Episode Transcript
Proverbs chapter 13, verse 11.
Proverbs chapter 13, verse 11.
The title of the message tonight is Easy Come, Easy Go.
And this proverb begins with the word wealth.
Wealth is the precious substance of this world that gives us earthly pleasure and also provides our earthly needs.
To be comfortable in life, every person needs a reasonable amount of wealth.
Even homeless people recognize their need for wealth.
Have you ever seen them with their shopping carts?
What little wealth they've got, it's important to them.
They're going to put it in that shopping cart and push it wherever they go.
And God made the earth for us to enjoy.
And to be sustained by in wealth is our portion of what the earth has to offer us.
The Bible cautions us to not seek to be rich.
But at the same time, it encourages us to store up wealth for our comfort and needs.
But wealth doesn't jump into our pockets, does it?
If it did, we'd just wear bigger pockets.
But it doesn't.
It doesn't just come to us.
God gave the world an abundance of wealth.
The world is full of wealth.
But he designed it so that we cannot possess that we without first acquiring it.
Wealth doesn't fall into our pockets.
Wealth must be, look back in your text, gotten.
It has to be gotten.
It must be obtained by some means.
And to me, it's really marvelous when you think about it.
When we go to bed at night, we don't even think about it.
But all night long, do you know what we're doing?
We're filling our lungs with air while we sleep.
Air is necessary to live.
And it's all around us.
It's supplied freely to us by the grass and by the trees.
And we just take it in, don't think much about it until we have trouble breathing.
Just there.
It doesn't require a whole lot of effort on our part, not a whole lot of thinking.
We walk outside and we fill our eyes with light.
The light just comes to us just like that just like the oxygen.
Oxygen comes to us through this wonderful thing called atmospheric pressure.
God delivers that oxygen straight to our nose.
Just comes to us.
And through energy, God sends light to us straight to our eyes.
You don't have to do anything to get it.
It just shines freely down to us.
But wealth, wealth doesn't come to us freely, and it doesn't come to us naturally.
One of the most common questions that we ask people is, and that people ask us, is, what do you do for a living?
We get asked that all the time.
What do you do for a living?
Or they'll just say simply, what do you do?
And what we're really asking them is this: what's your method?
Of getting wealth so you can have your earthly needs and pleasures met.
Next time you want to introduce yourself to someone, try asking it that way.
They're probably not going to talk to you much longer.
But it's what we're really asking them.
We're really saying, you know, we all know we have to have wealth and it doesn't just come to us.
So, what's your method?
What are you doing to acquire it?
It's really what we're asking.
Getting wealth takes effort.
Even if you're getting wealth with no effort, getting wealth takes effort on somebody's part.
Even if it doesn't come through your effort, somebody's going to have to put forth effort for that wealth to get to you.
And there's all kinds of ways of getting it.
And Solomon first addresses wealth that is gotten, look back in your text, by vanity.
By vanity.
If you're taking notes, just right outside your margin, emptiness, worthlessness.
Literally wealth gotten by emptiness.
I'm going to read you the definition of the word vanity in the good old 1828 Webster's Dictionary.
Empty, wor, having no substance, value, or import.
Man, that pretty much nails it.
Vanity.
Now you know why God condemns vanity because it's empty.
It has no substance.
It's worthless.
No value.
No importance.
God didn't make us to be empty and have no value.
God redeemed us with the precious blood of his son.
You know, we looked at that parable not too long ago where Jesus saw the church as a treasure hid in the field.
His church has value.
But some people get their wealth.
By vanity, that means they get their wealth by an empty and worthless means.
That's their method.
Empty and worthless.
And what they do to get their wealth, it has no value.
What they do to get their wealth has no importance to anybody.
And some people are okay with that.
Some people don't care how they get their money as long as they get it.
But the Word of God distinguishes between wealth gotten by vanity and wealth gotten by righteous labor.
It's both wealth, but it's distinguished by the word of God.
And people get wealthy, or they gain, they acquire wealth by vanity.
When what they do is empty and worthless.
When what they do to gain their wealth has no value or import.
When someone asks me what I do for a living, I'm proud to tell them how I earn my living, always have been, so long as I.
I worked for my dad growing up, and I went to work for the state, and then I went to work for the courth.
In here.
And it's important.
