The ABCs To Be Financially Free

David J. Mullins: Hey podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. Now, here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
Dr. Robert Jeffress: Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, do you know if you look through the Bible, you'll find a wealth, pardon the pun, of information about money in the Bible? I know there's some of you who are saying, "Wait a minute. Shouldn't you be talking about something more spiritual like the Holy Spirit or sanctification? Why are we talking so much about money?" The reason we talk so much about money is because the Bible talks so much about money.
David J. Mullins: Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. Car payments, a mortgage, keeping the lights on, and the refrigerator stocked. When you add up all the normal expenses, a lot of families are left with very little financial margin. So what is the solution? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares Solomon's wisdom for managing finances on a tight budget. But first, let's take a moment to hear some important ministry updates.
Dr. Robert Jeffress: Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. I'm convinced that the best vacations are the ones in which I leave margin for spiritual enrichment. In fact, I'd argue that it's one of the healthiest things you can do for your soul. Imagine spending 10 days tracing the actual footsteps of the Apostle Paul, walking the ancient streets of Ephesus and Thessaloniki, surrounded by a group of like-minded friends who love God's word as much as you do. That's exactly what we're doing May 14th through the 23rd, 2027, on the Pathway to Victory Journeys of Paul Mediterranean Cruise. We've planned the perfect balance of meaningful exploration and genuine rest. All the details are at ptv.org. This year, Pathway to Victory is celebrating 30 years of ministry. To mark the occasion, I've written a brand-new book for you. It's called *Seven Lessons from My 70 Years*. This is really more of a personal journal than a traditional book. One of the major lessons that runs right through its pages is the secret to a truly fulfilling life: aligning your priorities with God's. When His purposes become our purposes, everything else finds its proper place, including our money. That's what our message is about today. I'll send you a copy of my book when you give a special 30th-anniversary gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. I'll say more later, but right now, it's time to start the message. I titled today's sermon, "The ABCs To Be Financially Free." Vicki Robins and Joe Dominguez wrote a best-selling book a few years ago entitled *Your Money or Your Life*. In the book, they recounted their own personal story of how they decided to get out of the rat race, to quit their jobs, and live on $6,000 a year of investment income so that they could pursue their real passion of participating in charitable work. They wanted to be free from having to earn a living so that they could give themselves to volunteer service. It's not a Christian book per se, but there's a compelling message in that book for every Christian. The fact is, there are many Christians who are working at jobs they cannot stand to buy things they do not need in order to impress people they really don't like. Maybe you're one of those people. Notice today I have what I call the ABCs to be financially free. Here are the four principles for creating margin in your life. The A stands for adjust your spending below your income. If you want to have margin, first of all, adjust your spending below your income. Now, the B in this outline stands for be careful of debt. Are you borrowing too much money? Are you enslaved to debt? How do you know if you are? One way is to do a calculation. Many financial consultants say that we should spend no more than 30 to 35% of our income every month on all of our debt: house payments, car payments, credit card payments. If you are spending more than 30 to 35%, you may be in trouble. Here's the basic problem with debt. Debt allows us to artificially live beyond our means, and debt erases any financial margin that we have. Number three, how do you create financial margin in your life? The C stands for consistently save part of your income. Remember Proverbs chapter 6, verses 6 through 8. Solomon said, "Go to the ant, O sluggard. Observe her ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer, or ruler, prepares her food in summer and then gathers her provision in the harvest." Even an ant understands that the harvest it enjoys in the summertime, the bountiful food, won't last forever. So it sets aside some of the food in the summer and in the fall to prepare for the wintertime where there is no food. The same thing is true for us. If we're wise, we're going to set aside some of our income for future needs. How much income should we set aside? Some financial planners say that we ought to set aside at least 10 to 15% of our income for our retirement needs, and then more than that to set aside for emergencies, college educations, and other big-ticket items. How much money you set aside really isn't our call to make. But I want to give you three words that will help you in your saving and three words that will help you understand the benefits of saving. By the way, there are a lot of you right now listening who are young adults, those in midlife, and senior adults. It's not too late for you, but it's going to be harder for you to create margin in your life. If you're a young adult listening to this message right now, write this down. Parents, grandparents, write it down for your children and your grandchildren. Three important words. Number one: immediacy. The best time to begin saving money is now. Because