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had done unto him. And it came to pass that when Jesus was returned, the people gladly received him, for they were all waiting for him. And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue. And he fell down at Jesus' feet, and besought him that he would come into his house. For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. But as he went, the people thronged him. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his garment. And immediately her issue of blood stitched. And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling and falling down before him. She declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole, go in peace. While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Thy daughter is dead, trouble not the master. But when Jesus heard it, he answered, saying, Fear not, believe only, and she shall be made whole. And when he came into the house, he suffered no man to go in, save Peter, and James, and John, and the father, and the mother of the maiden. And all wept and bewailed her. And he said, Weep not, she is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise. And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway, and he commanded to give her meat. And her parents were astonished, but he charged them that they should tell no man what was done. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the Sunday night service, Lord, and I just pray, Father God, that you would bless Pastor Shelley now. Fill him with your spirit, help him to preach his sermon boldly, and also give us ears to listen. Minimize distractions, Lord, so that we can learn from what you have laid on Pastor Shelley's heart for us this afternoon. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Look back at verse number 11, Luke chapter 8, verse number 11. The Bible says, Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. So Jesus Christ puts forth a parable, and then he gives the interpretation right away in this passage. He tells us exactly what these things mean. It says in verse number 12, Those by the wayside are they that hear, then cometh the devil, and take away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. Now, in this parable, really, if you were to try and understand the main context, what's the main point that Jesus Christ is trying to get across with this parable? I believe that it's very clear that it's about the heart. It's about the heart of man, and it's illustrating for us the different types of people that exist in this world. And I believe there's four categories. I've spoken on this before, but this first category is just the entire unsaved world. The entire unsaved world, they've had an opportunity where the word of God came to them at some point, but they're the ones on the wayside. Look what the Bible says about it. It says, Those by the wayside are they that hear, then come to the devil, and take away the word of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. So these people are not saved because they never believed the gospel. They never believed the word of God. They never accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, and so this is just the unsaved. Now, obviously, amongst those that are unsaved, there's all kinds of variation, right? There's those that are religious. There's those that are atheists. There's those that are reprobate. So this is a wide and vast array of people, but that's not the emphasis of this parable. It's just saying, hey, those are the unsaved. Verse 13, They on the rock are they which, when they hear, receive the word with joy, and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation, fall away. So now he's going to give you three subcategories of those that are saved. The first category are those. They hear the word of God, and they notice, receive the word with joy. So they get saved. They accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. They're excited that they're going to go to heaven, but it says they have no root, which means they don't really know much of the Bible. They have nothing really firmly grasped. It says, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. Now, some people take that phrasing of which for a while believe as like, well, they believed, and they were saved, but then they stopped believing and lost their salvation. We already know that that's impossible to lose your salvation, but it's basically just they have their faith in Christianity. They're trying to serve God, but whenever there's something coming and testing their faith, anything that's coming to test their faith, they just immediately by and by, they're offended. They immediately go away. They thought, well, I need to go to church, and then they just get out of church, or they never even show up at church, but basically these are the majority of Christians in my opinion. Most people that are saved just don't serve God. Most people, they have no root. Most people, if we talk about the people that we get out saved, out soul winning, how many of them have a root? How many of them really are serving God? They're immediately offended, and if we were to say, hey, we also believe that every fag should get a bullet in the head. By and by, they're offended. I mean, immediately they're offended. They have no root. They're like, oh, I don't know about that, and it's like, but Jesus is still your Savior, and it's like, yeah, but I don't know about all the rest of that, you know. They don't like everything else necessarily. They don't have much root. They don't really serve God. The majority of people that are saved in this world just aren't serving God. Okay, then we go on to another category. This is kind of a funnel. Verse 14, and that which fell among thorns are they which when they have heard go forth and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to perfection. So, this is another group of people that are saved. They get plugged into church, or they start serving God in some way, but because of the temptations of this world, because of the cares of this world, because of all the things that are out there, they end up getting sucked away. They end up losing out on the opportunity of actually bringing forth any fruit, because it ends up getting choked is what the Bible is saying. The love of money ends up coming and just draws them out of serving God. Hey, they show up for church for a little bit. They get plugged in for a little bit. They're the Roman candle Christian. Hey, they're real excited for a hot minute, but then really in the grand scheme of things, when we look at their life, we can tell they just really didn't serve God. They didn't end up bringing forth any fruit. They just didn't accomplish anything for God. Okay, now verse 15 is going to then go on beyond that. It says in verse 15, but on that, but that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience. So we finally get the best group of Christians. Those that are saved and they actually serve God. They have a good ground, which is what? Which in an honest and good what? Heart. So it's about the heart. Those that have the good heart are those that are going to end up keeping the word and they're going to bring forth fruit with patience. These are the faithful that actually serve God. Now this actually fits well with what Jesus said in Matthew nine. He said, then say thee unto disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. There's few people that actually want to serve God in this world today. And so that's a reality that we have to accept that if we want to have a church