You know, God wants my effort.
And I want my effort in life to have value and importance.
You should too.
What we do in life should have value to people.
It should have importance to people.
And teaching the Bible has great value and importance.
Keeping the peace, as Brother Shepherd and I do, just in different ways, has v and import.
I used to drive a wrecker.
You think, well, that's not very valuable.
Well, if you're broke down the side of the road, it is.
Getting someone's vehicle off the road and pulling it in for repair, that has value and importance.
I was always proud of what I did, even then.
Very proud.
These things add to the quality of another person's life.
That's what our labor should do.
Our labor in life Should always add to the quality and value of someone else's life.
It should always be helping someone in some way.
Sister Alice used to work at the dental office.
You got dental trouble, you'd see her work very valuable.
You still sit with people, Sister Alice?
You still do both?
I didn't realize you were still in dentistry.
So now you know where the dentures come from at the dentist office when she sits with the elderly people.
That wasn't a very good joke.
It seemed just popped in my head and it came out.
It was not in my notes, I assure you.
But you know what?
That's valuable to people.
When you're elderly and you need, or you have an elderly loved one, you need someone to sit with them, your car breaks down, it's good to have Brother Billy to call.
You know, we need value and importance in our life, what we do.
And God wants our lives to be valuable to other people not because of who we are, but because of what we do.
Recently, a 57-year-old physician from Tyler pled guilty for his role in a $5. million health care fraud. 57-year-old doctor, that's my age, a doctor.
Instead of spending his time treating patients, he was paying for people's identities so that he could then take those people's identities and then build Medic for COVID tests.
He had never seen these people before.
They never came to him for treatment.
They never requested a COVID test.
They didn't know they got one.
Of course, they didn't.
And he had been billing the government Medicare for those tests.
You know, it took some work.
It took some thinking on his part and some other people's parts to defraud the government of that $5. million.
But what did he do to gain that money?
Was it important to somebody?
No.
Did it have any value to anybody?
No.
He didn't help anybody.
His fraud hurt people.
It emburdened our society with it burdened our society with more debt.
But he didn't help anybody.
It had no value, no importance.
It was totally empty.
It was wealth gotten by van.
And if you're not being valuable with what you do, and there's all kinds of ways to get wealth by vanity.
But if you're not being valuable with what you do, do you know what you are?
Instead of being valuable, you're being naughty.
Naughty.
If you have notes, write down the word naughty.
Naughty.
What's the root word of naughty?
Naught.
You all know what the word not means?
Nothing.
When you like Santa Claus, who I don't believe in, who I have quite a distaste for, but he's checking the list to see who's been naughty or nice.
You see, we grow up with those words, but you know what those words are really saying?
Who's been vain?
Who's been living in vanity?
What little child has been worthless?
Because that's what it means.
It means emptiness, worthless.
Naughtiness is nothingness, worthlessness, and thus it is ungodliness.
That's why, again, the Bible condemns vanity in Scripture, and the Bible says wealth gotten by vanity, look back in your text, shall be diminished.
Diminished.
Means it'll reced.
Generally, when you store up wealth, the idea is for that wealth to do what?
Grow.
But here the Bible says when you acquire wealth by vanity, and again, a proverb is a general truth that's applied generally.
It doesn't mean it's going to happen in every situation, but generally, when you get wealth by vanity, instead of having a growing effect, it will have a diminishing, a shrinking effect.
And you'll see it over and over again.
I've seen it over and over again in my life: wealth gotten by vanity having a diminishing effect, where wealth gotten by righteous labor.
Has a growing effect.
Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 11.
Explains that the kind of wealth that is gotten by vanity, it's not going to be blessed by God.
In not being blessed by God, it will then have a tendency to.
Shrink rather than grow.
Jeremiah 17, 11 says, As the partridge, a partridge is a, and we don't have them around here, but a partridge is a Kind of a game bird.
It's a large bird that they'll hunt.
It a meat bird.
But as the partridge sitt on eggs and hatcheth them not, So he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.
There's a lot said in that verse.
You have the idea of a partridge sitting on eggs.
Of course, the only reason to sit on eggs is to hatch them.
And she sits on the eggs, but they don't ever hatch.
All that sitting, all that caring.
And those eggs never hatch.
You know what the purpose of the egg is?
