-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:40 Welcome to KJV Cafe where we discover great truths in the Bible. That’s what we do. Do it by the work of the Holy Spirit.
00:49 Nothing that I can do only by the grace of God as He revealed these truths that you can grab a hold on and apply to your life and become closer to God and have more peace, joy, etc. in your life. You think I’m bluffing? I’m not bluffing.
01:06 Today’s topic is wealth. We’re wrapping up a series on wealth. You know, who provides wealth? You may say the bank or you may say your boss or you may say your rich granddaddy or you may say the lottery or whatever it is, but no, truly God is the one that provides wealth.
01:27 He’s the one that provides wealth. Deuteronomy 818 says just this much, Deuteronomy 8:18, but thou shalt remember the Lord thy God for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth that he may establish his covenant which he swear unto thy fathers as it is this day. Deuteronomy 8:18 underscores two principles.
01:50 Number one, you know, everything comes from God. And number two, he gives you the power to get wealth as in he gives you the air in your lungs and he gives you the abilities and He gives you the land that he created and the resources. And so when we start thinking about it, we realize everything comes from God.
02:10 It all comes from God. It’s all made by him. It’s all for Him.
02:14 And without Him, nothing is made. Amen. Now the context of Deuteronomy 8:18 is dealing here specifically with Moses addressing the Israelites as they’re in the wilderness.
02:29 You remember they were taken out of bondage from Egypt. They were slaves and the Lord delivered them through Moses through the parting of the Red Sea and he gets them onto dry land and gets them to the wilderness, wipes out the enemy behind them, drowns them out. Amen.
02:44 And literally delivers them from bondage. That’s what God has done for them at this point. And God has instructed them with his commandments and through Deuteronomy 5 and 6 and 7 and 8. He’s giving the Israelites these commandments and they’re struggling with it.
03:02 You know, they’re sinning. They’re creating false gods in the wilderness. They’re murmuring and complaining and talking about how they miss the food of Egypt and they wish they could go back and be slaves.
03:16 And so it kindles God’s wrath and the elder generation is wiped out before they can go in the promised land. But as they’re preparing to go in the promised land, God is then reminding them again that he is the one that’s done this for them. So they shouldn’t forget him, that they should fear him, that they should serve him, keep his commandments, cast out all the enemies in the land because he’s going to do it for them.
03:38 Seven different people groups that occupy the land. He’s going to wipe them out as Deuteronomy 7 tells us that they shouldn’t be afraid or discouraged. But remember what God has done.
03:47 And so we see here as we’ve gone through this series on Deuteronomy 8:18, we see that God is the one that tests and builds character in low times. He tests. He rewards.
04:01 You must stay near to Him to experience the greatest blessings in life. And conversely, if you go far off from God, that is going to be the worst part of your life because we are built, engineered, made to be near God. Amen.
04:15 The Israelites were tested in the wilderness and we see what happened there was not pretty for many of them. What’s happening in our lives today? Where is God testing us? That’s the question. What is the godly response to testing? Well, if we’ve sinned, we need to repent.
04:31 And if we haven’t sinned, we need to pray that we don’t sin. Amen. We need to look back on what he has done and have faith on what he can and will do if we continue to simply believe.
04:42 God rewards faithfulness in Him. The common theme here is if you don’t drift from God, if you’re obedient to God, even in those difficult times, eventually God will reward that faithfulness. Again, he is the provider of wealth.
04:58 And I’m gonna get to in a minute here, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but oftentimes people think there’s another way and so like a shortcut and one that doesn’t involve a deity, a higher power, one where they can be the captain of their own ship and you see where that goes.
05:14 And that’s why this, while it sounds simple as I tell you about it here on air, it’s very difficult to put into practice because it deals with submission and faith and belief and these things that can be hard for us to do, especially here in America where we’re taught in school, in the public school system, that we can do anything, that man can achieve everything, and that man should have a plan for everything. And then it’s all about what man wants to do.
05:40 And God has kind of been left out of it. And I’m talking about the public schools, not of course, I know there’s some good godly Christian schools out there, but many of these schools, they teach these kids, you know, your key is to wealth is not God, it’s education, it’s vocational training, it’s whatever. And I’ve got nothing against education.
05:58 I used to be a teacher, Amen. I have nothing against it. I think it’s excellent. We encourage our kids to get an education.
06:05 We got a teenager in the house, and I keep getting on him to study for his SAT and his ACT or whatever he’s going to be doing, you know, to really get on board with that. And so I believe in education. But the reason why I can tell him that is because he’s already rooted in the foundations of God.
06:19 He already realizes that God is superior, that God provides wealth, that God himself gave my son his intellect so that he could go to school, at least I hope he realizes that, and on and on. But the Israelites had lost touch with that. They wanted to be their own God, so to speak.
06:37 They wanted to have something else to worship because they felt tested and tried and they didn’t like it. And here in this world today, we have sin, the devil, testing people nonstop, bringing people into bad situations. You ask, how does a family get divorced? Is that not sin that broke that family up? More times than not, it is.
07:01 I say almost every time, sin’s involved in it. Or how about someone that has all these good intentions? They want to go to church, they want to go to Sunday school, they want to read their Bible, and they never do any of those things, or they never do some of those things. Is that not the devil’s distractions?
07:15 And so we have to get pride out of the way and look at God rewarding our faithfulness in Him, and realize it’s only by God that we are able to do anything, including obtain wealth.
07:29 It’s nothing you can do or have done beyond having faith. So don’t go far away from God thinking you can do it on your own. I mean, think about what the primary issue is, was, excuse me, for the Israelites in the wilderness.
