CAPITAL BIBLE CHURCH January 26, 2014 SERMON NOTES PASTOR BILL HAKEN Series: How to Be Rich How Much Stuff is Enough? Luke 12:16 21 Intro: Review what we learned in part 1 of How to Be Rich. What is rich? Notice what Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:17, 18. 1 Timothy 6:17 Tell those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which will soon be gone. But their trust should be in the living God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and should give generously to those in need, always being ready to share with others whatever God has given them. We, the American people, are the richest people in history, but the problem is, we won t admit it! No matter how much we have, we always say rich is double what I make, whether it s $15K or $500K! But we are Rich! We need to learn to be good at it! Paul told Timothy to warn people about 2 bad side effects of wealth: - Makes one proud or arrogant! - Makes one trust in money migrates our hope from God to riches! Memorize and repeat several times each day: I will not trust in riches but in Him who richly provides. Today we ll look further at how rich Americans can clear up their faulty thinking about money. I say rich Americans because we possess more than most people around the world and in history could ever dream about. So what s the problem? Point # 1: 1. We have everything we need but lose sight of what we need it for. Jesus definition of Greed: Greed is the assumption that everything placed in our hands is for our consumption! Brilliant isn t it? You probably know people who had a lot of things in their hands and weren t greedy. Neither was it when they kept those things for themselves! It was when they took it a step further and thought/believed/acted like everything they owned was intended for them.
The place where Jesus taught this was in Luke, and he taught it in response to an argument about greed. Notice Luke 12: Luke 12:15 Then Jesus said to them, Be careful and guard against all kinds of greed. Life is not measured by how much one owns. 16 Then Jesus told this story: There was a rich man who had some land, which yielded an abundant harvest... He has a good year, a good crop, and finds himself with more than he needs. So, what will he do with the extra? Remember now, that Jesus is making up this story, and he could have had the guy do anything he wanted. Jesus is trying here to get us to think about what we could/would do if we would find ourselves in that situation. He wanted to teach us the right way and the wrong way, to respond if we ever find ourselves with more than we need. He showed us how to be good at being rich! Interestingly, the rich guy did what most of us do if we have a good year. Jesus continued, Luke 12:17 He thought to himself, what shall I do? I have no place to store all my crops. Put yourself in his situation today maybe it s Saturday morning and there s no place you have to be. You have money in the bank, gas in the tank how and where should you spend the day? Home Depot/Lowes? The movie theater? Your favorite restaurant? The mall shopping? What shall I do today? Or, think about the moment when your tax refund check comes in the mail. Maybe you weren t expecting it. What should you do with it? Upgrade your computer? Trade in your car? Buy new carpet for the house? Put it in the college fund? Jesus went on: Luke 12: 18Then he said, This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and other goods. 19Then I can say to myself, I have enough good things stored to last for many years. Rest, eat, drink, and enjoy life! So, is Jesus telling this story to illustrate the importance of saving, or investing our surplus, or starting our own business? Those all sound like suggestions you might hear from a wise teacher. So, back to our story, the rich guy tears down his old smaller barns and builds new ones! It s such a smart move that our government will even give you a tax write off if you do it today. So, this seems reasonable. Industrious even, right?
