Getting Ahead

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

He's writing them. He's pastoring a church, and so these are called, 1 and 2 Timothy, along with Titus, are called the pastoral epistles, meaning the letters that Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus about being a pastor, about leading a church. And these are called the pastoral epistles. In this encouragement, in reading the pastoral epistles today, we need to know two things about this church that Timothy is pastoring first, we need to know that the church that is receiving this letter is having significant wealth disparity. So not just normal, rich and poor, but as with most of the commercial centers at this time, in Ephesus, there's the very rich and the very poor. There's great economic disparity between the two. It's a lot easier to see who's rich and who's poor. When you walk into a gathering of the Ephesian church, you can definitely see who doesn't have enough

money for good clothes and who does. That's the first thing you need to know. There's significant wealth disparity. The second thing you need to know is that the Ephesian church also had a a contentment disparity, a contentment disparity. And although it is just as despairing, it is much harder to see. So between rich and poor, you can look at people's clothes or shoes or how dirty they are, and you can see in the Ephesian church who's rich and who's poor. But this, in the contentment disparity, it was much harder to see those who enjoyed what they had and those who always wanted more. And so, whenever we come to this text, whenever we are looking at rich and poor,

it is gonna be really difficult for us to grasp what's going on. If we're just gonna look at rich and poor. If we just say, okay, here, Paul is writing to the rich and here Paul's writing to the poor, we're gonna miss it. We actually need four different categories, not just rich and poor, we need to overlay rich or wealth with contentment. So, whatever we're looking here, we're going to be looking at the rich who are content, the poor who are content, the rich who are not content, and the poor who are not content. And our reading today touches on all but one of those four. The one that does not touch is if you are poor and content. So today, if you are poor and you are content, I have nothing to say to you. You can just pray for the other three groups, okay? If you're poor and content with exactly what you have, then this is you just pray for other people because they need to hear what the scripture is going to say.

And also, let me just say this. Today the subject of money will come up. we will step into those very dark waters of, hey, I went to that church for the first time and all I talked about was money, okay? That's, it's a common thing. However, as we read today's scripture, really what I want you to see is not about money, I want you to see the gospel, and I want you to see that the gospel is not about being financially rich or poor, that it goes much deeper than whatever's in your bank account. And so to do that, we need to read. We need to see what we're saying. We're going to start in verse, at the end of verse five,

and just as a lead in for some of these six verse five, what we have just been discussing in the previous verses here, for some of the one through better part of five, is false teachers that are coming in and they're delusional. They are trying to stir up trouble, they are. And here's kind of the last thing he says in verse five, it says that these false teachers are imagining that godliness is a means of gain. Now what he means is that these false teachers think that if I act in a godly way, that's actually a way that I can make money. And it is on that occasion that we get the next slew of verses. It's almost like something like tripped, like a breaker tripped in his thinking, and now we're talking about godliness and gain. Okay, so the false teachers in verse five, false teachers are imagining that godliness is a means of gain. And then we start in verse six. It says, but godliness with contentment is great gain,

for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. But for those who desire to be rich, sorry, but those who desire to be rich, fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Okay, I want to start in the middle. I want to start in verse 9, and I want you to look at it again. It says, it says, those who desire to be rich. And I want to propose to you that those that desire to be rich can be rich or poor. In other words, rich people can desire to be more rich. Just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean like, oh, okay, I have enough money, I'm good, I don't want to be rich anymore. Many people that are rich are still motivated to accumulate wealth. A closer translation of this would be, instead of those who desire to be rich, those who

plan on accumulating wealth. Those who scheme and arrange their lives in such a way that they can amass more wealth. So those who desire to be rich, that's what we're talking about. We're not typically talking about rich people, okay? That's not a label that we're going to use. Here it's not very helpful. Rather, we're going to call them people that want to get ahead. People that want to get ahead, not just rich people. And particularly today, okay? In the world that we live in today, everybody in this room, unless your name is Jeff Bezos, you can point to somebody who is richer than you. Okay? Everybody can. Everybody says, well, they got more than me, they got more than me, they got more than me. Using the the labels of rich and poor is very confusing, especially in America where we're one of the richest nations in the world, right? So if you're poor in America, are you still rich relatively?

