Clayton Presbyterian Church
October 22, 2006
You are rich. I don’t know if you think of yourself as rich, but you are. If you don’t believe me you can go to a website called, globalrichlist.com. When you input your annual income, the website tells you how rich you are in comparison to the rest of the world’s population. Unless you make less than $34,000 per year, you are in the top five percent of the richest people in the world. If you make more than $50,000 per year, you are in the top 1% of the world’s wealthiest people. That means that 99% of the world’s population would look up to you. That’s 6.6 billion people by the way. Any way that you slice it, we are all rich. We all have incomes that vast majority of the earth’s population could only wish for.
That makes our Scripture reading for this morning all the more relevant, because it begins with the words, “As for those who in the present age are rich….” Normally, we might blow right past those words, convinced that they don’t really concern us, but now we know that we are the rich.
And we should also take note because the Bible is clear that God expects us to use our resources wisely, and not foolishly. We will be held accountable. We are called stewards of what God has given us. In other words, we are managers and we will be called to account for how we live.
So let us hear what our passage has to say to us, that is to us who are rich. Listen to God’s Word to you.
17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life. (NRSV)
This is one of the straight forward passages of the Bible that is so easy to understand that we want to do all that we can to never read it. Why? Because it is hard to do. Being a Christian can be hard, because it goes against so many of our innate tendencies. Let’s take a look.
First, it warns us of the dangers of riches, that is, that we set our hopes on riches. This is one of the most dangerous things about money. Think of everything that you want out of life. What would be on that list? Happiness, security, comfort? We all assume, on some level at least, that money can help us get these things. If we had more money then we wouldn’t be as worried about being able to pay our bills. If we had more money, we could travel more, enjoy adventure, and see our families. If we had more money, then we wouldn’t worry about things out of our control, like losing a job or the economy turning south. And we set our hopes on money.
According to Money magazine where they reported on a study, "Money won’t buy you happiness." The article says,
Sure, if a person is handed $10, the pleasure centers of his brain light up as if he were given food, sex or drugs. But that initial rush does not translate into long-term pleasure for most people. Surveys have found virtually the same level of happiness between the very rich individuals on the Forbes 400 and the Maasai herdsman of East Africa. Lottery winners return to their previous level of happiness after five years. Increases in income just don't seem to make people happier--and most negative life experiences likewise have only a small impact on long-term satisfaction.
"The relationship between money and happiness is pretty darned small," says Peter Ubel, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan.
This is the trap. Money cannot make us happy, but we continue to only want more of it. It is not money that can save us, because it is not money that’s in charge. It is God who can save us because it is God who is sovereign over all the earth. God calls himself our loving heavenly father. He wants us to come to him with our needs. He assures us that his plans for us are for our good, not for our harm. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus asks his hearers whether or not their earthly fathers would give them a stone when they asked for bread? Of course not. Then, he suggests, why don’t we believe that our Father in heaven will be better to us than any earthly father would? Our passage in Timothy tells us that we should set our hopes “on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” God gives us everything that we need to be happy.
God is so generous and is always ready to do good to us. That is God’s very nature. He is a generous giver. And therefore, we should be generous givers as well.
This is in fact what our Scripture passage tell us. First, don’t set your hope on money, but instead set your hope on God. Then it says, we are “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” We are called to be rich, not rich in monetary terms, but rich in good works. Rich the way that God is rich. In this way your riches are not determined by how much you have, but by how much you give away. God gave us his only Son. He gave all that he could give. We are called to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.
Giving is difficult. But it is still worth it.
In a sermon on giving, Dave Ferguson, pastor of Community Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois, read this letter from Jeff and Julie, who attend the church:
Julie and I started attending Community Christian Church in January 1993, after moving here from California.
We moved here for a business opportunity that ended up not working out, and we soon found ourselves in a desperate financial situation. We were behind in our rent and our car payments. We had back-IRS payments, 16 credit cards with more than $40,000 in debt, and not enough food in the fridge to keep our tummies full. And on top of all that, we decided to start a business.
