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More | Week 5 · Rewind

Rock Point Church

77 min

Pastor Bill Bush · May 7, 2018 · 4 min read · 77 min listen

The big idea

When we chase money's gifts instead of trusting the Gift Giver, we make it an idol that can never deliver the satisfaction, security, and peace only God provides.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7Idolatry is wanting the gifts more than the Gift Giver
Point 2 of 7We approach God with talk but not real trust, especially about money

Point 3 of 7Money promises four things it can never deliver
Point 4 of 7Buying the lie leaves you living under a cloud
Point 5 of 7Store treasure in heaven by investing, not just spending
Point 6 of 7The world's wheel puts enjoy and repay in charge; God's wheel puts giving first
Point 7 of 7Where you put your treasure is where your heart will follow
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Ecclesiastes 3
Ecclesiastes 5:1
Ecclesiastes 5:7
Ecclesiastes 5:10
Ecclesiastes 5:11
Ecclesiastes 5:12

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · May 7, 2018 · 77 min watch · 2 min read

More | Week 5

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Ecclesiastes 3
Ecclesiastes 5:1
Ecclesiastes 5:7
Ecclesiastes 5:10
Ecclesiastes 5:11
Ecclesiastes 5:12

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

When we chase money's gifts instead of trusting the Gift Giver, we make it an idol that can never deliver the satisfaction, security, and peace only God provides.

God offers real joy and freedom with money, not guilt. But when we love money more than God, expecting it to satisfy us, solve our problems, and give us security, we end up frustrated, discouraged, and angry. The only way out is to dedicate what God gives us to Him first, trusting His way of giving, saving, and enjoying over the world's way of spending.

Key points

1
1Idolatry is wanting the gifts more than the Gift Giver
Pastor Bill sets up the whole message by defining idolatry not as statue-worship but as placing anything else in God's job description — looking to something other than God for satisfaction, security, and stability. He notes this series has walked through pleasure, work, and politics as good gifts that become idols when they replace God, and now turns to money.
2
2We approach God with talk but not real trust, especially about money
Working through Ecclesiastes 5:1 and 5:7, Pastor Bill explains that Solomon calls worshipers to keep their ears open and mouths shut rather than making empty vows. He applies this to how believers make excuses in their hearts instead of truly listening and obeying God, particularly when God asks something hard of their finances.
3
3Money promises four things it can never deliver
From Ecclesiastes 5:10-13, Pastor Bill walks through four lies money tells us: it will satisfy us, solve our problems, give peace of mind, and provide security. He shows each one collapses — the rich still can't sleep well, still lose it all, and still die with nothing they can take with them.
4
4Buying the lie leaves you living under a cloud
He points to Ecclesiastes 5:17, where those who chase wealth as their source live frustrated, discouraged, and angry no matter how much they have. He connects this directly to the anger some in the room were already feeling just from him raising the topic of money.
5
5Store treasure in heaven by investing, not just spending
Turning to Matthew 6:19-21, Pastor Bill contrasts spending (money is gone) with investing (it grows and lasts). He explains giving is itself a gift — it gives believers a front-row seat to God's eternal work, it is the one proven weapon against materialism, and it actually produces the joy people were afraid giving would cost them.
6
6The world's wheel puts enjoy and repay in charge; God's wheel puts giving first
Using two diagrams, he contrasts the world's cycle — acquire, enjoy, repay, save, give, plan — where repay eventually swallows everything, with God's cycle — dedicate, give, save, repay, enjoy — where giving and enjoyment both get to grow. He stresses money isn't ours to acquire but God's to be stewarded.
7
7Where you put your treasure is where your heart will follow
From Matthew 6:21, Pastor Bill corrects the common misreading — it isn't 'put your money where your heart is' but the reverse: wherever you put your money is where your heart will go. He ties this to why many men especially feel stuck in spiritual passion, because they won't put their wallet in the ring and let their heart follow.

A story from life

Preacher's story about two roommates who refused to pay rent while spending freely on a guitar and clothes

Application

Pastor Bill frames the choice as whether you will spend your money or invest it.