smaller amounts of money saved early in life are much more valuable than large amounts of money saved later in life, all because of the magic of compound interest. Let me illustrate that for you. Let's say there are two people, Dick and Jane. Remember Dick and Jane from the first grade? Jane goes in to see the HR person on her first day of the job, and the HR person says, "Now, Jane, we have a 401(k) plan here. And if you'll invest some of your money, it'll help prepare for the future." Jane says, "Well, that sounds like a good idea to me." So she signs up to put $1,250 a year into her 401(k) plan. She does that every year for eight years. After eight years of working for the Acme Corporation, she decides to retire and become a full-time homemaker. But she also decides to leave the money she has accumulated over those eight years in that 401(k) plan. For the next 22 years, she doesn't touch it, and she doesn't add anything to it. Now, Dick goes to work on the same day as Jane did. The HR person tells him about the 401(k) plan. But Dick says, "I know I need to do that, I should do that, but I've got so many family responsibilities and expenses right now. I just can't afford to do that right now." So for the first eight years of his life and working life at Acme, he doesn't contribute a penny to his 401(k) plan. After the first eight years, he hears a message just like this. He gets convicted. He says, "I really ought to do this. I need to take advantage of this." So he starts contributing to his 401(k) plan, and he does so for the next 22 years. At the end of the 30 years, who's going to end up with more money? Is it going to be Jane, who invested $1,250 a year for eight years—that's a total of $10,000—and then never added a penny to it? Or is it going to be Dick, who invested $1,250 a year for 22 years? That's $27,000-some-hundred dollars. Who's going to have the most money at the end of 30 years? At 8% interest, Jane is going to have more money than Dick. She will have accumulated $74,000; Dick will have accumulated $71,000. How is that possible? One person only saves for eight years, one person saves for 22 years. It's what John D. Rockefeller called the eighth wonder of the world: compound interest. Money is more efficient saved early in life, even if for a shorter amount of time, than a large amount of money saved later in life. Immediacy. Secondly, the word consistency. This is a key word. Again, a small amount of money regularly saved over a long period of time can do wondrous things. Most people don't want to think about saving because they don't want to deprive themselves. They think if they save money, they're depriving themselves of current enjoyment of life. But you don't have to be an Ebenezer Scrooge to have financial margin in life. Let me give this illustration. Again, I hope you young adults will especially listen to this, and parents and grandparents, tell your kids and grandkids. Let's imagine someone has just graduated from school. They're just beginning their work life. They are 22 years old. Let's imagine this 22-year-old young adult starts investing $100 a month in a mutual fund. That's what he can afford, $100 a month. He invests $100 a month and never increases it at all. He invests it in a mutual fund, and let's say the mutual fund earns 12% a year. By age 72, do you know how much money he will have accumulated? $100 a month, never increases it. By age 72, that person will have accumulated $3.9 million. $3.9 million. And if he puts it in a Roth IRA, he can have that money tax-free. In other words, for the price of a Starbucks every day, this person can retire a multi-millionaire. Now, my daughter Dorothy is sitting right on the front row. She's going to be 22 in December. Dorothy, that would be a great plan for you to take care of your parents in their old age. That would be our financial measure of success there is having you do that. I know some of you financial people are going to write me. "Oh, 12%. That's too high. Nobody's earning 12%." People did in the 90s. It's true today they're not earning 12%. Okay, make it 10% or 9%. You can still have multiple millions of dollars by saving a small amount of money over a long period of time. That's what we're talking about here: the word consistency. Thirdly, the word diversity. The third key in saving money is to diversify your savings. Mark Twain said, "Put all of your eggs in one basket and watch the basket." But Solomon says no, that is a prescription for financial disaster. Instead, listen to what he says in Ecclesiastes 11, verse 2. "Divide your portion to seven or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth." Don't put all of your money in stocks. Don't put all of your money in bonds. Don't put it all in real estate. Diversify because you really don't know what the future holds. Have a balanced investment so that you can take advantage of some things that are up while other things are down. Diversity. How do you create financial margin in your life? A: Adjust your spending below your income. B: Be careful of debt. C: Consistently save a portion of your income. D: The final and an important principle. Devote a portion of your income to God. Devote a portion of your income to God. Solomon offered another piece of financial counsel that is overlooked by so many people and so many Christians, and explains why so many Christians have trouble with their finances. Listen to Proverbs 3, verses 9 through 10. "Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all of your produce, so that your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be overcome with new wine." These verses are not a blanket promise that if you give to God, you will automatically be financially wealthy. If that were the case, if giving to God