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The cost of everything is up. Inflation has served to levels we haven't seen in four decades. 8.6 percent year over year. You have to go to 1982 to find a higher number. With higher prices on food, to gas, to rent, inflation impacts everyone. Whether you're watching TV or standing on the checkout line, signs of record high inflation are unavoidable. In the last year, food prices are up 10 percent, vehicles 12 and a half, and gasoline almost 50 percent. In economics, inflation is defined as a persistent substantial rise in prices to increase inflation. I call it the income reduction act. That's exactly what's happened. You're talking about massive taxes. The biggest gain in four years in a react former Reagan. Keep your place in 2 Kings chapter 12. We're going to look at this story in detail in just a few minutes. We'll look at it and see what we can learn from it this morning. But this morning, I want to give you another practical sermon. So last week, last Sunday morning, we looked at four steps to survive hard times. And that's kind of a prerequisite to this sermon. This morning, we're going to talk about four steps to survive inflation in our country today. So of course, what is inflation? It's something that we talk about a lot. It's something that everyone, I'm sure, is recognizing. It's basically how things are getting much more expensive today. And I've asked myself and talked to people in the church on how, I don't know, how people are affording the things that they afford or how people are affording, how much the price increase of things is going on today. So today, we're told today that inflation, meaning the price increase that we're seeing, we're seeing that they're saying the government tells us that inflation is 9%. However, many things that I look at, and I've got a couple examples for you this morning before we get in to the Bible. So hopefully, I can give you a very practical few things to think about in your lives to help you survive something that's actually happening to you in your life from day to day. But many things have doubled in price that I've noticed. It's much more than 9%. And I just did some math on used vehicles, for example. I just went and I looked at used vehicles from two or three years ago and compared to what that same used vehicle was today. And the price increase that I came up to from used vehicles just over the last couple of years is about 40%, 40%. Now, here's another thing that I've realized over the last maybe six months or so is that many people don't even know how to calculate the price increase of something. So here's a very simple way to calculate things. Just look at gas prices. If you want to know what the percentage of increase in something is, all you do is you subtract the more expensive price from the price that it used to be and then divide by the price that it used to be and take that times 100. We'll do a quick example with gas. So gas, just a couple months ago, was $6. So gas was $6. A few years ago, three years ago or so, it used to be $3. So if you just take 6 minus 3, you get 3. And then you divide that by the original price that you were looking at, which is 3, you get 1. You take that times 100, you get 100%. So basically, gas in the last, you know, it's going down a little bit now. You're starting to see gas at 550, at 520 in Fresno. But gas, you know, went up 100% from what it was just two or three years ago. Cars have gone up 40%. This is something that I've never seen in my lifetime. You know, a car, as we've looked at in budgeting sermons before and, you know, financial sermons before, you know, if you remember the Making Sense sermon series that I did a couple of years back, cars are a depreciating item. They are not what is considered an asset. They're considered a liability because you buy a car for a price and then the minute you buy that car, it's always worth less. Today, if you bought a car two years ago and you drove it for two years and you put miles on it and you put wear and tear on it, you can literally sell it today for more than what you paid for it two years ago. That is something I have never seen in my lifetime and I'm 45 years old. So that, that, all that to say this, it's because of inflation. It's because of price increases. You know, gas has gone up 100%. Cars have gone up 40%. Housing, you know, housing in Fresno, if we just look at housing in Fresno in the last three years, housing has gone up 16% every single year and that's the least number that I've listed, you know, this morning. You know, I look at the prices of things all the time and I notice the smallest things and, you know, we would buy goldfish. Jacob would buy goldfish for his fish tank and we used to go and buy goldfish and I remember specifically that goldfish two or three years ago used to be about seven cents per goldfish. These little tiny goldfish you would get at Petco or PetSmart or wherever it is, those goldfish now are 14 cents per goldfish. Now you think about it, you say, oh, 14 cents, what's the big deal? Guess what? That's a 100% price increase over three years. So 9%, give me a break, okay? It's not 9%. Turn to Proverbs chapter 11 and keep your place in 2 Kings chapter 12. So prices are just skyrocketing. Prices are skyrocketing of things that we buy, things that we need. You say, how did this happen? Why is this happening and is it going to get better? So before we get into these practical reasons, let me just show you a quick explanation on why it's happening, why it's not going to get better and that the Bible actually explains it, okay? The Bible actually explains it. Turn to Proverbs chapter 11. So basically, you know, there's a measure of the money that's out there, the dollars that are in circulation and over the last couple of years through COVID, the government, the Federal Reserve that services the government that provides the dollar has increased the amount of money that is in circulation. It's been steadily increasing ever since 1913, but