Well, in the middle of this, Jon had challenged us to include our finances in our commitment to following Jesus, and I really struggled with this. It wasn't that I didn't want to support CCC or set an example for others to follow. It was, in fact, that on occasion Julie and I were so broke that we ended up going to a friend's restaurant to ask for free food. I thought, If I'm struggling to keep my family, how can I commit what I don't have to God? What am I supposed to do; just write a check for ten percent of my income and hope that something happens? Jon urged me to trust God and give it a shot.
After prayer and discussion, we decided that God would get the first portion of every check and not just what we were willing to give up each week. We learned to make God the first priority in our lives, and we had no idea how we'd get by.During the week after this decision, my brother and I were dropping off flyers at a construction site looking for work. We'd started a carpentry company. We met a builder, and he asked if we would be interested in doing their work. He had a house that was ready for us to start immediately and about twenty more to do during the next twelve months.
Julie and I no longer questioned how we'd honor our financial commitment. Julie and I decided to increase our giving.If our story ended there, it would be a good story. However, you cannot outgive God. Over the next couple of years through a complicated and divinely orchestrated series of events, Julie and I also went from renters to homeowners. Owning a home has given us the ability to restructure our debt and give us some security and stability. I felt the need to tell our story. The story is much, much more than about finances. It's about faith, stepping out and trusting God with all that we have—our lives, our future, our relationship, and even our finances.
Now as I reflect on this story and what we experienced, I'm still trying to answer one question. What was it that we sacrificed?
Giving is really, at bottom, about trust. Do we trust God to take care of us? Can we give away some resources that we might otherwise use to provide for our needs? How much do you trust in God to take care of you? Do you believe that he will? It is only if you do, that you will be able to be generous.
What qualifies as generous? If there is a good cause, or the hat is passed and you reach into your purse or wallet, how much would you drop in? Most people would be pretty comfortable dropping in $20. Is $20 generous?
I might have thought so before Friday afternoon. On Friday we went to the State Fair. Do you know that we spend $20 for our girls to go on 4 rides? And we spent more than that on food. And then I looked around and realized how many other tens of thousands of others did the same, if not more. If we will drop so much on something so fleeting, $20 can’t be that generous for most of us.
On the other hand, the Scripture says that money that we give is not wasted, but invested. When we are rich in good works, when we are generous in our giving, we are “storing up treasures.” The text says that we are storing up a treasure for the future life that really is life. What a phrase! Real life is not the good feelings or experiences that we can buy. Real life is that which comes from God.
I want to come back to that question of what is generous. In that letter that was written to the church in Illinois, what the couple decided to do was tithe. This might be a brand new idea for you. The idea is an ancient on in the Old Testament, where tithing means giving a tenth of what you earn. Most people’s giving is nowhere near that.
Kari and I are committed to tithing because we believe that by tithing we are bearing witness to the fact that everything that we have belongs to God. It also helps us to be more generous than we might be if we decided how much we wanted to give at the end of the week, or after we had bought everything we wanted to for the month.
In preparing your pledge, I encourage you to sit down with your finances. Look at your giving statement to see how much you gave this year and do the math to figure out how much you are giving compared to how much you bring home. You will probably be surprised.
I encourage you to set a goal of getting to tithing. Increase the amount that you give each year by 1% until you become a tither. It is the best investment program that you can find.
Last week I was hard on those high falutin Hollywood types that are so puffed up with their own riches and success. This morning I want to share with you one bring counter-example.
For eight seasons, Patricia Heaton starred on CBS's hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Toward the end she was reportedly pulling down over $6 million a year. But how often do you hear a Hollywood star say things like this?
“I struggle to keep it simple. Obedience, sacrifice, and modesty are not real popular buzzwords out here. An issue I'm dealing with lately is, "Do I have too much money, and am I being a good steward of it?" In fact, I was talking to a friend about tithing—just giving your 10 percent as opposed to giving until it actually starts costing you something, which is what I think tithing is all about.”i
Heaton was already giving 10% and she looked at her life and concluded that it wasn’t really costing her anything. If our giving is not really costing us anything, then its not real generosity.
Most of us would say, "Sure, I would tithe too if I made that much money!" But, you know, that is exactly what most people in the world might be saying of us. God has given all that he could give to us, and he has given sacrificially. We should strive to be generous givers like he is.