In this sermon, Pastor Chuck Smith discusses the folly of focusing on earthly riches and neglecting the eternal. He emphasizes the brevity of our time on earth and the importance of laying up treasures in heaven. He warns that wealth cannot redeem our souls or bring us true peace and joy. Instead, Pastor Chuck encourages listeners to walk in God's love, experience His Spirit, and be witnesses for Him. He concludes by reminding believers that God will guide and keep them as they live a full life in the Spirit.

Oh, let the Son of God enfold you With His Spirit and His love Let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh, let Him have the things that hold you And His Spirit like a dove Will descend upon your life And make you whole The foolish and how riches cannot redeem As we turn in our Bibles to the 49th Psalm Beginning with verse 13 And now with today's message Here's Pastor Chuck Smith So this is their folly Their way is that of folly Because they have taken and made no provision for the eternal My sojourn here on earth is so short Less than a hundred years But I'm going to enter into the eternal No end But the thing is Now is my opportunity to lay up for eternity And yet people are taking no advantage of this opportunity They don't think in the realms of the eternal And that is folly Spending so much effort, time on the temporal Neglecting completely the eternal And though their way is folly Yet their posterity approves their sayings We have all these great quotes from Grandpa Who left this fortune to the family About working hard And a penny saved is a penny earned And I made it the old fashioned way I earned it But yet they are like sheep They're like animals They are laid in the grave Death shall feed on them And the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning And their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling And a year after they're dead They're not very beautiful anymore They can't redeem their soul They can't buy their salvation But God will redeem my soul I'm not trusting in money for redemption I'm trusting in God to redeem my soul From the power of the grave For he shall receive me Paul as he writes to the Ephesians in chapter 1 Lists the tremendous blessings that we have The spiritual blessings in Christ in heavenly places Thanks be unto God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places Who has chosen us Before the foundations of the earth And as he lists those blessings He says, for we are accepted in the Beloved God accepts me in Christ That is, he will receive me into glory God will redeem me, he will receive me into glory What I couldn't buy for myself, God has given to me The glorious redemption, it's through Jesus Christ And being redeemed through Jesus Christ I have come into a full life Because I've come into the life of the Spirit Those who are outside of Christ Live in only a two-dimensional plane of existence Body, soul Body, conscious And the conscious mind of man Man is absorbed and filled with the body needs That's what absorbs his conscience And so he has what the Bible classifies The mind of the flesh They do mind fleshly things I think about what I'm going to eat, what I'm going to drink Where I'm going to go for fun And all I think about is the area of the flesh But the Bible says that the mind of the flesh is death But when you are born again of the Spirit You then begin to live in the spiritual dimension And your mind is now controlled by the Spirit And the mind of the Spirit is life and peace and joy And you come into this full-orbed life Now notice, life, peace, joy You can't, with money, buy life You can't redeem your own soul With money, as much as you have, you can't buy peace As much as you have, you can't buy joy So God will redeem me and receive me And so thus, don't be afraid when one is made rich When the glory of his house is increased When you see a person win the lottery For when he dies, he will carry nothing away His glory will not follow him to the grave Though while he lived, he blessed his soul He said, how great I am And men will praise you when you do well for yourself They say, my, you know, he started out as a janitor And now he's the president Hard work And men will praise you when you become successful But what does God think about it? And what does God think about you? And so men will praise you when you do well by yourself But you shall go down to the generation of your fathers Where they never see the light Jesus said they will be cast into outer darkness Where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth Man that is in honor Has the riches and the wealth And yet doesn't have understanding of the eternal Lives only for the present Uses his wealth just for material things Is like the beast that perishes He lives like an animal And shall perish like an animal Interesting psalm Much to contemplate Psalm 50 is a psalm of Asaph Who was David's chief musician Jesus one day was talking with the Pharisees He was disputing with the Pharisees And he said You do search the scriptures Because in them You think that you have life But they are they which testify of me Jesus is declaring that