that's another story. In the United States, the money supply, the amount of dollars that are out there has increased 25% in just the last two years, okay? So basically, you wonder how they paid people to stay home, you know? When COVID happened, they shut down businesses, they shut down everything, and then they just started giving these checks to people to stay home, to not work. You say, how in the world did the government afford to do that? Well, they just created the money. That's how they did it. They just created the money out of thin air. $6.4 trillion is what they created. They increased the amount of money in circulation by 25% in just the last two years. In the last 20 years, just to kind of give you a context here, in the last 20 years, if you want to look at a graph of this, just go look at the M2 trends over the last 100 years, 50 years, 20 years, that's a measure of the amount of dollars in circulation. But over the last 20 years, the amount of dollars in circulation has increased by four times in the United States, or in, you know, just the amount of dollars that's in circulation in the world economy. But here's the thing. People don't pay attention to this. People don't pay attention to this. And as a matter of fact, monetary policy in the United States has kind of become, you know, like evolutionary theory, because people don't even realize how big these numbers are so big and so large that people just can't even wrap their head around these numbers. Like $6.4 trillion. You say, what does that number even mean? You know, it's such a large number that people can't even wrap their head around it. So let me just give you some context on what a trillion dollars is, okay? If you took $1 bills, okay, if you took just $1 bills and you took a million dollars and you stacked $1 bills on top of each other, you'd end up with a stack of $1 bills that was about 350 feet tall. Okay, you say that's a pretty tall stack right there. That's a million dollars, dollar bills stacked on top of each other. If you took $1 billion, you know, a billion with a B, the height of that stack of dollar bills would be about 68 miles high. You're like, wow. I mean, basically, that's like 358,000 feet high, right? That's outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Now, if you took $1 trillion, $1 trillion with a T, and you stacked $1 bills on top of each other, it would get you 67,000 plus miles, which is a quarter of the way to the moon, okay, of just dollar bills. So this is the idea of just that they're just creating all this money, and the idea that there's not going to have any consequences to it, you know, it's not true. It's not real, okay? Economics is like gravity, okay? It's something that you're just going to deal with no matter what. The consequences are inescapable, okay? Look at Proverbs 11 and look at verse number one. So is this right? Is this okay? You know what the government is doing by just creating all this money out of nowhere? You know, look what the Bible says. The Bible says a false balance is abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. Now, think about it this way. Think about it this way. You say, why should I be upset over the government, you know, just creating money? Well, first of all, God says here that a false balance is abomination. You know what that means? That means he hates it. That means something that is not fair, something that is not balanced, like if you agree to pay $20 for something and then you only pay five for it, you know, that's an abomination to the Lord. That's a false balance that's stealing, okay? Just think of two guys on an island, and these two guys, they both work, they both make money, and they both purchase goods with their money, and they purchase goods from each other, okay? Say these two guys, there's only two of them, say these two guys, they both make $20 an hour, they both work 40 hours a week, so they both earn the same amount of money, okay? They both work just as hard, they both earn the same amount of money, so they can buy the same amount of goods, and they can buy from each other at the same rate. Now, just imagine that one of those guys had the ability to just make his own money, just to print his own money, and just flood this market of just these two guys with all this extra money, and the one guy is still working at $20 an hour, yet the one guy could just print his own money. I mean, you would, you could about imagine when you think about it from just one, two people living in a small economy together, that other guy would be pretty upset over the fact that this guy is just flooding, you know, money into this small tiny little economy, that he can just afford anything, and he can, the other guy can afford nothing because he has to work for his money, and not only that, by the other guy printing and just dumping all these dollars into this small economy, he's literally devaluing the money that the one guy earns, honestly, okay? So look, he should be upset that that other guy can just print all this money. Look, that's you, that's us, that's me. We should be upset that, you know, the government, the Federal Reserve can just dump all this money into the economy because they're devaluing the money that every American goes to work to earn, okay? They're devaluing it. So it's not necessarily that the things are getting more valuable, it's that the dollars that we use are getting less valuable. That's what's actually happening, okay? It's, look, it's just supply and demand, okay? When there's more supply of dollars, the value of that thing, if the demand stays the same, the value of the thing where the supply increases, it goes down. It's very simple economics. That's why the government has spent, you know, 20, 40 years trying to increase demand of the dollar around the world, you know, go look up the petrodollar, we don't have to get into that, but the point is that as long as there's this large demand for dollars around the world, they've been able to get away with what they've been doing by