What’s in Your Wagon

This is week number three of our sermon series called The Quest, and I want to begin today by taking you back to one of the great real-life quests of all time. I’m talking about the westward expansion that we saw in the 1800s in America. Have you ever really thought about what those early pioneers faced?

Consider that it’s about 2,000 miles from Missouri to the west coast. Can you imagine how long it would take to get there if you were bumping along at two miles an hour in a covered wagon?

Think too about the rivers, mountains, and deserts they had to cross, not to mention the outlaws, Indians, wild animals, storms, and diseases they had to contend with. Today, we use the term “snowflake” to refer to people who are soft, who melt in the face of even the smallest difficulty. Trust me, there were no “snowflakes” on the Oregon Trail. Those people were as tough as nails.

One of the things they had to do to ensure their success was to stock plenty of supplies because, once you got past Independence, Missouri, there were very few places to restock.

So here’s what they would carry in their covered wagons when they were first starting out:

120-200 pounds of flour in canvas sacks

25-75 pounds of bacon

15 pounds of ground corn

50 pounds of rice

25 pounds of sugar

The weight limit of those early covered wagons was about 2,000 pounds and about three fourths of that was food.

Today, Samuel L. Jackson and Jennifer Garner are always asking, “What’s in your wallet?” In those days, the question was, “What’s in your wagon?”

For the person who wants to achieve financial health that honors God, those early pioneers present a valuable lesson. You can’t go off half-cocked. You must plan carefully, which means saving and investing for the long haul.

Why? Because life is unpredictable. Not a day goes by that people don’t have their lives turned upside down by unexpected circumstances. A person is healthy one day and disabled the next; employed one day and laid off the next; riding the wave of success one day and crashing into the rocks the next.

When something bad happens—and it will—you need to be financially prepared. So let’s think about saving and investing, the two things you can do to prepare for whatever is just over the horizon.

I. First, let’s think about saving.

It’s interesting how God sometimes gives us examples in nature of how we ought to behave as humans.

Ants, for example, are great savers. Proverbs 30:25 says, “Ants—they aren’t strong, but they store up food all summer.” I know you’ve seen an ant carrying a crumb that’s bigger than its entire body. That’s one of the most amazing things in nature.

And then there’s the squirrel. The squirrel is a rodent, which mean it belongs to one of the most despised species on the planet. Most people hate rodents. However, the squirrel gets off easy because it has a big bushy tail and it is at least somewhat cute.

When you see a squirrel running around in your backyard, there’s a good chance that he’s collecting nuts and hiding and burying them so he can come back in the winter and find something to eat.

This is where the phrase, “squirreling money away” comes from. A man might say, “I’ve been squirreling some money away so I can buy those golf clubs.” He’s talking about saving.

Everybody needs to save. Everybody needs to squirrel some money away because we know that difficult times are ahead. Even if you’re in good financial shape right now, you know that things can change, and quickly.

The economy could go south in a hurry.

You could suffer some sort of catastrophic event like a fire or storm damage.

Your employer could restructure and eliminate jobs or cut back on your hours.

You could develop some sort of health problem that might disable you.

Or there could be a global pandemic that might put your employer out of business. A few years ago that would have seemed like an unrealistic possibility…like a gross exaggeration. But not anymore.

And when such things happen, you need to have some money squirreled away. A lot of financial people talk about having an emergency fund, which is a great idea.

The thing about an emergency fund though is that it only helps you if you use it for emergencies. If you let it get away on things that are not emergencies then it defeats the purpose.

For example, new tires for your car is not an emergency, even if you need new tires. The reason is because you’ve known all along that the day was coming when you would need to buy new tires. You should have been budgeting for it.

Also, that new, bigger, sharper TV is not an emergency, even if you do want one so bad you can taste it, and even if football season is about to start.

That hot new iPhone is not an emergency, even if you do feel little tingles of desire when you watch the commercials.

If you want to know what an emergency is, it’s…

Sudden unemployment.

Your AC going out in the middle of the summer.

Your car breaking down.

Your roof springing a leak.

Emergencies are those things that have to be taken care of right now.

But it’s not just an emergency fund. If you’re a diligent saver, you could also create an opportunity fund.

Have you ever been in a situation where a great opportunity came along, but you couldn’t be a part of it because you didn’t have the money? Maybe a friend invited you to go on a wonderful trip to someplace you’ve never been, but you didn’t have the money and couldn’t go. That’s really frustrating, isn’t it?

Saving is the answer to so many of life’s problems and frustrations.

In the Bible, there is a beautiful example.

In Genesis 41, we’re told that Joseph, the ruler of Egypt, diligently stockpiled grain to prepare for a famine. He was creating an emergency fund, you see.

Well, the famine eventually came and was so severe the people cried out for help. That’s when Joseph opened the vaults. Genesis 41:54 says, “The famine also struck all the surrounding countries, but throughout Egypt there was plenty of food.”

It’s safe to say that people who save are never sorry, but people who don’t save will be sorry, sooner or later.

II. Secondly, we need to think about investing.

The Bible makes a powerful point about the importance of investing in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. It’s a story about three servants who were given money by their master to manage while he was gone on a trip.

Two of the servants invested their allotment and returned to their master even more than they were given. The third servant buried his in the ground and returned to his master exactly the amount he was given.

If you know the story, you know that the master was furious with the hole-digger but delighted with the investors. Clearly, God wants us to do our best with what he gives us. And when it comes to money, that means investing.

A simple way to think about investing is that it’s putting money away now believing that, in the future, you’ll get back more than you put away.

The reason you’ll get back more than you put away is because of interest. Interest is the money that’s paid to you for putting your money in a financial institution.

