 The cost of everything is up. Inflation has served to levels we haven't seen in four decades. 8.6% 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%. Vehicles, 12.5%. And gasoline, almost 50%. In economics, inflation has defined as 4% for the substantial rise of prices. To increase inflation, I call it the insurgency. That's exactly what's not happening when you're talking about massive taxes. The biggest gain in the American operation is to react former Reagan. Keep your placing in 2nd 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 of 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 six minus three, you get three and then you divide that by the original price that you were looking at, which is three, you get one, you take that times 100, you get 100%. So basically gas in the last, it's going down a little bit now, you're starting to see gas at 550, at 520 in Fresno, but gas 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. A car, as we've looked at in budgeting sermons before and financial sermons before, 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 all that to say this, it's because of inflation. It's because of price increases. Gas has gone up 100%. Cars have gone up 40%. Housing, 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 this morning. I look at the prices of things all the time and I notice the smallest things and 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 it 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 gonna 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 gonna get better and that the Bible actually explains it, okay? The Bible actually explains it. Turn to Proverbs chapter 11. So basically, 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 wanna look at a graph of this, you 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 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 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? It's such a large number that people can't even rack their head around it. So let me just give you some context on what a trillion dollars is. If you took one dollar bills, okay, if you took just one dollar bills and you took a million dollars and you stacked one dollar bills on top of each other, you'd end up with a stack of one dollar 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 one billion dollars, 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, that's basically, that's like 358,000 feet high. That's outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Now, if you took one trillion dollars, one trillion with a T and you'd stacked one dollar 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 gonna 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 chapter 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. If you agree to pay $20 for something and then you only pay five for it, 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. 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 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 money into this small, tiny little economy that he can just afford anything and 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 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? And it's like, 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 20, 40 years trying to increase demand of the dollar around the world. 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 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 gonna continue? Is it gonna continue? Is it gonna get better? Is it gonna 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, I mean, that's gonna be approved. That's gonna 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's very clear about that. So how do we survive it is the whole point of this morning sermon. Turn to Proverbs chapter 18. Turn to Proverbs chapter 18. You're like, okay, the answer is gonna be make more money. You know, 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 gonna 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 gonna have very little money. You're gonna, I mean, somebody that's just hardworking, very skillful, goes out and works 80 hours a week is definitely gonna 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 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 throw away society. We literally throw everything away. First of all, men, if you're leading a family men, the Bible says that 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 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 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 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 track 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 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 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 cart 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 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 a family spending. Turn to Proverbs chapter 31. Turn to Proverbs chapter 31. There is lots of examples of cutting down on waste and Proverbs chapter 31. And this is where women have a huge power to make a difference in their family. You say, well, dual income. Everybody's dual income today. So there's no way that you could make a living 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. 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, which is most people that we know have two or more children. Daycare costs will be over $10,000 a year. 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. 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 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 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. Now wrap your head around this. So you need to make $40,000 or more to justify having your wife go to work. The average income for a single person in Fresno is $25,000 a year. So it makes literally 0 cents 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 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, and 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, both parents are working. They live a more extravagant life than a single income family. They live basically to that dual income. So even if they're above that $40,000 threshold or whatever it is, they live a higher level of income or of standard of living than the single income family, which puts them at 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 expenses that they would have because two people work. 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 looking for these things. She's looking for the needs of her family. Look down to verse number 15. She rises also while is it yet night and giveeth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens. It says right here, she's very hardworking. So the wife that stays home is very hardworking in a single income family. And look at verse 16. She considereth a field and buyeth it with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. Again, talking about how she's very hardworking. But what does it mean when it says she considereth 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 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. This is part of keeping the home. Keepers at home. What does that mean? Look, it's a big deal. She can increase the net income of her house by 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 at a thrift store or something that's not even used, by the way. You find clothes out there that like, here's what you have to do. 