True Life

Message Transcription

Well, if you have your Bible with you, I invite you to turn over to first Timothy. We're going to be there today. We started a series last week called Take Five. It's a moment for us to stop and consider where we are and when we are and who we are. How life is going. A chance for us to take a break, a pause, if you will. It consider how God might be inviting us deeper into life together and life and community here at Broadway, but also in our city of Lubbock, where he's challenging us to take a next step in faith, our faith journey, whatever that might look like. Last week we spent some time thinking about specifically our financial lives, and we're going to do a little bit of that again here today. You know, this conversation came up as we were thinking and looking at our budget and we're trying to meet our budget and pay our bills and all those wonderful things, all the challenges that we all experience individually we are experiencing and going through here together as a church family. And so we're just, again, looking back again at what does the scripture say about taking good care of our financial life. So last week we looked at Paul's words and second Corinthians Chapter eight. Well, we'll look at there and just a minute today we're going to be in First Timothy Chapter six. And my hope is that today, if you have come this morning feeling something like if I just had a little bit more money, if I just made a little bit more, I was just worth a little bit more, I'd be okay.

You know, we can't deny the pressure the culture puts on us when it comes to our resources, our finances, the pressure to have more. We live in a culture of scarcity where a zero sum equations all the time. Meaning the more that I get, the less that you have an opportunity to have. And so it it challenged us. It forces us to turn on each other, to think, well, I've got to get mine, so you've got to get yours. I'm not going to worry about you. You worry about you. But that's not the way of the kingdom. That's not how Jesus nor Paul talked about this grace filled life. You know, last week we talked about the challenge that that Paul gave to the church in Corinth to take advantage of the opportunity to to be graciously generous, to have a heart that is filled with grace, a grace filled life. In fact, he would point to his their counterpoints in Macedonia, their counterparts, rather, in Macedonia, that he described this way, he'd say, in the midst of a very severe trial, they're overflowing, joy, and their extreme poverty welled up and rich generosity for our testify that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability entirely on their own. They urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in the service to the Lord's people.

It's amazing. A kingdom equation comes out of joy, plus poverty equals generosity. So Paul says, Don't you want to excel in this grace of giving? Now, he's going to say today that that that is the invitation into the life that's truly life. And this equation, Paul says, comes directly from Jesus life, who though he was rich for your sake. He became poor so that you, through his poverty, might become rich. Now this equation comes right out of the life and the teachings of Jesus. In fact, if we don't take this seriously, if we get this equation wrong, we're going to end up spending our lives chasing after the very same thing that people who don't even know God chase after Jesus says. He says, You may gain the whole world. And what you'll find is that you forfeited your soul, your very life. So how do we join in on the grace of giving? Well, we do so in part by recognizing that God is not only working in us and for us, but he wants to work through us. And so the resources and the blessings that he gives to us are not just for our own accord, for us to just enjoy ourselves, but God wants to do something through us with those resources. It's one of the amazing and beautiful things about the church is we gather our gifts together, that God blesses them exponentially.

And so we want to live in the kingdom with the kingdom economic principles in mind. Otherwise, we're in danger of being deceived into following the way of the world. Of greed and scarcity and fear and selfishness. And that certainly seems to be the case at the church that Timothy is pastoring when Paul writes him this letter. In fact, if you read through first and second, Timothy and Titus, they're they're known as the pastoral epistles, not just because they were written for a pastor, but because Paul's really trying to help Timothy unlock and help his church unlock what it means to live out the life of faith in community in a pagan world. How do you live out a life of faith with people who don't agree and think and believe the way that you do? And that day, there were evidently rich people who were not very good at being rich. Now, I know this may sound strange to you, but imagine there were some rich people who had attitude of superiority, who looked down on other people because they didn't have the same kinds of things. Others were overindulging themselves and meeting their own needs while ignoring the needs that were right there in front of them. I know it's hard to imagine, but just go there with me for a moment. Others were making poor personal decisions because they believed the rules didn't apply to them. Right. Crazy, huh? I mean, people would live as if the rules don't apply to them.

