Faithful Finance - Part 2

June 20. 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Faithful Finance - Part 2

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Alive, applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish the book of Deuteronomy, we're going to step aside for a few weeks and publish a workshop I did in August of 2024 called Faithful Finance. In that workshop, I explained our current economy, our current financial situation,

and did it from an economic background and a historical background, and most importantly, did it from a biblical perspective. In that workshop, you're going to find out why we are where we are as an, as a nation, as far as our economy and what we should be looking at and why we should be looking at it for the future,

not only for the future of the finances of individuals, but the future of the finances for our churches and for our country. And so I would encourage you to just spend some time listening.

Even though it is being published here a year later,

it is still true and it is still current for today.

John 1:5 says. John 1 First, John 1:5 says, this is the message which we have heard in him and declared to you that God is light,

and in him there is no darkness at all.

Now we understand and we really get our fullness from that. Most of the energy of the universe is somehow intricately,

intricately tied to light.

Okay?

Heat comes from light.

If you even go down to, like the energy made by plants comes from light,

heats the atmosphere and causes there to be these four winds that the Bible talks about and how a person sitting on the earth with no satellite could know that there were forward mighty wind in the heavens that control the atmosphere.

That atmosphere is literally controlled by the heat and the light of the sun.

The sun is a giant light manufacturer.

Okay?

So we understand that God is the source of the energy of the universe. He's not only the creator of the physical universe, he's the source of the energy of the universe.

All right,

so we've got God making matter. We've got God being the source of energy. And by the way,

in matter is energy. And we understand that from the nuclear age that literally the molecules and the atoms that are in us are comprised of packets of energy that God created.

The truth is this universe is just a universe of energy.

If you, if you want to know how it works, it says here John 1:1 through five, in the beginning was the Word, and we've talked about that. I'm going to move on past that.

It says Matthew 6:19 through 21,

Jesus is talking and he makes a statement.

He makes a statement about the work we do.

He says, do not store up for yourselves treasure on Earth where moth and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven,

where moth and vermin do not destroy and where thieves break in.

Do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,

okay? Now, what he's saying is that you have the ability to amass treasure,

okay? And then he's saying that there's a direct tie between the treasure that we amass on Earth and the treasure we amass in heaven,

okay? Now, what we call treasure and what God calls treasure are two different things.

What we call physical treasure and what God calls spiritual treasure are two different things. And we understand. And I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail about this, but what we understand is, is that the treasure that God desires, what God is in the business of accumulating,

is the treasure of humanity,

okay? That the most important thing to God, the thing he was willing to spend his own son's blood for, is human beings. He desires to have relationship with human beings.

And he gave the greatest gift he could possibly give.

He gave the greatest work he could possibly do through Jesus Christ, so that he could have a relationship with us. All, right?

So anytime you're thinking about economics,

investment,

things like that,

you always must come from the proper perspective. And you go, preacher, I didn't come here. I wanted to know what Bitcoin is, okay? All right?

Now, don't you hear me?

It doesn't do you any good to know what a physical thing in this universe is unless I can apply it to the spiritual and understand how it works.

It does not do you any good to do that, okay? It just becomes another thing you possess.

Are you following me?

And Jesus said, store up for yourselves a treasure in heaven. Which means that the perspective is I am doing this for a reason. So if I'm going to be storing something, not consuming it,

and that's what I'm going to be talking about if I'm going to be storing something, you need to have a reason for storing it,

okay? And it needs to not be a physical,

limited, temporal reason. It needs to be an eternal reason.

Does that make sense to you?

Okay, so. So he says here in. In Genesis 1:26,

then God said,

let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

So he's saying that we. We were made in an image or a likeness like him,

okay?

He says, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle, and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth.

So God has given us rule or dominion over his creation. Which means now you need to hear this. At its fundamental level,

God has given us dominion over that which he made.

All right? So I have a. I have a power not just to,

you know, wander through it and, you know, just be. I'm here. I am.

You know,

I have a power given to me,

ordained to me by God to function and operate in the universe he created me in. I can actually do work that has results,

Okay? I can do things that make a difference, that change things.

In fact,

the apostle Paul, who I believe wrote Hebrews, says this,

but one testified in certain places, saying, and he's quoting the old Testament, Psalms 86, what is man that you are mindful of him,

or the Son of man, that you take care of him? What he's saying is,

why do you care about man?

We're little specks in this universe. We're smaller than the little specks in this universe. We're specks on specks in this universe.

Okay?

Why do you care about him?

Notice he said, you have made him in his form,

you've made him in his physical power a little lower than the angels,

meaning that the angels in their physical power are greater than man.

You have crowned him with glory and honor. That goes back to that dominion thing.