Shut up and listen, as Solomon said
Stop rehearsing every excuse in your heart for why you can't trust God with your money, and actually listen to what He is asking.
Make giving your first fruits, not your leftovers
Plan to give to God first before spending, saving, or repaying anything else, so giving actually reflects trust rather than what happens to be left over.
Pick a percentage and start now
Choose a percentage of your income to give, even starting at one percent if you have to, rather than waiting until you feel ready.
Be progressive with your giving
As God takes care of you, keep increasing your percentage over time rather than stopping once you reach a comfortable number.
Throw your wallet in the ring
Put your money where God is asking, especially you men wrestling with spiritual passion, and watch your heart follow it as Jesus promised.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“What he built into us, it says in chapter three of Ecclesiastes, was a longing for eternity. Meaning a longing for him. A longing to have a relationship with the creator who made us”
From the transcript
“He starts off in verse one, if you think I'm a throat puncher, listen to this. As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut”
From the transcript
“He says down in verse seven, talk is cheap like daydreams and other useless activities. He's like, we talk a lot and then we don't actually do. You know what he says? Fear God instead”
From the transcript
“he says in verse 10, those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness. The first thing he's saying is money will not bring satisfaction”
From the transcript
“The second thing, verse 11, the second lie that tells you you might just be making money your idol is, the more you have, the more people come to help you spend it”
From the transcript
“And then verse 12, he says people who work hard sleep well. Whether they eat a little or much. It means if you have a lot of money or you don't. But if you worked hard, slept pretty good. But the rich seldom get a good night's sleep”
From the transcript
“And then the final thing in verse 13, he says, there's another serious problem I have seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver”
From the transcript
“Right here. When we buy into this lie, it says in verse 17, throughout their lives, anyone who follows this way, it doesn't matter how many times you go to church, throughout their lives they live under a cloud”
From the transcript
“he says in verse 20, God keeps such people so busy enjoying life that they take no time to brood over the past”
From the transcript
“So in in in where am I at? Matthew chapter six. Jesus actually says, here's what we need to do”
From the transcript
“In verse 19, he says, don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them, where thieves break in and steal, your treasure in heaven, where moths and store your treasures in heaven where moths and rust cannot destroy”
From the transcript
“Look what he says in verse 21. In verse 21 Jesus says, wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will be also”
From the transcript
“You know what the Bible says to Malachi? The only time God ever challenges us in all the scripture to test him. You know what he asked us to test him on? Giving”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

There's a kind of busyness that can fill a worship service — the right songs, the familiar prayers, the comfortable routine — without ever truly engaging with God. Solomon's opening warning in Ecclesiastes 5 cuts through all of it: come to listen, not just to speak. That word 'listen' is more demanding than it sounds. It means arriving with an open posture rather than a prepared defense. It means letting God's voice land before our own thoughts crowd it out. The sermon connected this to money in a surprising way. One of the reasons we struggle financially and spiritually is that we've stopped genuinely listening to what God says about wealth, enough-ness, and where our security actually comes from. We fill that silence with habits, assumptions, and cultural noise instead. Solomon calls that the sacrifice of fools — religious motion without real attention. Today is simply an invitation to slow down. Before the week of reflection on money and faith goes any further, start here: come ready to hear something that might rearrange your assumptions. That's not a threat — it's actually good news. A God worth listening to is a God who has something worth saying. And what He has to say, as this week will show, is far better than anything the world's financial logic offers.

For reflection

When you think about money, finances, and what you want your life to look like, how much of what you believe has actually come from listening to God — and how much has just drifted in from culture, family patterns, or fear?

Pray

Pray for a genuinely open and listening posture as you begin this week.

Day 2

Solomon had the resources to run every experiment on satisfaction that money can buy, and his conclusion is almost jarring in its plainness: whoever loves money never has enough. That's not a proverb about extreme wealth. It's a description of a mechanism — the more you orient your heart toward money as the source of what you need, the more your need grows. The number in your account changes; the hunger doesn't. This is worth sitting with honestly, because the illusion is so persistent. Most of us don't think we love money — we just want a little more breathing room, a little more stability, a little less anxiety. But that is exactly how the cycle starts. The frustration the sermon described — working harder, earning more, and somehow feeling no more satisfied — is precisely what Solomon is naming here. The good news buried in this verse is that it diagnoses a misplaced expectation, not a character flaw. Money was never designed to deliver satisfaction. When it doesn't, that's not failure — it's the thing working exactly as it was built. Satisfaction is God's territory. He offers it not as a reward for accumulating enough but as a gift to those who trust Him. That reframe doesn't make the practical pressures disappear, but it does point the hunger in the right direction.