Instead of using those labels for right now, let's just talk about people that want to get ahead. There are people that want to get ahead, people who desire to be rich. This is more evident whenever you look earlier in the verses, when you look at verses five and six, because there is a word play and I already alluded to it with the word gain. There's a word play with the word gain or godliness as a means of gain. That these false teachers, verse five, are imagining that godliness is a means of gain, but, but godliness with contentment is great gain. Okay. That's a pun there. You're not supposed to belly laugh, but maybe chuckle a little bit. Okay, thank you. Okay. That was close. I almost didn't get it. False teachers are imagining that godliness is a way to get ahead, but what verse 6 says is that, oh, hey, actually, godliness is a way to get ahead, but it's only when you are content with what you already have. That's a way to get

ahead. If you're godly and you're content with everything you have, then gain is possible. Yes. It's only whenever you are content. In other words, it's not what is in your bank account, it is what is in your heart. You see a contrast here with the desire to get ahead with contentment. it. If you are not content with what you have, then you are probably in this mode of desiring to get ahead. Let's go back to verse nine. It says, those who desire to be rich, and I want to keep going, those who desire to be rich fall into a temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." The desire to get ahead follows a very deadly sequence. You can see the sequence here in verses nine and ten.

It is what theologian Philip Towner calls a violent chain reaction. You fall into temptation, then you fall into a trap, then you are into many senseless and harmful desires, And then you are, as if we needed some irony here, you are plunged into ruin. You are baptized into failure, into destruction. What a word. I mean, what a vivid picture that people are plunged into ruin and destruction. When you desire to be rich, it will end up with you being baptized into ruin. You will be given over to it.

It ends, we see in verse 10, it ends in an abandoned faith and a tormented life. The desire to get ahead follows a deadly sequence. And remember, we're not talking about what's in your bank account, we're talking about your heart. And so it's the desire to get rich. If you look at verse 10, it's a very often misquoted verse when people will say that money is the root of all evil and it's not, it's the love of money that is the root of all evil. It's actually a root. It's not even the root. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. And so it's not being rich, it's the desire to accumulate wealth. It's not having money, it's loving money. And here's the deal, if you get it wrong, if you believe it is your bank account that determines your righteousness, then you are going to think that poverty makes you more righteous, or not having nice things makes you somehow better in God's eyes,

and it doesn't. Conversely, you're going to think that living comfortably puts you at odds with God, or makes you less righteous, or if only we could get rid of these creature comforts and be closer to God. I understand the sentiment there, but the thinking is a bit off. It's not your bank account. And so first, I think it's a good question for us to ask ourselves, How can you tell if you are trying to get ahead?

How do you know? What if this is you? Well, let me just ask you a few diagnostic questions. See what you say. And we're not asking for hands raised. So if you wanna raise your hand, that's cool. I'm not asking for hands. I just want you to think this through. Can you, when somebody else gets something really nice, can you genuinely enjoy that for them? Or is this, or are you kind of drowning in bitterness and envy? When somebody gets something nice, can you enjoy that for them? Right? Can you say like, in fact, my daughter was telling me a story. There's a girl in her grade, my daughter's a ninth grader, story. And she's not here, she's working in child care so I can tell a story on her. Perfect. She's a ninth grader. There's another ninth grader on her volleyball team that made varsity, which was just, wow, didn't really expect to make varsity. And when I was asking her about

it, she said, oh, like, we were really excited. Like, we said, go, Katie, we were just really excited for him. And I asked, I mean, I did. I cried a little bit. I'm like, nobody was jealous? You know, this is such a common thing, right? Nobody was jealous. When others get something that would be nice for you to have, are you genuinely happy for them? Another question would be, what is the trajectory of your life? What is the trajectory of your life? Are you on a path for temptation and a trap and running headlong into harmful desires that will then baptize you into ruin. Are you on that path? Are things getting progressively worse in your life in a quick way? If so, if so, something that might be happening is that you're not content with what you have and that you're trying to get ahead. And then maybe this is a positive way to state it, but it's still a question.

