[Kingdom Business Culture]

33 The perils of worldly profits

Outline: The devil takes advantage of the greed that exists in people's hearts to eat everything, even the root! Therefore, we must be vigilant against the word "greed" in business activities, and we must not resort to any means to achieve our goals.

Speaker： GLOBAL JIREH

Translator: Jacey GAO

Narrator: Angelie GACASAN

But godliness with contentment is great gain. ⁷ For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. ⁸ But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. ⁹ Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (1 Timothy 6:6-10)

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Thanks for tuning in to GLOBAL REACHOUT. I am Sister Angelie, and starting from November, we have launched the program called the "Kingdom Business Culture". This program is based on the workplace training course by GLOBAL JIREH entitled, "Christ-centred Entrepreneurship". This course was compiled by Pastor Tony TAY Meng Hiang to help brothers and sisters live out Christ in the workplace.

We encourage brothers and sisters to sign up for this course, so that they will not only have the opportunity to communicate directly with the instructors, but also establish long-term and close contacts with the kingdom business operators in the group, learn from each other and encourage one another, and put the theory into practice. Living out Christ in the workplace. For those who are interested, you can refer to the end of the manuscript and register by email.

In today's show, we're going to talk about "The Dangers of Worldly Profits." The "worldly profit" we are talking about today is the profit obtained through illegitimate channels, the ill-gotten gain that people make out of greed. In Greek, the word "greed" means "desire to have more." Therefore, "greed for money" is an endless desire to have more money, rather than a desire to fulfill God's destiny for oneself. We often see in the news that some people who are greedy for money will even harm others in order to obtain money. Clearly, selfish greed can lead to confusion and corruption.

In Joel 1:4 from the Bible, it says: What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left  the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten. Friends, please note that there are four kinds of locusts mentioned here. There are so many types of locusts, why does the Bible use four different names to represent this wide variety of locusts?

First of all, here we are talking about locusts, the original meaning of locusts is "devourer", which means greed - the first characteristic of locusts in the plague of locusts is greed. Next, the locusts left by the great locusts come to eat. The word "great locusts" here means "to become many" in the original text - a reminder that greed is a pervasive human problem. In the next step, the great locusts are left to eat by the young locusts. The original meaning of this "young locusts " is "to swallow", that is, to devour everything. In the end, what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten. Did you know that the other locusts can eat up the roots of plants!

Through these scenes, we can see that man’s greed leads to God’s judgment—before the locusts came, it was the Garden of Eden, and after the locusts passed, it became a wasteland. The devil takes advantage of the greed that exists in people's hearts to eat everything, even the root! So brothers and sisters, when we run a business, we must be wary of the word "greed", and we must not resort to any devious means to achieve our goals. The root of worldly profit is greed, which is based on selfish greed; and once a person wants to make a fortune, he will inevitably fall into confusion and corruption. For Christian professionals, the profit of running a business is important, but it must be done in a proper way. We must first delight in the Lord and be crucified with Christ.

Why be crucified with Christ? Because money can't lure dead people! If we are not crucified with Christ, we will inevitably become the devil's prey. The devil first makes us doubt the word of God, and then it is the "three deadly tricks" of temptation - he will tell you: the fruit can be used as food to satisfy the lust of your flesh; Wisdom, satisfies your pride in this life; finally, emphasize that the fruit is pleasing to the eye, and caters to the lust of your eyes.

If you believe all these, you will fall into a snare, lose your authority to rule the world, and sink deeper and deeper into sin until you will eventually collapse and be destroyed, sinking into corruption and destruction. As Ecclesiastes 9:12 says: no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.

A Christ-centered business approach, first and foremost, is honesty, emphasizing this prophetic alignment; but secular corporations, who do not know God, will comfortably seek profits through fraudulent means. For example, to exploit workers for higher profits, deduct wages, and extend working hours; in order to expand faster, they do not hesitate to damage the environment... Others, such as cutting corners, abusing patents, and imitating technologies, are also issues of integrity. For this kind of evil, Isaiah 5:8 says: Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.

In addition to lack of integrity, the lack of kingship from God in the pursuit of profits can also lead to strategic problems. A typical phenomenon is excessive mortgage. When we run a business with excessive leverage, once the economic situation deteriorates, the assets bought by borrowing one million from the bank in the past may only be worth several hundred thousand. In such a situation, let alone sustainable development, it may even be a problem to repay the loan, and it has no choice but to close down.

Do we still remember how the subprime mortgage crisis caused the financial turmoil? At that time, banks lent money to people with unstable income or even no income at all. Knowing that they might not be able to repay the loan in the future, the bank still assumed that house prices would continue to rise. Their wishful thinking was that even if the debtor could not repay, the bank could repossess the property and sell it at a profit. As a result, in the depressed market, the recovered mortgage could only be sold at a low price, and the bank fell into crisis as a result.

Many real cases remind us that running a business with high risks not only causes debtors to suffer losses, but also harms creditors, causing huge social harm. This is what we need to be cautious about in business operations. In today’s economic environment, most businesses need loans to grow, and the premise of borrowing loans in a moderate way is—seeing the greed in human nature and remembering God’s reminder to us through 1 Timothy 6:6-10 , to give full play to the kingship endowed by God and make wise decisions.

Dear friends, this is where we end today's episode. I hope to see you again on the next episode of Kingdom Business Culture!

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Discussion 

1. Today, many money games such as scam, loan sharks scams, gambling cheats, etc. are still prevalent. From the perspectives of the organizers and the victims, please try to analyze the influence of "greed" on people's decision-making.

2. What is the debt situation of your company? Is there a reasonable control system?

3. Delight in the Lord and be crucified with Christ. How to implement this spiritual truth into the business operations that we pursue to create profits?