ensured and promised that you would always, 100% of the time, be financially successful, then giving would not be a matter of making an offering, it would be making a wise investment. Nevertheless, as you look through the whole counsel of God on this subject of giving, you find that more often than not, God promises to bless those who give and to judge those who withhold from Him. In fact, not to give what belongs to God, God calls robbery. To not give God what belongs to Him is tantamount to robbing God. Turn over to Malachi chapter 3 for a moment. Malachi chapter 3, or some people call it "Malachi." Malachi chapter 3. Remember the situation here? The Israelites were not giving God what belonged to Him. They had all kinds of reasons. They said, "God, we just can't afford to give. We're these impoverished agricultural people. We don't have the money to give. After all, after we subtract our mortgage payment and our TV cable bill and our chariot monthly payments, we just don't have any margin left." So what were they doing? They were using what belonged to God to pay for their monthly expenses. They said, "God, we cannot afford to give." And God said, "You can't afford not to give." Look at what He said in Malachi 3, beginning with verse 8. "Will a man rob God?" Literally, will a man stick a revolver in the face of God and say, "Stick 'em up"? Would you say that to God? Would you ever think of doing that to God? Sticking a gun in the face of God and saying, "Give me everything you have"? Notice what He says. God said, "But you're robbing Me." But you say, "Well, how have we robbed You, God?" God answers, "In tithes and offerings. For you are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you." What's the answer to make sure you're not robbing God? "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in My house. And test Me now in this," says the Lord of Hosts. It's one of the few times we're ever told to test God in the Bible. But God says, "You can test Me in this. If you'll bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, test Me and see if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows." That's the positive promise. But notice there's a negative promise here too in verse 11. "Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it may not destroy the fruits of the ground, nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes," says the Lord of Hosts. The positive promise is this. God said, "Israelites, if you will give 10% of what you have to Me, I will bless the 90% above anything you can imagine." "But if you rob Me of the 10% that belongs to Me, I will allow the devourer to consume 90% and more of what you have." I've heard so many Christians through the years give a testimony like this. They've said, "For years, we were disobedient to God in this area of tithing. We did not give what belonged to God. We felt like the way we could have some padding, some margin in our finances, was not to give." "And yet," they said, "whatever margin we had through not giving to God, it was amazing every month how it got eaten up by unexpected car repair bills or medical emergencies or other things that we had not planned for. But when we started obeying God in this area, God blessed us beyond anything we could have imagined." Many of you have that testimony as well. That's what the word of God is saying here. Remember, we're talking about how to have margin in your finances, how to have that buffer zone. Nothing will eat up that buffer zone, shrink it and eliminate it, anything more than robbing God. Robbing God will eliminate margin in your life. So what is the answer here? Well, again, He tells us. Look at verse 10. "Bring the whole tithe where? Into the storehouse." Now, when Malachi said that to the Israelites, they didn't say, "Storehouse? What's the storehouse?" They all knew what the storehouse was. The storehouse was the Temple. The tithe belonged in the Temple of God. "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse." Now, the question is, where's the storehouse today? We don't have a Temple. Where is the storehouse today? Let me give you a hint. The storehouse is not the Red Cross. It's not Habitat for Humanity. It's not Campus Crusade for Christ. Those are all wonderful organizations, and they're certainly worthy of support, but the tithe doesn't belong to them or any organization like them. You see, it's the local church that has been uniquely created by God, and it's the local church that has been uniquely commissioned by God to fulfill the Great Commission. Every other organization in the world, I don't care how wonderful it is, it's a man-made organization. Every one of them. Every Christian organization is a man-made organization except the local church. God designed the church. God commissioned the church to be His agent for spreading the word of God throughout the world. I'm not saying you don't give to those other things, but what I'm saying is the primary focus of our giving is to be the storehouse. And in the New Testament, that storehouse is the local church. "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse," says the Lord of Hosts. The way we create financial margin is by obeying God in every area of our finances. Truly Solomon was right when he said in Proverbs 10, verse 15, "The rich man's wealth is his fortress; the ruin of the poor is their poverty." Financial margin in your life does give you the freedom to do what's right. It gives you the security of preparing for your future needs. It gives you the joy of supporting God's work. However, the benefits of margin are limited to this life and this life alone. You see, there is one contingency margin cannot protect you against: your death. Do you realize that? It doesn't matter how much you accumulate; it