And yet that's happening in the church. And so you hear Paul challenge Timothy with some words at the end of this letter that Spencer read for us just a moment ago, he said, command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope and wealth, which is so uncertain. But to put their hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Paul starts with this freight command, those who are rich. Which leads us to this question, who is he talking to? Who's he talking to? If you're like me, most of us think somebody who's rich, somebody else, somebody not me. I'm not rich. Right? He's talking to the rich people and they're about to get it because it's time for them to get it. I'm sick and tired of them not playing by the rules. I'm sick and tired of them having everything and me having nothing. And so they're about to get it. Paul Let's hear it, brother. Lay it on them. It's interesting how the word rich in art is defined so loosely in our culture. What we find is it's actually defined and shaped based on where we are. If you've ever noticed that there's a group in the UK that's a research and development group, they do all kinds of marketing research. They put some questions out doing a study one day back in 2019, asking folks to kind of gave them a range of income levels and then ask people simply to respond.

Somebody, an individual making this much money. Do you think they're rich or poor or neither? And so start it from zero and kind of working their way up. In fact, I've got a slide here. If you bump up here, how much do you earn have to earn to to be considered rich? What's you'll notice that far right hand column in that turquoise colored green. It's down between 90 and 100,000 before the average person who looks out in the world and sees another person earning somewhere between 90 and $100,000 before taxes, they would consider them rich. Now they turned the table a little bit and said, Do you consider yourself rich? Based on what you make. And so they they ask that question, how much do you make and do you consider yourself rich? Well, another slide. Here's kind of what they found. I thought this was pretty interesting. Again, the far right hand turquoise color are the number of percentage of people who earn that amount of money who consider themselves rich. Okay. 87% said if you make between 90 and 150. It's just normal. That's just average. That's neither rich nor poor. It's kind of an interesting thing. No one really thinks they're rich. Have you ever noticed that? No one really considers himself rich, but they know how to spot a rich person somewhere else. It makes me think of the study that was done.

It's pokes fun at preachers. They they took a survey at a preaching conference and they said, how many of you think you're an above average preacher? What percentage of preachers thought they were above average preachers? Like 78%. That's impossible, right? Everybody thinks they're above average, right? Like we live in Lake Wobegon or something. Nobody. Nobody sees themselves as rich. But what numbers are actually true about your income and your worth when it comes to comparing you to the rest of the world? We'll check these numbers out. If you earn more than $1,500 a year combined annual income, you're in the top 25% of wage earners in the world. Now, if you earn more than 25%, you're now in the top ten. And if your combined annual income is more than $50,000, you're in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. Now, let me ask you, are you rich? I kind of changes the game a little bit, doesn't it? I mean, what this means is I'm rich. And that's kind of an uncomfortable word to say, isn't it, when you think about Jesus engagement and interactions with those who are wealthy in the Gospels. Here's the thing about rich people. We don't feel rich. You see, there's this big gap between being rich and feeling rich. You know, when Kayla and I were first married, we didn't make hardly anything. Both grad students, Kayla was working to support us through there.

Now we wake. We make way more than we did 24 years ago when we started out. And I still don't feel rich. And what's interesting is, even though we make more money now, I still don't feel rich because I've seen other people who make more. They make more than I do, and they have more than I do. So it reminds me not of how much more I have now than I used to, but. But how much I still don't have. And how much I still really want. So it's not that I have less. I've just become more aware of people who have more. And so in my eyes, they're rich and I'm not. That's why when we hear Paul tell Timothy command those who are rich, we think he's talking about somebody else. My hope for us this morning is that that we would maybe hear it as maybe Paul's talking to us. If he's talking about us. He's talking to me and maybe some of you as well. And even if you don't think this applies to you, what's interesting is money can control you, whether you have a lot of it or not. Regardless of where we are financially. How we feel financially. Let's listen this morning as if Paul is really talking to us. In fact, he commands Timothy first to command those who are rich in this present world. Not to be arrogant. Notice he doesn't say command them to to to feel bad. They should be embarrassed and ashamed.

He doesn't say tell them that they're evil or they're wrong or they're sinful because they have money. He doesn't say you should never be concerned about your financial life. Instead, he says, Don't be arrogant. Now, why would he say that? Because one of the first things money does to us is it starts to tempt us to believe things about ourselves that we aren't true, that we're smarter than others, or we're more entitled. We've earned this, we deserve this, or my comfort is more important or more valuable than other people. Now, some of these things may not be conscious thoughts that we think out loud or that we would ever say to someone like, I'm sorry, I can't help you. My needs are just more important than yours. I don't have any money to give you today because I'm saving up for this thing. It's more important than you. We don't say that stuff out loud. We just. We find other ways around it. Other ways to. To say it. See, one of the things that we start to think is that we're more important this money change a person. Have you ever seen money change someone? Have you ever had a friend who came into a lot of money and noticed they're different now than they used to be? I have. It is interesting how we never think it's going to happen to us, though. Well, if I had that kind of money, I'll tell you what I would do.

