We Are Rich

This past summer, I came across a book written by one of my favorite pastors, Andy Stanley. Andy is a pastor of a large church in Atlanta, Georgia. Many of you might recognize his father Charles Stanley who also was a famous pastor. The name of Andy’s book was “How to be Rich”.

Well, this book “How to be Rich” was nothing like those self-help books or TV info commercials trying to sell us something. This book started out by challenging us to see things through a different lens. As I was reading this book, Andy began to challenge me first (1) to think and realize I am rich, and (2) since I am rich, how am I going act, behave, and live, since most people who are rich are not very good at being rich. They don’t understand how to be generous with their time, money, and possessions.

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November 15, 2015
1 Timothy 6:17-18 We are Rich
Pastor David Pranga, Brewster Baptist Church

Let me just get this out of the way, it’s the elephant out of the room.   First, I realize nobody wants to hear a pastor talk about money. It makes everyone feel uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable. You feel uncomfortable. Money is a touchy subject. Why? Because we place money so close to our heart.

Yet, if you read your Bible for any amount of time. There are passages in the Bible that only speak to rich people. How they are supposed to treat people, act, behave, and be generous. And if you are anything like me, I read those verses and think to myself, these are passages for really rich people. Those top 1% … Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, or Warren Buffet. It’s for those famous celebrities. We all have a rich person that comes to mind. And of course these verses don’t apply to me. Because I am not rich. These verses are for somebody else.

This morning, I wanted to talk with you about being rich. How many of you would consider themselves rich? Let me just say, it is a trick question because I already know that very few people would consider themselves rich. So, let me ask you a different question. How many of you know a rich person? A person that has made it. A person that is rich and well off. I believe we can all name one pretty easily.

Here is the interesting thing, if I went up to the person you might name, I believe that person would not consider themselves rich. Why? Because they can look at someone else they know and say they are not as well off as their friend. But then if you asked their friend if they are rich, I promise you, that he or she will say that they are not rich. I promise you that he could probably name a person that is wealthier, in his mind. And it would keep on going…

Here is the problem with defining rich. Rich is a moving target for most of us. It does not matter who we are. It does not matter what our income level is. Nobody believes they are rich. (PAUSE) Yet, everyone one of us knows someone who we think is better off than ourselves. We all know someone who is rich. Rich is typically that other guy, it is not us. Rich is the person who lives down the street from us with the bigger house, fancy car or boat. It’s definitely not me. You must be talking about someone else.

Yet, when I read Andy Stanley’s book, “We are Rich”, I was confronted with this deep paradigm shift in my thinking and thought process. It is one of those thoughts that I did not want to freely admit to. Here it is in a nut shell…What would happen if these verses about the rich people really apply to me? It is not just for those top CEO’s, famous athletes, actors, and musicians.

What if, these verses really were written for you and me? For people in this room. Yes, I am talking to almost everyone in this room. When you come across verses in the bible about the rich, maybe just maybe, we are the rich people that God is speaking to in Scripture.

I want you to turn your bibles to… to 1 Timothy 6:17

1 Timothy, is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul, was a rich guy back in the day and was quite a powerful individual. When Paul started following Jesus Christ, he lost everything. He lost his money, he lost his status, and he lost his authority. Now as a believer in Jesus Christ, Paul tells Timothy, that there are things you need to talk to rich people about.

Let me read 1 Timothy 6:17 to you.

“Command those who are rich in the present world…. “

So let me ask you the question again. What is the definition of “RICH”?

Gallop did a poll and asked the question to Americans who made $150,000 a year, if they were rich? The answer… They answered a resounding… NO. I am not rich. Then Gallop asked people who made $30,000 to $35,000 a year, what is rich? And they answered making $75,000 a year would make them feel rich. But I bet if you asked the question to people making $75,000 a year if they are rich, believe me, they would tell you no.

Money Magazine whose readers are highly successful business people were asked a similar question. Their question was… How much money would you need to have in basically liquid assets to make you feel like you were rich? The answer they came up with was five million dollars.

After doing some research there is no real definition of being rich. You will never know when you cross the line from not being rich to one day being rich. You won’t one day open your bank statement or your pay stub and say to yourself, yes… today I am rich. It just does not happen that way.

