1 Timothy 6:18 How To Be Rich: Rich in Good Deeds
Why a Series on Money
Today is the third Sunday in our series called “How to Be Rich.” It’s a stewardship series. It’s not about how to get rich, but how we should act as Christians if we ever find ourselves in a situation where we are a person of means.
Of course, nobody ever really feels rich. As Andy Stanley says in the book that I am using as a source for this series, “rich” is a category that we always reserve for someone else. No matter where we are on the income scale, “rich” is always a step or two farther up the line.
But most of us would like to be rich, so you can think of this series as a “just in case.” You can think of this as practice if that day ever comes when you are rich. And since what we’re really talking about are attitudes and behaviors with regard to money, even if you don’t think of yourself as rich there are important principles here for us all to learn.
Now, the more cynical among you are probably wondering: Why a series about money? It can feel a little intrusive, a little personal, to have the preacher talking money. One of the stereotypes about church and organized religion is that they’re always after our pocketbooks. So why spend four weeks coming to church to hear about money?
Well, I have three reasons.
First, it’s Biblical. I try very hard to be a Biblical preacher. I want the Bible to drive the things that I say. It’s why we put the Bible verses up on the screen. I want you to see that the things that I teach are drawn from scripture. My job, really, is just to put the Bible in front of you.
And, here’s the thing, the Bible says rather a lot about money. One source I found said that out of a total of 31,173 verses in the Bible, 2350 are about money or riches or possessions. That’s about 7.5%. If we restrict ourselves to just the verses spoken by Jesus—the red letters in the Bible—the percentage jumps to 15%. That’s more than Jesus had to say about heaven and hell combined. So if we go just by the percentages we should be preaching about money between 3 and 8 times a year.
Our primary text for this series is 1 Timothy 6:17, and we can see that it is clearly about money:
17Command 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 for our enjoyment.
The Bible sees our attitude toward money as crucial to our spiritual life. So while I don’t want to give the impression that the church is only interested in your money, I would be ignoring a large part of scripture if I didn’t preach about it.
Second, we’re doing a series on money because I believe it can do real good in the world. That is to say, I’m hoping that as we think hard about stewardship and wealth that an even greater flood of God’s money can be released to do God’s work in the world.
One of the reasons we need instructions on How to Be Rich, as I said the first week, quoting Andy Stanley, is that we have so many examples of rich people who are so bad at it. The U.S. is one of the richest nations in all of world history, and yet we are also one of the worst at giving our money away.
Stanley’s book came out 12 years ago, so some of the statistics he gives may be a little out of date, but I am certain they still reflect current practices. He quoted the Department of Labor to show that only about 3.7% of household income in the U.S. goes to charitable donations. And he pointed out that the higher the income, the lower that percentage gets. The average giving of a household making $50,000 a year is a pretty good 6%. But jump the income up to $200,000 and the percentage given away drops to 4%. And the trend continues: the more someone makes, the less they are likely to give.
And those numbers hold pretty steady for both Christians and non-Christians alike.
So I believe that a series on money may help us reverse those trends and do real good in the world as we learn to be more generous with God’s resources. Here’s what the next verse in our text says, 1 Timothy 6:18, which will be our focus today:
18Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.
But there’s a third, and even more important reason for us to do a series on money. It is for our good. It is important for us to hear what the Bible has to say about money and giving because the Bible promises that when we follow its plan for our money it will bring us joy.
Let’s look at the next verse in our text, 1 Timothy 6:19:
19In 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.
Pay special attention to that final phrase: “The life that is truly life.” Do you want to take hold of the life that is truly life? I do. That sounds like something really good. That sounds like what Jesus was talking about in John 10 when He talked about “abundant life.” That sounds like the best, most blessed kind of life there is.
