James 5:1-6, ESV
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Options:
++1. Worship God with our resources.
++2. Worship resources as our God.
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Responses:
++1. Selfishness
( What’s mine is mine)
++2. Stealing
(What’s yours is mine)
++3. Stewardship
(What’s mine is His)
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Worldview of wealth:
++Rich (oppressors) and Poor (oppressed)
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Biblical view of wealth:
++Godly rich and Godly poor.
++Ungodly rich and Ungodly poor.
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Biblical goal for wealth:
++*Stewardship
++*Servant hood
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Write this down:
You can love money and use people.
Or…….
You can use money to love people.
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Personalities of wealth:
1. Hoarders
2. Spenders
3. Avoiders
4. Haters
5. Manipulators
6. Flaunters
7. Score keepers
8. Givers
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3. Worthless wealth can lead to _many sins_.
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- Wealth unjustly _gained_.
V4. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
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- Wealth selfishly _spent_.
V5. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
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- “Luxury” _softness/ comfort_
- “self-indulgence” _pursuit of pleasure_
- “fatten your hearts in the day of slaughter” _addictive lifestyle/ “never enough”_
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“They are like so many unthinking beasts, luxuriating in their pastures day after day, growing fat by the hour and careless of the fact that each day, each hour, brings the butcher nearer, Only the thin beast is safe that day; the well-fed has made itself ready for the knife…..blind to heaven and hell, living for this life, forgetting the day of slaughter.”
Alec Motyer
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- Wealth wickedly _acquired_.
V6. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
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4. Wealth can lead to _blessings_.
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:16-17, ESV
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- God is the owner and we are the stewards.
++Therefore, God is honored by good stewardship and dishonored by dead-end sponges.
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- Don’t give to get a blessing.
++ We give to be a blessing.
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17 Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to use their money to do good.
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They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. 19 By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.
1 Timothy 6:17-19, NLT
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“Promising fulfillment in money and things and lands and houses and cars and clothes and boats and campers and hot tubs and world travel, materialism has left us bound and gagged, pathetically thinking what the drug addict thinks, that our only hope is getting more of the same.
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All the while the voice of God, so hard to hear through the clatter of our things, tells us that even if materialism did bring happiness in this life- which it clearly does not- it leaves us woefully unprepared for the next”
Randy Alcorn
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Guidelines for God’s Wealth and Will
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- _Provide_ for your family.
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
1 Timothy 5:8
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- _Promote_ God’s kingdom on earth.
1 We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, 2 for in a severe test of affliction, their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.
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3 For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord
2 Corinthians 8:1-3
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- _Win the lost_.
5 Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, 6 who testified to you r love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.
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7 For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. 8 Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.
John 3:5-8
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- _Care for those in need_.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him,
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how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:16-18
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- _Support those in ministry_.
* 1 Corinthians 9:4-14
Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.
Galatians 6:6
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