just increasing the supply of dollars. But look, they just, they overdid it so much in the last, you know, two or three years that they simply can't cover it up anymore, and the consequences are literally inevitable. They're inevitable, and we're seeing it today. We're seeing it today. And I mean, look, you say, is it going to continue? Is it going to continue? Is it going to get better? Is it going to get worse? Well, here's the thing, the latest government idea is to go and create another 500 billion, that's half a trillion, dollars and put that into the economy, they created it from nowhere, and to fight climate change. That's the solution for inflation today. And that's what this, I mean, that's going to be approved, that's going to actually happen. So the point is this, before we even begin the sermon, the point is we better get used to this, and we better figure out how to prepare for it and how to survive it as Christians. So that's the whole point of the sermon this morning, is just to give you four practical ways to survive these rising prices and how things are getting much more expensive. And really what it is, is just the value of your dollar that you work hard for is just getting less and less and less. Over the last 100 years, since 1913, the dollar has lost 98% of its value. And that's going to continue to get worse and worse and worse. What our government is doing today, what they've been doing for 100 years is a false balance. And it's an abomination to the Lord, we get that. I mean, the Bible is very clear about that. So how do we survive it, is the whole point of this morning's sermon. Turn to Proverbs chapter 18. Turn to Proverbs chapter 18. You're like, okay, the answer is going to be make more money. I need more money, make more money. Look, there's more that you can do than just make more money. And this isn't a sermon only for the men either. This is a sermon for the women, for the wives, and for the children of a household. Everyone in the whole family can help with these four items. Look at Proverbs chapter 18 and look at verse number nine, or just look at the front of your bulletin. It is the verse of the week. The Bible says in Proverbs 18, nine, it says, he that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. Now this is super interesting because, and here's another reason that this sermon tonight and the sermon this morning are going to be important because a lot of these things that the Bible teaches are counterintuitive. And this is one of those things. Like you would think, you would think that somebody that's lazy and that would have very little money. So if you're lazy, you're going to have very little money. You're going to, I mean, somebody who's just hardworking, very skillful, goes out and works 80 hours a week is definitely going to have more money than somebody that's lazy. So you would think that the lazy person would take better care of their money. But that's not the case at all. And you know that this is true if you know lazy people because the Bible says that somebody who's lazy also wastes everything that they have. They waste, they'll take the little that they have and they will waste it. It makes sense because what do they do with their time? What's the lazy person do with their time? They waste it. They completely waste their time. So the first point to survive inflation is this, waste less. Waste less. Now here's what's interesting. You're saying, well, I'm pretty efficient. Well, I think that, you know, living in the country that we live in, everyone, men, women, and children can do much better as far as like what we waste in this country. We have become, Americans have become a throwaway society. We literally throw everything away. You know, first of all, men, you know, if you're leading a family, men, you know, the Bible says that, you know, you should be the leader of your family. The first thing that you need to do is you need to lead. You need to budget your household and you need to take a look at what you're wasting in your house. Some of these things surprised me that I, that I looked up for this sermon, but here's the thing, my budget. So I control my budget in my house. I make the budget and look, my wife is definitely involved in this situation. I'm like, how much do we need for this? How much do we need for this? Because quite frankly, my wife spends a majority of the money that is in this budget because she is the one that is, that is, you know, running the household. She's keeping the home. So her input is very important as far as how I lay out this budget. How much do we need for food? How much do we need for clothing? How much do we need for the necessities that we need to live, you know, in this life that we're living? But I can tell you this, the budget for our food in the last two or three years has doubled. I tracked the budget very, very closely and our food budget in the last two or three years has doubled in our house. Now here's another thing that's interesting. So a food budget, you know, is, is a decent chunk of what you will spend every single month and it's a necessity for sure. But here's an interesting statistic and kids listen up to this. In the United States, it is shocking. This is shocking. In the United States, 40% of food is wasted. Think about that for a second. Think about, you know, men, ladies, wives, husbands. Listen, think about the money that you spend on food every single month. Imagine going to the grocery store now and literally throwing away nearly half as you drive out of the car, out of the grocery store, taking almost half of the food and just putting it right in the garbage can because that is what people are doing today. That's what's happening in the United States today. And look, ever since I've read this, I've been watching the plates in, in my house. And look, I'm not saying it's 40%, but it's a lot. Even in my house, I'm watching the food. Look, this is why kids need to eat their food. I mean, kids need to finish their food, but what's happening? They're coming