that's going to serve God, we have to understand it's going to be a few in the grand scheme of things. Most Christians are not going to really serve God. Now, what can we learn from this parable? We can learn a lot of things from this parable. I tried to just give you exactly what it's teaching the on the surface understanding interpretation, but there's other things we can think about. First of all, we have to realize that it's our job. It's our goal to preach the gospel to every single person, period. That's our goal. That's our job, but not everyone's going to accept the gospel. That was that first group, right? We're sowing the seed. It's not our job to determine who to sow the seed to. We're supposed to just sow it to everyone. And then eventually some of that's going to be good. Most of it's going to end up turning out bad though. Okay. And what we can also look from this is that some of the seed is going to end up being wasted. Some of this seed ends up becoming a bad investment essentially. They're not getting a good return. Only one group is actually bringing forth any kind of return on that seed being sowed. Okay. And really what I want to preach on this evening is the idea of bad investments, bad investments, which I'm taking a little bit of this story. Maybe a tertiary or another way to look at this is just the fact that in some ways you can sow certain things in your life that end up not bringing forth any benefit. It ends up being a bad investment. And I like in verse number 14 and who we're really looking at, these are Christians who they get plugged into God, but they've diversified their portfolio. They're not just into God. They're also into the love of money. They also into the cares of this world. And those are bad investments and they end up causing them to choke the word and they end up getting drawn away from serving God. And a lot of people will make all kinds of bad investments. And I'm going to talk about carnal ones and spiritual ones this evening, but let's dig in, go to Proverbs chapter six, go to Proverbs chapter number six. I preach a sermon on wise investments. Let's, let's flip the tables. Let's talk about bad investments. Okay. Now wise investments. I talked about real estate. I talked about gold. Those are really good investments from a long-term perspective, but there's a lot of financial investments that people make that are horrible financial investments. These things that I'm talking about are things you should not do. Okay. I'm not recommending them. Just making that super clear, but the number one bad investment that I can think of is a timeshare. Okay. Timeshares are so bad. Okay. Now here's the thing. I said real estate. So you kind of think like, Oh, timeshare, right? Yeah. That is not real estate. Timeshare is like owning the leasing rights to a particular property. You don't actually own the property. Now the person that sells timeshares, he's doing good financially. Okay. The people that buy the timeshare from this guy, horrible investment. It is a complete ripoff. Now let me show you something in the Bible. And I want to draw off of what the Bible says and understand this. It says in Proverbs chapter six, verse nine, how long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou rise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth and thy want as an armed man. The Bible teaches that being a slugger, being someone that's lazy is going to be very detrimental to your finances. Obviously, Hey, if you're not going to work, neither should you eat is what the Bible says. First of all, but he likens it under somebody that naturally becomes poor and someone that naturally becomes poor is someone who travels all the time. Look, traveling will destroy your finances. Okay. Traveling is not a benefit to your finance. And obviously I'm not saying, obviously you have a job that forces you to travel and pays for your expenses. That's one thing, but I'm saying you as a person, if you just constantly are traveling from one place to the next, that is going to destroy your personal finances. And I talked about buying or selling homes. Look, if you just buy a home and then sell it and then six months move to another place and then buy it and sell it and move in six months. Look, you're just going to be wreaking havoc on your personal finances. Okay. If you don't want to just destroy yourself, don't travel all the time. Think about some of the poorest people, gypsies, what do they do? They just wander around traveling. Okay. And there's some of the poorest people now go to Proverbs 24 Proverbs chapter 24. And this makes perfect sense, but it's interesting how the Bible actually repeats itself on this exact point. So it must be pretty important because of all the proverbs, there's lots of great proverbs. Why would God then just repeat another proverb? Just the exact same thing. It must be really important. Look at Proverbs 23 verse 33. Get a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands asleep. So that poverty come as one that travel in and I want is an armed man. Now the latter half I'm ignoring, but it's just basically, Hey, when you got a gun in your hand, everything looks like it's, it's yours. You know, basically saying, Hey, when the government, they just say, Oh, I guess everything's mine now. Or somebody that's going around stealing stuff. But it's also true that people that go around traveling all the time will destroy your finances. Trips will destroy your finances. Okay. Now I'm not against taking a trip. I'm not against traveling every once in a while. What I am saying is that if that's a habit of yours, it's not going to be beneficial to your finances. It's going to hurt your finances. When we think about people that want to be rich, what do they want to do? I just want to travel. You know, I just want to travel and see the world. You know, I just want to do these fun things. Look, you're not going to make money by traveling. Now you would think that would just be common sense, but somehow people are buying timeshares. Okay. What kind of fantasy world are you living in? When you believe you're going to be making money, saving money and making a great investment by vacationing. Think about that. Like what kind of fantasy, Hey, you're going to vacation and make money. It's like, that sounds too good to be true. You know why? Cause it is. Okay. Every time there is a scam, you know what vacationing does? It bleeds money. I I've been on vacations. I can see why dad's always angry because it's so expensive. I mean, vacations and trips and all these things. It costs so much money to travel and if you go anywhere, that's like a hot destination spot. I mean, they Jack up the prices on everything. You, if I've gotten to Walt Disney world a lot in my, in my past, cause when I was young, that's where we go every summer, a burger there's like 20 bucks. And that's like 10 years ago. I don't even know what it is. It's like 40 bucks or something. You know, everything is just jacked up. Hey, I just want to Coke. It's like $7. You're like, Whoa, $7. It's like the movie theater or something, you know? And really this is what happens when you just travel. You're going to bleed money. You're going to lose money. And let me just prove this from a secular perspective. There's literal billboards. Even when you go to Oklahoma, there's literal billboards that are advertising, buying your timeshare. And it's like, when big sell your timeshare. Now timeshares were such a great investment. Why would people have billboards advertising? How to get out of them? I looked it up. Here's