And Paul says it is available in the coming age to those who follow Jesus. “Life that is truly life.” But notice, it’s in the context of this greater discussion about money. Paul says that when we handle our money well, when we are generous with it and we don’t put our misplaced hope in it, that’s when we lay up treasures for ourselves in heaven. Handling our money well—being good at being rich—is one of the ways to enjoy life that is truly life.
So, a lifestyle of the rich and famous--a lifestyle of stuff and extravagance—the sort of lifestyle that Instagram and the reality shows promote as real living—that’s not life that is truly life. Not according to the Bible. No, according to the Bible one of the ways to enjoy the best life there is, is to get our view of money in line with God’s view of money.
That’s why we’re doing a series on money. It’s not because we are trying to beg for more money for the church, but because it’s Biblical, it can do real good, and it’s for our good.
Vaccination
Now let’s get into the main part of the sermon.
The main idea of this series—we’re calling it the “game changing declaration”—is this:
I will not place my hope in riches, but in Him who richly provides.
We’re trying to avoid a “migration of hope.” We don’t want our hearts to be so set on the things of this world that we fail to trust in Christ. And yet, that’s something we are all prone to. So, we’re looking for different strategies to avoid this hope migration.
The first week, we talked about learning to love our money less. We looked at some of the harmful desires and painful griefs that can come from outsized devotion to money. Then, last week, we talked about contentment. Learning to be satisfied with what we already have, because if we’re not happy with what we already possess, more stuff isn’t really going to help.
Now, this week, we’re going to talk about giving.
I wonder if you know who Edward Jenner was.
Edward Jenner was a physician in England in the 1700s. And the big problem facing the medical community at that time was smallpox. Smallpox was an outrageous killer. It took the lives of nearly 80 percent of the children who caught it. And for those who survived, it often left terrible scars.
At the time there was little understanding of disease transmission. Germ theory was still a long way off, and nobody knew much about viruses. When a smallpox outbreak hit, there wasn’t much to do but seclude your family and hope it passed you by.
But Jenner had a different idea. He heard stories of English milkmaids who wouldn’t catch smallpox if they had already been sick with “cowpox”, a weaker version of the disease carried by cows. So Jenner had a crazy idea: he’d intentionally make children sick with the tamer version of the disease in the hopes that they’d become immune to the more deadly version.
Thus was born the idea of vaccinations. In fact, that word is also Jenner’s creation. He took it from the Latin word for cow—vacca. He went around exposing kids to the fluid from an active cowpox boil and—in what appeared to be a miracle—they seemed untouchable whenever a smallpox outbreak appeared.
Well, in the same way that cowpox builds up an immunity to smallpox, we can think of giving as a sort of vaccination against the love of money. (illustration from Andy Stanley, How to Be Rich, p. 75)
The Text
Let’s go back to the text. 1 Timothy 6:17:
17Command 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 for our enjoyment.
There’s the problem. Those who are rich are prone to “bouts of arrogance and chronic dislocated hope.” (Stanley, p. 76) That’s what we want to avoid. What should we pursue instead? Verse 18:
18Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.
Paul says that what those who are rich in this world need to do is be generous. To give. To share. If we really want to know how to be rich, we should seek to be rich in good deeds. That’s the vaccine against the heart disease of money worship.
Notice that Paul says essentially the same thing in four different ways. He really wants us to get this: 1) Do good. 2) Be rich in good deeds. 3) Be generous. 4) Be willing to share.
If you find yourself in a position of being rich–and remember, all of us, just by virtue of living where we live in the time of history in which we live–if you find yourself in a position of being rich you should seek to do good. To be rich in good deeds. Be generous. Be willing to share
That’s the vaccination against the migration of hope. That’s the prescription for loving money too much and consistent discontent: Be rich in good deeds. Make our wealth less about ourselves, and more about sharing with others.
In fact, here’s our main idea this morning:
If we want to be good at being rich, we have to practice being generous.
One of the best ways to avoid an unhealthy relationship with money is to be good at giving it away. Be rich in good deeds. Be willing to share. Be generous.