to dinner, they're not hungry. Why? Because they've been snacking or doing all these things. We'll talk about that tonight in tonight's sermon. But the point is, there's a lot of waste just in something that is a huge budgetary chunk of, you know, a family spending. Turn to Proverbs chapter 31. Turn to Proverbs chapter 31. There is lots of examples of cutting down on waste in Proverbs chapter 31. And this is where women have a huge power to make a difference in their family. You say, well, you know, dual income, everybody's dual income today. So there's no way that you could make a living just on, you know, just on a single income. But first of all, here's the thing, and I've been tracking this for years as well, but here's some interesting facts on dual income families, okay? Here's the thing. If you look at all the money that just being dual income costs a family, just let me give you some examples. The average, if you have more than two kids, so I'm talking about a family, both parents working that have two or more children, okay, which is most people that we know have, you know, two or more children. Daycare costs will be over $10,000 a year, okay? Restaurant spending goes up if you have dual income families. I mean, it's just a reality of what happens because you don't have one parent at home, a mom making meals at home. Restaurants are about $400 a month on average for a dual income family. Then you have the extra commuting costs, you know, two people driving to work. Maybe you need another car, maybe you need gas for that car, that's about $350 per month. Taxes on average for dual income families are going to be about $10,000 more per month than a single income family because you'll save money on taxes. Here's the math. Here's the basic math of it and how it all works out just to break it down for you. Unless you make over $40,000 per year, it is not worth it for one, I mean, just from a financial perspective. We're not talking about the Bible, you know, principles and raising kids. Unless you make over $40,000 a year, it is not even worth it for one parent, for a mom to go to work, okay? Now wrap your head around this. So you need to make $40,000 or more to justify having, you know, your wife go to work. The average income for a single person in Fresno is $25,000 a year. So it makes literally zero sense to, for most families with more than two children, to have one spouse working. And even think about it this way, even if your wife was going to work and she was making over $50,000 a year, ask your wife that's working if she would go and do that same job for $5 an hour or $10 an hour, because that's what she's netting. That's what, you know, the working woman is netting, especially just based on averages, obviously. But go to Proverbs chapter 31. We're talking about wasting less, wasting less. So look, another thing is the dual income life, now these are just things to think about, the dual income life, you will have families that are, you know, both parents are working, they live a more extravagant life than a single income family. They live, you know, they live basically to that dual income. So even if they're above, you know, that $40,000 threshold or whatever it is, they live a higher level of income or of, of, you know, standard of living than the single income family, which puts them at more, more at risk if someone were to lose a job, things like that. Look at Proverbs chapter 31 and verse number 13. We're talking about wasting less, wasting less. So both parents go to work in general, both parents go to work, and then all that money that one parent makes is spent on extra, you know, expenses that they would have because two people work, okay? It doesn't make a lot of sense for most people. Look at Proverbs 31 verse 13. Look at what the virtuous woman does. She says, she seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands. So it says that she's out and she's seeking, she's looking for these things. She's looking for the needs of her family. Look down to verse number 15. She rises all so while as yet night and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens. It says right here she's very hard working, you know, so, you know, the wife that stays home is very hard working in a single income family. And look at verse 16. She considerth a field and buyeth it with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. Again, talking about how she's very hard working. But what does it mean when it says she considerth a field? She's going around and she's shopping for things. She's shopping, she's comparing, she's looking for a good deal on this field. Now look, I don't do any of the purchases on things like wool, flax. I mean, I don't do any of the purchases of food in my house. I don't do any of the purchases of clothing in my house. But I have a virtuous woman who is out there considering things. She's out there looking for deals on things. She's out there, you know, look, you can, I have a lot of worry and stress in my life, but clothing, food, and making sure we get good deals on those things is not part of my stress, is not part of my worry. Because she is out and she's doing these things. Look, spending your money wisely and not wasting it is a huge part of surviving hard times, which leads me right into the next point, which is this, spend less. The first point is waste less. The second point is spend less. And this virtuous woman, this is a huge deal for the ladies. That this is part of, look, this is part of keeping the home. You know, keepers at home. I mean, what does that mean? Look, it's a big deal. She can increase, you know, the net income of her house by, you know, finding deals on food, finding deals on clothing. Look, we're talking thousands of dollars a month here. Could be saved. You know, if you can go out and buy a shirt for $50 or you can find something, you know, at a thrift store or something for, that's like not even used by the way. You find clothes out there that like, here's what you have to do. You have to, you have