Now for a few minutes we're going to have another one of those heart-to-heart talks,
and I do pray that this little talk today shall mean everything in the world to you.
I know full well before I begin it that there will be those who will, after I will have
left your home, turn off the radio and you will have forgotten everything that I would
have said, because before I begin you have your own mental attitude regarding the material
things of life.
But I pray that there will be those whose eyes will have been opened to the real sense
of values and will learn better what to do with the material when it comes to this life
here on earth.
Again, I am well aware of the fact that people do exactly what they want to do.
I can preach and preach and hammer and hammer on something and give you the light and yet
in the final analysis you will do exactly what you want to do.
It's only as the Spirit, the Living God, will open your understanding to the truth and in
receiving the light, if you love Him enough you will be obedient to the truth.
Now we are still in the sixth chapter of Matthew and I'm going to read to you three verses,
the 19th, 20th and 21st verse, the sixth chapter of Matthew.
It's in that great sermon, the greatest sermon that was ever preached.
It was preached by the very Son of the Living God.
Therefore the truths in this sermon come from the highest authority in heaven and earth.
In this sermon now we come to the material plane of life.
Oh sure, earlier in this sermon he talked about the material but he spoke of it in the
sense of giving our alms to Him.
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them, otherwise ye have
no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites
do in the synagogues and the streets, that they may have glory of men.
Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.
But as we come now to these three verses, beginning with the 19th verse, we come definitely
to the material plane of life.
I want you to see something.
The value of money lies in its control by spiritual purpose.
To desire it, to use it for its own sake is to destroy all human value.
And it's just like that.
This idea that money can make man happy is the most deceptive, it's the greatest deception
in the whole world.
No man will have any satisfaction from his money until he begins to do good with it,
until he learns the real purpose in having money.
God has so constructed human nature, God so has a control of the material things of life,
He has so ordained, there is an unwritten law written by God Himself between the material
and man, and He has so constructed man, and He has so made the material that it is impossible
for the material things of life to make man really happy.
And it's just like that.
You understand what I'm trying to say?
It seems complicated and yet it's the simplest thing in the world.
I don't care how much you may accumulate materially, the material things cannot give you happiness.
I'm talking about a deep security.
I'm talking about joy.
I'm talking about peace of mind and peace of soul.
Oh my, you can hear a bunch of drunks going down the street.
Somebody says, oh my, there goes a bunch of happy people.
Oh no, they're just a bunch of loud mouth things.
That's right, champagne at night and real pain in the morning, as somebody said, kind
of like that.
You know, we mistake a lot of noise, we mistake a lot of surface stuff for real abiding satisfaction,
a feeling of security.
The greatest thing that you can enjoy is peace of soul and peace of mind.
And I can prove that man has been so constructive and that God governs man and the material
things of life to the extent that the material cannot give man complete satisfaction and
security because the richest man in the world never got to the place where he was absolutely
contented and satisfied with what he had.
If he had a million, he was striving to make another million.
If he had five million, he was not content with the five that he had, he was trying to
make five more.
If he had 10, he wanted to make 50 million.
Why?
Because he still lacked the inner security that he was seeking.
He was never satisfied.
Why no sitting there?
You're probably making a hundred dollars a week and you'd say, my, if I had the money
and if I had the paycheck and if I was getting what Mr. So-and-so, I would be absolutely
happy.
I would, for the first time in my life, feel a sense of security.
I wouldn't ask for anything more.
Oh, yes, you would.
Whatever you would, you would seek for something more just as much as you're seeking for something
now.
It's like that.
It's exactly like that.
You know, it's the strangest thing in the world when it comes to the material things
of life.
Let's just lay bare the facts.
This is just a little homey, heart to heart talk because it affects all of us.
Remember, I don't care how spiritual you are or whether you have any spirituality or not,
God knows that we are still in an old material world.
The light bill has got to be paid.
The rent has got to be paid.
If you're a homeowner, there are taxes that have to be paid in that property.
There's got to be money to live.
That's no secret to God.
And He's a practical God.
He's a reasonable God.
He's interested in every detail of our lives.
That's the reason when you read the word of God, you'll find that He not only speaks of
the spiritual.
He also made provision for the material because He knows how necessary the material is to
man as He lives here on this planet, in this world.