07:47 What was it? Why did God have to tell them in our text verse in Deuteronomy 8:18 to remember Him? Why did God say, remember me, because I give you power to get wealth, so that I can establish my covenant, which I’ve sworn unto your fathers, unto Abraham, and so forth.
08:04 Why would God have to remind them of that? Like, why couldn’t they just know that? Unbelief. And unbelief, when it’s rooted in, what does it lead to? A great falling away.
08:16 What’s happening today in society? Unbelief. I watched a great movie last night by Cristano, I think it’s the last name of the director. It was called Play the Flute.
08:28 Really good movie, really Bible-based movie. And it was, it’s on Pure Flix, by the way. We’re not sponsored by them, but we’ll throw that out there.
08:36 That’s what I did. I told my wife years ago, I said, we’re getting rid of Netflix, we’re gonna get Pure Flix. And that’s what we did, praise God.
08:44 And no, not everything on Pure Flix is pure, or good, or whatever, but that’s for another message. But this movie was great. Amen.
08:51 And in this movie, it was dealing with the latest generation, and how hard it was to reach them as a youth group. So it’s like a youth pastor in a small youth group, and it was real hard to reach these kids, and with the Bible truth.
09:04 And, you know, there’s a great line in there where the wife looks at the pastor and says, oh, don’t you know that this generation doesn’t care much for spiritual things, or something like that.
09:15 And, you know, he just nods his head soberly. And yet it’s so true. There’s great unbelief in this generation.
09:25 And the reason why I say unbelief is because people are boastful about not knowing or caring about God. I was on a job assignment not too long ago, and my heart was broken. I had to go on social media, and there was a very successful person in this industry writing an article that I was supposed to potentially read and share.
09:44 Not that I’d been ordered to, they just wanted me to look, you know, look at these things for their business. And the guy literally was bragging. He was boastful about not being a religious person, even though his mother was in the ministry, or so forth.
10:02 And that was a whole other topic. But he was proud to mention this. You know what that tells me? There is a complete lack of fear of God.
10:08 If you believe in the living God, you would not slander his name, amen? You would not bring reproach to his name. You would not promote unbelief. You would not boast yourself up above him, Amen. You would, if you realized who God is, you would fear him greatly.
10:25 Can I tell you today that I fear the Lord today? I fear Him more than I’ve ever feared Him, Amen. You start reading about God, Amen. You start understanding God and His word. You start understanding His power, literally providing every breath you breathe, every beat of your heart, the one that is in control of all things, Amen. The one that sent us only begotten so that we’d be saved. Do you fear Him today? I fear Him today.
10:49 And because I fear Him, I try to rein myself in. I guess the idea that the Bible brings up often is bridle, like a horse’s bridle, where you kind of rein the horse in, amen? That wild animal, you got to rein it in. The idea of meekness, right? Of strength under control.
11:09 And we don’t see that in society today. Today we see unbelief. We see lack of fear of God, which my Bible tells me is foolishness.
11:18 The Bible says wisdom, the beginning of wisdom, is the fear of God. So lack of the fear of God would be what? It’d be the opposite of wisdom. It’d be foolishness.
11:26 In these last days, we must be faithful to God, because there is a great amount of unbelief, as there was then, here today. Again, it’s so great, especially among the younger generations. It is so great that literally big movies are being made about it, discussions.
11:44 And no one is seeing this movie saying, I have no idea what they’re talking about. I guarantee you pastors around the country are seeing that movie, Play the Flute, saying, I know exactly what that’s about. Oh, I can relate to that.
11:57 Oh, I’ve seen that. And no pastor would say that with a jolly heart. They’ll say that grieved, knowing it’s the truth, knowing it’s the last days, knowing it’s a great falling away.
12:06 And does God, is God unaware? He knows. He’s put it in his word. He helped us understand that circumstance in the wilderness with the Israelites, so that we can understand here today that he is the one that provides wealth.
12:18 Again, what did God want to do? He wanted to bring them into the promised land, into Canaan land, to the land of milk and honey. He didn’t give him victory over all their enemies. He’s going to give them peace roundabout.
12:29 And he’s saying, don’t forget about me. But needless to say, here we are in the richest country in the world. I’ll say the most developed country in the world.
12:38 One of the freest countries in the world, despite lockdowns and all that. We’re still one of the freest countries in the world, especially on the state level. There’s some states out there where they’ve got some very good laws from what I’ve read.
12:52 I think it was like Montana or the Dakotas. I mean, they let you be out there. Amen.
12:59 They let you be. And yet we have all this freedom. We have all this wealth, comparatively speaking.
13:02 We have all this education. And are we turning to God or are we forgetting him? Oh, I would say we’re absolutely forgetting him. And I would say beyond forgetting him, the devil’s in there working to pervert his word with denominations and groups perverting the word of God, changing what it means.
13:19 They’re elected officials. Oh, it grieves me to see this. There’s elected officials in Congress that call themselves Christians or even people of the ministry that believe in absolute abominations to God, like abortion and homosexual marriage, and live these things out proudly.
13:39 And then they say that they are men and women of God. God help us. In these last days, faithfulness to God is the precursor to true wealth.
13:49 So what is true wealth? Again, if, if, as I mentioned earlier this week, I believe if you had a whole lot of money, what good does that money do? Uh, when you’re gone, amen. Matter of fact, what good does it do when you’re here?
14:03 Only obedience to God and turning to God and fearing God will really lead to the true wealth that only he provides. And that’s what I want you to remember.
14:12 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless.
14:16 I’ll talk to you next time. Amen.