another timeshare break free today. Timeshare gone.com. How does that even exist? If timeshares are a good investment, break free today, I'm going to try and break free of all my really good investments. Imagine someone like I can't get rid of this gold. It's just, it's so hard to get rid of like, is that really a problem? I'm having a hard time getting rid of, you know, this, this really good real estate. No, you have a hard time getting rid of a timeshare. Here's this website, exit timesharenow.com. I mean, just a big billboard that they advertise, yet people, they will literally buy timeshares. Go to Proverbs 21, Proverbs 21. Please never, ever do this. They say, why does someone buy a timeshare? I don't know, but they put them in a room with a really high pressured salesman, and they sit there and lie to you and try to tell you how much money you're losing by not buying it. It's like, this is a one-time offer. You're never going to get this offer. People are losing money by not buying this timeshare right now. The prices are going to go up so much more in the next year. And since you're coming back next year, because you had so much fun, you know, on this trip, it's going to cost you double next year. But if you buy our timeshare, we're going to cut that in half. I mean, you're going to be saving thousands by vacationing, mind you, by going and spending money. And look, I know people in my life personally that have bought timeshares, they hate it. They would give it away. Go on eBay and just type in timeshares. There's tons of timeshares you can buy for one penny. Because the thing about timeshares, this is what they do. Once you sign up for it, okay, you get the timeshare. You have to pay like 10, 15, $20,000 to buy them. Okay. And then once they get their hooks into you, you have to pay like 700, 900 or $1,500 every year just to keep the timeshare going. Now, even some of those, whenever you go to stay somewhere, you still have to pay for the place that you're going to on top of that. It's bizarro. They're a complete just money suck. They just take all of your money and laugh all the way to the bank. They just rip people off. But you know, this is not a shock because look what the Bible says in Proverbs 21 verse 17. He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man. He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich. Now an interesting phenomenon, you know, having worked in the bank, you actually know how much money people have because you do their finances. Okay. So you have their balance sheet. You can look at it and you can look at these people. The people that have just like anywhere from about a half a million to about a $2 million net worth. Okay. These are the most flashy people on the planet. If you want to say who looks rich, it's those people. Okay. The people that actually have a really big net worth, you would never be able to tell them from anybody else. They just look like your average Joe and you have a person and that guy that has like a half million or $2 million net worth. He's going to blow it soon and be poor, be dirt poor. He's jacked up on all kinds of debt. You know, they have the fancy car and the fancy house and they're flashing all their money and taking everybody out for drinks and doing all this stuff. Look, the people that actually have money, usually they're very disciplined. They're very cheap by nature. You know, people even brag on Warren Buffett of being somebody that you would never guess has lots of money. He has all kinds, his clothing doesn't look any kind of fancy. He drives an old car and everything like that. Look, the people that have money or actually build wealth, they're not going around spending all their money. They're saving the money. They're investing their money into good things. And those that love this pleasure, they're going to become poor. Look at every celebrity. Every celebrity, they buy their yacht, they buy their mansion. They're spending all this money that they're coming in to them for their athletics. They break their knee. You know, now they lose their contract. They say fag one time, they lose their contract or whatever. You know, something happens to them. They lose that money coming in and they're the poorest people on the planet. They have to go bankrupt. He said, how could you, how could you spend $24 million a year? They do it. They love pleasure. That's how. And so look, a bad investment is vacationing. Okay. Just time to avoid them. All right. Go to Proverbs 20. Just flip the page. Let me give you my second bad investment. Now, look, I don't, the reason why I'm preaching this is people do this stuff and I don't want you to remember this sermon. Be like pastor Shelley said, don't go to the timeshare presentation. Just don't go. Well, they're going to give me a free trip if I go and I just listened through the brochure. Don't do it. Don't do it. I know people. They like, I would never buy when they buy one. It was like, what in the world? I don't know, man. I just don't get in the room. Okay. Number two, bad investment, penny stocks, penny stocks. Look what it says in Proverbs 20 verse 21 and inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning, but the end thereof shall not be blessed. Look at Proverbs 28. Go to Proverbs 28. The Bible says, Hey, you can reap a lot of money quickly, but if it happens to be very quickly, the end's not going to be blessed. And this is another important point. When you're talking about your children, you want your children to work hard for the things that they have. You don't want your kids to be spoiled brats and then just bless them with all this money that they didn't work for. They didn't earn because a lot of times they won't appreciate it. They won't know what to do with it. Proverbs 28, look at verse 20, a faithful man shall abound with blessings, but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent. Look at verse 22, he that hasteth to be rich has an evil eye and consider it not that poverty shall come upon him. Now there's these things called penny stocks. Now this is talking about trading on the stock market or something like that. Now penny stock, it would sound like something that's a penny, but it's just a term. It could be any stock that's priced under $5, $3 or in fact $8. So it'd be literally pennies that you'd be paying for these stocks. Now on the stock market, when there is a company that's for sale and their stock price is below these thresholds, they don't have to provide all the financial scrutiny that other companies do. So in fact, they could be a complete shell company. They could literally just be a phone bank of people calling and selling and telling you to buy their stock. They have no product. They have no company. They're just complete liars and scammers. And this has happened a lot in wall street. They make movies about it. All these people, they set up these fraudulent companies and then pretend like they have something and they do what's called pump and dump where they just put, they put out a price that's really attractive. They get people to put some money in and it immediately puts the price up and they just jump the price way up and then they sell it at the top and all the people that have their money up lose everything. Now that's kind of complicated. You're not going to understand all this necessarily if you haven't known anything about trading stocks per se, but why do people do penny stocks? Well, here's the thing. Some penny stocks even trade at like 0.00001. So you could buy a million shares for like a thousand dollars. You can just put