It's to have offspring.
You know what happens when you have offspring?
The flock grows.
The flock grows.
It increases.
And here, this doesn't.
He says that a partridge sitting on eggs and hatches them not, so is he that gets riches that gains wealth.
Imagine him putting.
Funny that we call it a nest egg, isn't it?
Him building up his nest egg, and he sits on that well thinking, man, look what I've got.
This is going to last me.
I'm all excited about this.
But he didn't get that wealth rightly, not righteously.
It says, So he that getteth riches and not by right.
So he doesn't rightly own that wealth.
He didn't get it in a righteous labor as God intends for us to get our wealth.
He says he's going to leave those eggs.
In the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.
Now, when he's sitting on all those eggs, He's looking at someone else over here with fewer eggs.
He's thinking he's smarter than them.
But in the end, he's the dummy.
And the working person is the smart one.
Since I live in the city, I can't have a rooster at my house.
And that means none of our chickens' eggs are fertilized, which means they'll never hatch.
You know what happens sometimes, just by God's instinct?
A hen, even though there's no rooster around, they get broody.
Y'all ever seen a broody hen?
Boy, they'll get on those eggs and they'll just nurture them and bring them under them, and sometimes they won't even get off.
They don't even want to get off to eat.
They want to protect those eggs.
And I've seen our birds do that every now and then.
They'll just protect those eggs.
And they're not going to hatch.
All that affection, all that care, all that mothering over those eggs, only for Tammy to make an omelette out of them.
That's all that's going to happen.
Why?
Those eggs didn't come the way God intended for them to multiply.
It would require a rooster.
That doesn't stop those chickens from trying.
But in spite of their effort, eggs that are not fertilized shall eventually leave those chickens.
And wealth that was not gained the right way, God's way, the Bible way, the way God designed for us to gain wealth with the righteous labor of our hands shall leave.
The person who got it.
And in the end, that person shall be known as a fool.
That doctor, I bet he thought he was real sm when he scammed that five and a half million dollars.
He probably thought, man, I didn't have to see any sick people.
And to deal with these people whining in my ears about their complaints.
Easy money.
You what?
He doesn't feel so smart now.
He's been sitting on that five and a half million all this time, and now he's known for being foolish.
Eggs are gone.
He'll end up losing those millions that he gained through fines and attorney's fees.
His wealth, as God said, shall be diminished.
There's just a a beautiful example of what God's talking about.
So wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished because God's not going to bless that wealth.
And not only will wealth diminish because God won't bless it, but wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished because man won't cherish it.
He won't cherish that wealth.
When I was a young man, my dad took me out to the Back of our imp yard at work at my dad's shop, he showed me a wrecked vehicle.
Total vehicle.
He said, There's your pickup, son.
And he said, If I he said, I got enough money, I could buy you a new one, but you can fix that.
And you'll appreciate it.
You'll take care of it.
And boy, did I take care of that pickup?
And you know, when you get something easy, like the title of this message, if it's easy, come, it's easy, go.
If things just get handed to you, you don't always cherish them.
Because you didn't work for them by the sweat of your brow.
Any wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished, because that man won't cherish that wealth.
You don't have to defraud someone to get wealth by vanity.
There's all kinds of ways to get wealth by vanity.
People who win the lottery get that money by vanity.
I was listening to Brother Adrian Rogers today on the way home, and it was I've heard the message before, and it was so good, and it happened to fit in with what we're talking about here.
But he said, right enterprise always helps.
It's always a win-win.
I invent something.
A needs that invention.
Say she wants to sew, I invent a sewing machine.
She gets the sewing machine, I get the money.
She wins, I win.
You win the lottery.
The only way you can win is if everybody else loses.
There's not a win-win, it's a win-lose.
You win by people losing.
If I work righteously, I win by people winning.
The other day we had a A threat of a protest at our courth.
And it was getting close to time to get off.
And I thought about it and I went and I started talking to the employees and supervisors there and the court staff.
I said, hey, we've got information that there's going to be a protest.
I said, if y'all want to leave work a little early?
We can escort y'all all out before anyone gets here.
And y'all can be safe.
We won't have to worry about anything.
So that's what they did.
We escorted them all out of the vehicles, made sure they got away safe and sound.
And you know what?
