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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Ed Reid - Christian Money Management

G. Edward Reid

Creator of Heaven and Earth

Well it's great to be back in Loma Linda.

It's hard to believe that Kathy and I were the age of many of you some years ago when we were students and members here at University Church.

Our son Andrew was born at the University Medical Center, and so here we are some 40 years later back at Loma Linda.

We've been here in the meantime, of course.

I was a little bit surprised that no 1 mentioned the earthquake this morning.

Of course, we were up, most of you were sleeping, but since our circadian rhythms are on Eastern Time, we were at 4.03 this morning.

I was up going through my PowerPoint program and Kathy was reviewing her Sabbath school lesson and I said, well that's an earthquake.

I won't bore you with my earthquake stories, but I will tell you that I was on an appointment in Los Angeles in 1994 on a Monday morning when the Northridge earthquake came.

And also I was in a very severe earthquake in Ley in Papua New Guinea, but that's for another time.

What I want to share with you today is something that has occurred to me in my personal study in our walk with God in the many years that I've been teaching money management and stewardship.

I do want to just give you a little brief story, and that is when I was at the seminary and in college, I took 3 years of Greek and a year of Hebrew, And in the intervening years since that time, I have used those ancient languages occasionally.

And I have books to help me if I need to, you understand.

But I did not learn anything about money management in college or seminary, and you need that every day and every week.

Hopefully things are changing, but I'll share with you briefly what I know.

We're going to get into God's Word, so let's bow our heads, shall we, for a prayer.

Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be involved today with the Advent Hope Sabbath School.

I pray that You'll bless this group and the influence it's having around the division in the world.

And I pray that You'll bless each of us as we contemplate Your Word today.

I have found that the key, and I'll get into this more this afternoon when I talk to you about successful living, to money management is to look at money and possessions in a right perspective, and that is an eternal perspective.

This means a worldview with our possessions, biblical perspective, seeing life from God's point of view, if you please.

Believe it or not, what we do today, even with our money management, has a great deal to do with eternity.

Everyday choices we make regarding money and possessions actually have eternal consequences, and the game of life becomes serious, very serious, only when the stakes are raised and actually when we realize how high they really are.

There are large segments today of modern evangelicalism which have succumbed to the heresy that this present life may be lived selfishly and disobediently without serious effects on the eternal state.

Never have so many Christians believed the lie that our money and our possessions are ours to do with as we please.

Never have so many thought that as long as we affirm with our lips certain doctrinal statement, then we can live our lives indifferently to human need and God's divine command, and then everything's going to turn out well in the end.

But when it comes to money and possessions, the Bible sometimes is redundant, often extreme, and occasionally very shocking.

As a matter of fact, many people come to the Bible for comfort, not for a lecture on finances and money management, but for those of us, and I believe that would include everybody here today, who take the Bible as their standard for faith and practice, we have to ask ourselves some very hard questions.

How could the Bible's author and editor justify devoting twice as many verses to money than to faith and prayer combined.

How could Jesus say more about money than both heaven and hell?

Didn't He know what was really important?

A large volume of Scripture teaching on this subject really demands our study.

And the haunting question, immensely important to each of us, is why does God give us so much information on money and possessions?

Actually with so much to be said, and the fact that he had such a short time on the earth, why did our Savior spend at least 15% of every word that's recorded of his talking about this particular subject?

And another interesting thing, why was he able to single this out in two-thirds of his parables as being so important?

And the enigma actually deepens when we understand that Jesus linked money management to eternal life.

I'll give you an illustration of that Zacchaeus story, the first 10 verses of chapter 19, and I'm just going to tell you this because we need to get into the PowerPoint program, but when Zacchaeus said that he would give half of his money to the poor and pay back 4 times more than he had cheated people out of, Jesus didn't merely say to him, that's a great idea, this sounds wonderful.

So I'm going to talk to you today about creator of heaven and earth.

I did not come out here and tell you to get involved in a controversy.

I just want you to understand where I'm coming from in all of this.

There's some 2, 500 verses in the Bible that deal with money and possessions.

We're just going to look at a few of them today, but I will tell you if people were to ask me, what is your favorite verse on stewardship?

It was not even a stewardship verse at all, unless you see it from this perspective.

