2-28-10 Finances – Congratulations

How many of you would like to be rich? Maybe you bought a lottery ticket yesterday, or maybe you found a lottery ticket yesterday on the ground, and today they read off the numbers and Eureka, Hot Dog, you are rich!!!! How many of you would like it if that happened? But then here’s the question, “What kind of rich person would you be?

Maybe you’ve known rich people in the past or maybe you’ve seen them on TV and so many of them are arrogant or rude or extremely selfish, even greedy, and you might have thought to yourself, if I was rich like them, I wouldn’t be like that. I would be more generous with my money if I was them, right? What kind of rich person would you be?

This message is entitled “How to be rich!” I am greatly helped in this message by pastor Andy Stanley. I heard a message by some time ago, and it got under my skin and has really challenged how I think about money.

In our world in our world people are always trying to tell us how to get rich, and a world that is constantly baiting us to get rich, and to have more and get more stuff. I live in that world and I fall for the same stuff. But what nobody ever talks about is how to be rich once you get rich. Once you get rich, how do you get good at being rich.

Now, some of you are already thinking, Well, this message is not for me because I’m not a rich person. I know rich people, but I’m not rich, so this message is for them and not me. But here’s the deal. Nobody knows where the line is between rich and not rich. You and I’ll never get a paycheck or a bonus and at the top of it, it’ll say You’re now Rich!!!

You’ll never know when you crossed the line from not rich to rich. You won’t be able to say, Friday at 3:00 I got rich!

You don’t know where that line is, so here’s what’s going to happen to you. One day, you might go from not rich to rich and you won’t know it. And instead of learning how to be rich, you’re just going to keep trying to get richer and you’ll never learn to be what you’ve already become because you don’t know where the line is.

Does that make any sense at all? You and I we might know some rich people and if we went up to them and asked them, “Hey, are you rich?” What would they say? “No, I’m not rich.” And they would immediately talk about the richer people, and you’d look at them and go, “You’re crazy! You’re Rich!” And they don’t even know it, Why? It’s because they don’t know where the line is.

The same thing that happened to them, might happen to you or maybe has already happened to you. They went from not rich to rich and didn’t know it, and instead of learning how to be rich now that they are rich, they, in fact, are spending time and energy trying to get rich, when they’re already rich.

Do you know any rich people who aren’t very good at it? Sure you do. Maybe you have a daughter and they’re selling candy bars or cookies and you see this big house, and the people obviously are rich, and you think to yourself, we can make short work of this. We’ll go up to that front door and those people can buy cases of what we’re selling and not even phase them, and tomorrow we can turn in all the money and say, “Done” because rich people ought to be generous, right? So my daughter finally got up to the door and the person bought one candy bar or didn’t buy anything, and you say to yourself, that’s not how to be rich!

Or, have you ever met an arrogant rich person? And you think to yourself, “If I were rich like them, I would not be like that. They’re not very good at being rich. I would be good at being rich. I wouldn’t be arrogant like that.”

So, this morning we are going to be looking at a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to a new church pastor by the name of Timothy. Paul, a seasoned veteran in pasturing is giving advice to Timothy who is a new pastor. Paul used to be rich, but then became poor when he became a Christian, because it was against the law in Paul’s time to be a Christian. Paul writes these verses to Timothy about rich people, and who better to write about rich people than Paul because he used to be rich.

Paul says to Timothy, when you see rich people and when you are around rich people, here’s what I want you to tell them. Paul says this:

Command those who are rich in this present world . . . 1 Timothy 6:17 (NIV)

Now, as soon as we read that first part of what Paul is commanding, we think, “We’ll this is not for me! I’m not rich, so I can just skip over the rest of these verses – I can just take a nap this morning, because this is not relevant to me.”

Why would Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, and why would God, who inspired the writing of the Bible, separate those people out from the rest of the people in the world and say, I have some very specific commands for you? Isn’t that kind of weird? Shouldn’t the Bible be everything for everybody? Why would Paul and why would God address rich people specifically?