Interest is good, but what’s even better is compound interest. The simplest way to understand compound interest is to think of it as “interest on interest.” In other words, you get interest, not on the original amount of money you deposited, but on the continually growing amount that interest is producing. The upshot being that your money grows a lot faster.

Albert Einstein said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.” I’m sure you would rather be earning it, so let me offer you some simple investing principles that will guide you in your decision making. These are universally agreed upon by everybody who knows anything about managing money.

Number one, start now.

If you’re young, it’s tempting not to. It’s tempting to wait because you’re not making top dollar and you need to pay for college or buy a house and maybe a car. So you tell yourself that you’ve got plenty of time. You can start investing later, maybe in a year or two.

The problem is that a year or two often becomes five or ten. And when that happens, you have done yourself a great disservice. All of that compound interest that you could have been getting is gone forever.

If you talk to people who are approaching retirement age and ask them about their investments, they will almost all say that they wish they had started investing sooner.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today. The same is true of investing. Start now.

Something else you should do as you invest is diversify.

In other words, don’t put your eggs in one basket. Put your eggs in several baskets. That way, if something happens to one basket, you’ll still have other baskets.

Sounds almost childlike in its simplicity, doesn’t it? But boy, is it ever important. If you don’t believe me, hop online and do a little reading about all the people who invested their entire life savings with Enron or Bernie Madoff. They would be happy to tell you how important it is to diversify.

And then one more thing you should always do as an investor is adjust as you go along.

You don’t just invest your money and forget about it. You monitor what’s going on in the world and with your life.

For example, when you’re young, you might be able to take some greater risks with your investments because, if something goes wrong, you still have plenty of time to recover. But as you start to get older, you’ll want to back off on the risks because, at that point, you can’t afford to have a big loss.

The bottom line is, there are common sense things you can do that will make you a wise investor.

Before I wrap up this idea of investing, let me just give you a few words of warning…some things to think about as you plan your investments.

First, be very careful who you listen to.

Proverbs 12:6 says, “The words of the wicked are like a murderous ambush, but the words of the godly save lives.”

There are plenty of wicked people in the world who would love to swindle you out of your money. There are others who would like to manage your money in a way that benefits them more than it benefits you.

There are also people out there who aren’t wicked, but you still shouldn’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Some people have money, but not because they made good decisions, but simply because they were born into the right family or they were in the right place at the right time.

Don’t ever look at someone who has a lot of money and say, “Wow, he’s doing really well. I’ll ask him for advice.” Keep in mind that the money he has, even if it seems like a lot, might only be half of what he would have if he hadn’t made so many bad decisions.

Second, do not fall for any get-rich-quick schemes.

If you’re like most people, rarely a day goes by that some kind of get rich quick scheme (or scam) doesn’t cross your path.

As you’re driving in your car you might hear about gorgeous lakefront property in the mountains for an unbelievably low price that you could turn around and sell for twice as much.

Or in your email you might receive information about a can’t miss investment opportunity that is sure to make you rich. But of course, you have to act now.

This is something you should know about schemers and scammers. They will always encourage you to act hastily. The last thing they want is for you to think and do research. So if you ever feel pressured by someone to make a hasty, uninformed decision, back off. Do your homework.

Also, beware of bubbles.

When people start valuing something to the point of being ridiculous, you know that bubble is going to burst. It happened with tech stocks in the 1990s. There were people who lost 75 percent of their investments when that bubble burst.

But it’s hard to resist a bubble because you see everybody else taking the plunge and you’re afraid you’re going to miss out on something incredible.

When you get that feeling, I’ve got a good Bible verse you can fall back on. It’s Proverbs 21:5. It says, “Steady plodding brings prosperity; hasty speculation brings poverty.”

When you get the burning urge to invest in something that seems ridiculously overvalued, say those words over and over. It’s one of the most important verses in the Bible when it comes to investing.

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As I wrap up this message, I want to talk to you about what are commonly called “the golden years,” those years when we retire and live out the remainder of our lives with less pressure and less responsibility than we had when we were working forty or fifty or sixty hours a week.

Obviously, as we save and invest during our younger years, we have an eye on those golden years. We’re thinking about them and making decisions that we hope will leave us in good financial shape when we get there.

If you’ve ever known anyone who was broke in retirement, you know what a tragic thing it is. It’s something we all want to avoid.

But for just a moment, I want us to stop thinking financially and instead think philosophically about those golden years.

There is a mindset that sees retirement as that time of life when we’re finally able to get out from under all of our work obligations and just live a life of self-indulgence. We do what we want, when we want, and as much as we want, and everything else gets shoved to the side.

That sounds good, but unfortunately, the church often suffers as a result.

For example, a newly retired school teacher might be approached by her pastor to teach a new class that’s starting up at church. Her response is, “Nope. I taught for thirty-two years. I’m done with that!”

Or a newly retired accountant might be approached by the elders and asked to help set up a new bookkeeping plan for the church, and his response is, “Nope. I’m done with all that. I gave it up for good when I retired.”

Talk to any pastor and you’ll hear stories about retired church members who play golf five or six days a week, but refuse to help out at church. Somehow, they have gotten the idea that when you retire from your work or your career, you’re supposed to retire from serving the Lord, too.

My plea is for you to understand the value you have to the Kingdom in your golden years. You bring knowledge and wisdom and experience to the table, all of which are sorely needed in every church.

You likely have people skills and leadership skills that have been honed over the decades in your professional life.

I can think of few greater tragedies than for people with so much to offer the Kingdom to just check out and live solely for themselves, but it happens and all too often. It’s as if we have battalions of soldiers that have turned in their weapons and are playing cards in the barracks instead of helping to fight the war.

Don’t be one of them!

Even if your saving and investing accumulates a mountain of money, there is still a war going on and you are needed.