Nov, 2005
1. Your money is not your own. It all belongs to God.
Haggai 2:8 All silver and gold belong to me, [says the Lord God]
Psalm 24:1 The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
1 Corinthians 10:26 For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.
Even the kings and kingdoms of the earth belong to the Lord, The Lord God owns it all!
2 Chronicles 36:23 Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.
Daniel 4:17 This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men. see also Daniel 4:25 & 4:32.
Psalm 75:6-7 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.
But why are there bad politicians? Because God gives us what we deserve. We reap what we sow!
Therefore, we’d better be good if we want good rulers, and if we want God to bless us. God will trust you with His wealth if you are trustworthy and obedient to his laws. Be faithful over a little, and God will give you more–even rulership!
Joshua 1:8 This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.
Proverbs 13:22 If you obey God, you will have something to leave your grandchildren. If you don’t obey God, those who live right will get what you leave.
Luke 16:10 Anyone who can be trusted in little matters can also be trusted in important matters. But anyone who is dishonest in little matters will be dishonest in important matters.
11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?
12 And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?
Luke 19:17 “That’s fine, my good servant!” the king said. “Since you have shown that you can be trusted with a small amount, you will be given ten cities to rule.”
2. Since we are God’s stewards, we must invest our money (God’s money) in ways that God instructs. If your broker disobeyed you, you’d fire him. So, don’t disobey God’s instructions or God will no longer ask you to be His caretaker of His wealth, and will be likely to stop blessing you. Seek knowledge from God and the Bible. Fools refuse instruction. People are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Seek wisdom first, then all other things are added. Seek the kingdom first, and all will be added to you. Godly wisdom leads to wealth. Seek out the council of wise men.
Proverbs 16:16 It’s much better to be wise and sensible than to be rich.
Proverbs 1:7 Respect and obey the LORD! This is the beginning of knowledge. Only a fool rejects wisdom and good advice.
James 1:5 If any of you need wisdom, you should ask God, and it will be given to you. God is generous and won’t correct you for asking.
Hosea 4:6 You priests have rejected me, and my people are destroyed by refusing to obey. Now I’ll reject you and forget your children, because you have forgotten my Law.
Proverbs 13:18 All who refuse correction will be poor and disgraced; all who accept correction will be praised.
2 Chronicles 1:11 All who refuse correction will be poor and disgraced; all who accept correction will be praised.
Matthew 6:33 But more than anything else, put God’s work first and do what he wants. Then the other things will be yours as well.
Proverbs 15:22 Without good advice everything goes wrong– it takes careful planning for things to go right.
3. Work. Tend your flocks. Be diligent. You must pay attention to your investments, and take care to know the state of the companies in which you invest. (Be not deceived.)
Proverbs 31:16 A good woman knows how to buy land and how to plant a vineyard,
Proverbs 10:4 Laziness leads to poverty; hard work makes you rich.
Proverbs 13:4 No matter how much you want, laziness won’t help a bit, but hard work will reward you with more than enough.
Proverbs 22:29 If you do your job well, you will work for a ruler and never be a slave.
Proverbs 27:23 You should take good care of your sheep and goats.
Wealth comes from producing more than you need, and trading your excess production to other men.
I grew up in Sacramento, and we had several fruit trees. We had an apple tree, a plum tree, a lemon bush, a pomegranet tree, a peach tree, and a grape vine. Each tree could produce more than a small family of four could eat. But the excess was not really enough to go into business to trade to others in a reliable, profit making way.
The Bible says to plant a grove of trees, all of one kind–and not a grove of trees of different kinds. This would require planning & specialization in order to trade away the excess to others, in order to reap the benefit of the harvest season.
Leviticus 19:19 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.
4. Don’t be lazy, you must work. Laziness leads to poverty.
Proverbs 18:9 Being lazy is no different from being a troublemaker.
Ecclesiastes 10:18 Some people are too lazy to fix a leaky roof– then the house falls in.