But the Bible begins with, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The very first thing the Bible establishes about God is that he is the creator of heaven and earth, and this forms the foundation for everything else the Bible says about him.

By the way, the psalmist is replete in the book of Psalms with allusions to creation as you well know.

The Apostle Paul in the New Testament, who wrote 40% of the New Testament, over and over again talks about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, All these kind of things.

And if we don't believe in creation, the whole business goes out, you understand.

Very interesting, but it talks about God, about who we are, and about how we should relate to Him.

And the second and the most significant 1, I think, since God is the only and exclusive creator, He is at the same time the rightful owner of everything.

Within this worldview, all creatures, all of us are expected to perceive ourselves and our possessions as belonging to God, the real creator.

Now it's really fascinating to me, by the way my administrative assistant is a young woman who enjoys PowerPoint and so she has finds all these beautiful pictures, I won't spend time to talk about them but I believe that they're not up there, where are they?

Do I need to hit my function switch again maybe?

No, I'm not getting the right picture here.

I'm not getting the opportunity to choose another 1.

I came at 830 this morning, so this would work.

You really didn't miss anything except the first 6 slides.

What I'll tell you is the New Testament is very clear that everything that was made was made by Jesus Christ.

This is pretty awesome when you think about it.

And I'm just gonna show you a couple of pictures, really cute ones, they're just amazing.

After 6, 000 years of sin, to believe that there could still be something like that alive on the earth, It's really incredible when you think about it.

Well, there's lots of things that we could talk about here, but the Bible is clear in the 10 Commandments that Jesus made everything, and we honor the Sabbath, the day that we're here together, about that.

David says in Psalm 121 that he lifts up his eyes to the hills.

It's kind of interesting, I know things are a lot better, but when Kathy and I came out here in the mid-70s, we were actually in Loma Linda for 3 weeks before we knew there were Masons here, and I'm really serious.

We came at night and it was in the summer and you know the smog was in here and we just didn't know they were there.

It says, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

And by the way, something really interesting, as Christians we can have joy in adversity as we studied in our Sabbath school lesson because we know if we die, Jesus can recreate us once and all.

By the way, if He's not the Recreator, everybody that's dead, we've seen the last of them.

We have to depend on God being our creator to recreate us, of course.

So we look for the new heavens and the new earth.

And also our 3 angels' messages upholds the fact that God is the creator and of course, therefore, thereby the owner of everything.

David said, the earth is the Lord's and all its fullness, or everything in it, the world and those who dwell therein." So much more.

God says, if I were hungry I wouldn't tell you because the world is mine and everything in it.

This is 1 of my favorite places in the Bible because I want to tell you something.

Planning Your Life for Success

Well, thank you, Angie, and good afternoon, everyone.

Someone said to us, there's really power in a testimony, and I can give you several.

So we sent out requests to people, you know, that we knew their names and addresses and so on.

And we asked people if they would send a testimony.

You know, Psalm 34, verse 8 says, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Well, anyway, we wanted to know, do you really have an experience that you could tell us about where God did something great for your family because of your faithfulness and stewardship.

Kathy and I have a story in here, and if I have time, I'll tell you that this afternoon.

The most amazing thing is we pre-sold 92, 000 of these.

And when they went out to the churches, people started reading them and saying, where can we buy these to give to our friends?

Well, they're never ever at We're in the ABC.

Anyway, I have a few, and I want to give you 1 for your library here.

But the follow-up to that is we started getting spontaneous stories that went something like this.

If you think those stories are great, you should hear what God did for our family.

And then pretty much the crowning act of my role as the stewardship director of North American Division, I have, well I've got too many things up here, written a book or I'm the general editor of the book Faith and Finance.

I talked about it at GYC and so on, but we also have this book Now, the whole book and the leader's guide in Spanish, also Fe Finances, and so it's in English and Spanish.

And we're working on getting it in French.

But we also have a leader's guide for all of them, which has the PowerPoint programs and so on.

And the idea is that you could do a small group study to learn about money management.

Last year, when it first came off the press, before it was actually off, I had some advanced copies.

And I went to the Mountain View Conference, which is West Virginia part of Maryland, and so on, to the workers' meeting.

And my wife, Kathy, was just there this past week.

And 1 of the pastors came to her and said, tell your husband that this changed our lives.