a thousand dollars into a company and buy a million shares. And they're like, well, if the share price goes to a buck, I'm a millionaire, right? All I have to do is put in a thousand bucks and I get a million. And so that's the idea. That's the philosophy. But let me tell you something. You're better off buying lottery tickets than buying penny stocks. And look, I've known a ton of people that have gotten invested in these things. You can lose so much money very quickly. They're fraudulent. They're fake. It's not a good investment. And even if it was, the Bible says you must have an evil eye. You're not trying to do anything honestly. You're not trying to do anything genuinely. And look, majority of these are fake. They're a fraud. You're better off just going to the casino. I mean, literally that's what a penny stock is like. You might as well, it's rigged. Okay. You might as well go to the casino and just let them rip you off there. You might have some fun at least. Okay. I'm not advertising the casino. Okay. It's wicked. But I'm saying like, don't buy penny stocks. They're a complete fraud. Don't let someone come up to you and say, Hey, I found out about this company. It's going to be the next Microsoft. They're trading at like 3 cents a share. You know, you got 10 grand, you got 5 grand. And look, people do this in churches. Even my, I know people in my family, they had people in church come and they're trying to sell them mutual funds and sell them all kinds of goods, whatever, and just ripping them off, giving them all kinds of bad investment advice. Look, and it sounds cool. Oh, sweet. You got the end on this company. Yeah. It's going to be a big shot. You know, put a thousand bucks in, put 10,000 bucks in. You're going to be a millionaire. You're not. You are going to lose that money. I already told you what wise investments were. Okay. And first of all, you don't want to get rich quick. It will destroy you and destroy your life. People that win the lottery, it destroys their life. Now, I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this next one. Go to Proverbs chapter 14. These are some bad investments. Most of you might not even encounter those things, but just stay away from them. Stay away from penny stocks. Stay away from timeshares. And ultimately this is your lesson. You say, stay away from any get rich quick scheme. All of them. If someone tries to advertise a get rich quick scheme, you say, no, I don't want it. I'm not interested. It's not godly. It's unbiblical. I'm going to avoid it. People that actually have money, even from a current perspective, if I was to say, Hey, who are the people that have money in this world? None of them had this get rich quick scheme. None zero. And the ones that did, it was temporary. The guy of the pet rock or whatever, or even I remember this one company, they started out doing frozen yogurt in our area and they just went gangbuster month one, but they were foolish because they got this hasty rich. I mean, they made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first month. And it was just like, that's, that's winning. You start a small business, you put like $10,000 in and you make $200,000 in the first month. You're like, sweet. You could, they could have paid off all of their debt and they could have been gangbuster. Instead, they reinvested that money into more locations and they lost all of it and now have several hundred thousand dollars in debt. They lost, he sold his business that was making him money to just go into this business. So now he has no business, no money, all debt. Why? Because he had a good month and he thought, sweet. Look, don't get rich quick. It's not going to work out for you. The people that have money, they do slow and steady, slow and steady. They work hard and they invest correctly and they do these things. But obviously our goal should not to be rich anyways. The Bible says labor not to be rich and any money that I have, if it doesn't have a specific purpose, why not just give it to God anyways? Okay. But here's another investment that I see a lot of people making that is not a good investment. Proverbs chapter 14, look at verse 20, the poor has hated even his own neighbor, but the rich have many friends. Now there's an investment out there that a lot of people are making that, you know, I frankly think it's horrible. Okay. But that's my opinion. And I'm going to try and explain this from the Bible's perspective, but it's every MLM Ponzi scheme. Okay. And when I say Ponzi scheme, I mean, all of them. Okay. Every one of these MLM companies is a bad investment. Now, why do I say it's a bad investment? I have four points. My first point is that if you do an MLM, you're going to sacrifice your social life of genuine friends for vain friends. You, you replace good friends with vain friendships and notice that the poor is hated of his own neighbor, but the rich have many friends. You know what kind of friends you start going for the rich because they have to buy your crap and look at his crap. Okay. These MLM companies are usually a fraud and they're a scam and they're a Ponzi scheme. They're a pyramid scheme and they're just trying to rip people off. And what you have to do is you have to end up sacrificing all the people that you care about and you really love to gain vain friends. Now, what do they do on these MLM companies? You have to sell yourself. You have to go on Facebook. So what people do is they just start reaching out to all their friends on Facebook and they're like, Hey, come to my party, buy my goods, do all these things. A normal person knew what they do. That's annoying. They say the only reason they ever call me is for me to buy their stuff. The only reason they ever want me to come over to their house is to buy their stuff. The only reason they talk to me is they want to me to buy more of their stuff. Eventually, a genuine friend is going to say, I'm not really interested in this relationship. I'm not really interested in this, but the vain people, they love that vain people, light people, people that are covetous. Look what it says in Proverbs 19, go to Proverbs chapter 19 and look at verse number four, Proverbs chapter 19, look at verse four. Wealth maketh many friends, but the poor is separated from his neighbor. So attracting people with money is going to be, you know, you're going to have lots of friends. But at the end of the day, the poor is going to be separated from his neighbor. Look at verse six, many will entreat the favor of the prince and every man is a friend to him that giveth gifts. Now here's the thing, lots of people love to come to your MLM party and get a free cookie and then hang out and it's fun, but they're not really your friend. Everyone wants a free sample. Everybody wants the free gimme, you know, the thing that they give out or whatever, but at the end of the day, that's not real friendship. What the Bible is exposing here is fake friendships. It's saying, hey, many will entreat the favor of the prince and every man is a friend to him that giveth gifts. And you know, these MLM parties, they're always trying to entice people to come. So they'll give them little goodies or little gift bags or little cookies. It's really like the cell groups or life groups at churches where they're just trying to bring people in. They don't actually care about them. And they're enticing them with these little gifts and little trinkets for what? For them to end up making a purchase, end up to buying that product and subscribing, end up becoming a new distributor, becoming one of the people