The answer is pretty evident if you just look around at some of the rich people that you know. Rich people have unique issues, don’t they? Rich people have unique temptations. Rich people have unique responsibilities. And this may be difficult for most of us to believe, but it is difficult and challenging to be good at being rich. Consequently, rich people are set up for all sorts of trials and difficulties that non-rich people don’t have to deal with. So, since God loves all people, he says, “I want to be sensitive to the trials of rich people and I want to give them some very specific instructions.

You know the kind of unique things that rich people have to deal with don’t you? I mean, rich people have extra money, right? Rich people will save up money, because they have extra, and put in into the bank and then when their kids graduate from high school, they send them to college and they pay for their kids college, because they have so much extra money. Some rich families actually have a car for every adult living in their house and when their kids get old enough to drive, then they buy their kids a car, maybe not a new car, but a car none the less.

Rich people have so much extra money that they have to do estate planning – that’s the kind of planning some rich folks do, so that they’re extra money can be distributed correctly when they die. Get this, rich people know that they are going to run out of time before they’re going to run out of money – that when they die, they’re going to have left over money. So they have to spend money and time planning what to do with their left over money. Rich people pay other people money in order to help them plan what to do with their money after they’re dead.

Rich people over eat. Rich people have so much food, get this, this is amazing – Rich people have so much food, they have so much food in their house, that they will actually throw the old food away to make room for the new food. They will have so much food that food will go bad before they can eat it all. Rich people have pressures and have to think about things that non rich people don’t have to do.

I’ve heard rich people say to other rich people, “I’m worried about my kids, because they have so much stuff”, and then they go right home and buy them more stuff.

Rich people complicate their own lives unnecessarily, but they can’t help it because it’s the nature of being rich, and I think this is why God addresses them separately.

Rich people will do things like, they’ll go into their kitchen and they’ll take things out that work, and then they’ll put other things right back in that works. For instance, Rich people will take out a refrigerator that works, and then they’ll buy a new one and put it right back in the same place the other one was. Rich people rip out all the counters in their kitchens or baths and they’re stable, I mean you could sit on them, and then they’ll put in new counters. It’s amazing!

Then they’ll complain about all the dust and crude and disorganization that’s going on while they’re redoing their kitchen and how inconvenient it is to have to use the second kitchen downstairs while the remodeling is going on upstairs.

There is a lot of social pressure when you’re rich. When you’re out with other people, you have to look a certain way. You have to pay attention to style. Rich women will stand in front of a closet full of very nice cloths, and they’ll say – what do they say? Yeah, “I have nothing to wear.” You know some rich people!

Meanwhile their rich husband is down in the garage. A garage is a house for their car. Rich people have houses, yes, but they also have houses for their cars. Many people don’t have a house, but rich people have a house for their cars. Those rich people will look at their cars and say to themselves or to someone else, “We need a new car” and the crazy part about that is the car they have runs just fine.

Some really rich people not only have a house for their cars, but they have a house for their things called a barn. They have so many things that they build a house for their things. Can you believe that?

Rich people work for other rich people that tell them, “I want you to take a vacation– a week, or two, or three where I don’t want you to work at all, but we’re going to pay you during that time anyway. They say to them, “We’re going to give you money, but you’re not going to be here. Rich people don’t even have to work to get more money, and people give them money to not work. Isn’t that the craziest thing you’ve ever heard of? Rich people then have to spend time planning what they’re going to do with all the time they aren’t at work.

This all adds level upon level of complexity that non-rich people don’t have to deal with. They get in fights and arguments about where they’re going to go, and where they’re going to stop and what they’re going to spend all their extra money on.  These rich people get on planes and rent cars, do great things and go to fantastic places, but they still die with money left over.

Rich people have a lot more complexity and anxiety and stress because they’re rich, so God very specifically, through Paul, addresses rich people in the Bible, because they deal with things that non-rich people never have to deal with.

Now, the problem with this verse, when Paul says to Timothy, “Command those who are rich” is that we don’t know exactly who Paul is talking to? Rich people, Yes, but who are they?