It made me feel good.
It was a win-win.
I got paid for that.
You know what?
They got security for that.
It's a win-win.
I love here at church.
I thank God the church does well to take care of me here.
But it's a win-win.
Y'all get taught the Bible.
I get help with my financial needs.
Each person wins.
If you're involved in something where another person doesn't win, but they lose or they get nothing for your gain, That's vanity.
That's wealth gotten by vanity.
I was when I was a young patrolman, I stopped a man one night.
And he had a sack of supper, supp, in his front seat, packaged up, ready to go.
I said, where are you headed tonight?
He said, I'm taking this to my wife for supper.
She's at work.
I said, oh.
I said, what does she do?
Well, she was a stripper at a club.
And I just lectured him for a little bit.
I said, sir, doesn't that bother you?
You got men looking at your wife.
Doesn't that bother you?
You know, that woman got paid for that.
But you know what?
The men le the losers.
They didn't gain.
They lo.
And that loss that they experi carries with them the rest of their life.
It pollutes their mind.
It hurts their marriage.
It's not a win-win.
That's wealth gotten by vanity.
It's worth l.
It 's empty.
It has no value.
Spoiled brats who are just given money by their rich rel.
For that matter, spoiled politicians who are given money by their rich supporters.
That's money gained by vanity.
And that money shall be diminished, the Bible says, because wealth that is not earned is wealth that is not cherished.
People who are not blessed.
People who work hard for what they have, they tend to spend it more wisely because they know how hard they had to work to get it.
People who work hard for what they have tend to save their money because they cherish the labor they put into it.
Listen, when you're older, if you've got a retirement nest egg, It sure is hard to turn loose of that because you know you can't go back and redo that again.
You hang on to it and try to make it grow.
When money comes easy, it often leaves easy.
Look back in your text.
But he that gathereth labor By labor, excuse me, he that gathereth by labor shall increase.
There's the increase.
There's the growth of fin.
Literally, he that gathereth by his hand, that word labor, literally in Hebrew, means hand.
Whoever gets it with his hand.
That means by working for it.
In Genesis chapter 3, 19, verse A, God told Adam.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.
And you know, when we read that, rightfully so, we think, man, that's the curse.
In the sweat of your face, you'll eat bread.
But you know, there's a principle, there's a promise revealed in that curse.
If you'll look at it, hang on, where's my little pointer?
Oh, hang on.
There it is.
You know where the promise is?
Watch this.
Shalt thou eat bread?
Or if you changed it to the correct order, thou shalt eat bread.
How?
In the sweat of your face.
It's not just a curse, it's a principle that you will eat bread if you're willing to sweat for it.
I'll bless you.
I'll make sure that you'll have what you need if you're willing to work for it, if you're willing to be valuable and make yourself useful in life.
God says, you'll eat bread.
Wealth that is gathered by labor shall increase.
And that word increase means multiply.
You know where it's used in the Bible?
Genesis 1:2.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters and the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
In that verse, we see a connection between God's blessing and our m.
That's why wealth that is gotten rightly, wealth that is gotten by us working with our hand and making ourselves valuable, that work multiplies because that work is blessed by God.
Now, you can work as hard as you want to.
There's another principle that the Bible is very clear on.
You can work as hard as you want to, but then if you don't honor God, God will make that wealth diminish too.
But we're talking about the general principle of working righteously, gaining wealth by righteous labor, and God blesses that righteous labor, therefore that wealth multiplies.
If we will labor righteously as God intended, then God will bless abundantly as He designed.
I'll repeat that again.
If we will labor righteously as God intended, then He will bless abundantly as He designed.
Be careful how you gain your wealth.
Don't go out and buy lottery tickets.
If you do get that wealth, it's wealth gotten by vanity.
Don't do it.
Don't waste your money on that.
Invest that money somewhere.
If I get money, I want it to be righteous.
I'm not looking for some vain w.
All money may spend the same, but not all money is worth the same.
We'll take that home with us tonight.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you, Father God, for teaching us about wealth that's gotten by vanity.
Such a wonderful, strong principle for us to remember.
Help us, Lord, to seek to gain our lot of wealth in life through the righteous labor of our hand, as you intended.
That you may bless that wealth as you designed.
We love you and we thank you.
In Jesus' name, amen.