under them for the pyramid scheme, okay? This is not a real friend. And people that invest in MLM, you're going to destroy your social life in order to be successful in this company. The people that are successful, they end up driving away genuine friends and replacing them with vain friends. Go to Proverbs 31, Proverbs 31. And I've seen this firsthand. And you know, I've even seen this where people, they reach out to you. You've never even talked to them in two years, five years. Hey, you want to come to my party? It's like, no. Imagine the only thing I ever invite you to do is come buy my product. You really think I'm your friend? You know who does that? Amazon, Walmart, McDonald's. They're always inviting me over. Hey, McDonald's always wants me to come buy. Sometimes they'll give me a free sample. They'll even smile and they'll shake my hand. They'll tell me how special I am. Well, maybe not right now, but you know, where's your mask? But isn't that, how is that different then? Is that real friendship? No, you can see right through that. And anybody that's a sincere person can see right through these MLM schemes. And so when it ends up happening is you drive off all your good friends that wanted to talk about life and their kids and family and church and God and have like a real human experience. And now it's replaced with what you selling them products, you selling them goods. And it takes so much time, effort and energy in order to actually sell this crap. And you know what? You end up not even making that much money. Now, let me say this. Most people that get involved with this would be women. Okay. Because it's easy for them. They're at the house. They have, they're the ones that are more social anyways. They have more friends. There's nothing wrong with women making money. In fact, the Bible shows us a good example of a Proverbs 31 woman making money. Look at Proverbs 31 verse 20. She stretches out her hand to the poor, not the rich that can come buy her crap. Yay. She reaches for their hands to the needy, not the ones that are going to buy her crap. Verse 21. She is not afraid of the snow for her household. For all her household are clothed with scarlet. She make of herself coverings of tapestry. Her clothing is silk and purple. Her husband is known in the gate. When he sit at the among the elders of the land, she make a fine linen and sell it and deliver girls on the merchant. So we actually see the Proverbs 31 woman is selling goods. And you say, Oh, see pastor Shelley MLM. Well, you missed an important step. It says in verse 24, she make a fine linen. She's making something good. And then she's selling that good. She's not a distributor. You know, as a distributor Walmart. Okay. You're not going to be as good a distributor as Walmart. You're not going to be as good a distributor as these places, but what they understand is they can use people, take advantage of them and their social interactions to reap benefits from them and sell their product that nobody would ever buy. And so you have to put all this time, effort and energy to end up selling things. And you don't even make very good profits. If you were such a good distributor, then open a Walmart. You're not that great. Okay. And you know what? These people, they have to invest so much effort, so much energy, so much contact in different people, having them over doing all this work. Look, if you just invested all that time, effort and energy and something else, you could have made the same money and not been trapped in a cold. Okay. There's nothing wrong with doing something with your time, making good merchandise, selling good merchandise. But I looked up an article. This article is analyzing MLM companies. Listen to what this card article says. It says the AARP foundations study found that 44% of participants in MLM drop out after less than one year working with MLM. So it says that most people actually just quit like 40 or not most, but almost half quit just in the first year of working for these things. Okay. It says Taylor's research shows similar numbers and goes in a little more depth on dropout rights. A minimum of 50% of MLM representatives drop out in the first year. A minimum of 90% of representatives leave within five years. By year 10, only those at or near the top have dropped out, which means at least 95% of representatives have dropped out. So it's a pretty short term gig, even from the statistics of people that get involved with these things. It goes on to say this, these numbers don't bode well when comparing them to the average failure rates of small businesses. So what this article does, which I think is brilliant, is they always try to advertise an MLM as being, you know, your own boss, but you're not. Okay. Owning your own company, which you don't. Okay. But if you actually just invested in your own company or your own product, you know, people do like an Etsy shop or they actually sell something that's tangible goods or do their own farmer's market or something where you truly are. It's comparing your small businesses. It says, according to the US business administration, only 20% of small businesses don't make it past the first year. So as 44% drop out of these MLMs, only 20% quit in the small business. It said half of them last longer than five years and about a third of them make it past 10 years. So just comparing people that actually have their own real business, like a legitimate business, they last way longer than these MLM companies. And if you want to talk about a good investment, look, obviously if you have a bad idea, it's always going to be wrong, but people that have their own businesses can make good money. And that's a way that people made a lot of money. But making money in MLM, the answer is you don't even make that much. You know, small businesses, you can make a lot of money if that's what you're, you know, you want to provide for your family or do good or actually have some benefit. This is the amount of money people make in MLMs. Okay. It says the ARP found that only 25% of people that got an MLM made a profit. Now here's the thing. Let's just say you didn't even do either of those. You just got a job. You know how many people make a profit when they get a job? A hundred percent. Some people, they invest tons of time, effort and energy. They don't even make money. Only 25, 25% make a profit, 27% broke even and about half of them lost money. Okay. So we talk about the 25% that made money, 14%. So about a little more than half of those made less than $5,000. That's not even that much money. It says 6% made between five and 10,000, 3% made between 10,000 and 25,000, 3% made 25,000 or more, 0.05% made a hundred thousand or more dollars. So we're talking about, look, the very smallest threshold of all those groups barely even made that much money. So it's like, why am I putting all this time, effort and energy into this when I'm not even going to be making that much money? Like if the goal is to make a few bucks on the side, this is a horrible investment. If it's to gain social life, it's a horrible investment. It's destroying you. Go to Proverbs 27. On top of this, you have to do shameless self-promotion in these MLM companies. You have to go and market yourself and talk about yourself and talk about these products. My life was so bad and it was going on the downward spiral. And then I found essential oils. And now my life is just so wonderful and so great. Isn't that an interesting name? Essential oils. How many men in here have ever have never used an essential oil? It doesn't look very essential. How many