For reflection

Can you identify a specific moment when getting more of something you wanted financially didn't actually bring the satisfaction you expected? What did you do with that feeling?

Pray

Pray for honesty about where you are currently looking for satisfaction, and ask God to redirect that hunger toward Himself.

Day 3

One of the quieter observations Solomon makes is about sleep. The laborer sleeps soundly; the rich person lies awake. There's a kind of painful irony in that image — the person who has acquired the most is the one most robbed of rest. More wealth brought more complexity, more to protect, more to worry about losing. The problems didn't shrink with the income; they just got more expensive. The sermon made this personal: more money doesn't solve your problems, it often multiplies them. That's not a reason to be careless with finances, but it is a reason to stop expecting that the next raise, the next savings milestone, or the next paid-off debt will finally deliver the peace of mind you're after. Peace of mind isn't a financial outcome. It's a spiritual one. Jesus made the same point from a different angle — anxiety about provision, He said, is the default mode of those who don't know the Father's care (Matthew 6:32). The laborer in Ecclesiastes who sleeps well isn't wealthier; he's less burdened by the illusion that his security depends on what he can stack up. There's a kind of freedom in that. The invitation today isn't to be irresponsible with money, but to loosen the grip of expecting it to be what only God can be: your actual peace.

For reflection

What financial milestone or number have you told yourself would finally bring peace of mind? How has that expectation held up so far?

Pray

Pray for the specific anxiety or worry about money that is most present for you right now, and ask God to be what no dollar amount can be.

Day 4

There's a grief in these verses that Solomon doesn't soften. A man hoards wealth, loses it, and has nothing to pass on. He came into the world with nothing; he leaves the same way. Whatever he spent his life accumulating — the stress, the sacrifices, the sleepless nights — none of it made the final trip. That's not morbid; it's clarifying. The sermon used this to press on the security question. Hoarding and spending everything on yourself can feel like building something solid, but Solomon calls it a 'grievous evil' precisely because it promises a permanence it cannot deliver. Security built on accumulated assets is always one diagnosis, one market crash, one lawsuit away from collapse. That's not pessimism — it's just the honest weight of living in a world where everything temporal is, by definition, temporary. What this passage quietly opens up is a different kind of legacy — one not measured in what you leave behind in a will but in what you invested in things that outlast you. The sermon pointed toward eternal kingdom work as the alternative to spending everything on yourself. That's not about guilt over what you own; it's about the invitation to build something that actually holds. Your time, your generosity, your testimony, your relationships — these are the currencies that don't evaporate.

For reflection

When you imagine the end of your life, what do you most want to be true about how you used the resources God gave you?

Pray

Pray for a growing desire to invest in things with eternal weight, and ask God to show you one place where you could begin.

Day 5

Solomon's summary lands hard: a life spent eating in darkness, with much frustration, affliction, and anger. That's the portrait of someone who expected money to do what it was never built to do. Satisfaction, problem-solving, peace of mind, lasting security — the sermon named all four of these as God's job description. When money gets placed in that role, it doesn't just fall short; it produces the exact opposite of what we hoped for. The word the sermon used was idolatry. That can sound dramatic, but idolatry doesn't always look like a golden calf. It often looks like a spreadsheet, a savings account, or a salary goal that quietly becomes the thing we trust most. The test isn't whether you have money; it's whether money occupies a place in your heart that belongs to God alone. This is actually one of the most freeing frames in the whole series. If money can't be God, you don't have to treat it like God. You don't have to let the balance in your account determine your mood, your sense of safety, or your view of the future. The frustration, the fading spiritual passion, the anxiety — these are symptoms of a misplaced trust, and misplaced trust can be redirected. That's not a simple fix, but it is a real one. And it starts with naming honestly where you've been looking.

For reflection

In an honest moment, which of these four — satisfaction, problem-solving, peace of mind, or security — are you most tempted to seek through money rather than through God?

