Last weekend, I began a sermon series titled Extravagantly Generous.  Our focus is on three verses from the end of 1Timothy.  This letter is written by Paul or someone close to Paul to a young pastor, Timothy.  It offers instruction to him on how to serve his congregation.  In his church he has some rich people. The three verses give specific direction on how those who are rich should act.

 

As I began this sermon series, I confessed that I am rich. I know that might shock some of you but by the end of the sermon, almost everyone confessed that they were rich too. Some of you are saying, “Well I knew that about this congregation. It’s just full of a bunch of rich people.” If you think this, you’re right. We are blessed; we are rich.

 

I know that some of you are out of work. I know a few are near bankruptcy. I know many of you worship St. Visa and have too much debt.  But in a world where half of the human race lives on less that $2 a day, even those in this church who are financially strapped are rich.[1] If you make $35,000 a year, you are in the top four percent of wage earners in the world. Most people in the world would look at you and say, “You’re rich.”  God has blessed us. We’re rich. We affirmed this last week. The reason we are studying verses 17-19 from the sixth chapter of 1 Timothy is they are specifically written for us, for rich people.

 

We also affirmed that one of the reasons we don’t feel rich is our definition of rich is a moving target. A Gallup survey revealed that most people doubled their income to get to a definition for rich. Thirty thousand dollar earners thought they needed $74,000 to be rich. Fifty thousand dollar earners thought they needed $100,000; even millionaires tended to think they needed more. That illustration alone should have caused you to ask, “How much money do I need?” Did you ask yourself that question last week? It is a really important question.  A number of years ago, a man I know through our kids’ sports sold a business. He got a big sum of money, something like seven or eight million dollars. Because it was in the newspaper, he was pretty open to talking about his good fortune. I remember him saying, “I just got a check that is more money than I ever thought I’d make and more money than I’ll every need.” It’s really an amazing thing to confess to a minister, isn’t it? About three days after that conversation, I walked into Marsh supermarket. There was a long line of people waiting to buy tickets for the lotto as the jackpot was at an all time high. At the head of the line was my friend, buying lottery tickets. “How much money do you need?”  I know your answer. The answer is, “More than I currently have.” Sometimes, it’s my answer because it is next to impossible in the world we live in not to get caught up in that “I need more” mentality. Paul tells Timothy “That’s bad character so tell them to stop being obsessed with money and do good.”

 

Did you notice that he didn’t say, “Be Good?”  He said, “Do good.” He has shifted from talking about personality and character to talking about the activity of rich people.  Verse 17 addresses character. Verse 18 speaks to our work.  “Do good” but just what are you to do? Rich people have two assignments. You are to be rich in helping others and extravagantly generous. As a rich person, both are hard.

 

Let me tell you one of the ways I’m rich and why this verse is hard. I know this will shock some of you but I get paid by the church not to work. I shouldn’t reveal this during a budget campaign but it’s the truth. I get something that only rich people get. I get….are you ready…it’s kind of embarrassing…I get vacation time. There, I said it. Rich people like me get paid by their employers not to work two, three, four, even five weeks a year. On top of my vacation, I don’t have to work seven days a week. Rich people don’t have to work every day of the week. That’s unheard of in many parts of the world and it was unheard of in this country until the last 75 years. Rich people have leftover time.

 

Hence my experience; let me see if it matches up with yours. The richer I get, the less time I seem to have. Is that your experience? I had this conversation a couple of years ago asking someone to serve on our board. He said, ‘You know, I am just so busy, I couldn’t possibly do it. I’m doing something every night running the kids to cheerleading and soccer. Then, we have the Colts and Pacers games and my wife is always making me go to IRT and the symphony. My golf game has gone to pieces because I’m not getting to the driving range much. Randy, I’m embarrassed to say that we are so busy that we’ve only been to our Florida condo three times this year.”

 

It was embarrassing but he wasn’t embarrassed for the right reason. He didn’t have any time because he’d spent it on himself and his family. He’d filled all of that extra time up with personal endeavors. You might think that’s an extreme example and doesn’t relate to you. So let me give you an illustration that might connect. The average American volunteers 48 hours a year to non-profits, something close to an hour a week. Some of you are nodding, saying, “That sounds about right.” Well, how about this. The average American gives 61 days watching television. The average American spends 2 days serving others, 61 days watching the tube.

 

Remember this passage isn’t written for average people. It’s written for rich people. Rich people aren’t to be average in doing good; they are to be “rich in helping others.”  Do you volunteer an hour a week? That’s just average.  If you are rich, you ought to be able to serve a lot more. The problem is that we live in a culture that says, “I’m going to spend all of my extra time on me and my family.” Rich people buy into that message because they’ve got options.  You’ve got time and money. You have the money and time to go to dinner or a movie or a play or even on a fall break vacation which many of our families are on right now. We end up filling up almost all of our extra time on ourselves.

 

This is what happens when this is how you allocate your time. You have a few nice memories but most of your personal experience fades pretty quickly. Contrast those experiences with time spent “being rich in helping others.” Those memories last a lifetime because you make a difference in people’s lives. Why is that people who go on mission trips talk about their experience all of the time but when the same people go on a vacation, they stop talking about it a few weeks after they return.  It’s because they have spent their time on others rather than on themselves. They have invested their time and made a difference. It’s why people who go on mission trips take them over and over again. They have become “rich in helping others.” When it comes to this part of your life, are you rich or poor, are you generous in sharing your time or do you spend it on yourself?

