Learn to be Content
Tom Shrader explores the biblical concept of contentment, focusing on Paul's secret of being satisfied in all circumstances from Philippians 4:12 and the equation of godliness plus contentment equaling great gain from 1 Timothy 6:6. He challenges believers to define 'enough' in their material lives, warning against the endless cycle of dissatisfaction that drives constant wanting. Shrader emphasizes that God blesses us not to hoard but to bless others, and that understanding the temporary nature of earthly possessions leads to freedom and proper perspective.
“God gives you things not to hoard them, He blesses you to bless others.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2012)
Recorded: November 08, 2012
Duration: 39 min
Themes: contentment, satisfaction, materialism, greed, stewardship, generosity, perspective, gratitude, struggling with materialism, feeling dissatisfied, young adult, new believer, parent, business owner, facing financial pressure, wanting more possessions
Scripture: Philippians 4:10-13, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, 1 Timothy 6:17-18, Ecclesiastes 5:10-15, 2 Timothy 2:4
Theological Themes: godliness, spiritual maturity, biblical worldview, christian living, sanctification, becoming holy, stewardship theology, eternal perspective
Full Transcript
Today is week 8 in what's 11 weeks. We're talking about how to stay straight in a crooked world, and the part that we're talking about is not so much the moral aspect of it, although clearly that's there. It's talking about how to stay straight in a world that begins to lose its compass.
For those of us who would say Jesus is Lord and we're followers of Christ, it's how are we to live with that reality in our life that God left us here for a reason. If all He wanted to do is get us to heaven, He would have taken us there at the point of conversion, but He left us here for a reason. So we talked about how we live and we talked about the Bible's the final authority in our life, and we had to now just learn what that word says and then make decisions accordingly.
We took a pivot in week five where we said here's the principle: our faith is deeply personal but it's not a private matter. It should affect in varying levels, obviously, everything we do. Then we talked the last two weeks about making the invisible God visible and speaking the truth boldly. In your life as you live, there should be a steady flow of people who are blown away when they see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control in your life. They begin to see the way that you handle yourself. I thought Governor Romney the other night in the way he handled the whole thing handled it with amazing grace, and I don't know that I could do that. Well, if people watch you they ought to look at you and go "wow," and then you point them to Christ.
Paul's Secret to Contentment
This is one of my wheelhouse messages, and so there's really two prominent passages we'll go to today. The first is in Philippians chapter 4. In Philippians chapter 4 verse 12, Paul writes this: "I have learned the secret." Everybody loves a secret. That's part of why I think we like gossip so much - I can tell you something about somebody.
I was reading the other day the difference between gossip and flattery. Flattery is something that I would tell you but never tell anyone else about you. Gossip is something I'd tell everybody about you but never tell you. I love to gossip, talk about him, bring you down a notch. It makes me look like I'm in the loop, it makes me look like I know the secret.
Growing up I was a big Muhammad Ali fan, and as Ali's fighting every fight had the same pre-fight buildup. They would always interview the challenger and the challenger would always in essence say "I have a secret weapon. I've watched reams of film of Ali and I've spotted a weakness, and boy when I see that hand drop - I'm not telling you what it is - when I see it boy I'm gonna be right there." And so they would get out there and after about five rounds his head's popping all over and the secret got knocked out of his head. And then I was intimidated by the fact he had a secret.
Well Paul says in Philippians 4, "I have a secret." Now let's put it in its context. Chapter 4 verse 10: "I rejoice" - and how do I rejoice? That phrase whenever you see it circle it, mark it, underline it, make note of it. His rejoicing is in the Lord. "I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity."
Learning Contentment Through Every Circumstance
Now he gets autobiographical: "Not that I speak from want, for I have learned - I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I'm in. I know how to get along with humble means, and I can also live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret" - here's the secret - "of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and of suffering need." He said here's what I've learned the secret: I've learned to live through the peaks and valleys circumstantially of life. I've learned how to live in prosperity - most of us fail that test - and he said I've also learned how to live in adversity. I've learned how to eat at Morton's and be happy, and I've learned how to eat a 99-cent double cheeseburger and be happy. I've learned the secret.