First thing. Give to the church, right? Yeah. That maybe your response kind of answers that one for me. The running belief in our day is that money changes people. But not us. Contemporary research actually shows that money has a profound impact on us. This was really interesting to me, came across a study that was done at UC Berkeley that even that having money, they studied in a really interesting way. I'll tell you about in just a minute. But they discovered that having more money can actually decrease our empathy and compassion. And here's how they studied it. On campus, they had a couple of students play the game of Monopoly. How many have you ever played the game of Monopoly? And they started out one student, they said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to start you out with two. Grant Every time you pass, go, you collect $200 and you get to roll two dice. Then they went to another person randomly assigned and said, You're going to get $1,000 every time you pass, go, you get $100, but you only get to roll one dice. Everybody knew the rules and when they started out, it was a little awkward because the first person they played about 15 minutes and they just watched these two people play and they noticed that at first the one with more money felt a little bad, a little guilty about this extra that that he had that had nothing to do with him.

It was just randomly assigned in this in this experiment. But as the game goes on, he became more aggressive, moving his pieces more loudly at one point, even moving the other person's pieces, but quit making eye contact with them and began taunting the other player. Right now. Think about this for a minute. Even having more fake money can make you act like a jerk. And that's so weird. We would never do anything like that. There's something else that they did. Another study. There's a pedestrian crosswalk in San Francisco, and so they just stopped. The law says when a pedestrian is in the crosswalk, you have to stop, let them cross, then you can go. And they just measured how which kind of cars don't typically stop. What they found was owners of luxury cars were four times less likely to stop. Now. Again, it's a small thing. But isn't that just interesting? How we operate when we come under the illusion of our resources, what we deserve. See when you don't know how to be rich. Money starts to change you. It starts to get in your head and mess with your thinking. Paul starts right where he needs to when he says Commend the rich not to be arrogant. Not to think more highly of themselves. Maybe for some of us this morning, that's the word that the Lord wants to give to us is we need to stop thinking more highly of ourselves.

Paul is going to go on to say command those who are rich, not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in money, which is so uncertain. You see, the more money we have, the more we're tempted to place our hope in it. It can provide me security and contentment and safety and protection. I'm so ready to forget to be generous each day. It's like I'm just inclined to forget this call. To be generous. Paul says it leads us to to trust in our resources, our money, rather than God. The writer of Proverbs said it this way. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city. They imagine it a wall too high to scale. In that interesting in a couple thousand years ago and even then. See, it's not new church. The temptation to lean upon the resources and the gifts that we have to build them as if it's a wall around us. And we could just build it so high that. That nothing could ever penetrate. Nothing could ever get in. That might hurt us. So the rich come up with this imaginary idea that it will make them more safe and more secure. And so what do they do? They keep working longer and longer hours at the detriment of relationships. They make choices. They shouldn't. They stop being generous. They buy and spend beyond their means. You see, this is at the heart of why people who make more on average give less.

Do you know that? They trace that out? If you if you track people's income levels, the more it goes up, the smaller percentage they give away. Why? Because they just can't afford it. This can't afford to give more. This inverse principle. Why? Because the more you think, the more you have, the more you think you need. The more you make, the more you imagine that you reach this point where you can build a life that's impervious to sin and sickness and doubt and death, no matter what it is disease. Writer of Ecclesiastes said it this way. Those who have who love money rather never have enough, and those who love wealth are never satisfied with their income. It's the old preacher joke I've told hundred times who's more content man with ten kids or the man with $10 million. It's the man with ten kids because he doesn't want anymore. Now, the question that Andy Stanley asks us is how much money would you need to secure your future against all imaginable eventualities? If you stop and think about how much money would I have to put together to to build that wall around us? Well, the answer is always more. See, the thing is, your money isn't your problem. I think that's what Paul's trying to help Timothy teach the church. Your money is not your problem. Your belief about your money is your problem. It's why you count on it too much and you cling to it and you put your hope in it.