The Old Testament scriptures were actually testifying of him Psalm 50 is a classic example Of the Old Testament scriptures testifying of him In Hebrews Concerning Christ there is a quotation of a psalm I have come as it is written of me In the volume of the book To do thy will oh Lord In other words the volume of this book is of Jesus Someone has said that The word history Should be really hyphenated Because it is his story And surely he is the center focal point Of the history of man We even date Our calendars From the time of his birth Before Christ And now in the year of our Lord Anno Domino in the year of our Lord The Bible says concerning The man of Paulus in the book of Acts That he was able mightily Through the scriptures to prove That Jesus was the Messiah In the discourse that Jesus had With the two disciples on the road to Emmaus The day of the resurrection Jesus began with Moses That is the Torah The first five books And he went through all of the scriptures That related to him Showing them How the Messiah must need suffer and die And rise again That is one book of the Bible That I wish had been written I wish that Cleopas and the other disciple When they got back to Jerusalem Would have sat down and written out All of those scriptures And the references that Jesus made Of the Old Testament scriptures to him But Psalm 50 is one of those special References And it is a reference to the second coming Of Jesus Christ And his judging of the world at that time We know that his second coming will be preceded By a period of great tribulation As Daniel said there shall be great tribulation Such as the world has never seen before Has never been Since the world was I think the way Daniel put it Jesus in more or less quoting Daniel Matthew 24 said And there shall be great tribulation Such as the world has never seen before Or will ever see again And then when he comes Matthew 25 and 26 He'll gather together the nations for judgment And he will sit upon the throne of judgment And so Psalm 50 is prophetic of that part Of the life of Christ We've already seen in many of the Psalms We see Psalm 2 The prophecies of the glorious kingdom age Ask of me I'll give you the heathen for thine inheritance The other most parts of the earth for thy possession We've seen in Psalm 22 The graphic description of his death upon the cross The details of the Parting of his garments among them And the casting of lots for the robe The piercing of his hands and his feet And on and on and on So Psalm 50 another one of those Messianic Psalms A prophetic Psalm Dealing with the time when Jesus comes again And judges the earth So the mighty God Even Jehovah hath spoken And called the earth from the rising of the sun Unto the going down thereof For out of Zion The perfection of beauty God hath shined And that is of course Through Jesus Christ God did shine forth Jesus said I am the light of the world And John was sent to bear witness of that light He was not the light but more witness of the light That is the true light That lighteth every man that cometh into the world So out of Zion The perfection of beauty God hath shined Our God shall come There are those today that are saying Where is the promise of his coming Since our fathers have fallen asleep All things continue as they were from the beginning But Peter affirms But the Lord shall come Here it is declared in the Psalm Our God shall come And shall not keep silence The silence of God is a very difficult thing for us today I have a problem many times with the silence of God I wish God would speak When I see some of the blasphemies That man is guilty of today When I read of this Gay pride Proud of it You know that's what the scripture calls wantonness And the scripture looks at it as As low as you can get When you flount your sins And the thing that problems me is Why is God silent? Why doesn't God do something? A day of judgment is coming A fire shall devour before him That is the great tribulation that will precede The coming of Christ The next judgment will be a judgment of fire Upon the earth God judged the earth once with a flood Time of Noah He promised he would never judge with a flood again But he will judge with a fire Will devour before him It shall be very tempestuous round about him He shall call to the heavens from above And to the earth That he may judge his people In Matthew And he shall gather together the nations For judgment The declaration Gather my saints together unto me Those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice And the heavens shall declare his righteousness For God is judge himself It is interesting to me that As we read the book of Revelation And that coming judgment of God upon the earth During that period that we call the great tribulation During the midst of some of the most devastating parts Of the tribulation We hear the angels We hear the voices from the altar of God Declaring the righteousness of God's judgment Holy and righteous are thy judgments, O Lord And over again through the book of Revelation We find that in the midst of the judgment There will be the declaration of the righteousness Of the judgment of God That comforts