Now a couple of things we observed: verse 11 and verse 12, in both cases he had to learn these. These weren't natural, it was supernatural. But the word that pops off the page for me is something that's contrary to human nature. He said "I've learned to be content, I've learned to be satisfied."
The Equation for Great Gain
Now here's the second passage - veterans know it at this point - it's 1st Timothy chapter 6, where contentment takes center stage again. He said, "But godliness is actually a means of great gain when it's accompanied by contentment, for we have brought nothing into the world, and we can't take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with those we should be content." So there's the word that surfaces again.
He doesn't in any way dismiss needs. He says there's legitimate needs. You have a need for food, you have a need for covering, you have to find a place to live, you have to have clothes to wear. Those are basics, those are legitimate needs. But I think what he's saying is let's keep that need pile as small as we can, and within it let's find some level of satisfaction.
So here's where I want to go: verse 6, put it in the form of an equation: godliness plus contentment equals great gain. So in God's economy, in God's level of great success, these characteristics are there. It's godliness with a sense of contentment, and that contentment can go to a whole bunch of areas, but he seems to be talking in the sense here of material things.
If you go to a reasonably good church - so let's say you're going to Skyscale Bible Church, good church - if you're there four weeks in a month, of the four weeks my guess is probably all four, but for sure two of four, probably three of four, probably four of four, you'll hear Jamie talk about something that relates to godliness. Godliness is a consistent, genuine, authentic walk with God. So Jamie will talk about it. Almost every church - I would hope that if you came to Redemption Church...
At any of our campuses that you would hear—Frank, Ricardo, Luke, or myself—you would hear us talk about godliness. You don't often hear a message that has within it a sense of contentment.
Now I want to go back to the equation. Nine plus one equals ten. I will stipulate that the nine has a greater value than the one, but the one is essential if I want to get to ten. Godliness is more important than contentment, but it's essential if I want to get to whatever God calls great gain. Godliness—consistent, authentic walk with God—plus contentment.
Understanding Contentment
Here's how Webster defines contentment: happy enough with what one has or is without desiring something more or different. Synonym would be satisfied. This bumps against who we are as people. By very nature we're dissatisfied with something almost the minute we get it. There's something that's built in—we're hardwired as creatures to live this.
I have two daughters, Sarah and Haley. Haley has four kids, Sarah has three, and we get together every Saturday during football season to watch the Iowa game. There's seven of these kids. We're at Haley's house typically in a smaller family room that connects to a living room. With seven kids—ages six, five, four, three, two, one, six months—it's loud. Oh my gosh it's loud.
What I've observed is they're demanding. "I'm hungry." "Well what do you want?" "Well chicken, chicken tenders." "All right, well I want steak and we're not going to get either one of these." Why did I ask him what he wants? I should just give him something. So we'll go through this big exercise. We'll get him or her what they want. They'll take a bite and then what happens? They're gone. "Can I go down to the garage?" The garage is a toy garage. There are hundreds of little cars. They'll get that out, dump out all 200 cars, and then they're done. They just go from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. They're satisfied for about this long.
Well they grow up to be you. That's the thing we don't ever get. They grow up to be you. You've just learned to mask it. That's how we're hardwired—more. Here's what Paul's saying, but God's saying: I want you to achieve some level here of contentment.
Solomon's Ancient Wisdom
You don't need to turn there but you should make a note of Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verses 10-15. My point here is it's not a 2012 issue, it's not a time of Jesus issue. We're all the way back to Solomon. Here's what Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 5:10: "Whoever loves money never has money enough. The more you have, the more you want. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income." The more you have, the less satisfied you seem to be. Counter-intuitive.