Proverbs 24:30 I once walked by the field and the vineyard of a lazy fool.
31 and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.
32 Then I saw and considered it well; I looked upon it, and received instruction:
33 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep —
34 so shall thy poverty come as one that wandereth, and thy want as an armed man.
Proverbs 20:13 If you sleep all the time, you will starve; if you get up and work, you will have enough food.
Proverbs 28:19 Work hard, and you will have a lot of food; waste time, and you will have a lot of trouble.
The Bible tells us to not only work hard, but to work efficiently, to not waste time! Therefore, work hard to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the work that you do! Or, seek to do the work that is most efficient, most effective and most productive.
Free & Honest Trade increases men’s efficiency, because men can specialize & become experts at what they produce, and thus, produce more.
5. You must save the excess portion that you get from all your hard work. You must save to become wealthy. Saving means spending less than you earn. It requires self-control, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. There is no other way to become wealthy. You must have a storehouse (savings) in order for it to be blessed. Even the ants have a storehouse.
Deuteronomy 28:8 The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
Proverbs 21:20 Be sensible and store up precious treasures– don’t waste them like a fool.
Proverbs 6:6 You lazy people can learn by watching the ant
7 Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
8 Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
Proverbs 30: 24 On this earth four things are small but very wise:
25 the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer;
6. Your wealth has a purpose. It is not for your personal luxury. So, do not live extravagantly to excess. A Rich man built barns for his money, for a plan of laziness, and it was all taken away. Another rich man lived extravagantly, and ignored the poor, and was taken to hell. But having riches was not the problem, because having wealth is not incompatible with being a disciple of Jesus. A rich man was a disciple of Jesus.
Proverbs 23:20-21 Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.
Proverbs 21:17 Heavy drinkers and others who live only for pleasure will lose all they have.
Luke 12:15-21 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.
He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
Mark 10:24-27 The disciples were shocked to hear this. So Jesus told them again, “It’s terribly hard to get into God’s kingdom!
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?
And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
7. Do not be deceived. This is not advice, it is a positive command to not be deceived. Being deceived leads to disaster. You must avoid investing in frauds such as Enron, or the dollar, or bonds. Worshiping a false idol (dollar or bonds!) can cause your wealth to be destroyed. Wealth itself can be either a deception, or a reward.
Deuteronomy 11:16-17 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you.
Matthew 13:22-23 The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
8. Use just weights and measures. Unjust weights and measures are an abomination. Therefore the dollar, which used to be a weight of gold, is no longer a just weight of gold. The dollar is fraud, and an abomination. The dollar is also a deception, a broken promise, because it used to be a promise to pay a certain amount of gold or silver.
Leviticus 19:35 Use honest scales and don’t cheat when you weigh or measure anything
Deuteronomy 25:15 If you weigh and measure things honestly, the LORD your God will let you enjoy a long life in the land he is giving you.
Proverbs 20:10 Two things the LORD hates are dishonest scales and dishonest measures
Exodus 20:15 Do not steal
9. Do not covet. (To covet means to envy and desire things that don’t belong to you.) Coveting makes you miserable, and it leads you to want to take from another to be rich, rather than realizing that wealth comes from producing on your own.
Exodus 20:17 Do not want anything that belongs to someone else. Don’t want anyone’s house, wife or husband, slaves, oxen, donkeys or anything else.
Coveting and taking from others is wrong, because it assumes that one man’s wealth must come at another man’s expense. But the world economy is not a “zero sum” game of mere transfers of wealth. Real wealth is produced from the earth: everything either is originally grown or mined–including you.
Production, work, creates wealth. Trade creates wealth.
10. Avoid the lures of communism, which is the result of coveting and stealing. Avoid insurance, and social security, which are plans of communism. Trust in God’s ways. The way of criminals is the way of communism, “let us all have one purse”, which means that the family does not need to take care of the family, because the state has taken over the family duty.
Exodus 20:12 Respect your father and your mother, and you will live a long time in the land I am giving you.