me Because the Bible is not entirely specific As far as the judgments of God in that future day And there is a concern For those that have not had a fair opportunity To hear the gospel of Jesus Christ For children who have died Would it be fair for God to judge those as he would A person who willfully, deliberately Turns his back against the Lord In open blasphemy against God And obviously that wouldn't be fair And so God will be fair in his judgment The Bible doesn't tell us the final disposition of every case But it does assure us that he will be righteous And true in his judgments He will declare, God is judge himself And he shall declare his righteousness in the judgment Hear O my people, I will speak O Israel, I will testify against thee So here is where this particular psalm goes directly now Into prophecy as God now speaks Through Asaph And it turns to the first person As do many of the psalms where God himself Speaks through the prophet Hear O my people, I will speak O Israel, I will testify against thee For I am God, even thy God I will not reprove thee For thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings Which were to have been continually before me They were not totally faithful in those sacrifices and offerings But God said, I'm not going to reprove you for that For I will take no bullock out of your house Or he goats out of your folds For every beast of the forest is mine And the cattle on a thousand hills God is saying, I'm not broke, I don't need your sacrifices I'm not going to reprove you for your lack of sacrifices My, every beast of the field is mine The cattle on a thousand hills And I like this, God said, I know all the fowls of the mountains And the wild beasts of the fields are mine If I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you Or I wouldn't ask you for help For the world is mine and the fullness thereof I like that God is not broke He's not desperate He's not begging for funds He's not dependent upon you to keep him going Though it may appear that way If you watch television God said, look, if I needed something, I wouldn't tell you Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God thanksgiving Pay your vows to the Most High In the book of Hebrews it says, wherefore, let us offer unto God The sacrifice of praise, the fruit of our lips unto the Lord And this is a sacrifice that to God is well pleasing God is pleased with your just expressing your love Your praise Your thanksgiving to Him We'll return with more of our verse-by-verse venture through the Bible in our next lesson As we find that God is a righteous judge And we do hope you'll make plans to join us But right now, I'd like to remind you that if you missed any part of today's message Or perhaps you'd like to order a copy for that special friend or loved one You can do so by simply contacting one of our customer service representatives And they'd be more than happy to assist you with the ordering details Simply call 1-800-272-WORD And phone orders can be taken Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time Once again, our toll-free number is 1-800-272-9673 And for your added convenience, you can order online anytime When you go to the wordfortoday.org And while you're there, be sure to browse through the additional resources That include Bible studies, commentaries, CDs, DVDs, and so much more Once again, that's the word for today online at thewordfortoday.org And for those of you who still prefer to write, you can use our mailing address Which is The Word for Today, P.O. Box 8000, Costa Mesa, California, 92628 And be sure to include the call letters of this station with your correspondence And now on behalf of The Word for Today, we'd like to thank all of you Who share in supporting this ministry with your prayers and financial support And be sure to join us again next time As Pastor Chuck Smith continues his verse-by-verse venture through the Psalms That's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today Now once again, here's Pastor Chuck Smith with today's closing comments May the Lord bless you, may His hand be upon you Strengthening, guiding, keeping As you walk in His love and as you experience His Spirit Working in and through your life this week May God use you, make you His witness And prosper you in your ways In Jesus' name Do you want to know a great story about gang members, drug addicts, mental patients Society's rejects and how God turned their lives around to use them mightily It's all right here in the book Harvest Join Pastor Chuck Smith as he tells the story of how God transformed the lives of 10 men to reach the world Read the testimonies of Greg Laurie, Raul Reese, Mike McIntosh, John Corson, Skip Heitzik and others And see for yourself that if God can use these guys to spread the gospel worldwide Then God can use you too To read a sneak preview of the book online visit thewordfortoday.org Or call The Word for Today at 800-272-WORD I want to encourage you to check it out This just might be the book to change the life of a loved one or even you Visit thewordfortoday.org This program has been sponsored by The Word for Today In Costa Mesa, California