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 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, 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 and 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. And look, if you can afford that 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. Back to Proverbs chapter 31. Here's another one. So what are we looking at? We're looking at spending, 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 gonna have to work harder than the average man. It's just the way the math works out. He's gonna have to work more hours. He's gonna 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. Let me 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 gonna 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're gonna have family time and you don't wanna just be gone working all the time. 80 hours is a lot, okay? I mean from my experience, from my perspective, 60 to 70 hours is about right, 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 gonna waste less, okay? We're gonna 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 man, that will give your household, that will give your bank of money that you bring in every single month. It'll 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 wanna work 70 hours a week. Well then increase the value of each hour of your time. That's another way to make more money in inflation. Look at Genesis chapter 25, we get 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. An 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. That means he was very skillful in hunting. Turn to Proverbs chapter 22. Proverbs chapter 22. Let me, I'll read for you Exodus chapter 28 and verse number six. The Bible, I mean, we just looked at Exodus 28, ad nauseum. 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 the skill that it must take to do something like that. But look what it says in Exodus 28, 6. 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 in 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. See, it's not 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. So 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 gonna 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 gonna stand before the upper level people in a society. They're not gonna stand before the lower level people in a society. Now you see that, you see that all over the Bible, that literally the cunning men, who are they dealing with? Turn to 1 Chronicles chapter, or 2 Chronicles chapter two. I'll read for you 2 Chronicles chapter 26 verse 15. You're gonna turn to 2 Chronicles chapter two. I'm gonna 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 bolt works to shoot arrows and great stones with all. I believe this is 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 two, 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 asks from all this materials from the king of Tyre and the king of Tyre sends him all 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 hear him my fathers. 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 could 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 wanna be the boss. They're like, I wanna be the manager. No, you don't. No, you don't wanna be the manager. You know what you wanna be? You wanna be the cunning man. That's what you wanna be. You wanna stand before kings. You wanna write your own ticket. You wanna have just the run of the place. You become the cunning man. Forget the manager. Many times the manager doesn't know anything. You wanna become the cunning man. A guy that I knew asked me or was talking to me a couple of 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 asks 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 like that. He's like, I don't understand them. And I don't like looking at all those drawings. It's like, no, I told him, it was like, you need to learn how to read those drawings. You need to learn. 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're the ones coming up with the stuff. If you look at some guy that you work with or somebody that you know and they make a bunch of money and you're like, oh man, 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 provide them that higher wage because they're the cunning man. That's why. All right, Jacob. I mean, Jacob a couple of 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 had some fishing gear or something he wanted to buy and he's like, is there anything I can do to earn some money? Is there anything I can do to 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'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 men of the Bible that lived to be 900 years old. Because I think about the things that they must have built and how good they must have been. I mean, I've met some guys, I love watching skilled craftsmen. Like I've worked with some mechanics that could literally make anything out of metal. It was just the most, I love working with guys like that. Because they just, you're like, how in the world did you just make all these, I mean, I would work 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 parts. Because they were cunning, skilled people. And they were just, it was just wonderful to just 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, ah, I gotta 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, 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 blessed guy who has fixed that problem, videotaped it, just so you and 12 other people could watch it. 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, 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 gonna help you. I've said this to my kids hundreds of times. It's like, look, it doesn't matter how much you make, you can spend it all. A lot of people have in their mind that like, man, if I could just make this number, then I'll be fine. But no, 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 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, man, 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 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 2 Kings chapter 12. Spend less, spend less. Have a family budget. You're like, what's a budget? Look at 2 Kings chapter 12. We're gonna see a budget here. Joe Ash, Joe Ash had a problem. The house of God, the temple was in disrepair and he was trying 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 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 to verse number nine. What did he do? Look at what Jehoida did. I said, but Jehoida, the priest, he took a chest and bored 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 the 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, which is 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. 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 say you have $100 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 was 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 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, 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, like 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 the husband side and the wife side. You know, and the wife is gonna have to be smart. She's gonna have to, I mean 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 am 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 in your snaking drain pipes 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 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 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 dollar's 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, look, 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.