people have gone their whole life never using them? They're so essential. I'm just saying like in the past, essential, they're so essential. Look, they have to go out there and they have to try and make it seem like their life got so much better when they found this MLM product. Oh, I used to vacuum the carpet for hours, for days. And then I got this curvy vacuum. You know, oh, are you tired of scrubbing that pan for just hours and days and weeks and years? You got to get this pan. Nothing will stick to it. Watch me throw an egg on it. Is it going to really change your life? I mean, these products are just ridiculous. You have to get on there and you have to pretend like it's the best thing since the toaster oven. You know, it's the greatest thing ever when it's not. You have to try and convince yourself that it's such a great product and you have to do all this shameless self-promotion because there's no one else promoting you. So you have to go out there. We're having parties and it's so wonderful and come listen to me and let me give you lectures on it and let me tell you how wonderful it is. Let me show you how to use it. You have to do all this shameless self-promotion. The Bible says in Proverbs 27 verse 2, let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth, a stranger and not thine own lips. And look, they get tempted into going around and bragging about how wonderful their life is now since they found this magical product, this wonderful product that nobody else has. This is a one-time limited time offer. You can only get it through me. Sounds like a cult. Go to Proverbs or go to Psalm 39. Go to Psalm 39. Not only that, in order to be really successful in these, not only have to go around and brag about how wonderful your life is now that you found this product, you have to put forth this persona that you're perfect. You have to put forth the persona that your life is great and wonderful. You have to be even more fake than social media already is because nobody wants to buy your product. Nobody wants to come to your life and be like, hey, how's your life? My life sucks. It's terrible. Everything's bad, but you should buy my product. And it's like, is it making it better? Not really. Do you want 10? Can I get you a dozen? No, no, no. They had to get out. They had to be like, my life is so amazing and it's so wonderful. And if you just sign up under me, your life can be amazing and wonderful too. So they had to go out and pretend like they have this amazing life and they had to brag about themselves. But look at Psalms 39 verse six, surely every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted in vain. He heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them. Look, this is just the world and it feeds into this worldly carnal philosophy wherever he has to go around and act like they're so great and so wonderful. The Pinterest perfect. Okay. Their life is so great. They have to talk about how much philanthropy they do, don't they? In the world, they just go brag about how much they love people. I found this person and they were so destitute in life and I introduced essential oils to them and now they're so wonderful. Look at their life story turnaround. They have to have this because nobody will buy their crap. So they're like, look at this person. This person was going through life and it was so horrible for them. And then I introduced this vacuum, this spatula, and now their life is so amazing. Look at this story and look how much I'm helping people and loving people and investing in people. I'm just this wonderful philanthropist and they have to presume how godly they are too. Not just an MLM. This is just in general. People have to talk about how much they love everybody, how much they love God. And they also have to talk about how much they buy. Look at all my fancy car and look at my fancy house. I mean, when I got an MLM, now we can take the vacations we want. And now we can have all the parties we want. We can go eat out and do all these things. They have to talk about how smart they are. Look, the Bible says every man walketh in a vain show. And social media doesn't help. Men have to go around and talk about how athletic they are, right? Talk about how they married up and their spouse is so great. And these women, they get on Facebook and they share the meal that they made. Look at this wonderful meal I made for my husband this week. It's like, do you only make one good meal a week? Why do you have to brag about this one? Who did you make the meal for? I guess it's great when I don't have to eat it, huh? Who knows how it tasted? I don't care what it looks like. What does it taste like? Why do you have to go around and just brag about it? Look at this wonderful meal. I make wonderful meals on Mondays. It's like, if you have to brag about that one, what do the other meals look like? What did Tuesday's lunch look like? What did Wednesday look like? How come this one's standing out so much? And then you look at it's not even that great looking and you're thinking like, that one stands out? Oh man, why is that meal so noteworthy? But you have to brag on yourself and look at this wonderful meal I made with this crockpot or this, you know, whatever. I don't know what it is. Who cares? It's all crap, my friend, okay? And basically it feeds into this false gospel of lifestyle evangelism because it's all about life betterment. All that they do is they go around and brag about how their life's so much better from this product and how much better they're making other people's lives from this product. And they have to go around and show all these videos about how everything's great about this product. And it's the same philosophy as lifestyle evangelism. Just go around and talk about how great you are and then everybody's going to be like, I want that too. I want Jesus now too because your life just looks so great. I mean, I've never seen anybody live so awesome as you and so abundant as you. I just want to have that abundant life like you do. And they feel like they're networking with people. Look at all the people I'm networking with now. I can give them, you know, Jesus. I gave them a card to our church. They're probably going to get saved. They're not going to get saved. Look, these people are fake. They're light, they're vain. And I'm telling you, MLM is a bad investment. And the last point is that the products are a scam. Go to Proverbs. I don't have, I don't have a verse there, but look, most of these products, if they were so good, let me just explain something about capitalism. A good product sells itself. Period. You don't have to have someone convince you and wine and dine you and bring you over to your house and tell you how wonderful. Look, if it's a great product, it sells itself like toilet paper. Since toilet paper came to my life, my life has just changed. You have to come to our secret toilet paper parties. You need to get a dozen rolls, man. This is just, get on the subscription program. Look, everybody sells it because it's such a great product. Everybody wants it. If it's such a great product, why isn't Walmart selling it? Why isn't every distributor selling it? Bottled water. It's a great product. Everybody sells it. Why? Because it sells itself. Okay. Starbucks coffee. It sells itself. You don't need MLM to sell Starbucks coffee, my friend. I don't know what drugs they put in it, but everyone's addicted. Who knows? I don't get it. I'm not into it. You know, I don't want to get into it. These, you know, essential oils. It's not essential. They had to put that on the