Riches I Heed Not
1 Timothy 6:7-21
Sharing
One day in 1866, a very sick patient was brought into a hospital. She shivered and her heartrate was but 46 beats per minute. Her cheeks was sunken in and she was frail and skinny. She didn’t look like somebody that could recover. She struggled to breathe and was very nervous. Worst of all nobody knew how to treat her. In the late 1800’s people died in hospital due to one of two causes: 50% dies of illness and 50% died because of the treatment doctors gave them. Medicine was in an experimental stage. If they did not know how to treat you, they either bled you or gave you an electrical shock.
Luckily for her, this particular lady was treated by a doctor who was more careful. His name was William Gull. Gull chose to observe her intently before deciding on treatment. He discovered that her condition was more physiological than biological even though it was life threatening. He eventually named her condition and called it Anorexia Nervosa. This woman wanted to be skinny but she somehow got so caught up in the process of becoming skinnier that she lost traction on the purpose of her journey and just kept on getting thinner and thinner. This is what makes anorexia such a very dangerous illness. You keep on getting skinnier although you were skinny enough a long time ago. This kills you.
With great compassion doctor Gull helped this woman to recover and to realise that she is already skinny. She went on to open her eyes to the fact that she is too skinny and needed to eat and gain weight. She recovered fully. Today there are thousands of woman and men that receives the same treatment for anorexia.
So why did this condition suddenly appear in the 1800’s? It happened because of Technology. You see by this time the printing press was well developed. Cities became more densely populated. For the first time people lived in close proximity to each other. Suddenly people experienced social pressure to conform to certain standards in areas where they until recently, enjoyed great freedom. Boy, doesn’t that sound familiar!
One of these areas were the female body. Previously a fuller figure was seen as attractive and desirable. But then corsets came into fashion. A corset, for those of you that doesn’t know, is a type of harness that a woman puts around her waist and stomach area and then tighten. It gives a woman the look of being thin and big breasted. Very soon after this strange fashion came, the hourglass type of body became desirable. Corsets weren’t good for the body. Woman wore them so tight that they could only breathe with the top parts of their lungs and developed a chronic cough. Suddenly all woman strived to look like an hourglass. This was the breeding ground for anorexia; an illness of which 8 million people in America suffers from per year.
It’s simple really. Not to realize you are skinny enough and then to keep on getting skinnier, kills you. Even though many people suffer from Anorexia, it is still a relatively small portion of the population. But many more people suffer from a similar condition and a much larger portion of the world’s population suffers from it, many without even knowing it.
Some people are rich. They got more than enough but do not realize it. It feels to them like they are poor and they get caught up in making more and more money. They get burned-out, their spirits gets numbed. They get disconnected from community and sometimes even from their family and their marriage partners. They basically withdraw from live, from everything that hasn’t got something to do with making money.
Now to be wealthy isn’t necessarily something bad just as being thin isn’t necessarily something bad. Wealth is often sketched in the Bible as a blessing from God. But to be rich doesn’t imply that you are good at being rich and handle it well. Just as somebody with many children isn’t necessarily a good parent, so someone who acquired great wealth doesn’t necessarily handle that wealth in a good and God honoring way.
You are Rich
You are rich. This is the first thing you need to realize today. And when I say you are rich I do not mean it in a philosophical way like in you are spiritually rich or something. I mean materially rich. None of us feels rich. We feel poor. Because we always compare ourselves to the one percent of people that have more than us. But if you fall in the top five percent of people and at least 95 % of people are poorer than you- that means you are rich. We live in an era where we have more luxury, abundance, food and comfort than any previous generation that lived on earth. We know a much higher quality of life than even upper class income groups knew a hundred years ago. If King David of the Bible were to visit us would have told us that we live like kings.
Don’t take my word for it. God home and visit the site globalrichlist.com. There will be an option to put in your monthly income. It then shows you on a chart where you lie in terms of the world population’s income. It even takes into account the currency in which you are paid. And here you were thinking you needed to win the lottery before you can call yourself rich!
You are in Danger!