 

Our congregation is a highly functional church. We use lots of volunteers every week to teach children, encourage youth, care for the property, support the office, do mission work, and make worship happen. I could go on and on about the volunteer opportunities that we have. The point is this. Our church is doing well but we will never reach our full potential as a congregation without more commitment from more people. But there is a second truth which falls on the heels of that one. You will never reach your full potential without “being rich in helping others.” If you blow in here on Sunday, grab a little worship, feel dusted off and leave, you are hurting yourself. You are a spiritual consumer who is greedy about leftover time and the more you allocate your time on you, the less satisfied you will feel about your life.

 

You need to create a budget, not of your money but of your time. Look back over the past month. I know you think you are incredibly busy but be honest. Where are you spending your time? Are you spending it on yourself or in serving others? We need you to serve to fulfill our mission but even more so, you need us as a place to serve. Don’t get to the end of your life with memories of nice vacations, nice restaurants, good concerts and good movies but no real memories of helping others.  Be rich in helping others—that’s good work. 

 

And be extravagantly generous. Again, this passage is giving instructions to rich people. You aren’t just to be generous. You are to be extravagantly generous. This makes a lot of logical sense, right? The more you have, the richer you are, the more you’ll give. But for most people it doesn’t work that way. If you are like most people in America, the more you make the less you’ll give. Each year you can study the IRS documents on charitable giving. The most recent study indicated those who made 25,000-50,000 donated 1.6% percent of the after-tax income to charities. Every other income group above 50,000,  from $50,000-100,000, $100,000-200,000, 200-500, 500-1,000,000, 2 to 5 million, and 5-10 million fall below 1% in giving money to charitable causes. The only other group that was over 1% was those who make more than ten million dollars a year but they only gave 1.2%. Does that make sense to anyone at all? Someone making $50,000 a year is more generous than someone who makes $500,000 a year or 5 million a year? Now maybe those numbers don’t make a lot of sense to you because we don’t have many $50,000 or many $500,000 a year families and as far as I know, we don’t have anyone making five million dollars a year.[2] If anyone wants to correct me about that last statement, you can see me in my office after worship.

 

Why are poor people more generous than rich people? This is what happens. I see it every year with the kids when I do this value lesson with them during the children’s sermon. I’ll hold up a dollar and ask, “How much of this should you give the church?” Many of the kids will say, .25 or half of it. A few will even say, “The whole thing.” Then I’ll ask about ten dollars and they will immediately zone in on a dollar. A dollar out of ten seems fair. Some of them are even okay about giving $10.00 of a hundred dollar bill. But the larger the denomination of the bill gets, the harder it is to turn loose of a tithe. Our kids reflect their parents. Add a few more zeros and it gets harder and harder. You’re making $100,000 and a tithe is $10,000. Suddenly it feels like real money and there are other options on how you spend $10,000 and you think, “I just don’t think I can do that.”  The weird thing is this. If you sat in church and watched the kids go through this exercise and some kid says, “I’m only going to give a penny of my dollar to God’ you’d think, “What are his parents teaching him? What a greedy little kid.” But Americans earning between $50,000 a year and ten million a year give less than a penny on every dollar.

 

It’s all about options. Rich people have options of what they can do with their money and the richer they get, the more options there are and just like the issue of time, we are programmed to spend our money on ‘me and mine.’ The more money rich people make, the more nice things they can buy, nice trips they can take, nice dinners they can have. I know what I’m talking about; I’m rich.

 

It’s why God told us to take our tithe off the top. Because if you don’t, the richer you are, the more options you’ll have to use your tithe for something else. Then, you only give God what’s left over.

 

Think about this image. Your boss or your in-laws or the president of the university you attended or even the President of the United States, someone who you hold in the high esteem, someone special, comes to your house for dinner. Instead of making careful plans to prepare the very best dinner, you serve leftovers. You go into the refrigerator and pull some Tupperware containers out and give the sniff test and say, “You know, I think this is still good.” You find a Styrofoam container in the back and say, “Honey, when did you bring this steak home? You think it’s okay to serve?” “Yeah, just scrape off the purple stuff and turn it upside. He’ll never know.” But of course he knows and you know too.

 

You will never stand a chance of being generous if it doesn’t come off the top. It allows you to pre-decide how you are going to give. It takes giving out of the leftover category, out of competition with all of the other options that compete for your spending attention. It’s why making a written pledge is so important. People who pledge give three times as much money to their church as people who don’t.[3] Why--because they aren’t giving leftovers.

 

Here is a challenge. Look back over the last year. Add up all of the money that you’ve spent on you and your family. Add up all of the discretionary spending you put into all of that entertainment, recreation, vacation. Don’t forget all of those luxury items you’ve put into your home. Don’t forget the golf and the sailing and the Colts. Add it up and then compare it to what you’ve given to the church. Then ask, “Where is my treasure?” Is it in my stuff or in my relationship with God?”  To whom am I extravagantly generous?”

 

Paul says to Timothy, “Rich people can do tremendous good because they can be extravagantly generous.” We need you to do good.  Again, our congregation is filled with wonderful ministries. We have a lovely campus and are building a second campus on Promise Road. We’ll launch a terrific ministry in Fishers, reaching more people for Christ. But we will never reach our potential as a congregation until we learn to give off the top, to become committed to the biblical principle of a tithe. A penny on the dollar doesn’t go nearly as far as we need to go.

 

Off the top giving is the same principle that financial planners promote for saving. It’s just absolutely essential for rich people to do this, to budget off the top, with our money and with our time because we have lots and lots of competing options.

 

Last weekend I invited you to join me in claiming your identity. I’m going to ask you to do it again. I know it’s hard to say out loud, even a little embarrassing. But let’s give it a try, one more time. “I’m blessed. I’m rich.” There, you said it, so do good, be rich in helping others, be extravagantly generous.

             

 

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