name. Essential. Then they should have been, you know, the number one person in COVID, those essential businesses. Look, we're essential oils. Lavender. I don't even know what to do with lavender. Peppermint. I mean, rosemary, lemon. Look, and I'm not against these products per se, but you know, you can buy these products at Walmart too and all these stores, but like yours isn't as pure as ours. Okay. You don't do as many cultic rituals in the field with it as we do. Okay. Come watch our cultic rituals that we do in the field. We pray over it. We pray to Allah and every God, the God of forces. And, uh, you know, he just, he does special miracles on it and it's so much more pure. It's like, look, it's just a joke. Okay. And I don't care what MLM you're into. It's all the same story. If you need MLM to sell your product, it's because your product's crap. It's poorly priced, or it's not really as great as it sounds. It's never going to change your life. You know what changed your life? True salvation. Church. Why don't you start investing in church and then, Hey, when you invite people over, it's about God. It's about going soul winning. It's about loving the Lord Jesus Christ or reading the Bible. You know what? Your friends will change based on your social interactions. And if your social interactions are all about money and buying stuff, you're going to have some bad friends. And if all your interactions are about the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ and soul winning, your friends are going to change. You know, it's gonna be a lot better friends. Go to Proverbs 22, Proverbs 22 and look at verse eight, talking about bad investments. MLM is a bad investment. I don't care how you slice it up. If you want to make money, get a job, okay? Or start a real business or make something legitimate. Make a good product and sell it. Don't try to peddle someone else's failed product that has to only be pushed through MLM. Proverbs 22, look at verse eight. He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity and the rod of his anger shall fail. The Bible says, if you sow to sin, you're going to reap vain things. Now, one of the worst investments I think you could ever make with your time, because we talked a lot about money here, but also even time a little bit is television. Television is the worst investment. And guess what? You're never satisfied. It brings no satisfaction. It brings no life enrichment. It never helps you in any way. It's only negative. Look to an article. It says the average US person consumes 238 minutes of TV daily. That's three hours and 58 minutes. Imagine if America read the Bible for three hours and 58 minutes daily. You think our society would be a little bit different? How about just five minutes? It says they're on a week average 35 hours. That's almost a full work week. You could have a second job like a second full-time job. That's more than 77 days a year. And you know what you read from this? Nothing. Vanity. Absolutely nothing. It is complete. And that's the best case scenario that is worthless. A lot of times you're just looking at filth. Joke 31 says, I made a covenant with mine eyes. Why then should I think upon a mate? TV is all agenda driven. It's aimed at getting you to behave in a particular way. Why watch other people live their lives? I'm going to watch other people cooking food and then order delivery. I'm going to watch other people buying and fixing up houses while I rent. I'm going to watch other people go out shopping. Don't shop. I'm going to watch other people go on vaca- like what are all the shows vacationing and shopping and houses and food, sitcoms. Why can't you just be a funny person yourself? Why can't you just invite other people to sit with you in your living room and y'all talk and y'all laugh every once in a while? Why do you have to watch other people sitting around talking and then laughing every once in a while? It's nonsense. You say, well, I like drama. Well, come to steadfast Baptist church. Subscribe to the YouTube channel already. I mean, I like an action flick. Go on soul winning. You know, I mean, look, TV is a waste of your life. Live your life. It is stealing your life. And you know what? YouTube and Facebook are much better. Okay. Some people, they just replace television with that. And hey, I'm not down on, you know, if you want to watch something every once in a while, or you want to communicate with people, I get that. And we need a little bit of downtime here and there, but it's a bad investment. Ephesians chapter two, the Bible says, and you had the quick and you were dead and trespassing sins weren't in time past. You walked according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now working with the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation and times past the lust of our flesh, the villain desires, the flesh and the mind were by nature, the children of wrath, even as others, the Bible says, we all have the same mindset. We all have that demonic spirit working through us. And you know what? That's what the television is constantly trying to do. It's trying to constantly put the devil's agenda in your mind by stuff, covetousness, adultery, bill fornication, drugs, alcohol, just anything and everything. That's the world's agenda. And now it's the fag agenda. I don't really watch TV anymore, but every once in a while, when you just catch a glimpse, whether at a restaurant or a family or friend's house, it's like, you can just see through the agenda so clearly. And it's so bad. It's everywhere. It's ESPN. You think like, come on, this is like football. Why do we have to talk about bags? You know, or anything. It doesn't matter. PBS, you know, it doesn't, the nature, the nature channel, it's now going to bring in facts to that too. You know, whatever it is, they can just bring faggotry into it. Cause that's the devil's agenda is to warp your mind and to confuse you. Now turn your Bible. If you would go to Proverbs 20, I'm going to give you one real quick. Another one is a carefree college education. And what I mean by this, look, I'm not against education, but this is a bad investment to have a carefree college education. What I mean by carefree is there was really no thought into why to go to college. Now, some people they were like, well, I'm just, I got to go to Baylor. I just got to go to the division one school. I looked up Baylor, how much it costs to go to Baylor for tuition. It's $63,000 a year. It's $250,000 for a four-year education at Baylor, a quarter million dollars. And that's not like you get paid that you paid that you didn't have a job and you racked up a quarter million dollars in debt. That's I mean, this is ridiculous. Okay. I, I looked at another college, Hardin Simmons. So this is not like a division one necessarily. This is a little smaller school 41,000. Okay. Or 164,000 over four years. Then I looked at the school that I graduated from West Texas A&M. Okay. Their average semester, including room and board. So this is kind of a full in package, $20,000 a year or 80,000 over four years. Now let me say this. If I get a degree from Baylor or West Texas A&M, you know how much big a difference that's typically going to make in the workforce? About zero. In some cases it will. Don't hear me wrong, but you could literally spend $170,000 more for virtually the same benefit. That's a bad investment. And look, some college education or some college degrees are going to benefit you in some career path. There's some certain career paths where you could use that college education benefit. But