Verse 11: "As goods increase, so do those who consume them." The more you have, the more people including the government will come after it. "And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast your eyes on them?" The more you have, the more you realize it doesn't do you any good.
Verse 12: "The sleep of the laborer is sweet, whether he eats a little or much. The abundance of the rich man permits him no sleep." The more you have, the more you worry about it. Isn't that the case right now? What are we going to do? The stock market goes down yesterday. This is how silly and goofy and human we are—we worry about getting it and then once we got it we're worried about keeping it.
Verse 13: "I've seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner." The more you have, the more you can hurt yourself by holding on to it. The more foolish things you'll do—meet Martha Stewart. For a couple hundred grand you're going to jail.
Verse 14: "Or wealth lost through some misfortune." The more you have, the more you have to lose. Then verse 15: "Naked a man comes from his mother's womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand." The more you have, the more you leave behind. That's just age-old. That's the reality.
The Moving Target of Necessities
Paul says here's what I want you to see: you have legitimate needs and those needs need to be met. But he paints the picture of contentment. There was a study done—a survey—and this is probably now three, four, or five years old. They broke people into categories of income. The question was, "I spend nearly all of my money on the basic necessities of life." Those making $35,000 or less—62% said that's true. Those making $35,000 to $50,000—46% said "I spend nearly all my money on the necessities of life." Those making $50,000 to $75,000—35%. Those making $75,000 to $100,000—a third of them said "I spend nearly all of my money on the necessities of life." And those making over $100,000—20%, one out of five said "I spend nearly all of my money on the necessities of life."
Obviously, and it's written without any definition of whatever necessities are, it's a moving target. The reality is—and I think this is an interesting statistic—in 1900, 43% of the average family's income was spent on food. In 2000 it was 15%. So we're seeing necessities moving around. That necessity package must be getting bigger.
That takes me back—remember the old Radio Shack tagline? "We have thousands of things you never knew you needed." Here's what will happen at church: somebody will come in and they'll go, "I'm really hurting. I'm hurting financially. Will you help me?" Now here's where you need definition. By "help" they mean "will you give me money." We say, "We'd love to help you," which means we'll sit down and help you bring...
In your bills, we'll assign somebody to you who will spend time and they'll go through the bills with you and help you do a budget. There may be occasions where we're pretty good about it and we'll come in and say let's take some of that pressure off, so we'll make some electric payments for you and house payments and all those. But we're not going to do it in a vacuum. We're not the government. We're not just going to give you a check and say have fun and come back next month. We're going to say let's put some restraint on it.
The minute we say bring your bills, the majority have never come back with their bills. You're going to sit down and it is a battle royal. Is cable TV a necessity? I mean, it seems really odd you're in here asking for help, so you're either not making enough or spending too much. We want to come alongside and see if we can help on the spending thing.
So you sit down and they're going, "But I have to have, I have to have a phone." I'll even go and say, "You know, you kind of do anymore. The guy's going to have an interview, but you don't have to have this phone." "Well, you do. Yeah, I'm paying for it." Okay, that's the difference here. The difference here is you're in a position where you're acknowledging either through circumstance or life or whatever it is that you're overwhelmed by this, so we want to help you out of it, which means some control of it. Then we're into this massive discussion about cable TV, about internet - we obviously need that - car, house, investment property. It goes on and on and on.
I'm just telling you, unless you're around this, you would be stunned what people come in and what they expect. So then it's not a big leap when you see them go from that to now I'm happy to let the government do these kinds of things for me. It's an easy leap there.
The Research on Wealth and Happiness
There was a social psychologist and he spent approximately a couple of decades studying Americans and other cultures. He focused on the years in this country between 1960 and the year 2000. Here's what he discovered: the average American saw real income double, yet we have less happiness, more depression, more fragile relationships, less communal commitment, less vocational security, more crime, more demoralized children.