all ends at your death. Solomon understood that. In Ecclesiastes 5, verses 15 and 16, he said, "People who live only for wealth come to the end of their lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day they were born." You're going to be as naked the day you die as the day you were born. Isn't that a sobering thought? What he's saying is, just as you came into this world with nothing, you leave with nothing. He goes on to say in verse 16, "And this too is a very serious problem. As people come into the world, so they depart. All their hard work is for nothing. They have been working for the wind, and everything will be swept away." Jesus told a great story to illustrate that truth in Luke 12 we read it this morning. Remember, it was a story about a very wealthy man. He had spent his life accumulating margin, a buffer zone in his finances, and he had succeeded beyond his wildest imagination. He had so much extra he didn't know what to do with it. His barns were overflowing with grain, his kids' education was fully funded, his 401(k) plan was maxed out, and he still didn't know what to do with all of his money. In fact, one night he lay awake just saying, "What in the world am I going to do with all this excess?" And he started making his plans. "I'll do this. I think I'll do this. I'll do this." And then God came to him and said, "You fool. Tonight your soul is required of you." That phrase in Greek literally means, "Your loan is due. Tonight your soul is required of you. Tonight you're going to die. And who now is going to own what you've spent your life accumulating?" And then Jesus added this application in Luke 12:21. "So is the man who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." Listen to me, ladies and gentlemen. The value of margin ceases at the cemetery. From that moment throughout eternity, only your relationship with Jesus Christ matters. Because the truth is, only Jesus Christ can provide you lasting freedom, lasting security, and lasting joy. All our striving for financial freedom and liberation from the relentless pressure that money can bring, it ends at the cemetery. And there's nothing more important than settling our account with God while there's still time. This is one of the many lessons that drove me to write my brand-new book. It was inspired by a significant milestone in my life. I've called this book *Seven Lessons from My 70 Years*. You see, turning 70 has a way of clarifying what truly matters. It reminds you that our days are numbered and that the account we most need to settle is the one we have with God. In its pages, I open up about the lessons that have shaped me, drawn straight from scripture and from a lifetime of walking with Christ. It reads more like a journal than a book, and it's the perfect thing to pass along to a child or grandchild you love. I'd be glad to send you a copy when you give a special 30th-anniversary gift. Then, as we conclude today, let me say thank you for your confidence in us. Your partnership with Pathway to Victory truly makes a difference. Recently we heard from a caller who said, "I was brought up with a lot of different beliefs, but I didn't know the truth about being a Christian. Since I began listening to Pathway to Victory, God has opened my spiritual eyes and open doors in my heart. And now I can receive the truth." She concluded by saying, "Thank you." Well, that's precisely why we're partnering together in this ministry. And when you give to Pathway to Victory, you're the one who's making it possible to touch people like this caller and countless others who've come to rely on these daily radio programs. Thanks so much. Here's David to tell you more.
David J. Mullins: Today when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, you're invited to request Dr. Jeffress' brand-new book, *Seven Lessons from My 70 Years*. Call 866-999-2965, visit ptv.org, or text PTV to 78800. And in celebration of 30 years of ministry, we've gathered Dr. Jeffress' most requested messages from the past three decades into a complete teaching series called *Truth You Can Trust*. And we'll send it to you on DVD video and MP3 format audio disc as a thank you for your especially generous gift of $75 or more. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or make your request online at ptv.org. Now you could write to us if you'd like. P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. That's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins, wishing you a great weekend. Then join us again next week when our 30-year anniversary celebration continues with more bold biblical teaching from Dr. Robert Jeffress, right here on Pathway to Victory.
Dr. Robert Jeffress: Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.
David J. Mullins: You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His word. To become a pathway partner, go to ptv.org/donate or you can follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Oh, and one last thing before we go. Don't forget to reserve your spot on the 2027 Journeys of Paul Mediterranean Cruise. Now you've heard me and Dr. Jeffress talk about this Bible conference at sea, and cabins, well, they're going quickly. Just picture yourself aboard the beautiful Celebrity Infinity sailing round-trip from Athens. Now each day you'll gather for biblical teaching, worship, and fellowship, and then you'll step ashore to stand where Paul stood in Ephesus and walk the streets of Thessaloniki where his letters still speak to the church today. Nine unforgettable nights with more biblical destinations along the way. Every meal prepared, every detail taken care of, plus the joy of traveling with like-minded believers. There's also an optional pre-cruise extension in Athens. To book your spot, go to ptv.org.