division one schools, in my opinion, are mostly overrated. It's not necessarily, now they say, oh, you're going to make all the connections and blah, blah, blah. Look, it's, it's, it's out there, but it's very rare. It's typically a bad investment. And I looked at the dropout percentage because some people they'll go to college and they're paying all this money. They paid $60,000 for year one. And then they drop out. You're really getting no benefit from that. Look at the dropout. Listen to the dropout rates. The official four year graduation rate for students attending public colleges and universities is 33%. Only 33% graduate in four years. They said after six years, 57. So almost half don't even graduate. They're just literally throwing money away. What's the point? And then on top of that, people get worthless degrees, worthless degrees. You say, what's, what's a worthless degrees. You have no skill. Okay. Now let me, I can't even read all my, what the Baylor and I just got a couple American studies, bad idea. Hey, I spent a quarter million dollars and I got a degree in American studies. What kind of job can you get with that? I have no idea. America, anthropology. Now some of these will tell you what career path you get. They said you could become an archeologist. You could work at a history museum, be a geologist, social worker education. Look, these are bad degrees. Apparel design just makes up. What is the cause of apparel merchandising? Here's one Arabic. I spent a quarter. Now here, let me say this. Of all the degrees, at least you would have learned a foreign language. Okay. Potentially, but they have a, every language is an option. You know, Arabic, how about Arabic and Middle East studies? What in the world? What is that going to be? Archeology art history. That's the worst. Okay. Asian studies, Chinese. Here's one classics, Roman and Greek civilization, Greek literature. Basically you're going to read the most perverted, disgusting fill and learn about the most wicked cultures that have ever existed. And then you have a degree in that. You paid to do that. Greek and Roman studies. They don't even just classic that you could get the Greek and Roman studies degree. How about just history? Which is going to be revisionist history is what they should call it. Interior design. This is a horrible degree. General business. No. Okay. How about this one? Religion. Go to Baylor and pay a quarter million dollars in religion. You will not know anything. Okay. Women's and gender studies. They, I looked at the career path. This is what your career path, the only option they provided. You could become a professional writer. Isn't that sound right? You know, when you look up these articles, they're always a bunch of dykes and faggots that are these article, these article journalists. They just write and they're just liars because you know what? They learned all a bunch of lies and filth and smut and women's and gender studies. So then they go out into the real world and they just, Oh, I can just lie for a living. Cool. It's called the journalism. I look at another article, 10 worst college majors for jobs, liberal arts, English, humanities, journalism, art, music, theater, arts, marketing, public relations management. Now I got a management degree. Okay. So don't hate on me too hard, but I'll admit this. It's worthless other than just having the paper. Okay. I would have been so much better off if I was going to still go to college to get a legitimate degree, something that had some skill, you know, like an engineer, someone that's going for accounting, someone that's going for something in the medical industry, perhaps. Okay. And not every medical degree is good either. But what I am saying, I'm not against education, but if you take this carefree attitude of just going into college, it can be the literal worst investment of your life. And if I were to say one of the, the top five, for sure, worst decisions of my life was going to college. Horrible. It doesn't benefit you. You lose money. In many cases, you don't add anything to your career path. And then you get caught up in a lot of worst decisions when you go to college. Horrible decision to be made like this decision proverbs 20 verse one wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging and who serves the seed thereby is not wise. My neck, I'm almost done with my points, but this is a horrible, horrible investment is alcohol and drugs. People spend so much money on alcohol and drugs. You know how much alcohol benefits you? Zero. It's always negative. Drugs are always negative. It never helped anybody. It's never done good to anybody. And it just drained your wallet. You should stop all alcohol and drug purchases forever. Never buy it. Never get it. The Bible says it's a mocker. It says that you're stupid for even buying it. You're just throwing money. You might as well just burn money. I'd rather you do that. Just say, Hey, you know what? I have 20 bucks. I'm just going to light on fire because otherwise I was going to buy alcohol and I'd be like, good job. That was smart. Way smarter than buying the alcohol. Proverbs 23. Look at verse 29. Proverbs 23 verse 29. Who hath woe? This is what you reap when you sow to alcohol and drug. Who hath woe? Who has sorrow? Who have contentions? Who have babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath the redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it's red. When it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of the mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick. They have beaten me and I felt it not. When shall I wake? I will seek again. So it's like the same MLM cult. You get stuck in there and you feel like you can't leave. Look, it's an expensive habit with no benefit. It brings no life enrichment, and you're not drawing closer to God. Go over to Galatians 6. The Bible says, And be not drunk with wine where it is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. The Bible says in 1 Peter 5 to be sober. So many people are destroying their lives. They're making a bad investment by drinking. Never drink. It will destroy you. And you'll get hooked to it. And the Bible says, after you get hooked to it, this is what your life is going to look like. It says, They also have aired through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way. The priest and the prophet have aired through strong drink. They are swallowed up of wine. They are out of the way through strong drink. They air in vision. They stumble in judgment, for all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. When you invest in alcohol, you're going to wake up, and you're going to realize, hey, I can't even walk, I can't even talk, and I'm just laying in a pool of my own vomit. If you think that's fun, drink alcohol. Or have kids. I'm just kidding. You'll get to see what that's like. But it's gross. Vomit is gross. Look, these people that drink alcohol, they'll do the most disgusting things because they don't even know where they're at. They'll put their head in a feces-full toilet bowl, and drink it, and vomit on it, and just lay on the floor, and vomit on themselves, and kill themselves, and die. So many people die from vomiting from alcohol. In fact, in the military, they train them to just walk by and turn everybody's head on the side, just so they won't kill themselves from all the vomit that they're pouring out from drinking alcohol, from all the damage they do to their esophagus. Oh, that's the billboard. Let's get that billboard up. The guy dying in his own vomit. The guy with his head.