Why? Because we don’t know where the line is. People may look at us as being rich but most of us never say we are.

As I was preparing this message, I came across a website called “www.globalrichlist.com”. It is a great website that will tell you just how rich you are. Have you ever wondered about how rich you really are? It will show you what percentage you are compared to every other person in the entire world. Everyone in the entire world imagine that. I decided to type in the yearly salary of $48,000 a year.

Guess what I found….To my shock, if I made $48,000 a year, I would be in the top 1% of the entire world. I would be pretty rich in the eyes of many people in this world.

So I decided to have some fun with the calculator. I decided to type in my 1^st full time job after college – which was $20,000. Do you realize what percentage of the world made less than me?

How many would say top 25%? 10%? Let me tell you that you are in the top 4% of wage earners in the entire world. In my first job, I was making 96% more than the entire world.

See, when we compare ourselves to other people and many of us do, when we compare ourselves to all people in this world, by International standards, many of us have crossed the line of trying to get rich to actually, realizing we are rich! The people of the world look at us as being “the rich”.

Here is the main reason. There is a difference between feeling rich and being rich for most of us.

I was thinking about times in my life where I felt rich. There have been a few. Whenever I come back from a third world country, I feel rich. The first time in my life where I felt rich was actually in high school. My first high school job was working as a busboy at a very nice and fancy restaurant. It was called the Fireside Restaurant and Playhouse.

I remember when the minimum wage was $3.35 per hour. I can remember my sophomore year of high school, collecting my pay checks of $200 and putting it all in the bank. I dreamed of what I would spend my money on. But I never really bought anything. I just watched my bank account rise and rise over the next few months to years. I remember it hitting $1,000 and thinking to myself how rich I was. Then $2,000, $3,000, finally $4,000 during my senior of high school. I was proud of myself. I felt rich.

Why did I feel so rich? Why did I feel rich making less than $3.35 an hour and working 20 to 40 hours a week depending on the season? I had margin in my life. I was bringing in money and I had no bills to pay. I was living with my parents. I was driving a car that was my parents. I was eating food that my parents bought.

I chose to save money and dream about how I was going to spend it but never did. The key was I had margin in my life. I had margin in my life and I felt rich. I had no bills and I lived with my parents.

The problem many of us face is that most of us don’t feel rich because we have very little margin in our life. We may make a lot more money, but we have a lot more expenses we have to pay for. So even though we may be rich by the standards of the world, we don’t feel rich. So we don’t act rich. Since we don’t have margins in our life, we will never feel rich and so we cannot be generous.

What really happens in the course of our life is that we go from not being rich to becoming rich. We may cross that line, sometime in our life and we don’t even realize it. Then we don’t know how to act once we really are rich. Why?

Why don’t we know it? Because you and I have never feel rich. We base rich on how we feel. We base being rich on the people we know. We base rich on what we have and what we don’t have.

Remember those verses Paul had for Timothy….Instead of thinking those verses are for the top 1% of rich people in the United States. We may have to realize that Paul is speaking to us today. Just the opportunity of living in America and being on Cape Cod, we are in the top 4% of the entire world! We are the rich people that the bible is speaking about. Whether we like it or not.

So let us go back to the 1 Timothy 6:17

Listen to what the Apostle Paul says to rich people…

“Command those who are rich in this present world, not to be arrogant

See God has a heart for rich people and he wants to offer them some advice. First, he tells them not to be.   What are some other words for arrogant – pride, proud, big headed, egoistical, and superior. How many of us know some arrogant rich people? I believe that some of us do know some arrogant rich people.

The apostle Paul tells the rich people not to feel like they are superior to other people. They should not exhibit pride and arrogance because they were blessed with wealth. We need to remember from last week’s sermon that everything belongs to God. We are just the stewards of God’s resources. Paul is just reminding the rich people, that they should not be arrogant about what they have.

Of course, we all know rich people who are not arrogant with their wealth. In fact how times have you heard someone say something similar to this? That person over there, He is worth a ton of money, but you’d never know it. Why do we say this? Generally, we are impressed that this person acts like a normal person. They don’t carry it on their sleeve. They don’t wear it. There is just something about them that is different. I think the best word might be “humble” or “modest”. That is how Paul is saying we as rich people should act.