Give to God First
So, let me talk about the practice of generosity. Andy Stanley, in his book How to Be Rich, talks about three P’s of giving.
First, we should practice priority giving. The key to Jenner’s vaccination was to apply the technique before the outbreak occurred. And the same is true with generosity. It won’t happen unless we make it a priority. If we wait until we feel rich to start giving, we’ll never start, because—as we’ve been saying—most people don’t think they are rich. And, as we’ve seen, the richer Americans get, the worse they get at giving. So, no matter how rich or poor we might feel at the moment, now is the time to start being generous.
The Biblical advice is to give to God first. Proverbs 3:9 says:
Honor the LORD with your wealth,
with the firstfruits of all your crops.
Firstfruits is pretty self explanatory. It means the first part of every harvest went to God. The Old Testament describes a Festival of Firstfruits where people would joyfully bring the best of their harvest to the Lord.
What this means for us is that when our paycheck comes, we should set aside the amount we plan to give first. If we write checks, then our offering should be the first check we write. If we use a cash system, put God’s part in God’s envelope first.
Here’s the amazing thing: when we write that giving check first, then we find that at the end of the month there’s enough to get everything else paid. But when we do it the other way around—when we think we have to pay all the other bills and everything first, and then we’ll give at the end—so often we get to the end and find there’s nothing left.
We need to make our giving a priority. We need to have a plan. If you’re married, sit down with your spouse and determine how much God is leading you to give. And then when you make out your budget, automatically deduct that much from your spendable income.
Priorities are funny things. There’s always something to challenge them. Something to get in the way and try to make us change course. It takes courage to keep a priority. Especially when the payoff isn’t obvious.
Think about those first patients of Dr. Jenner: “What do you mean you want to infect me with cowpox?” His vaccination wasn’t all that sophisticated. People infected with cowpox still got sick. It was still uncomfortable. It just wasn’t as deadly as smallpox. But they had to wonder if it was worth it. What if they went through the cowpox, and still got the smallpox anyway?
Well, it takes the same kind of foresight and courage to make generosity a priority. Even when we’re not sure we have the cash to spare. We have to make a habit of giving now so that if and when we do become rich money won’t have such a tight hold on our hearts. That’s how we go from a value system that says “money is the key to life and happiness and safety” to saying “I will not place my hope in riches, but in Him who richly provides.”
Percentage, not Sum
That leads to the second P: Percentage giving. When it comes to our giving, God cares more about the percentage than the sum.
I’ve already mentioned that the wealthier Americans get the less they give— percentage-wise. It can be misleading, because the actual amount given seems like a large sum. But statistic after statistic shows that the more an American has, the smaller he or she gives as a total percentage of net worth. A check for $1,000 written to a charity might seem like a lot of money, but if you’re a millionaire is it really that big of a sacrifice?
And so, God is concerned more about the percentage than the sum. And His starting point, the percentage He recommends again and again in the Bible is 10 percent. A tithe. For example, Leviticus 27:30:
A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD.
Andy Stanley says that for many people, the idea of giving 10% is extremely uncomfortable. But so is a colonoscopy. And yet, both are good for us. It just depends on how badly you want to protect yourself from the side effects of wealth. (p. 82)
My point here is not to try to talk you into giving 10%. Bible scholars debate whether or not the Old Testament laws on tithing carry over to the New Testament. Still, it’s a good benchmark. Some might not be able to make such a big jump all at once. It still makes a good goal to get to, and beyond.
But my point for now is to get us thinking about percentages. It’s a part of having a plan. Our giving should be proportional to our wealth.
Let me give you another Biblical example to show that God cares more about the percentage than the sum. It’s a story about Jesus.
Back in those days the offering plate wasn’t passed. Instead, there was a big receptacle in the temple courtyard where people could come up and drop in their offerings where everyone could see. These offering boxes had big trumpet shaped cones on the top, and they would make quite a bit of noise when coins were dropped in. It was sort of a spectator sport. Some people would make a big spectacle out of it, coming with a retinue of servants and dropping their coins in one at a time to make a big splash. Some were even known as Zingers, for the way they would throw their money in and make those trumpets sing.