And if you're doing this, it's probably, do you enjoy the hunt at the expense of enjoying what you already have? Do you enjoy shopping more than owning? Do you enjoy the pursuit of career goals versus actually meeting those career goals? If all you do is live on the pursuit, then you will be dried out. You will abandon your faith. This is what happens when we desire to be rich, when we arrange our lives in such a way that we are planning on accumulating wealth.

And so I said we could discuss two, and that is the first. The first would be rich and poor that are discontent, that are not content with what they have, they are desiring to get ahead. The second group that we will discuss some overlap here is simply the wealthy. Just if you're wealthy. And in verse 17, we're going to skip ahead to 17. We're going to go back through some of the other verses, but we're going to skip ahead to 17 because in 17 it says, begins for simply 617, as for the rich in this present age charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches." And it keeps going. We're gonna stop there for just a second. And so this is different than people that are trying to get ahead. This is the people in the church that are rich in this present age. You're wealthy. What he's warning against here, well, we can take from this and not look,

if you wouldn't describe yourself as wealthy, I don't think you're like, we're not somehow magically excused from these verses. We can still learn about what's going on with people that have wealth. Wealth and comfort have a way of distorting your self image. Wealth and comfort have a way of distorting your own self image. The word hottie, if some of you were reading out of the King James version, you were gonna read a word that is old, it is high minded. High minded, now if you've never been called high minded, you were probably born after 1970, okay? But being high minded is something that we would call maybe like, if you're, if you're hottie or high minded, you're, you're 10 feet tall and bulletproof. Okay. You're no, you think you are indestructible.

Being, being high minded is thinking more of yourself than you actually are. That's what, that's actually what it means to be high minded, be hottie. So it distorts yourself image. It makes you think you won't ever die. It makes you think that you're indestructible. It makes you think that, man, wouldn't it be great if they could cryogenically freeze my head so that I could live forever? Okay? There's people that do that. There's rich people that do that because they don't ever want to die. They believe themselves to be indestructible. Wealth and comfort have a way of doing that on a, now that's an extreme level, but even on a small level where we think that we are above some discomfort. Honestly, look, whatever your thoughts are on the COVID-19 pandemic, you know, we don't have to agree on that. But I will say this, there is nothing like a global pandemic to make people realize how fragile they are.

Some people are not responding well to that fragility. Some people have known it all along and they're undeterred by the fact that they're fragile because they've kind of known they're fragile this whole time. But when you have people, especially people that are in a lot of wealth or in a lot of comfort and you somehow disrupt that and you say your life could be over like that, it is extremely upsetting. It is extremely off-putting because it messes with their self-image. Wealth and comfort has a way of distorting that. and comfort also have a way of distorting the vision for their own life. It says that the wealthy are not supposed to set their hope on, quote, the uncertainty of riches. Setting your hope on something uncertain. We have another word for that, it's called betting. If I want to set my hope on the uncertainty of Tom Brady throwing 40 touchdowns this

year, well I can actually put money on that, right? And I can make or lose money. I'm uncertain about whether it's going to happen, but I think it will. Whenever we are wealthy and when we are comfortable, what we tend to do is bet on ourselves. We tend to look at the future and we tend to go, oh, okay, there's some things that are coming, I'm not sure Oh, you know what though? I've got this variable. I've got this thing that gives me confidence. Me. I'm going to make it because I'm good enough. I'm smart enough, and people like me. OK? You consider the risk involved. You look at it. You really assess the whole thing. And you say to yourself, I can handle it. This will be just fine. Nothing to worry about here. And this is why, this is why we have the contrast. It says, as for the rich in this present age, verse 17, charged them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches,

but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. This is why it's contrast with setting our hope in God. You either are setting your hope on God, or you are betting on yourself. We're not split in any middle here. How are you living your life? Also, whenever you look at it, as for the rich in this present age, it's kind of a shot to the ribs, right? It's like, hey man, you're only rich for now.