There's one thing we all have in common, every human being, and that is the fact that when
we came into the world, not one of us came in with a stitch of clothes on our body.
We came absolutely naked.
That little baby of yours may have been the son, the daughter of very wealthy parents,
and yet it came into the world naked, exactly the same way as the little baby came in who
had no assurance of even the milk in the bottle that would be given it, and a worried mama
and a distraught papa wondering how they were going to support the new baby.
That baby came in just as naked as the son and the daughter of a Rockefeller.
And you want to know something else?
When we leave this world, we go out almost as naked and stripped as we were when we came.
After all, just how much can one pay for a good suit of clothes?
There's a limit to it.
You can be the wealthiest man in the world, and yet, sir, there's a limit to what you
pay for a suit of clothes.
Now that's an awful good-looking tie, but there's a limit to just how much you pay for
a tie.
And in most instances, they don't even put shoes on the feet of a corpse.
A pair of socks, and there's a limit to what you can pay for a pair of socks.
And there you lie in the casket, almost as naked, as stripped of everything as you were
when you came into the world.
You leave every copper scent behind, every penny that you worked so hard to get.
You sold your soul to get ahead materially.
You got it piled up.
You skimmed.
You did everything you could to get it.
You robbed widows.
You lied.
You did everything.
And now, bud, what do you have?
You've got to leave every copper scent behind.
It's like that.
It's exactly like that.
Until you have a thorough understanding of God as the loving source of your boundless
supply, you will not learn how to associate the spiritual with the material.
You've got to understand how to live with the material, along with the spiritual.
You have to know how to put the material things of life in its place, in association with
the spiritual and with God.
Until then, you do not know how to deal with the material with perfect wisdom.
You want to know something?
You cannot want for anything when once you truly realize that in the mind of God, obedience
and faith are bound up in the same bundle.
In other words, there is no way in which one can have security without spiritual understanding.
I repeat it.
If you forget everything else that I say in this little heart-to-heart talk today, remember
this one thing.
There is absolutely no way.
It is impossible.
It's one of God's unwritten laws.
It is impossible for you to have a complete sense of security without spiritual understanding.
That's right.
I can prove it.
You see, that is the reason that no matter how much a man makes without the spiritual
understanding, he still is lacking in the sense of security because he knows that the
safest banks can fail and they do.
Oh, I don't care how much insurance they carry.
I don't care what publicity they may give out, assuring you that they are perfectly
safe.
Yet, it is a proven fact and it has been proven to the sorrow of many, many, many men and
women that the safest banks in the world can fail.
They have, they do, they will again.
Somebody comes up and says, real estate is a safe investment.
Oh, you can hear that.
And yet, many, a smart man has literally lost his shirt in real estate.
There's nothing that's dead sure about investing in real estate.
The value of real estate fluctuates.
Then there comes the unexpected political upheavals that affect people, affects their
job, their standing, their status in life.
Somebody can be a big political mogul one day and then the next day he's stripped of
everything.
He's left walking the streets looking for a job.
That's politics.
Now, the Bible refers to these things as mo and rust and thieves.
I read it to you now, beginning with the 19th verse.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where
thieves break through and steal.
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and
where thieves do not break through nor steal.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
You know, let's go back to the statement that I made just a second ago about the fact that
there's no way in which one can have security without spiritual understanding.
And if you follow me in the interpretation of the Word of God, in the prayer that Jesus
taught us to pray, and we come to that part, give us this day, our daily bread.
And of course, he was talking about the material then, talking about the same thing that I'm
talking about now.
And he meant in those words that our real source of supply comes from the Father himself.
You may be looking to your employer, you may be looking to US Steel or that department
store where you work, or the man who is head of your office, the one who gives you your
paycheck as being the source of your material living.
Beloved, in reality, the place where you work, the one who gives you your paycheck is only
the channel through which the supply comes for the material.
The real source of supply comes from the giver of every good and perfect gift, God himself.
He is the real, the actual source of your supply.
And when you see that for the very first time, you'll feel secure when it comes to receiving
the supply because his supply to you is exhaust.
God will never go bankrupt.
God is still God Almighty.
The place where you work can go bankrupt, can fail, but the real source of your supply
for the material comes from the giving hand of Almighty God.
There's security in that because God cannot fail.