Here is what Paul is saying… Look, if you are so lucky, or have worked so hard, or if you are so smart or so blessed, regardless of how you think you got it, Paul says to these Christians, once you have crossed the line from not being rich to actually being rich, once you cross the line of having more than you might need and you have more than most people, don’t let it go to your head.

Let’s continue in the passage to see what else Paul has to say to rich people…

“Command those who are rich in this present world, not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain,

Here is the big idea of this passage…Paul is saying when you start to have more money, when you get that raise, when you get that promotion, when you get that bonus, when all a of sudden things start looking good for you, something may start to happen to your hope.

It’s possible you won’t even see it happening at the time. You won’t see it coming. It is not a decision that you intentionally make. Paul is warning you, that your hope may begin to migrate towards accumulation of wealth.

Paul is telling Timothy, this young pastor, there are going to be rich people in your congregation. There are going to be people in your congregation where their hope will migrate. Many of these people won’t realize it. Paul is saying, “Don’t let your hope migrate towards accumulation of wealth and things.

Don’t let your hope move towards the next grand thing you need for yourself. It may be around a new gadget, electronic device, those new clothes that you must have, a new and fancy car, or a remodeled house.

For rich people it’s easy for us to start running after things we want and crave. Why? Rich people are plagued by this thing called – discontentment.

Here is what I have noticed… The more a person has, the more they want. Rich people are not satisfied with what they have. The more you have, the more you want. Your desire is for newer and nicer things. Your appetite will grow and grow. It will become bigger and bigger. You will want more and more stuff.

We all know the truth. Our appetite for “things” will never slow down. We have been conditioned through commercials and the people we hang out with for the desire to have more and more.

Do we find it? Does stuff or things make our life happier, full of peace, and contentment? I would probably answer “no”. The reality is the more we have, the more stress we have because of the things and stuff we own. Somebody has to take care of it and now our life becomes more stressful than before. In fact, for many people by taking on more and more stuff, we become financially drained. We feel the financial pressure more and more, because of all the stuff we own.

I have seen rich people chase after getting more and more stuff because they are full of discontentment. We believe that if we have more stuff, if we upgrade our present stuff; then our life will be better. We will be happier. We will find contentment and peace.

Paul is warning rich people not to put their hope into wealth and stuff. Our wealth and stuff will not bring happiness and peace and contentment.

Can you image for instance, sharing your financial pressure with someone from a 3^rd world country? They would look at you and look at you more. It would be embarrassing for us to share about the financial pressure we face living in America. They simply would not understand.

As rich people living in America, we sometimes forget what most of the world has and how they operate. I have had the opportunity to travel abroad through mission trips. I have traveled to third world countries that had very little. I have been to countries like Ghana (Africa), Belize (Central America), and to parts of Mexico.  Each one of these places were very poor.

When you visit a third world country and meet the people that live there, you see life in a different way. I can remember getting picked up in van. Do you know the first thing we did? We prayed to God that the van would start and get us to where we needed to go. Let me tell you for that entire trip, we prayed for that van to work. It was a way of life for them. They knew they needed God to help them out.

Like I have mentioned, I had the great opportunity to travel to small villages where people had very little. The people would walk to get around. There were very little vehicles. Most people just walked. They lived in houses made of tin. A lot of the houses had dirt floors. Some of the lucky ones, slept on concrete or on a mat. The children often slept on the dirt floors. And when it rained, everything was muddy. I have spent time where women would gather their water by walking miles to a watering hole and back to their home.

Whenever you take a mission trip to a 3^rd world country and start doing work with people, you notice a few things. One, living in America – you are extremely rich. I have always felt rich when traveling abroad and doing mission work. We so have many things that we take for granted. Running water, a place to rest, a vehicle that runs, food and shelter.

Second, I have worked with Christians outside of the United States. One thing that I found interesting is that these Christians would love to come to the United States. They see the things and stuff us as Americans have and they want it. I try to tell them that they have so much more than what we have.