You're wealthy, but there's another age to come. And your wealth in this age, your comfort in this age has nothing to do with your wealth or your comfort in the age to come. As for the wealthy, in this present age, charge them not to be haughty because they can become haughty. Charge them not to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches because they can bet on themselves, because wealth and comfort have a way of making us delusional and nobody is exempt from that. Let's look at verse 17 again, talking about setting our hope on God. Because the contrast is the wealthy in this present age that are setting their hope on uncertainty. the comparison is between the wealthy and then God himself. It is actually God who richly provides. This is another play on words kind of going back to the same idea of verses five and six. You see that God is the one who richly provides, wink, wink, as if to warn the rich, not just that your wealth

is only temporary, that it's only for this present age, but also to warn the rich. There is another kind of wealth that goes beyond yours. There is another kind of comfort that far exceeds anything your couch and your Netflix account can provide. There is a wealth that is deeper and more true than yours. You think you're wealthy, you think you're set up, you think You have all these things laid out. You think your life is going to go a certain way, but you don't know. God has wealth that cannot be destroyed, that can't be moved, that isn't in anybody else's bank account. God's wealth is deeper. It is truer than anything that we have. There is wealth beyond yours. And you find this all over 1 Timothy 6. where God demonstrates this true wealth, right? That he demonstrates his wealth in richly providing. God provides richly to you material possessions

for you to enjoy. God is generous with you. I want you to think about it right now. Just take a second. You can close your eyes if you have to. I want you to consider the generosity of God. I want you to think about it. Think about everything you have, family, breakfast, your career, meaningful work, good friends, physical strength, health. And even if you could only check off one on that long list, God is still generous. God has ordained all of these things in your life before the foundations of the world. He planned on being generous with you in very specific ways. Another way to think about it is you have nothing in your life and that includes family, that includes anything, health, anything, anything that you believe you're entitled to. You have nothing in your life without God's express desire for you to have. God is generous, generous toward you. And God is not reluctant to share.

God's not giving you things and kind of like, oh, I mean, this is leftovers, but I think Clay is going to like it. Yeah, okay Clay, well, I mean, it's fine, whatever. No, no, you get the idea from here and a lot of the places in scripture that God is generously providing everything that you need and more and hoping, working for you to actually enjoy those things. That is God's express desire for you, not just for you to kind of survive from paycheck to paycheck, but for you to actually find deep contentment in all that you've been given and to cooperate with Him in that. God is not reluctant to share. God is not even, God is even worried about, He's even worried about you finding joy in those things. Not just that you have it, not just, I put a roof over your head so just be happy and shut up. No, God is saying I put a roof over your head, I gave you clothes, I gave you family,

I gave you health, I gave you community, I gave you everything you need, and I want you to enjoy it. I have a tough time with this. I mean, I know that this isn't personal testimony time, I've already had that. I have a tough time enjoying what I have in front of me. I'm often allured by what could be. And sometimes that's great. It helps me plan. And sometimes it's not, because I can't find contentment, even when things are good. You can ask Daniel Oster. Sometimes he's just nodding, blessing. So many conversations. I'll call Daniel and he'll listen to me whine for, I don't know, 15, 20, 90 minutes. And at the end, more like 90, and then at the end, he'll say, okay, hey, let's just reset.