He had a good year, so he should do what people do today when things go their way, right? Pay off their debts. Max out their Roth IRA s and their profit sharing. Put some away in savings accounts. Reward themselves with new clothes, or new flat screen TV s or a new car! So far it s a good story and we like the premise we re waiting for Jesus to say...and he lived happily ever after. But suddenly, the story takes a morbid turn. Luke 12:20 But God said to him, Foolish man! Tonight your life will be taken from you. So who will get those things you have prepared for yourself? 21 This is how it will be for those who store up things for themselves and are not rich toward God. Ouch! Talk about unexpected downers! Suddenly, unexpectedly, the guy dies! That s often the way it is, right? Now it s now that we are going to die the night after we get our raise! But, if we only do with our money what the rich man did, there will come a time, quite suddenly, when we will discover the foolishness of our actions. Jesus was announcing a new principle, a new paradigm for those times when we find ourselves with extra. Whenever we have more than we need, our natural assumption will be that it s for our own consumption. But this is the wrong mindset. In His own very practical way, Jesus was exposing the flaw in our natural way of thinking. 2. If we simply store up for ourselves and are not rich toward God, then everything we possess will be a total loss. At some point, everybody leaves the same amount behind! How much? We leave it all behind! But, if we will take advantage of those times when we have more than we need, and do more with it than simply save it for ourselves then we can become rich toward God! And by implication, it won t be a loss anymore! Now, when we overlay Jesus teaching here on top of Paul s command for rich people, we get a plan for avoiding this pitfall. There s a set of things to avoid:...not to be arrogant or put our hope, our trust in wealth... There s a set of things to pursue:
...to put our hope in God...to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. Generosity then, is an antidote against the side effects of wealth. John Wesley said, When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart. That brings us to the next question: 3. How can you vaccinate yourself against affluenza with generosity? The problem with a word like generosity is that it s as hard to define as the word rich! Ironically in fact, just like nobody thinks he s rich, everybody thinks he s generous. After all, nobody thinks he s stingy or greedy! Generous is one of those words that s open to wide interpretation. That s one of the reasons rich people are so bad at being generous. There s no real grading system for it, no standard of measure. Like Phys. Ed/Gym in high school you re pretty much guaranteed a passing grade just for having a physical body and showing up!! In the same way, if you ever gave a dollar to a homeless person, or directions to someone lost, or a smile to a stranger, you can rightly call yourself generous. Now that might be true, but it won t help to vaccinate you, to inoculate you against the side effects of wealth. For that, we need something more tangible, like guidelines to follow, principles to observe, Rx s to take. When you take everything Jesus taught about giving, (and He spoke more about money than any other subject in the Bible), and distill it down, 3 common themes emerge, all start with P. Priority giving Just like a vaccination has to be applied before a sickness occurs, the same thing is true with generosity it won t happen unless you make it a priority. If you wait until you re rich you ll never start, because rich people live in denial that they re rich. No matter how rich or poor you might feel, now is the time to be generous. By now we don t mean soon! Not when you re out of debt, or have your car repair bill paid, or are in better shape financially! While you understand that generosity isn t just for rich people, at the same time, it s surely not for broke people, right? Actually, generosity isn t dependent on your finances at all! As odd as it might sound, generosity begins where ever you are, that s what it means to make it a priority!
When you make giving (generosity) a priority, something happens inside of you, especially when it s a challenge financially to you. It s like you loosen your grip on a value system whose motto says, Money is the key to life and happiness and safety. In that split second, you reject that way of thinking for one that says My hope is not in riches but in Him who richly provides. Suddenly your eyes are opened to a value system that can t be measured by dollars. How to make giving (generosity) a priority? Make it the very first check you write every month. Before the mortgage, before groceries, or savings. Whenever God blesses you with income, let your first action be one that acknowledges where it came from. Whatever the amount, do it first! - The minute your paycheck is deposited! This not only insures that you ll guard it as a priority, but it s a symbolic way of reminding you where your hope lies. Percentage giving Remember in part 1, we saw that the richer people get, the less they give away. Amazingly, the more extra money we make, the less we view it as extra. Of course, we tell ourselves we re giving more because the dollar amount goes up. But in terms of percentages, giving actually goes down! And it s almost sinister how this tendency creeps into our behaviors and derails our attempts to be good at being rich and generous. If you really want to guard against the side effects of wealth, don t evaluate your giving in terms of dollars, but percentages this gives a better reflection of whether you have control of your money or your money has control of you! Everybody gets a portion in life, but we don t all get the same amount. So it doesn t make sense to base generosity on a certain dollar amount. If Warren Buffet or Bill Gates give $1,000 to charity can they be sure they re protected from the negative side effects of wealth? Jesus taught this principle to His followers in Mark 12. Back in those days, the plate was not passed, but people went and dropped their offerings into a treasury box. Jesus was watching as person after person came up and dropped their money into the box. Rich people gave large amounts and poor people put in less. Jesus watched the rich people who wore fancy clothes and paraded around like hot-shots, but also Jesus said, took advantage of widows along the way. He said, they devour widows houses. Suddenly an elderly widow lady hobbles up and puts two small copper coins in. It was almost embarrassing how insignificant her donation was, especially when compared to
