We have been blessed of God to establish His covenant on the Earth.  It would be good for us to spend some time and meditate upon these things and ask, “Is my thinking natural or is my thinking eternal—is it spiritual?”  God’s the source, and He’s blessing us with all of these different things.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, there is some great wisdom that’s given to us in Chapter 5 verse 18 where it says, “Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour.”  Enjoy the blessings; amen?  We’re not talking about asceticism; we’re not talking about trying to take every penny and put it away.  Now, I make a statement like that, and we have to come back, and the Scripture, of course, speaks of the wisdom of laying up and saving.  But the Holy Spirit says here—and it’s a powerful statement— “It is good, it is good to eat and to drink and to enjoy the good of all your labor.”  Can you say “Praise God” for that?  Amen!  It doesn’t mean we have to eat filet mignon every night.  But it’s good to enjoy the fruit of your labor!  Enjoy life!  In my backyard, I have a sign that says, “Enjoy Everything, Possess Nothing.”  God wants us to enjoy our prosperity, our abundance.  But it’s to be held very lightly.  You might hear at any time the Lord has need of this.  Amen?  We have no idea what tomorrow brings us. 

Let’s look at a couple of verses just very quickly, so that we can understand why our trust is not to be in mammon.  Now, when I talk about mammon, we’re talking about not just money in and of itself, because money is not evil.  The Bible doesn’t say money’s evil.  The love of money is the root of all evil.  It could be better understood of all these evils of what’s being referenced in First Timothy 6, because there are many sins that don’t have their root in money.  And money was not part of the original sin, pride and independence were.  So, we see that we’re not to have any trust in money whatsoever.  The danger—we’ll see as the Scripture speaks of trusting in these finances—brings about deception, brings about a brokenness and a piercing through with sorrow of our hearts.  Proverbs 27:24 says, “For riches are not forever: and doth the crown endure to every generation?”  Proverbs 23:5 says, “Wilt thou set your eyes upon that which is not?  for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.”  Over the years, different people respond to the loss of all things—of all that they possess in different ways, and not all of them that have positive responses are necessarily regenerated people, but they’ve come to grasp some of these biblical laws and principles.

I saw a documentary about ten multibillionaires who are penniless today.  How do you lose multiple billions of dollars?  Do you want to know how all of them lost their billions of dollars?  How many have an idea?  By trying to get more.  Every one of them, same common denominator, “This four billion isn’t enough!  Man, I can make this investment, I can double that.”  Yeah, and you can lose it all, too!  That’s just showing you that the covetousness, the greed—it can never be satisfied if you love money.  And see, what happens is people lose the value of money and get caught up in the pursuit of more in the war of having more than the other guy, and it becomes the pride of life more than the money, and how that pride can rise up and destroy you in this competition of self-elevation, of greater independence.