One day, Jesus and His disciples were in the courtyard watching people give their offerings. Rich person after rich person came by. They wore fancy clothes, groomed their beards, and prayed lengthy and flowery prayers. Jesus said about some of these people that they “devour widows’ houses” (Mark 12:40)
But then, more quietly, an elderly widow hobbled up to the treasury box and dropped in two small copper coins, “worth only a fraction of a penny.” Compared to the lavish offerings given before her, her donation was laughable. And yet, at that moment Jesus called a timeout and brought his disciples in for a lesson:
43Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on."
It wasn’t the sum that she gave that impressed Jesus. It was the percentage. It was the sacrifice. Here was a woman who was vaccinated against the love of money.
Grow in Giving
Then, third P, we should strive to practice progressive giving. Our goal should be to get better at giving over time.
Andy Stanley uses this math problem. Suppose your first job pays $20,000. As a priority, percentage giver, let’s say you commit to give $2,000 away. That’s a tithe, and that’s a big sacrifice.
But now, let’s say over time your career advances and you do well and reach an income of $200,000. And let’s say the kids are grown and launched, the house is paid for, and the 401K is in pretty good shape. If you are still giving at 10%, you’re giving away $20,000. Which is a lot of money.
But think about it: is that $20,000 as big a sacrifice as $2,000 was when you first started out? Probably not. You’ve still got $180,000 left to play with, which is 10 times that amount you had when starting out.
As our income increases, and the extra margin we have increases with it, we should make it a goal to grow in our giving.
Listen to these words from 2 Corinthians 8:7:
7But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.
Giving is something we can excel at. I take that to mean that giving is something we can get better at over time. We should all make it a goal to excel in the grace of giving.
Let me give an illustration from the life of John Wesley:
In 1731 Wesley began to limit his expenses so he would have more money to give to the poor. He records that one year his income was 30 pounds, and his living expenses 28 pounds, so he had 2 pounds to give away. The next year, his income doubled, but he still lived on 28 pounds and gave 32 pounds away. In the third year, his income jumped to 90 pounds; again he lived on 28 pounds, and gave 92 pounds to the poor.
Wesley preached that Christians should not merely tithe, but give away all extra income once the family and creditors were taken care of. He believed that with increasing income, the Christian’s standard of giving should increase, not his standard of living. He began this practice at Oxford and continued it throughout his life. Even when his income rose into the thousands of pounds, he lived simply and quickly gave his surplus money away. One year his income was slightly over 1,400 pounds; he gave away all save 30 pounds. (Quoted by Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity, p. 299)
That’s radical giving. I’m not saying that as our income rises we shouldn’t be able to enjoy some of the benefits of that wealth. But still, what a challenge, to intentionally raise our standard of giving rather than our standard of living.
I’ve heard many people describe their financial goal as the reverse tithe. That is, they would love to get to the point where they lived on 10 percent of their income and gave the other 90 percent away. It’s a great goal. But if that sounds like something we’d like to be able to do someday, it’ll only happen if we start practicing giving today.
*****
Priority, Percentage, Progressive. The 3 P’s of giving that will help inoculate us against the love of money and the malaise of discontent. It’s the way to practice generosity that will help us lay up treasures for ourselves in heaven and take hold of the life that is truly life.
When we have a plan, and we stick to it, it also helps us avoid the three deadly S’s: Spontaneous, Sporadic, and Sparing.
We should be intentional about our giving. Make it a priority, not a spur of the moment thing.
We should know how much we are giving as a percentage of our total income. Make it proportional to what we have, not just an amount that seems good compared to others.
And we should challenge ourselves to grow in our giving year after year. As our standard of living increases, so too can our standard of giving.