to take advantage of people that waste. Because people buy something, one time they don't like it and they just give it away. That's what, that's what the virtuous woman needs to do is go out and find those type of deals. You need to capitalize on the laziness, on the wastefulness of others. Which is really easy in the United States to do this because everybody is wasting things. So look, there's more to money than just making more money. There's more to money than just making more money. You can waste less, you could spend less. Here's the thing, men, men, you can, you can cut down on spending by fixing things. Like think about your car. Think about your car. Like you do not want to buy a car right now. You do not want to buy a car. But here's the problem, you could go out, say you did need a car, you know, you can either go out and buy a $4,000 car or you can buy an $80,000 car. And I mean people go out and they buy these $80,000 cars or whatever. Look, if you can afford that and more power to you. But the point is, is if that $4,000 car can do the exact same thing that the $80,000 car can do, you can basically say that you would have wasted $76,000 by buying an $80,000 car. Keep what you have going. You know, keep what you have going. You know, you can, the problem is this, you know, people, if you can't afford to pay your bills, you should never be going and spending money on all these new vehicles. Look, if you can't pay your bills, you should never go out to eat. It's a huge waste of money. It's, you know, you can spend less by never buying a new car, by never going out to eat. Look, don't go on that vacation. The problem is that people in America, they just, they can't say this, they can't say these words, I just can't afford that. Because like people, people will give them a credit card for anything and like they think that they can't afford that. But they go and you're gonna pay the price for all those things. People want everything right now. And just because somebody else has a brand new pickup doesn't mean that you can have a brand new pickup. Odds are that that person that has the brand new pickup can't afford it either. You know, the funny thing is, is that I've like met people throughout the years. You'll find that the people who are most financially secure is the people that are driving the old cars. The people that are driving the cars that are paid for. The people that are driving the car that they just fix all the time. So look, spend less. And every one of us, I believe, could spend less in many different areas of our lives. I mean, here's the thing, there is no reason, there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to, you know, that you shouldn't be able to fix your own car and do some of these things. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. But look at this one. Go back to Proverbs chapter 31. Here's another one. So what are we looking at? We're looking at wasting less. We're looking at spending less. Here's another one, work harder. Work harder. Here's the thing. Here's the thing that men need to realize, you know, if they want to go to a single income family. You know, you want to go to a single income family, you want to homeschool your kids. Here's the thing, that man that wants to have a family where those things happen is going to have to work harder than the average man. It's just the way the math works out. He's going to have to work more hours. He's going to have to get an extra job. Whatever it is, it's the nature of the single income. It's the nature of having a single income while everybody else has a dual income. Because guess what? Dual incomes also raise the price of things. Dual incomes also raise the price of vehicles, houses, all these things. Look back at Proverbs. I mean, just think about the Proverbs 31 woman. She's cutting waste. She's spending wisely. But also, you can increase the money that you bring in. Here's a measuring stick, just from my personal experience. 40 hours a week is what most people in the United States work. If I worked 40 hours a week, I would be bored out of my mind. 40 hours a week would be boring. I haven't worked 40 hours a week for over 15 years. I've always had something else that I was doing. Now, obviously, with the church, it's way more than 40 hours a week. But the whole thing is this. 40 hours a week is boring. And you have to have that mindset if you're going to have a single income. So look, now what's the top end of that? 80 hours is a little hard to sustain, especially if you have a family. If you're talking about 80 hours a week, you can do that one week, two weeks here and there. But you don't have family time, and you don't want to just be gone working all the time. 80 hours is a lot. I mean, from my experience, from my perspective, 60 to 70 hours is about right. It's very sustainable for a man to work 60 to 70 hours a week. And look, if you do that, you will increase the money that your family has. Turn to Genesis chapter 25. So, I mean, that's an obvious one. So what are we looking at so far? We're going to waste less, okay? We're going to spend less. And that's where, I mean, women really have a lot of power in that area. Just read Proverbs 31 again and again and again, and look at what this woman is doing. She is really spending her household's money very carefully. She's working hard herself. She's spending wisely. Then, of course, you can work harder. You can work more hours. You know, men, that will give your household, that will give your bank of money that you bring in every single month. It will raise that number. But here's another thing you can do. Work smarter. You say, what do you mean? There's a word that's used in the Bible over and over and over again. It's used so many times, we could never even go through all the verses here about what this word is. But here's the thing you can do, especially men, well, it applies to women as well. Increase the value of your time. So if you want to, you know, I don't want to work 70 hours a week, well, then increase