He goes on to say, though it kind of seems like it would make sense that the more you have, the happier you'd be, the reality is he says it doesn't flesh out this way. By the way, this guy is not a Christian at all. His conclusion, part of it, is this: if it's not what you have or objective life circumstances that make you happy, what is it? His conclusion is close, supportive, enduring, committed relationships are conducive to happiness. Faith and participation in faith communities are also conducive to human happiness.
The Heart as an Idol Factory
John Calvin says the heart is an idol factory - not meaning the heart doesn't work, it's saying the heart is constantly creating idols, those things that I think will bring me happiness. When I married Susan, I married Susan thinking that she would make me happy. I didn't realize it until two or three years into it that we were completely opposites. I mean, you know the traditional thought process: men marry women hoping they'll never change, but they do. Women marry men hoping they will change, and they don't. Therein lies the problem.
So I'm this hard, sarcastic, cynical guy and she's this sweet, kind, gentle person. I married her hoping she would rub off on me, that I would find happiness and peace and joy there. What I didn't realize - and you're right now going, "Well, it's obvious" - well, it wasn't obvious to me. About three years later, I realized that what I was asking her to do is impossible. I was asking her to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in my life. I was asking her to produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. There's this constant thing where we're chronically dissatisfied.
The Moving Syndrome
So He said here's contentment: you have food and covering. The reality is, and we've lived - I don't move people anymore - but when you're a young couple, doesn't it seem like every weekend you're helping somebody move? At least it did for me. In fact, I said this is stupid, I don't want to do this. We'd have the same scenario every time. We'd go in, we'd sit in this house, and the husband and the wife would say, "This is amazing. God blessed us beyond anything we could have ever, ever, ever imagined. We are not worthy. We don't deserve it. We could live here forever."
About six months later, somebody puts a flyer on the door of a house around the corner that's for sale. That's four bedrooms instead of three and three baths instead of one and a half. Those couples that could have lived in there forever decide it's time to move - not based on the fact that they need that extra bedroom, but the fact that it's available and maybe they can get it and they'll feel better about it. So that becomes the whole thing in your life, this sense of contentment.
The Montana Escape Fantasy
I'm meeting, this is probably six years ago, with five or six business guys. They're by any measure that you would use successful guys, and they're all miserable. They're all going to move to Montana. Montana must be the most depressing place on the planet because everybody with a problem is moving to Montana to be happy. So they're going to go all go to Montana or Idaho - one of the two. They're all the same at that point, one of the two.
They're going around the room and there's one guy says, "People are calling me all night long," and he goes on. I said, "You're a doctor. This is what happens if you're a doc. You're on call." Here's what they mean: on call, doctor. This can't come as a shock to you. When we went around the room, in my own way, myself included, I think all of us had achieved what we said would make us happy. But now that we have it, not so happy anymore.
Here's what I've discovered: we are instinctively dissatisfied, and we have
to learn it. We have to put a lid—that's what I used to call this talk. You have to put a lid on your dreams.
It's not an anti-material message, and I don't want you to think of it that way at all. I love stuff. I love to say it cost my friends a great deal of money to keep me in poverty. I don't want a condo up north, but I like knowing people that have them and that don't ever use them.
Defining How Much Is Enough
So I want you to see in this whole process that there's a couple of things you need to do. One of them is you have to put some definition on this stuff. You have to define how much is enough.
I'll be as honest as I will be. I'm going through it right now just in terms of trying to figure out retirement stuff. How much money do you need? There was a book that I read a few years ago called The Number, and the number was how much do you need to retire? And what he discovered is whatever that number was, by the time you get there, you tend to double it.
So I find myself sitting down—I have one of these meetings coming up in a couple of weeks—where I sit down and say, okay, how much money do I need to have? And now it's what kind of return can you get? And it's all these things. Well, if by definition, here's why that's important. If I can say this is the number, then by the time I get there, I shouldn't be saving anything beyond that. I've said this is the number—that's prudent savings. Anything beyond that is really by definition hoarding at that point. Because I've said this is the number, why am I saving more? When there's all these things and people around me that need to be funded and invested and all this. So I need to define it.