You're only mad because God has given you all these other things and it's just not following the schedule you wanted to follow. Is that right? Did I hear you say that? I say, no, I know he's right. I want things on my own quicker timetable. I want a future that I want. I find it difficult to have contentment in what is right in front of me. But that doesn't mean that, that doesn't happen to me because I'm rich. It happens to me because I'm sick with sin. I'm spoiled. I'm prideful. things on my own timeline, I get high-minded. I get haughty. And I think I can better myself. I think, yeah, we can make it because we have that X factor. Me. And it's foolishness. It's foolishness. It's a terrible way to live. And it will destroy me. That is a constant battle for me to find contentment. My wife is a great example for me on this. My wife is one of the more content people that I know. I sometimes wonder why her blood pressure does not raise

more often than it does. When they check her pulse at the hospital, she's like just a little bit higher than corpse. Okay, her like she's so calm. And I mean, I love that about her And I just think, gosh, like it's just so, how great would it be to live like that? I think sometimes, you know, I just, it's a battle. It's hard. For some of you, you're struggling right along with me. And for some of you, you're like, hey, I'm fine. I'm content with what I got.

Another way that you can find that God is rich is that he's rich in his provision of life, both our life now and eternal life, right? In verses 12 and 13 of chapter six, it talks about, it says, take hold of the eternal life to which you have been called. After we've considered all these things that God has been generous with us over, we can also be floored all over again by God's generosity to call us out of darkness into his marvelous light. How generous God is to, it says here in verse 13, says that God is the one who gives life to all things. And that has to do with your eternal life and the lifespan of a butterfly. Okay. That's God dispenses life to all things. Everything that's alive owes that to God. The impression that we are getting from 1st Timothy 6, 17, and from the the previous verses in verses five through 10 is that for those trying to get ahead and for those

that are wealthy, that God himself is a better example to follow than anyone else. That God himself takes it upon his own shoulders to say, this is how to be rich. This is how to own everything and live with contentment. And this is exactly what we see in verse 18. And we're continuing to speak to the wealthy, it says, the wealthy, they are to do good, to be rich in good works. Again, another wink on the rich thing, to be rich in good works and to be generous and ready to share. It's as if in verse 18, we are hearing it say like, hey, if you really want to get ahead, you really want to be rich, then be like God. God is generous, so be generous. Who's richer than God? God provides for the needs of others. Do the same thing. Be generous and ready to share. We just established that God did these things, right? God is generous and ready to share. Look, and these aren't just rules to follow.

This isn't God's generous, so I'm gonna be generous. Like I owe that to God because he did it to me. Okay, no, we're talking about like a changed life. We're not talking about rules. Someone who has truly experienced generosity, and you've experienced this. You have experienced the supreme generosity of somebody. And what did you want to do? You wanted to share that. That made you actually want to be generous to somebody else. Even if you're the scrugiest among us, when somebody is gracious with you, it makes you want to be gracious with other people. When somebody is generous with you, when somebody has given you everything that you need and more. I remember one time we visited when the kids were very young And it was really hard for us to visit. We're visiting my brother and his wife, and they have one daughter. And we have five kids, and they were all, I think, under the age of eight.

I mean, they were young. And so we all descend on their house. And I'm just thinking to myself, good night, nurse. This is not gonna be okay. Where are we gonna fit? But you know what, man? They had that whole thing laid out just for us. They had candy on our pillows. They had blankets galore. had. I mean, they had a range. They'd given us everything we needed. They provided for us. It was such a blessing. It was so humbling. If that happens to you, if that happens to you, somebody lays out just all this stuff for you and you kind of walk in like you expect it and you do not appreciate it, it could be that you have been overtaken by wealth and comfort. It could be that you are just trying to get ahead. If you think you deserve those things,

let's keep reading because there's kind of this ending, this promise here, for Timothy 6, and then I'll read 18 again and then 19 with it. They are to do good, this is to the rich, they are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life." What we are talking about at First Timothy 6 is not just changing where you write your checks. We're talking about changing how you view wealth. More than that, we're talking about... First Timothy 6 is talking to us about... The Spirit is speaking to us about how we understand the path of our life to go. What do you think the point of your life is? What do you think the point of you having money is, of you having stuff, what is the point of that? Is it just your comfort?