the value of each hour of your time. That's another way to make more money and fight inflation. Look at Genesis chapter 25, look at verse number 27. Here's this word. Let's look at this word. The Bible says in verse 27, it says, and the boys grew, and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field and Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents. So it says that he was cunning in hunting. What does that mean? It means he was very good at it. It means he was very skillful in hunting. Turn to Proverbs chapter 22. Proverbs chapter 22. I'll read for you Exodus chapter 28 and verse number six. The Bible, I mean, we just looked at Exodus 28 ad nauseam. We talked about this, these clothing of the high priest. We talked about the ephod. We talked about how that ephod, if you remember from Exodus chapter 39, how were they to make the gold in the ephod? They were to beat gold into flat sheets, and then they were to cut it into wires. Imagine that the skill that it must take to do something like that. But look what it says in Exodus 28 six, and they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, of purple, of scarlet, and of fine twine linen with cunning work. That means skillful workers did this. Look at Proverbs 22 and verse number 29. So look, I mean, we're talking about something, someone that's very skilled to make, they literally made gold threads to weave in with this linen for this ephod. Proverbs 22 29 says this, Seeest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men. Now, remember how Proverbs many times has opposites in the same verse? This is another one of those verses. Oh, the Bible is saying here that if somebody is diligent in their work, meaning they become cunning in their work, somebody that's very skillful in their work, they're hardworking, and they're very skillful, they're very cunning in their work, these people are going to stand before kings. The opposite of that would be standing before mean men. Now that word mean in the Bible, if you look at the archaic definition of that word mean, you know what it means? It means low class. It doesn't mean mean like, I mean to you. It means lower class. It's the opposite of a king. So the Bible is saying somebody that's very skillful is going to stand before the upper level people in a society. They're not going to stand before the lower level people in a society. Now you see that, you see all over the Bible, that literally the cunning men, who are they dealing with? Turn to 1 Chronicles chapter, or 2 Chronicles chapter 2. I'll read for you 2 Chronicles chapter 26, verse 15. You're going to turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 2. I'm going to read 2 Chronicles chapter 26, where we're talking about King Uzziah here in the verse I'm about to read you. It says, and he made in Jerusalem engines. So this king was very successful. He was very successful. He made in Jerusalem engines, invented by who? It says invented by cunning men to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks to shoot arrows and great stones withal. I believe it's talking about catapults or trebuchets or some kind of machines that were able to throw projectiles a long ways or maybe shoot lances or something like this. But it says they were invented by cunning men and they're working with King Uzziah. Literally the cunning men are standing before the king. Look at 2 Chronicles chapter 2, verse number 13. This is talking about King Solomon. King Solomon's getting ready to build God's temple. He's getting ready to build the greatest temple that's ever been built and he asked for all this materials from the king of Tyre and the king of Tyre sends him all these, you know, these building materials. And look at verse 13. Look at what else the king of Tyre sends to Solomon. He says, and now I have sent, what? A cunning man, endued with understanding of Hiram my father's. The son of the woman of the daughters of Dan and his father was a man of Tyre, skillful to work in gold and silver and brass and iron and stone. Look at all the skills that this man is perceived to have. And in timber and purple and blue and fine linen and crimson, also to grave any manner of graving and to find out every device. Look, he can literally fix anything. It says he can build all these things. He can make all these things out of cloth. He can fix any device that's put in front of him. It doesn't say like the device, he's like here's the list of things he can fix. It says he can figure anything out with thy cunning men. And he's saying he's gonna work with your super skilled people and with the cunning men of my Lord David thy father. So here we see these kings and who do they have? These kings have after the king of Tyre, King David, King Solomon, who do they have at their fingertips? Cunning men. Isn't that what Proverbs just told us? That these cunning men will stand before kings? See here's the mistake that people make today. Here's the mistake people make today. They go into a job or they go into working for a company or doing some work and they're like I want to be the boss. Like I want to be the manager. No you don't. No you don't want to be the manager. You know what you want to be? You want to be the cunning man. That's what you want to be. You want to stand before kings. You want to write your own ticket. You want to have, you know, just the run of the place. You become the cunning man. Forget the manager. Many times the manager doesn't know anything. You want to become the cunning man. A guy that I knew asked me or was talking to me a couple years ago about his job and he said he's like yeah when the foreman leaves. He's like he's stressed out about it. He's like when the foreman leaves he always asked me to like stand in for him. He's like but I hate it because then I have to like I have to look at all the drawings and he's like I don't I don't like that. He's like I don't understand them and I don't like looking at all those drawings. I was like no I told him it was like you need to learn how to read