He and his wife had read it through and followed the principles and so on.

At any rate, I presented this in Atlanta to all the treasurers in the North American Division, and that is the conference treasurers and the union treasurers.

At any rate, they were so impressed with it that the retirement office asked my permission to take chapter 9, which is on retirement, and just pull it out and put the same cover on it.

But they did that and printed 10, 000 copies and sent it out to all the Adventist retirees and also to all Adventist employers in the North American division.

I will tell you, it's very Christ-centered And it is also very up-to-date financially, including the current financial crisis.

The reason I can do it that way, if you give a typical book to the Adventist Review, it takes more than a year for it to come out.

And the reason is they have all these committees that it goes through and everything, which is a good idea.

And there's a cover committee and a text committee and a layout committee and all these kind of things.

Well, we actually did the book in-house and had a young designer put it together.

And we took to the review and it was out in 2 weeks.

So it's current information, and I think you'll find it to be real, really helpful.

And then the old standby that I always do is the It's Your Money, isn't it, this book.

So I'm going to give a copy of it and the workbook also to your library so you guys can do some small group study or check it out and read it, whatever.

I think you'll find it to be life-changing material and I hope that will be helpful to you.

The reason is, I want to tell you there are 2 Bible texts I want to show you before we get into the PowerPoint program.

The first 1 would be Proverbs, the third chapter.

So we'll go there and I'll just give it to you real quickly.

Proverbs, the third chapter is actually 1 of my favorite Bible texts in the Bible and especially dealing with stewardship.

By the way, the book of Proverbs is an incredible book because you have 2 things there.

The author is the wisest man who ever lived.

And under the inspiration of Almighty God.

So the book of Proverbs says, Proverbs 3rd chapter starting with verse 5, Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Would that include the management of our money?

Then it says, if you do that, He'll direct your paths.

It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones.

Now, verse 9 is what this is all leading up to, verses 9 and 10.

And with the first fruits of all your increase.

Now later this afternoon, I'm going to answer a question for you that some people have already.

Later this afternoon we'll talk briefly about tithing.

So people will ask this question, should we tithe on the gross or the net?

I was a personal acquaintance of Larry Burkett, the late Larry Burkett, who passed away about 4 or 5 years ago.

And he had a radio program that was on more than 1, 000 radio stations in the United States.

By the way, they didn't pay a cent for airtime.

It was such a popular program, they were putting it on and getting local sponsors for it.

But at any rate, a Lady called in 1 time with this question, should I pay tithe on the gross or the net?

I wouldn't answer it this way, but Larry said, would you like a gross blessing or a net blessing?

Really the big bottom line is, here it says, honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first part of all.

Over in the New Testament, in Matthew, the sixth chapter, middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, I know you guys need food, I know you need shelter, and I know you need clothes.

You know what I'm going to say next, don't you?

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all this stuff will be added unto you.

So both Old and New Testament say, put God first.

And I believe that God will take care of you.

So now it's time for me to tell you a story.

And first of all, let's read the next verse, where it says, so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.

Kathy and I, do you mind if I tell you a couple of anecdotal stories in my life situation?

Kathy and I were at Andrews University when I was in the seminary there.

1 of ours is going to Tennessee for Thanksgiving.

Wherever we've been in our work in ministry, about 35 years out of our married life we have gone to Tennessee for Thanksgiving.

Satan’s Plan for Your Money

Someone told me 1 time, some of you may know that in addition to money management, in my spare time I've written several books on eschatology, Sunday's coming, even at the door ready or not, battle of the spirits, those kind of books.

And they said, this guy came to me and he says, you know I have this wonderful idea.

We know that you believe Jesus coming is near and you are excited about that.

Anybody loves Jesus, excited about that, aren't they?

But you're also recognizing that we need to raise money to finish the work.

Why doesn't everybody get cash advances on all their credit cards and get loans on their houses and everything, get all the money we can together, quickly finish the work, then we can thumb our nose at the devil and the way to heaven and let him pay off the bills in the millennium.

Anybody have an idea of why it wouldn't work?

Well first of all, it's not a good Christian witness, you understand that.

But the worst part about it is Daniel 12 verse 4 comes into play.

There's a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation.

And the people that are in debt are going to have the worst time of it.