Without sounding like a doom and gloom preacher that has his whole sermon on sin, I must tell you like the doctor told that patient that you and I are in danger. Paul tells us in today’s passage that wealth has two serious side effects. First is it makes you arrogant. The second is that it makes your hope and trust slide away from God. Andy Stanley says that if wealth were dispensed as medicine it will probably contain the following warning:
“May cause arrogance. While taking this medicine, extra precaution should be taken not to offend people. If taken for prolonged periods, it may alter perception causing hope to migrate”
Money makes you arrogant. It you are wealthy you tend to assume that you are smarter than people with fewer money. You tend to think you are more attractive than less wealthy people and that your opinions should weigh more than theirs. Worse of all you will even think your jokes are funnier because people always laugh harder at the most wealthiest person’s jokes. All of this is of course not true at all. In so many cases your wealth did not come from the fact that you are smarter or more hard working than others but by sheer chance and because of circumstances you did not bring about. Like being born in a family that could afford good education in a country with political stability.
If people’s net worth increase, their self-worth automatically increase with it and that is dangerous. It can turn you into somebody that bulldoze over other people and exclude them. It gives you false friends. It makes people laugh at your jokes even when they aren’t funny. Sad…
If you don’t take care, then wealth makes our hope migrate. God is our provider and sustainer. If you build your hope on Him it takes away anxiety and fear. You know He will give you what you need and help you during times of scarcity. To Him everything in heaven and earth belongs! There is this beautiful prayer in Proverbs 30 that says: Lord don’t give me to much that I become arrogant and don’t give me too little so that I will curse you. If you put your hope on money you will always feel that you need more to feel secure. There are billionaires that worry more about money than beggars. Why? Because they put their hope on money.
Good News: There is a cure for the side effects of Wealth
I’ve been hard on you thus far. I have told you are wealthy. I have told you that your wealth causes side effects. Now for some grace: There is a cure for the side effects your wealth might have on you. Something we can do to ensure that we are good at being rich. That is to give and to share.
Nobody thinks they are rich but everybody somehow thinks they are generous in giving. If your definition of being generous is anything you give that you are not required to do by law, indeed every person can think of himself as generous. Heck, some people think of themselves as generous because they pay taxes! So what exactly does it involve to be generous? Andy Stanley suggests three p’s when it comes to giving that I find very helpful.
The first p stands for “prioritize”. Make giving the first thing you do with your income. It puts you in the right mindset. There is this Old Testament notion of “first fruit” where you give the first and the best of your harvest to honor God and to keep you in the right relationship-not as a form of payment but as a form of gratitude. If you make giving the first thing you do it’s like it reminds you that everything g you have was given to you.
The second P is Percentage. Give a percentage of your income. It is so easy to feel good about the $600 you give when you compare it to the $300 you used to give back in 1982 but what if this $600 is less than 1 % of your income-then it’s not really giving is it? What if you earn ten times more than in 1982 -then doubling what you give doesn’t quite make you Mother Teresa does it? To give a percentage is to avoid the trap of deceiving yourself. Research has pointed out that the more people earn the less they tend to give. It should really be the other way round, shouldn’t it?
The third P is progressive. That means to increase what you give annually. Giving involves that you should feel that you give. The true joy in giving lies in knowing you actually had to sacrifice something in order to give. When you do not increase what you give, giving looses that effect and becomes a drag. Plan and strife to give more.
A last word. If you struggle to give it is probably because the adverts in your mail and the expo you attended and your friends at the bar shows you the whole time what you haven’t got and gives you the message that it is not ok not to have those things. You learn a thinking pattern that always tells you: “you must buy the most expensive house car and dishwasher soap you can possibly afford.”
How do you change this way of thinking? You try and spend at least some time of your week with the 90% of people who have less than you. It tends to make you grateful and it tends to make you feel you have quite enough. Attend a soup kitchen. Go on an outreach to a third world country. Volunteer. Become rich in good deeds. It balances the voices of adverts screaming at you every day that you should have more.
Close
The greatest mistake that we make is to think that after we have given our tithe, the rest belongs to us. Everything in heaven and on earth belongs to the Lord. You have nothing that He hasn’t given you unless you stole something. There are texts in the Bible that says that there is a relationship between how you manage what was given to you on earth and between what will be entrusted to you in the hereafter. If that’s true, there is going to be a lot of surprises in heaven I tell you!
I sometimes listen to the televangelists. They always tell people how to utilize their faith in such a way that it brings them great wealth.
I think the gospel tells us something better. He teaches us how to utilize our money in such a way that our faith and hope can remain in Him. When we do this, we have a treasure in heaven where no one can break in and steal it and where it cannot wither away.
Isn’t it time that we acknowledge Jesus is Lord-also over our money?
If you feel tempted this week to worry about money and chase it above all else repeat this: “I will not trust riches but in the Lord who richly provides!
Amen