all the successful, prosperous wealthy folks who came before her. She was obviously dirt poor. Here are Jesus comments on the scene. Mark 12:43 Calling his followers to him, Jesus said, I tell you the truth, this poor widow gave more than all those rich people. 44 They gave only what they did not need. This woman is very poor, but she gave all she had; she gave all she had to live on. If you ve heard this story before, it s easy to miss what Jesus has to say about percentage giving. I mean, we all feel warm and fuzzy because Jesus stood up for somebody s grandma, and it s nice to hear the Son of God give a shout-out to the little people. So, the emotional take-away of this story is that Jesus is kind to little old ladies. But there s a powerful principle about giving and generosity here: The percentage matters more than the sum, more than the amount! Rich people are all arrogant and proud, trusting in their money, and they act like everything they own is for themselves. The side effects of money have taken over; meanwhile the widow is practicing generosity. So, here s the big $64,000 question: What percentage should you give? Start with 10% because the Bible has a lot to say about the tithe, the tenth. For some people, that s uncomfortable - but so is a colonoscopy, and those save countless lives! It just depends on how much you want to protect yourself from the deadly side effects of wealth. It s not just a way to be good. It s a preventative most important thing is to start somewhere. Progressive giving Now, if you really want to guard yourself against the bad side effects of wealth, don t miss this one. Progressive simply means that over time you raise the percentage; if you ve been giving the same 10% as your income grows, bump it up to 11%, then 12% and so on. Why? It s like when bacteria become immune to antibiotics, making them ineffective. As you vaccinate yourself against the dangerous side effects of wealth over the years, those vaccines don t have the same effect. Why? When you only make $20K a year first job, as a priority, percentage giver you give away $2,000 10%. That s a lot of money to someone only make $20K. Think of the impact on your heart are you likely to be proud and trust in money? Not likely.
Now fast forward a decade or two. Now you re making perhaps $80-100K a year the kids are grown, house is paid off, and if you re still giving 10% that s now $8-10K a year! But, if you need only $50K to live on, that still leaves you with an extra $22K. First of all, congratulations! You ve been a faithful giver and you ve maintained a lifestyle that gives you financial margin. But as far as the adverse side effects of wealth go, you might not be doing so well. It would be easy to be proud and to trust in your money to fix any little or big, problem that might come up. You might even be tempted to forget where your hope really lies! Solution? As your income increases, increase your percentage along with it. When you start giving 10%, at first it might be hard, but it soon will become comfortable. And while financial comfort can be nice, it can also make you more vulnerable to arrogance, pride and putting your hope and trust in money. So, that s why you need to increase the dose of the vaccination a bit. If you ve been giving the same percentage most of your life, think about raising it. Life is not stagnant. It s progressive in nature. Your giving should be progressive also. Planning is the key to managing the bad side effects of money. Generosity isn t simply something you ought to do. It s the vaccination, the antidote to allowing hope to migrate from God to money, to arrogance, to basically not being good at being rich. Generosity, then, isn t just something you do when you have more. It s something you practice constantly, so you ll know what to do when you have more. It s part of a plan, not just an overflow of the heart. It s a preventative against the side effects of money. If you approach giving any other way it will always seem un-natural. If you don t have strategic reasons for giving, then you re just taking a detour on the path to progress. Detours can be like roadblocks on the pathway to generosity. For example: 4. Roadblocks to generosity are giving that is: Spontaneous If your plan is to accumulate wealth, then you ll hoard and avoid giving, cause you feel like then you re losing it. But then if you see a commercial showing a bunch of starving kids in Africa, or you pass a homeless person begging for food, spontaneously you react with generosity. Anyone can be guilted or manipulated into doing a good deed.
But that s not a good plan to keep money s side effects at bay. And without a plan, giving will also be: Sporadic You only give when you re in the Christmas spirit, or there s a food drive at the grocery store, or something like that. It may feel generous, and perhaps it is, but it doesn t do anything to keep you from drifting toward arrogance or trusting in money. And without a plan, giving also tends to be: Sparingly done Why? Well, vaccinations aren t popular, they don t feel good! There s always built-in resistance to overcome. You re always going to have impulses to hoard your money, to give away less, and to play it safe! Unless you re following a giving plan, you re likely to lose most of your battles against those impulses. Being generous isn t easy; but it s not taking a vow of poverty either. It just means following a plan to keep your giving in proportion to your income and your assets. God commands us to be generous, not because He wanted our money, but because He didn t want our money to have us. And just like wealth has negative side effects, generosity, giving away wealth has positive side effects. Generosity is the antidote to the negative effects of wealth. 2 Corinthians 9:6 Remember this a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop. 7 You must each make up your own mind as to how much you should give. Don t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. For God loves the person who gives cheerfully. 8 And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others. 9 As the Scriptures say, Godly people give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will never be forgotten.