Pray

Pray for the courage to name the specific way money has been occupying God's place in your life, and ask God to reclaim that space.

Day 6

Jesus doesn't just warn against storing up earthly treasure — He explains the mechanism underneath it. Where your treasure goes, your heart follows. That sequence matters. He doesn't say your heart determines where your money goes, though that's also true. He says it works the other direction too: the physical act of putting your money somewhere pulls your heart along with it. Your wallet is a heart-formation tool. The sermon took this seriously as a practical weapon against the idol of money. Giving first — as a priority, with a percentage, increasing it over time — isn't just a financial discipline. It's a deliberate act of pointing your heart toward God and toward what He is doing in the world. Every time you give before you spend, you are telling your heart, in the most concrete language possible, what you actually believe about where your security comes from. The pastor's challenge was not to wait until you feel generous enough to give. Start somewhere — even 1% — and watch what begins to happen to your passion for God, your sense of connection to His kingdom, and your grip on the things you once thought you couldn't let go. This isn't a transaction. It's an act of faith that, over time, reshapes the desires underneath it. Treasure placed with God has a way of taking your heart with it.

For reflection

If someone could only look at your bank statement to understand what you love and trust most, what story would it tell?

Pray

Pray for the faith to take one concrete, tangible step of giving — and ask God to use it to move your heart closer to His.

Day 7

Looking back over this week, a single thread runs through every passage: money is a faithful servant and a devastating master. Solomon's ancient observations — the hunger that grows with wealth, the sleeplessness of the rich, the empty hands at death, the darkness of a life built on wrong expectations — aren't cautionary tales from another era. They're the story playing out in modern suburban life, perhaps in your own. But the week didn't end in despair, and neither should this day. The sermon's final word was faith, not guilt. The way out of the cycle isn't self-discipline alone or a new budget strategy, though those have their place. It's a genuine reordering — learning to receive income as a steward rather than grasp it as an owner, giving first as an act of trust, and letting God prove Himself in the space where money used to sit. Today is a good day to look honestly at what this week stirred up. What did you hear that you needed to hear? Where did you feel resistance, and what might that resistance be telling you? You don't have to resolve everything today. But you don't have to stay on the same wheel, either. The invitation is real: trust God with your whole life — your time, your talent, your treasure, your testimony — and discover that He is exactly what money was always pretending to be.

For reflection

Looking at the whole week, what is the one thing God most clearly spoke to you — and what is one specific change you want to make in response?

Pray

Pray for the faith to act on what God has shown you this week, and ask Him to make your finances a place where your trust in Him becomes visible.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message takes an honest look at what we actually expect money to do for us — and whether those expectations are ones money can ever meet.

Discussion questions

1
In Ecclesiastes 5:1, Solomon opens with a call to listen before speaking when we come before God. What do you think he means by that, and why might he place that idea at the start of a passage about money and worship?
2
Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 5:10 that whoever loves money never has enough. What patterns in everyday life — for people in general — do you think he's describing there?
3
The message mapped four things onto money's 'job description' — satisfaction, problem-solving, peace of mind, and security — and then argued that each of those belongs to God. Looking at Ecclesiastes 5:11–16, which of those four do you think people in our culture most commonly chase through money, and why?
4
In Matthew 6:19–21, Jesus ties the location of our treasure directly to where our hearts end up. What does that connection suggest about the relationship between our everyday financial decisions and our spiritual lives?
5
The pastor challenged us to treat income as something we steward rather than something we own, and suggested starting with even 1% as a first act of that kind of faith. What would it look like, practically, for a household to begin making that shift in mindset?
6
If the frustration, debt, and fading spiritual passion the message described are signs that money has taken God's place, what might the opposite look like — what would it look like for a community of people to genuinely reorder their lives around the idea that God provides what money never can?

Pray together

Ask God to reveal where we have placed expectations on money that only He can fulfill, and for the faith to hold those things with an open hand

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Week 5 · 6 messages

Where these passages are preached

Ecclesiastes 3 Ecclesiastes 5 Matthew 6 Malachi 3

Explore related topics

Contentment Financial Stewardship Generosity and Giving Money and Idolatry Trust and Security

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