People ask me, what do I think is going to happen to the economy?

And I'll tell you what I think, and then I'll tell you what I think about economists.

By the way, people are financial advisors to make weathermen look good.

The whole idea is we really don't know for sure what's happening, but I read lots of the, well I read all the national news magazines, but I get money magazines, you know, Money, Forbes and all those, and people are not sure what's going to happen, but they know 1 thing for sure.

We're only putting a band-aid over a deep wound right now and it's not going to hold very long.

And I think God is giving us 2 or 3 years maybe at the most where we can get our houses in order and get out of debt.

And that's what I would certainly encourage you to do if you can do that.

So that's what we're going to talk about here.

Now a lot of people don't understand this but selfishness and materialism are really part of the devil's plan.

Now I'm going to show you how we know that to be the case.

First of all, in the Spirit of Prophecy, Ellen White was given a vision of 1 of the devil's workers meetings.

I've been to workers meetings around the world.

All the pastors in the Trans-European Division, for example, just a few months back, and we're going, just recently we were at pastors' meetings in New Jersey, and I'm going to Chesapeake Conference Workers' Meeting, South Atlantic Conference Workers' Meeting.

So we have these workers' meetings where we have strategy for evangelism and so on.

Well, if we have workers' meetings, don't you think the devil also has workers' meetings?

I mean, doesn't it make sense that he would?

Ellen White was actually given a vision of 1 of the devil's workers meeting.

You may not understand this or know it, but Ellen White actually quotes the devil in Testimonies to Ministers and in Councils on Stewardship.

And the 1 that I'm going to show you is Testimonies to Ministers 473-474.

She overheard the devil saying, go make the possessors of lands and money drunk with the cares of this life.

Present the world before them in its most attractive light that they may lay up their treasure here and fix their affections upon earthly things.

Now let me just ask you, if I stopped there, would you think the devil has been successful at this?

We must do our utmost to prevent those who labor in God's cause from obtaining means to use against us.

The more means they obtain, the more they will injure our kingdom by taking from us our subjects.

Make them care more for money than for the up-building of Christ's kingdom and the spread of the truths we hate, and we need not fear their influence, for we know that every selfish, covetous person will fall under our power and will finally be separated from God's people." That is incredible.

Speaking from 6, 000 years of experience, It works, he says, if we can get the people focused on selfishness.

Ellen White also noted in the little book, Steps to Christ, page 44, the love of money, the desire for wealth, is the golden chain that binds people to Satan.

So in my seminars, I don't want to tell you how to become a millionaire.

As a matter of fact, once your debts are paid, you ought to be the most generous person on your block.

Because you want to be storing up treasures in heaven.

If you don't, you can write Martha Stewart and she could tell you.

The whole idea is, she spent time in federal prison because of trading on inside information.

Second Peter, the third chapter, verse 10 says, when Jesus comes back, everything on this earth is going to get burned up.

And that will reduce its value considerably, as you can imagine.

So the whole idea is, listen, we're told that we should be getting our stuff in a compact as form as possible so not much of our stuff gets burned up at the end.

God says that he gave us the tithing system to overcome selfishness.

You read it about it in Deuteronomy 14, 23.

And the church doesn't need the money either, near as much as our people, all of us, need the blessings that can come to us from tithing.

So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about tithing in this session, because it can bring a lot of questions and a little bit of controversy, so if you have, this may be your chance to write something down.

Abraham is called the father of the faithful.

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Series

Ed Reid - Christian Money Management

Satan’s Plan for Your Money

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Faith and Finance

Session 3: Life in Financial Partnership With God

50m

It's Your Money! Isn't It?

4- Why Tithing Was Established

28m

The Cure For Selfishness

53m

Oh Brother, Another Call for Offering

40m

Who is in Control of Your Life?

43m

Ed Reid: Faith and Finances in the End Times

Tithe and Offerings as the Foundation of Management

58m

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2023: Managing for the Master Until He Comes

03 The Tithing Contract

29m

A Call To Arms: How to Fully Engage In God's Church

1. Red Tape to Red Carpet: Your Unique Participation in the Global Adventist Church

59m

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2023: Adventist Heritage

07 The Tithing System

29m

Stealing in the Church

42m

Sound Doctrine