with those men. And there's a valuable lesson for us. And I've had experience with w with both of these. And I thank God for showing me in the scriptures this so I didn't make 14:37 a mistake. One was a a couple years back I had a shot at an inheritance. You guys know what an inheritance is? When somebody dies, particularly somebody that's like a a father or mother or somebody that's uh in in your ancestral 14:52 line dies, they leave you their stuff. And very often it's it's quite a bit of money or quite a bit of wealth. And I had a shot at it twice that comes to mind. I thought I'm entitled to it. And people would even tell me, "Hey Josh, 15:05 this is supposed to be yours. Let's go grab." and I didn't feel a piece about it, but I still have a relationship with them to this day. I didn't take it. The Lord helped me and he said, "Hey, nope. Give it up. Let it go." But Lord, it's a 15:20 lot of money that could be mine. I could use that money. I can find something for it. Let it go. So, I had to let it go. But I preserve the relationship with my family. The same thing in my job. I had somebody recently come tell me in one of 15:33 my jobs, they said, "Hey, you know, you should be promoted by now. you, you know, you've been here for a number of years. You should be a higher level than you are. You should be get paid more. You should say something. 15:46 I didn't. So, similar to, you know, this lesson that I learned from from uh from Jacob, I I I said, "No, no, no. If the Lord wants to give me a promotion, he'll give me a promotion, but I'm not going to grab." I know a brother in this church that was 16:00 promised a promotion. I remember him telling me the story years ago. He said, "Yeah, I'm I'm supposed to get promoted. They said, "I would." And it's been a couple years now. And I think it was three or four years before he finally 16:11 got it. But I'll tell you, by not grabbing, that brother benefited tremendously spiritually because he didn't grab. Because he didn't go to his boss and say, "Man, I've been working hard. You should pay me more." Now, I'm not saying you should never ask 16:27 for a raise or never accept a raise. I'm saying that spirit of grabbing at any cost, we can't have. And we learn it through these examples in scripture. Here's another example. This one's kind of hard to stomach for me. If anybody's 16:43 ever read through Acts, they've come across the story and just kind of scratch your head and go, "What on earth happened?" And and if if I understand the story right, Lord, how are you dealing with me with me? What a merciful God you must be. But 17:02 it's a story of Ananas and Safh. And if you really want to get this story, you need to go back a few verses. Go back six verses into the previous chapter into chapter 4 and read very slowly and understand what was going on in that 17:15 church to fully appreciate this story. And what you find is that there was a wonderful it was a wonderful church and people were selling their land and and bringing it and putting it at the apostles feet and there was kind of a a 17:30 wonderful spirit of sharing that is very very very rare on this earth but I I would read it in my Bible and then I would come to this couple Anonyas and Safh and they basically sold some land and took the profit and they 17:47 put part of it at the apostles feet and they grabbed on to some of it for themselves. Now when Peter when Peter, you know, talks to them about this, he says something that I I feel the same way to talk to you. Like your lands, your 18:05 money, your property, everything you have is yours. None of us desire it. It's yours. It's between you and the Lord. But what they did, they wanted to grab onto some honor in around very godly people and hold on to the money at 18:21 the same time. We find a spirit of grabbing in them. And what happens next is both of them drop dead. Now, I can't fully you I can't fully tell you 18:39 why God was so severe, but it makes me want to come a little more clean to my Lord and say, "Lord, if if I have this spirit of of grabbing and lying, I want to be free of it." And Lord, you probably could have done this to me at at multiple times in my 18:56 life, and you've been tremendously merciful, but going forward, I want a spirit free of grabbing and lying. And so as we consider this, if we ask a question like why, as we as you look at all these stories, all three or four of 19:10 them, if you include Eve, I found three things that are common, and explain why I'm tempted to grab for something, especially money or wealth. And it boils down to these three things. Quite simply, I trust my own reasoning. 19:28 Right? And I look at the situation. I discern it for myself. And I say, "I must get it. It's mine. I'm entitled to it. Everything I know, everything I've learned said, Josh, grab it." Despite a prompting from the Holy Spirit 19:43 saying, "Don't grab it." I'll, instead of listening to that prompting or listening to, you know, God speak to my heart or listening to what he says in his word, I'll trust myself and my human cleverness and wisdom and I'll grab it 19:57 anyway. That seems to be common. And if you go back and read these stories, I think you're going to find these three elements. Here's the second thing I see. We allow lying and deceit to come into the situation. Right? And again, I I don't have time to 20:12 show you how in each of those stories this happened, but the I can tell you the same thing happens to me. I allow I allow that that that deceit to come in. Something like this. Josh, if you win the lottery, you're gonna be so happy. 20:28 There's so many good things you'll be able to do with that that money and life will be great for you if you if you can somehow get your hands on it and wrap your fingers around it. That's a lie. That's a lie. If I can just get my hands 20:42 on that inheritance, I'll be happy. Everything will be great. So, when we allow lying and deceit, and very often when we get it, we try to hide it by lying. That also is common in those stories. But we want to love the truth about 20:57 oursel. That's what that this verse in Thessalonians says. It says that salvation comes when we acknowledge the truth about oursel. Lord, I'm a grabber. Lord, I I tend to want things for myself. I'm sorry. 