Proverbs 1:11 when they say, “Come on! Let’s gang up and kill somebody, just for the fun of it
12 let us swallow them up alive as the grave, and whole, as those that go down to the pit;
13 we shall find much precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil;
14 cast in thy lot among us, let us all have one purse””
15 my son, walk not thou in the way with them; restrain thy foot from their path;
16 for their feet run to evil and make haste to shed blood.
17 Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird!
18 And they lie in wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives.
19 So are the ways of every one that is greedy for gain, which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
11. Do not take advantage of other people–treat them as brothers. If you must lend, then lend, but take no usury. Do not be a usurer. In the modern world, this means you cannot invest in bonds, nor CD’s, nor a savings account, nor Treasury bills, nor junk bonds. Taking usury is extortion, and enslaving others.
Luke 6:35-37 But love your enemies and be good to them. Lend without expecting to be paid back. Then you will get a great reward, and you will be the true children of God in heaven. He is good even to people who are unthankful and cruel. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.
Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.
Deuteronomy 23:19 When you lend money, food, or anything else to another Israelite, you are not allowed to charge interest.
Exodus 22:25 Don’t charge interest when you lend money to any of my people who are in need
Ezekiel 22:12 In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord GOD.
Nehemiah 5:7 So I thought it over and said to the leaders and officials, ” How can you charge your own people interest?”
Although the Israelite could lend money to someone who was not an Israelite, they could NOT lend to a stranger who lived among them–because they were to treat strangers who lived with them as brothers, as themselves. Christians are to love our enemeis, see Luke 6:35 above…
Leviticus 19:33 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.
Leviticus 19:34 But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
Free market economists tell us that the immigrant is great for a nation. These people are entrepreneurs. Generally smarter, & braver than their countrymen, they make us better off. They enable us to trade more with their home nation.
If they come to do menial labor, that’s great, as we generally don’t want to have to do that kind of work ourselves.
And if they come to do high paying intellectual labor, that’s great, because that kind of work generally produces more for the company (and nation) that employs them.
12. The borrower is the servant to the lender. Therefore do not lend, lest you enslave someone. And do not borrow and enslave yourself. No man can serve two masters, God and mammon. So, how could you enslave yourself with debt, and become a servant of money? If you are in debt, you must “service” the debt, and the borrower is the servant to the lender. Be a servant to God alone, not to money, not to the lenders. Make your money serve you, don’t serve the money you have spent to excess that did not belong to you in the first place.
Proverbs 22:7 The poor are ruled by the rich, and those who borrow are slaves of moneylenders.
Matthew 6:24 You cannot be the slave of two masters! You will like one more than the other or be more loyal to one than the other. You cannot serve both God and money
Don’t be a slave to debt. Be free. Declare your freedom. You are allowed, by God, to declare your freedom once every seven years. Debts are not meant to be carried for 30 years, but only for a maximum of seven. It is not dishonorable to declare your freedom (through bankruptcy). It is especially not dishonorable when fraud, (unjust weights and measures) are used to enslave you to debt.
Deuteronomy 15:12 If any of you buy Israelites as slaves, you must set them free after six years.
Jeremiah 34:14 As part of this agreement, you must let a Hebrew slave go free after six years of service. Your ancestors did not obey me…
Modern math, compounded interest, which you can do on an Excel spreadsheet, shows that usury leads to slavery.
If you invest a single ounce of gold, and invest it for 6000 years, since the time of Adam, you can see the truth of usury. You can grow an ounce of gold into 6 billion ounces of gold (which is more gold than has been mined in all of human history) at a mere 1/4 of 1% rate of interest! And if you grow from an ounce of gold at 2% for 6000 years, then all the atoms of the universe would all be gold, and it would all belong to you. Therefore, it is impossible for extremely large money to grow more than 1/4 of 1% per year. And if it does, it will have corresponding years of losses to make up for it, because no man can own all the gold in the world. But small amounts of money can grow at extremely fast rates: you can buy a can of coke for 50 cents, and resell it for a dollar in one day to make a 100% return.