Okay? You've crowned him with glory and honor and set him over the works of your hands.

Notice we have power,

even though we're a little speck of nothing.

He has made us such that we have dominion over all that he made,

which is an awesome power.

Okay,

so I'm literally nothing, and yet I have dominion over the product of the breath of the mouth of the Lord God.

Okay?

And you've put all things in subjection under his feet.

Notice all things are under our subjection,

made a little lower than the angels, yet set above them.

Why are we set above them?

Well, one of those angels is the one who calls the not God to exist.

So even though he's more powerful,

far more wise and knowledgeable,

he does not have the dominion we do.

And so when I speak with the power of the Holy Spirit,

that power is far above his.

When I speak the word of truth,

it's far more powerful than anything he says against them.

He cannot say anything against me except that God allow it.

His Holy Spirit does it. So we have a power in us to do these things. Now,

let's talk about these laws that God made this this dividing line that God made, the first thing is the law of the conservation of matter, okay? And what that means is that this is one of the laws of the universe, that matter cannot be made or destroyed.

It's real easy to understand. It's right here in the book. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Matter can change from form,

change form through physical and chemical changes. But through any of these changes, matter is what, conserved, which means it doesn't go away,

all right?

Matter cannot be made or destroyed. You do not make matter.

What we do is we have dominion over the matter,

all right? We do not make it.

The same is also true.

It says here, this is the law of conservation of energy, a physical law that states energy cannot be created, destroyed,

but may be changed from one form to another.

So the energy that God put in the universe when he made the universe,

it doesn't go away.

It can't be made or destroyed. It can be changed.

And in fact,

because of the fall of the universe,

matter and energy are slowly,

slowly descending into chaos, which is the law of entropy, okay? That everything tends toward disorder,

all right? That's a law of the universe.

And the reason that law exists is because sin came in the world and sin causes disorder.

Sin causes things to become disorderly or out of the. Out of line. They're out of control.

Now, we know,

and we have proved that Einstein's theory of relativity is true.

And I'm going to explain it to you in very biblical terms.

E equals MC squared,

all right?

E stands for energy,

all right?

We've just talked about it.

Energy is,

by the way,

science can tell you how energy works,

what energy does, but we can't tell you what it is.

Did you know that science can tell you how light works?

What, like,

does.

We can't tell you what it is.

Did y' all know that?

And even though we can explain how energy becomes mass and mass becomes energy,

we really don't totally know, because we don't know what energy is and we don't know what light is. We can't tell you truly what mass is either.

Now, we can tell you what mass does.

We can tell you how that operates,

but we can't tell you what it is.

Now you go, surely we can do that.

No, we can't.

And I'll tell you why. Because God says he's unapproachable light, which means there's an aspect of God in. In his light that right now, because we are broken,

we can't understand.

Now, I believe when we get to heaven, that light does not become unapproachable for us. I think we can actually approach it and see it in its brilliance and understand it.

But that will be with bodies that are not cursed by sin.

E equals.

Now listen to this. Energy equals mass times the speed of light,

which is C.

E equals mass M times the speed of light squared.

And that's really fast, by the way. That's a big, big, big, big, big number.

It's a big number,

all right. It's not one of the. It's one of the numbers. Y' all remember when they got to the part. Some of y' all checked out way before this,

but. And some of y' all, when this came up, that's when you checked out. Y' all remember when they used to come up with this number and they'd say 42 times 10 to the 8th power.

And y' all are sitting there going, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that.

That was right before they added the Alphabet to the math. Y' all remember that?

The greatest question ever asked me as a teacher, the greatest question ever asked to me to teacher was asked to me by a football player in fourth block.

He did have a probation officer. The whole fourth block did, by the way.

I had 13 students,

sorry, one of them didn't have a probation officer. He just gotten off probation.

But the question was,

coach. And this was, this was asked, you know, in October, November. We. He's had some time to reflect on the question. Wasn't just an immediate question. One knee jerk reaction.

He asked me, right, right, right, right. At the end of class he goes, coach, coach, coach.

I go, what?

He says, why we got to have Alphabet math?

And you know, the more I thought about. I thought that was you. Just. That's the dumbest question I ever heard in my life. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know, that may be the smartest question I ever was asked.

Why do we have Alphabet and math? You know, it just caused people to check out. Right? I mean, if you're going to mix Alphabet and math, that's not right.

Right.

They're not peas and carrots. They don't go together. Right? They don't, but. But when you get to those big giant numbers,

it's hard to read them all the way across. And that's why you go to the 10th power or to. By the way, the negative 7th power means they go. The decimal point goes that way and there's zeros in front of it.

Did y' all know that I'm not gonna put it on a board for you, okay? But that's. That's what it is anyway.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you,

that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.