Here is the amazing thing of what I saw. This was especially true in Ghana, Africa. What I saw was joy in their life. This joy was not about things they did or did not have. The joy came through the Lord. They had a spirit of joy. I wanted to bottle that joy up and bring it back home. Their happiness is not based on what they have or don’t have. It is based on something much greater.

Let’s go back to 1 Timothy 6:17…. Instructions for rich people…

 

1 Timothy 6:17

… not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Paul is reminding Timothy and reminding us that our hope needs to be in God. Many of us realize that, but the problem is that many of us don’t live that way. When we live here in America, we can let our wealth play a more important role than it should be.

Jesus shares this with early Christians, where your heart is, you will find your treasure. And where your treasure is, you will find your heart. Jesus wants your heart. Jesus understands that if He is your treasure, you will want to follow Him first.

But if your treasure is your wealth, your heart will be full of stuff. Your hope will migrate. Your wealth will become a substitute for God. The problem is that many of us are not aware that our heart is more concerned with our stuff. We begin to care more and more about our earthly treasures and how we look to others than we do about Jesus. We often cross that line.

Paul is reminding people in his congregation; don’t let your wealth place a wedge between your Heavenly Father and yourself. Your wealth can be a substitute for God. And for rich people who have so very much, it is so easy to do. It is easy to think we can control our wealth. That our wealth has little to do with our faith.   But our wealth does play a role in our faith.

As we learned last week. God owns everything here on earth. We are only managers. God gives us the wealth. Our responsibility is to enjoy it and share it. We are going to be talking more about this next week.

As rich people, how are we to act and behave?   Let me give you a snap shot into next week.

If you want to read ahead in the next verse, 1 Timothy 6:18,

“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share”.

I promise you next week will be a good one. You must come back for next week. Next week, will be more on the practical. How shall we live? As rich people, we should learn to do good for other people.

In Summary:

This morning we talked about a lot.

• You and I are rich… By simply living in America, we are in the top 5% of the entire world according to our wealth and income. We may not feel rich but we need to learn to act rich.
• As rich people we are not to be arrogant. We should not pride ourselves on our wealth. Our wealth is really a gift from God. Our wealth cannot be a place we put our hope.
• We need to put our hope in God. God owns everything.

Challenge next week:

Here is the challenge for this week, to take the focus off ourselves and on helping other people.

Our church represents the food pantry for Brewster. We have people that come from Brewster and visit our church to get groceries to help them out. Many of these people are in difficult financial situations. It’s one of those ministries we don’t highlight very much but it is very important.

I was reminded yesterday, sitting outside for a soccer game. Winter is coming! People tend to need more help with groceries in winter compared to the summer. The food pantry needs our help. Next week, we need your help to bring in groceries.

Hot items: flour, sugar, canned goods, peanut butter, and plastic bags… You can go online and type in items for food pantry.

Here is our goal: We want you to bring in food for the food pantry, if we get too much, we will just take it to Harwich, Orleans, Eastham and Dennis.

Here is what you need to do, if you want to be involved. You can come next week and leave bags of food behind your car. Wayne and his team will collect the bags of food during the service and bring it into the food pantry.

Here is the deal… We need everyone to come next week with some food. We need to remember that God wants us to be people who give and help others. Everyone got it.

Let’s pray….

 

Questions for Discussion and Reflection:

1. When you hear the word “rich”, what is the first thing that comes to mind? How much money does it take to be R-I-C-H?
2. If you make $48,000 or more a year, you are in the top 1% of wage earners in the world, how does that make you feel? Do you agree or disagree? Why?
3. Why do people confuse being rich with feeling rich?
4. Describe a time when you noticed that the more you had, the more you wanted. When you feed the appetite, what happens to it? Why?
5. Read 1 Timothy 6:17-19. Do you tend to think of Christians and the church as being generous? Why or why not?
6. These verses warn the rich people not to be arrogant. Often wealth can become a substitute for God. Do you believe that your hope could migrate from dependency on God to dependency on money? Why or why not?
7. Why do you hesitate to give to others even though we have more than we need? How could being generous to others change people’s perceptions of Christians and the church?