21:16 I've learned enough about you to know that that's not the right spirit, but I still find it within myself. Brothers and sisters, that honesty before God is wonderful. Lord, I'm a grabber. I don't want to be like Ananas and Safh. I'm going to admit 21:30 it to the Holy Spirit right now. I have that tendency. I have it. I don't want it. That's the truth. I don't want it. But the honest honest answer is, yeah, I find that pull. Be honest. And the final thing that we see is an 21:47 impatience. We know through scripture the Lord wants us to learn patience. We wants us to have the spirit of Christ that wait. But what I'm finding my temptation to grab is like this is a once in a-lifetime opportunity. 22:02 If I if I miss this, I'm in trouble. I got to get it. But letting those things go. You don't think that your heavenly father is better than an earthly father? Do you really think he's going to let something pass from you and you're not going to 22:20 get it? Do you think that, you know, he wants to give you the very best? That's what that's what my sister Hannah said. He wants to give you the very best. Wait for it. I would say in the last few years, I've had things just drop in my 22:38 lap. I didn't work for them. I didn't earn them. I didn't grab them. They just came to me. You know, maybe when we're sitting over lunch sometime, I'll tell you about some of them. I should have never got them. The job I have right now, I have no 22:53 business working there. It's a wonderful job. It pays a great salary. I can't tell you. I'm not as smart as the people I work with. I'm not being humble. I just recognize that that God gave me something. I remember fighting for jobs, 23:08 trying to get jobs. I want this job, and God just gives me a wonderful job. He gave it to me. You don't think he'll give you the best? And even if he takes it away tomorrow, if I find out I go into work tomorrow and he he lay I get 23:20 laid off from work. I'm coming to a place where I see that my heavenly father must have a wonderful plan in store for me and it doesn't involve this job. It must be a trial or it must be something else that he wants to give me 23:33 something truly valuable. Now, I may get tested in that. I hope you guys all come up and encourage me with, "Hey, remember what you said, Josh? You're welcome to do that. He's so good. He's so faithful. He wants to give us the very best. But are we 23:48 patient enough to wait for it? Or do we grab it? We say, "Now is the time. This is the opportunity to get ahead." One of the things I do want to mention Jesus, you know, we looked at a lot of the stories in the Bible, but just 24:03 thinking about Jesus, he wasn't a grabber. Just looking at two verses, the one right before this and this verse. If I were to paraphrase it, it would be something like this. Jesus had every right to grab anything 24:21 he wanted, including all the status and power and priority of being God. And instead, he emptied himself. If we truly want to be like Jesus, we 24:38 have to overcome the spirit of grabbing. And we look at him and you know, he had it all. He emptied himself. He gave it all up. And he came and he served us in the most fantastic, wonderful, incredible, 24:56 tragic way possible. But his attitude wasn't what can I get or you know he he instead poured himself out. And so as we consider these these stories and as we examine oursel through them, you know, even if we failed, 25:15 brothers and sisters, even if we failed, and again, I've been a failure. But if as I look at my Lord and I see my heavenly father through the power of his spirit wants me to be more like his son, I'm encouraged and strengthened. Okay. 25:31 Okay. Let's let's overcome that. Old Josh was a grabber. New Josh wants to be like Jesus and empty himself rather than grabbing. That's the Lord we serve. That's the one we claim to follow. He's the exact opposite of what we've been talking 25:45 about this morning. All right, let's summarize talking about money part six and we focused on grabbing and particularly overcoming grabbing. We looked at a few examples. We started with our great great great great great 25:57 great great great great grandmother Eve and we saw the way that she was tempted to grab and it started with deceit from Satan and it started with looking at things and relying on our own understanding. We talked about Gahazi who could have 26:12 been a prophet with a quadruple anointing of Elijah but instead allowed his grabbing to ruin everything and instead of being an anointed powerful man of God he wound up just passing on leprosy to his kids, grandkids and so 26:29 on. We looked at Jacob by I think his name even means grabber. And we looked at two examples from his life where in grabbing for an inheritance and in grabbing for money in his job, he wound up ruining relationships with both uh 26:45 with with both his uh father-in-law and his brother. And again, go read them for yourself and see if you see the same thing. We looked at Ananas and Safh and saw that, you know, when you're part of a godly group of people, it's very 26:58 tempting to want to pretend you're not a grabber even though you are. And to get the honor of of overcoming when you haven't yet. And the most important thing, brothers and sisters, is that we're honest with God. And we acknowledge, Lord, I I I'm a 27:12 grabber. It's fine. Start with honesty. You'll be safe if you're honest. It's that deceit that can creep in that gets us in trouble. And we looked at the three things that they had in common in all of the stories, right? We saw that 27:28 um the first thing is that they all tended to lean on their own reasoning and their own understanding, their own cleverness. That was the first thing that got them in trouble. And we saw the second thing is they allowed the lie. They allowed 27:41 deceit. They quit searching for the truth. And when they allowed the lie to come in, they found that spirit of grabbing very strong. And then the third thing is that they were impatient. They weren't willing to wait upon the Lord 27:53 and get their strength renewed. They had to get it now. And I don't I don't want those things. And then the last thing we saw that Jesus is completely different when it comes to money and grabbing instead of instead of that he empties himself and 28:09 pours himself out. That's all I have brothers and sisters. God bless each and one of you and may you all overcome the spirit of wanting to grab.