You see, money is the provision. It's not the provider. And so Paul says it's too uncertain. And any of us who have ever had some money understand that it's too uncertain. I mean, think about what's most important in your life. And what money can't do. Right. How much I would give. How much would you give? If you knew it would solve the problem. That's just at the heart of your wrestling and you're struggling. How much would you give? Money can't solve that problem. It can't change the heart of a loved one. It can't heal you from an addiction or loneliness or despair or disease. I mean, some of us make more money now than we ever thought we would ever make. And we're still not happy. And some of us have more stuff than we ever thought we'd ever have. And we're still stressed and uncertain and anxious and alone. And it's not a sign that money then is evil. Instead, it's a sign that we've put our hope in the wrong place. It sees what you believe about your money, about your resources. So what do we do? How do we change that? What's the answer? Well, Paul tells Timothy. Command them to do good, to be rich and good deeds, verse 18, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

So that they can take the life that they were made for. This is how you take hold of it by building a foundation that's eternal. Paul says. To do good, to be rich and good deeds, to be generous, to share. If you haven't grabbed a copy of, by the way, magazine this month, I want to encourage you to do that. It just came out hot off the press this week. But in that magazine, we've challenged each of our ministries to help us take five to stop and think about God. Is there a way that you could invite me to step into the life that is truly life? To get engaged in a ministry that's beyond myself, to start doing good, to start laying that foundation, that eternal foundation, to start living outside of myself. You know, this conversation for us, it started in the financial world, but it surely extends beyond. And that's why we asked each and every one of our ministries, could you give us just five quick ideas about how we could start laying that foundation or maybe relaying it, or maybe get back to building it? You know, for some of us, as we said last time, the first step may just be starting to give. It may just be making a commitment. Lord, I'm going to start giving. And we gave you some ideas last week. Those are in the magazine this week.

Invite you to turn and take a look at those when you get a chance. For some of us. There may be something else, maybe engaging in a ministry, maybe taking our time in our energy and giving those away, volunteering in one of our ministries, serving in our neighborhood, reaching out in our workplace to find how can I make a difference? You see the greatest luxury of our wealth. That our wealth affords to us is not our ability to buy stuff. It's our ability to give. To give things away. I mean, look at Jesus. He had all the resources of the universe at his disposal. Yet for our sake. He became poor. He gave him away. In fact, his very life he gave for us knowing. That in doing so, we would find forgiveness and reconciliation and the life that's truly life. So Paul and Jesus invite us into that same life. See, Jesus was generous with his time. He shared what he had. He was never in it just for himself. He was generous in his provision because he set his hope on the provider. So church is I finish this morning. Let me ask where is your hope? Where's your hope? If deep down you realize that your hope is enriches and not of the one who richly provides. Maybe today is the day. You can make a choice to move that hope. To reinvest, if you will. It might be in a decision to start giving, but it might be in a decision how you'll respond to an opportunity.

That someone in need presents to you. Am I being how you approach your work? Maybe it's in how it might be, what you decide to buy or not to buy. You see, today is the day. Because you'll never get this particular day back. In this particular decision, this opportunity. Where is your hope? Church. Will you take your next step to excel in the grace of giving? As Paul challenged the church in Corinth. That would help you build that foundation, that will allow you to step into the life that's truly life. Got to pray for our church this morning as we think about a really tough topic. How do we spend our money? How do we recognize the needs in our lives and in the world around us have never been greater. The challenges never been higher. The obstacles. Never more bold. Yeah. Would you help us? To put our hope in you. Not in the the riches, the gifts, but in the giver. You got to pray that that message would sink in wherever it needs to this day. And Father, we want to be a church known for our radical generosity. Not just financially, Lord, but with our time and with our energies, with our passions. With her with all the resources that you give to us. Yeah. We want to make a kingdom impact in Lubbock and around the world. And I'm so thankful for so many who've caught that vision, who have been giving faithfully, not just of their their resources, their their finances, but of their time, their energy, their passion.

Oh, God. Would you help us to take our next step on that same journey? Recognizing that we're putting our hope not in the gifts, but in the giver, that we're laying an eternal foundation God, one that we will build upon that will last into eternity. That Jesus, just as you modeled and said it is better to give than to receive. And we want to be those kinds of people. Because we want to live the life that's truly life. And so, God, whoever needs to hear that, whatever they need to hear God. Would you make it clear to them today? We got also know there may be some that this message just doesn't even. It just falls flat. There's some other need or circumstance or obstacle or challenge they're facing. And so, God, I pray for them right now that you would just bless them. You'd be near and close to them that they might sense your presence and your strength. And your invitation to take that next step. God, would you give them courage to respond? Lord, wherever we are, we want to be a part of your kingdom family. So, God, would you help us? Give us strength and courage and peace. We ask all this and the one who gave it all up for us. May we do likewise? In Jesus name. Amen.