Acorns can grow into big oak trees, but oak trees do not grow to the moon.
13. Buy low, and sell high! Buy when cheap, sell when expensive. One of the greatest stories of a transfer of wealth occurs in the life of Joseph, who was sold into slavery and taken to Egypt. He became the chief servant of Pharoah, who had a dream. Joseph, with God’s help, interpreted Pharoah’s dream as a prediction of seven years of abundance and plenty, to be followed by seven years of famine. With this knowledge of future economic conditions, the Pharoah put Joseph in charge of storing up grain during the years of plenty at low prices, and then he sold grain during the famine years at high prices, and ended up owning virtually everything in the land of Egypt. See Genesis 41
Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up…
Proverbs 11:26 He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.
14. Diversify. Invest your money with wise and honest men for the sake of safety, because you do not know what bad or unexpected things may happen. Although there is no safer investment than gold and silver in your possession; however, they can be stolen, so invest with others, like mining companies.
Ecclesiastes 11:1 Be generous, and someday you will be rewarded.
2 Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth.
15. Store your treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust can steal. Recognize that it all belongs to God. And therefore, be a wise steward of what God has entrusted to you. Pay God’s things to God. (only the image belonged to Caesar). The famous question about taxes was a doubled edged question, for if Jesus said “don’t pay tribute to Caesar,” then Caesar would have reason to kill him, but if he said “pay tribute to Caesar,” then he would be against the Bible laws which say “bow to none other than God,” and it all belongs to God.
Mark 12:13 The Pharisees got together with Herod’s followers. [a] Then they sent some men to trick Jesus into saying something wrong
14 And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?
15 Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.
16 And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar’s.
17 And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.
Matthew 6:20 Instead, store up your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy them, and thieves cannot break in and steal them.
Matthew 19:21 Jesus replied, “If you want to be perfect, go sell everything you own! Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come and be my follower.”
Prov 19:17 Caring for the poor is lending to the LORD, and you will be well repaid.
Matthew 25
The Parable of the Talents
14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them.
15 To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.
16 The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more.
17 So also, the one with the two talents gained two more.
18 But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’
21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
22 “The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’
23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
24 “Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?
27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
28 ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
16. Why should God bless you with wealth if you would use it for selfish things, and if it could cause you to lose your soul? Wealth comes with problems, and creates problems. Wealth can be stolen, which is a problem the rich will fear. Wealth comes with responsibility–not only to defend and protect it, but to use it wisely, to give it away wisely, and to invest it into the Kingdom of God.
Ecclesiastes 5:12 If you have to work hard for a living, you can rest well at night, even if you don’t have much to eat. But if you are rich, you can’t even sleep.
Luke 11:21-22 When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils.
Proverbs 23:5 Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
Matt 13:22 The seeds that fell among the thornbushes are also people who hear the message. But they start worrying about the needs of this life and are fooled by the desire to get rich. So the message gets choked out, and they never produce anything
Luke 9:25 What will you gain, if you own the whole world but destroy yourself or waste your life?
There is a purpose for wealth. For increasing the Kingdom of God.
1 Timothy 6:17-19 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share (communicate-KJV). In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
17. To me, investing in the Kingdom of God, means to start back at number one, and seek Bible knowledge. And then, to teach that knowledge to others who are interested, like I’m doing with this article.
Daniel 11:33 And they that understand among the people shall instruct many…
Daniel 12:4 … many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
And also, by promoting the gospel message that we can have eternal life through believing in, and speaking about what Jesus did for us when he died in our place for us, and then was raised from the dead.
1John 1:8 If we say that we have not sinned, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth isn’t in our hearts
1John 1:9 But if we confess our sins to God, he can always be trusted to forgive us and take our sins away
Mat 10:32 If you tell others that you belong to me, I will tell my Father in heaven that you are my followers.