Is it just for you? This challenges us on a fundamental level because when you really understand how wealth works, If you really want to get ahead in this life, then you need to understand this defining point, to be the wealthiest, to gain all of it, to become rich beyond measure. You have to give it all away to become rich beyond measure, to be truly wealthy, to taste some of wealth that God has in abundance. He's the owner of a thousand on the cattle, no cattle on a thousand hills. He owns all of that. He owns more. How do we taste that wealth? How do we get ahead? How do we become like that? Give it all away. Give it all away. Watch. Watch as you provide for the needs of others that God provides for your needs. Watch as you become generous that God is generous. Watch all of that happen. And this isn't a get rich, you know, quick scheme. This isn't like I'm not promising wealth and comfort.

What I'm promising though, is that when you change that, when you understand wealth and the way that God has set up wealth, you will find contentment. And then we're back to verse 6. Godliness with contentment is great gain. It's the path to getting rich and staying rich. When you give it all away, it's just not a riches like you thought. It won't get you on the lifestyles and the rich and famous. It won't get you, you know, nobody's going to want to tour your house. Nobody's going to want you to write a book with how you got all that wealth because the world doesn't see that wealth as wealth, right? But remember, what God is talking about with wealth, what God is talking about with wealth is something that goes beyond what we have. This is how Jesus says it in Matthew 6, 19 through 21. He's talking, he says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth

where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. Okay, a lot of times we stop with that verse. We just say, oh hey, Jesus said, don't lay up treasure on earth, okay? Because all of it's gonna burn anyway. Yep, okay, good. Okay, that's the end of it. Nope, Jesus keeps going. He says, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That's interesting, right? Because Jesus isn't saying, hey, don't go for wealth. Jesus is saying, why are you aiming so low?

Go for wealth that lasts. Go for wealth that doesn't get stolen and moth and rust don't destroy. Go for that wealth. Why settle for dollars? Why settle for fame? It says, lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Jesus didn't say, forget treasure, forget legacy. Jesus said, aim higher, go for something worth going for. I dare you. Don't go so low. Here, look, Paul doesn't chide the rich for being rich. In 1st Timothy 6, he doesn't say, hey, you're rich and that's wrong, you should stop. What he does is he points them to a better ambition. What is the ambition of your life? Is it to be rich toward God? Is it like it says at the end, is it to take that, to take hold of that, which is truly life? That is what 1st Timothy 6 is going for. That is whenever we see wealth, whenever we see anything like that in scripture, the

idea is that we should aim higher, that we should take hold of something that is worth holding onto. What does that look like? Well, you know, I'm not saying go clear your bank account out tomorrow, right? I'm not saying sell your 401k. I'm not saying, I'm not saying those things. What I'm saying is, because again, it's not about your bank account, it's about your heart, is where is your security? Where does that lie? And for a lot of you, It has little to do with money and way more to do with pride. It has little to do with where you're writing checks and what you're willing to say in public. Oh, I don't want to look dumb. I don't want to speak up. I don't want to, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to not fit in. There is a way to sell out to God that lays all of your pride, it lays all the security that you have in your money or in your ability to look good or to talk good or it lays all

that out and just says, you know what, I don't care. I don't care about that. I just want to look good for the Lord. I just want to please the Lord. I just want to put a smile on his face. I don't care who says I'm dumb. I don't care how dumb I look. I want to hold on to something that matters. I want to lay up treasure in heaven. Following Jesus does change how you view your money. Might not change how much money you make. You might actually make less, I don't know. But following Jesus, being a Christian, has everything to do with how you view it. Has everything to do with how you view wealth, how you view money. Today, we're going to have our extended invitation time. Dan's going to come and lead us in worship. And as we sing, I'm going to be kind of right here on the front row. And if you want prayer, if you want to talk to somebody, you can come and see me. I'll be up here and we can pray. If you're interested in joining our church,

this is also the time to do that. But as we do, I want you to consider at the end of 19 when it says, take hold of that which is truly life. And I want to encourage you to take hold of that which is truly life if you have not done that. Let's stand as we sing.