those drawings. You need to learn. I mean we'll talk about that more tonight but you need to learn how to read those drawings because guess what? You know the cunning man? The cunning man makes the drawings and if you can't even read them you have no chance of ever becoming the cunning man that makes the drawings themselves. This is the cunning man. They they're the ones coming up with the stuff. If you look at some guy that you work with or somebody somebody that you know and they make they make a bunch of money and you're like oh man if I could if I could only make as much money as them you have to ask yourself what do they do? What do they know how to do that makes them able to make that much money? Because there's something. They're not just nice. They're not just good-looking. They literally have some skills that that provide them that that higher wage because they're the cunning man. That's why. All right Jacob I mean I Jacob a couple years ago was asking me all the time he's like is there anything I can do to make more money? Is there anything he wanted he had some fishing gear or something he wanted to buy and he's like is there anything I can do to to earn some money? Is there anything I can do to you know you know make some money dad? And I'm like hey you know what you need to do? You need to learn how to do something that is worth money. That's what you need to do. Before you can just come and just make more money you need to go and learn a skill that someone will pay you to do. And that looks that that's that's the cunning man right there. And guess what? Becoming cunning becoming cunning is a direct tie to wasting less. You say what do you mean? I love reading the Old Testament and reading about the men like Adam and all the you know the men of the Bible that lived to be 900 years old. Because I think about you know like the things that they must have built and that's how good they must have been. I mean I've met some guys I love I love watching skilled crafts craftsmen. Like I've worked with some mechanics that could literally make anything out of metal. It was just the most I just I love working with guys like that. Because they just you're like how in the world did you just make all these things? I mean we I would work at this at this plant and I would come up with some idea and I'm like yeah but there's no part for that and they would just make the part. Because they were cunning skilled people and they were just it was just it was just wonderful to just to watch them work. To work with cunning men like that. But here's the thing. Cunning men will waste less. You say how is that? You have every ability at your fingertips to be just like somebody who lived to be 900 years old. You say how? Because there has never been a time where there is more information available to the common man than right now. There's never been a time. Think about it. Think about keeping that car. You're like I got to go buy a car and they're like even a modest car is like $15,000 now and I got this car it's paid off but it breaks all the time. Hey learn how to fix the car. But how? Every single manual every single instruction is available on the internet today. Not only look it's a skill being able to solve and find out what's wrong and find things on the internet. That's a skill in itself. Not only can you get on forums and things where people have the same problems that you have then you can literally find a video of some some blessed guy who has has fixed that problem videotaped it just so you and 12 other people can watch it. There is no reason there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to fix every single thing in your house yourself today. A cunning man will waste less. You say how? Most parts to fix your dryer in your house are about $20. A new dryer is what 800 bucks? I don't even know. I mean I fixed my dryer and my washing machine all these things so many times in my house I don't even know what a new one costs. But I'm sure it's expensive. I'm sure it's hundreds and hundreds of dollars. But what do people do today? Something breaks and they throw it away and they go get a new one. So imagine spending $800 when all you had to spend was $40 and maybe four or five hours on the internet watching how to fix something. Okay look we are the atom equivalent because of all this information that's available to us. Everything is there. Everything is there. There's no excuse today. So look the point is this. The point is this. There's a lot of ways today besides just making more money to fight this inflation that's being pushed upon us. Plus I mean you could argue that without these biblical principles that we're talking about simply making more money wouldn't help. I mean just think if you were a great waster if you were very wasteful making more money is not going to help you. I've said this to my kids you know hundreds of times is like look it doesn't matter how much you make you can spend it all. A lot of people have in their in their mind that like man if I could just make this number then then I'll be fine. But no you can you can you can spend it all no matter how much money you make because somebody that was a wasteful person when they make more money they'll just waste more. The problem is is you need to first get into an eye into a mindset where you waste less. You know have a family meeting about this. Have a family meeting you know just think about you know men just think about look at your garbage every week. I mean don't go digging through your garbage but I mean just notice what you throw away in your house. Are you are you literally using things up in your house? Are you purchasing a lot of things that are like one-time use in your house? You know what do you throw away every week 40 do you throw away 40% of your food every single week? Just look at these things notice these things. Turn back to second Kings chapter 12 spend less. Spend less. Have a family budget. You're like what's a budget? Look at second Kings chapter 12 we're gonna see a budget