The reason why people don’t think that they’re rich is because they can immediately thing of others who are richer. Here’s the hard part about these verses in Timothy. If the verses are for rich people, but the people who are rich don’t think they’re rich, then the people that those verses are for will never take them to heart because they don’t think that they’re rich. Right? If God in his infinite wisdom says, “And here are some things for rich people” but nobody ever puts themselves into that category, then those verses go unattended to.

Let me give you some perspective here. There was a gallop poll taken and the intention of the poll was to try and determine what was rich. And not surprisingly, every group they talked to thought the next group was rich. Here’s how this goes.

v     Those that earned less than $30k household income thought that a household who earned $74K was rich

However, if you are here today and make $74K and I were to ask you, “Are you rich?” you would say, “No, I’m not rich.”

v     Those that earned between $30-$50K said “If I could make $100K per year, then I would be rich.

v     On and on up the charts it went. Each group of income earners believed that if they could, a little more than double what they earned, then they would consider themselves rich, but the people who made that amount of money never considered themselves rich.

Here’s the point: Being rich is a moving target. That’s why you may cross the line from not rich to rich and not know it.

Let’s take it to another level. Internationally, if you earn $37,000 a year or more, you are in the top 4 percent of the wage earners in the world. 96 percent of the people in the world are poorer than you if you make $37K a year, but if you make $37K a year, you do not think you are rich.

If you make $45K a year, you make in the top 1 percent of the wage earners in the . . . whole . . . world.

Now, here’s the interesting thing. Not one person in this room jumped up and down and yelled, “I’m rich, I’m rich, honey we’re rich! I love this church, because today we are rich” Not one person in this room smiled when I gave you those statistics. It didn’t take any of the financial pressure off of you did it. Why? It’s because you don’t . . . feel rich. There is no relief at all is there? Even though internationally many of us are rich!

The reason we don’t think we’re rich is because we don’t feel rich, and until you begin to feel rich, you’re going to try and get rich, and as long as you’re trying to get rich you’ll never act rich, because you don’t think you’re rich!

Here’s the deal: Feeling rich isn’t about income. It’s about how responsible you are with it. Feeling rich isn’t about income, it’s about margin and margin is the difference between what you owe verses what you have. It is the difference between what your bills are verses what’s in your check. Feeling rich doesn’t have anything to do with income! How do I know this? It’s because whenever I travel to third world countries, I inevitably find people who are rich, they are content with what they have, because all their needs are met.

There was a really great story a couple of years back when Bill Gates, the president and CEO of Microsoft went to India. Bill was trying to figure out how to be a responsible with all his money that he had been blessed with, and so he was way out in rural India, way off the beaten path in a very small hut where a single mom lived who was very, very poor. Bill was talking to this woman through a translator, and of course there was a journalist covering the story, and when Bill Gates left, the journalist asked the woman through a translator, “Did you know that the man who left your house is the richest man in the world?”  And the woman responded without any kind of expression, “Everybody who visits from the West is rich”.

In other words, if you had been the next person who came to her house, she would have put you in the same category as Bill Gates, because rich is rich! But that doesn’t make you feel any better about yourself does it?

The only paradigm in our culture is the paradigm of upward mobility. Make more, do more, have more, but that is a mirage that will never bring you contentment, peace, and joy.

If you make $37K a year or more, you are rich, and until we begin to acknowledge that we’re rich, we will never begin to act rich.

I don’t feel rich because I look around me and see people who have more than me, but when you look around the world you will see that you and I are very rich. If we are rich, how should we act? Here’s the rest of our verse.
Command those who are rich in this present world 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 – God owns everything – for our enjoyment. Are you enjoying your finances right now or is there a lot of anxiety or fear around your finances? Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share – loving our neighbor as our self. 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. 1 Timothy 6:17-19 (NIV)

Next week we are going to be talking about how to get financial margin. Margin is one of the biggest things needed in order to FEEL rich. Now we know that we’re rich, but how do we begin to feel like we’re rich, that’s the topic of next week.