here. Joash, Joash had a problem the the house of God the temple was in disrepair and he was trying to to save money to fix the breaches in the house. I mean there was all kinds of damage and things were falling down and he wanted he wanted to fix this but the first thing he tried to do was he tried to just give this overall command like hey we need to get some money together to fix this. But he didn't give any details or anything like that and like after it says after a long period of time went by nothing was fixed. So what did he do? Look down at verse number nine. What do you do? Look at what Jehoiada did. He said, but Jehoiada the priest he took a chest and bore a hole in the lid of it and set beside the altar on the right side as one cometh into the house of the Lord and the priest that kept the door put there in all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord. And it was so when they saw that there was much money in the chest that the king's scribe and the high priest came up and they put in the bags and told the money that was found in the house of the Lord and they gave the money being told into the hands of them that did the work. They had the oversight of the house of the Lord and they laid it out to the carpenters and the builders and wrought upon the house of the Lord and to masons and hewers of stones and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the breaches of the house of the Lord for it was all that was laid out for the house to repair it. So first of all they tried it with just no budget, with just no money, with just this general command. It didn't work. A budget needs to be detailed. You need to set the money aside. I mean a lot of people that because look if you don't have a budget or a plan that's the first problem okay but the second problem is once you have a budget or a plan it's worthless unless you actually stick to it. So what did they do? They actually made a box. They made a box and I've heard many people do this with their budgets that they'll actually you know say you have you know a hundred dollars per month for you know to go out to eat and that's your budget. You know a lot of people will just take I mean people that want to stick to a budget will take that money out in cash. This is the equivalent of putting a box to the side with a hole in it. They'll take that money out in cash and they'll put it in an envelope. I'm not saying you have to do this but the point is a budget's no good unless you stick to it. Just as Joe Ash is finding out with the house of God, they'll put it in an envelope and when that envelope is empty they're done and that's how they stick to their budget because it's so easy today and also notice another thing that Joe Ash didn't do. He didn't like borrow the money to go repair the house. He literally they didn't start the work until the box was full of money and then they could take the money out of the box and hand it to the people that were doing the work. He didn't like swipe his credit card. Obviously there's no credit cards back then but he didn't borrow the money you know and I've covered this in sermons before but borrowing the money going into debt will just that's just gonna bring you into servitude. That's another thing that's like gravity. I don't care what society you live in you go borrow a bunch of money get into a bunch of debt you're gonna be in servitude. You're like slavery's illegal today. You're gonna be a servant if you go into a bunch of debt. That's what you're gonna be. So look have a budget and stick to that budget. You know spend spend waste less spend less. Another thing work harder you know single income with the single income family and this is the whole thing on its own but the single income family folks is just gonna take a hard worker on on the husband side and the wife side you know and and the wife is gonna is gonna have to be smart. She's gonna have to I mean she she has just as much power on the family budget situation being successful or not successful as the husband who actually brings in the income. So remember that and then the fourth thing is just work smarter. You know get out of this mindset that you always need to call somebody. You know I joke around and I probably joked around with people in this church that you know there's not enough money in the world to make me a plumber yet I am plumbing all the time. I'm always doing plumbing. I hate it. I'm always and I'm always doing I'm not doing like new construction plumbing. I'm doing like plumbing on my house where it's like the most disgusting you know plumbing problems and you're snaking drainpipes in a 40 year old house and I end up doing this all the time. I do all the plumbing here but here's why it's because look get skillful and you can you know I don't know how many times I've said to my wife fixed it for 10 bucks or whatever you know is because calling somebody will cost you hundreds of dollars. Whereas if you can fix it for yourself it's it's like increasing your income by that same amount. So I believe that there's bandwidth to weather inflation in every family for these four reasons. All right tonight tonight we're gonna look at the root causes. The root causes of that the root causes that lead to financial and spiritual despair in in America today. So I'm gonna look at the root not root causes actually the root cause of financial and spiritual despair in our country today. So inflation things are just gonna get more expensive. Why? Because your dollars just getting less and less valuable. Why? Because of politicians and bankers and things that are completely outside of our control but if we just follow biblical principles in our lives we don't go into a bunch of debt you know we work harder we spend less we waste less and then we get more skillful what we can weather this and we will weather it better than anybody else. You say but we have single income we will still weather it better than anybody else if we just follow what the Bible says. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.