The Vegas Lesson
This is my favorite illustration of seeing this. In the old days, I would go to Vegas all the time. I said to Sandy the other day, I haven't been to Vegas in years. And I always wanted to see Danny Gams. He died. So unless it's really a super show, when he's coming back, I'm not going to see him. The last time I was there, I saw Sinatra, if that tells you how long ago it's been. So he was awesome too. But I said, we need to go to Vegas. I'd love to go up and see it, walk around. She said, you know, whatever.
Well, I used to go to Vegas all the time. And I would have this version of this conversation all the time. I'd be going up with a friend. Somewhere in the conversation he would say, "When I lose $1,000, I'll stop." And I remember one of the last times I went up, I saw my buddy. He's at the crap table. He's got chips all over in front of him. I see him a little bit later. I said, "Man, I saw all those chips." He said, "Yeah, I got up three grand." I said, "Wow. How'd you end up?" Well, he's goal-oriented, okay. And he had a goal. What was his goal? Lose $1,000. He's going to play until he loses $1,000. Now, at least I'll give him credit that he stopped at $1,000.
But here's what I learned that day. I said to him, "Man, if you won three grand, would you be happy?" He said, "Absolutely." He had what, upon reflection, would have made him happy. But because it was never spoken or defined, he didn't stop when he got there. You go to medical school. You do all this. You aspire to be this physician. It's not just for the profession but with a lifestyle that you perceive with it. And now you've got it.
Beyond Material Contentment
Now, let me expand it because it's material in this context. But let me expand it. It's being content with the spouse God's given you or the marital status that you have if you're single. I can't tell you how many single people I know want to be married and how many married people I know want to be single.
We all marry the wrong person. Even if it's the right person, by the time they've had three or four years of us, they turn into somebody we didn't know before. This is not about marrying the right person. It's about being the right person within the context of that marriage. And so you can play that game constantly.
You look around, and Christmas is coming. This is when it gets really bad. You're at somebody's Christmas party, and they've got a family room the size of this room, and it's just one of several things. And so you're in there, and you're living in this 1,500-square-foot house that is more than adequate. But you look at this, and you say, "Boy, I want this." You look at this guy you're married to, and you start telling him, "Isn't this a great place? These are great people, and he's a great provider, and you're not." I mean, that's what you say.
And you can flip it around, because here's how it goes, guys. It's now you've been married 30 years, and over 30 years things shift and shake, and that girl who was the petite little athlete is neither petite nor athletic anymore. She's more into bake sales now and eating what she bakes and all of the stuff that goes with it. And you start with, "That's what I wanted, and now I have this." It's being content with the spouse God's given you.
Contentment with the Children God Gives Us
Here's a huge one. It's being content with the kids God's given you. I've been down this conversation so many times. "Is it a boy or a girl?" "We don't know." "What do you want?" "Oh, ten fingers and ten toes." And then the baby's born, ten fingers, ten toes, and starts to grow up, but those ten fingers don't quite play the piano you think they should or catch a ball the way you think they should. Those ten toes don't run as fast as you think, and pretty soon you're dissatisfied with that kid.
Now, this is really good right here. At this point, here's the question you need to ask yourself all the time: Why? So Sarah got her Iowa basic skills test scores at the end of first grade, and I was devastated when they came. She was average in essentially every area except one or two. And I sat down there and I said, "Listen, a couple of things. Number one, this is from your mother's side of the family. Number two, we can work through this." But I mean, I was devastated. I went to Susan and I said, "You know, blah, blah..."
And I said, Why do I even care? Now, I'm going to tell you why. I wanted a daughter that was a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Elizabeth Elliot and Jennifer Aniston, which is kind of a unique combination. And here's why. I'm as honest as I can be. Not for her benefit. But so you look at her and say, She must have one heck of a dad.
So you start asking yourself those why questions, and here's what's going to happen. Your heart's going to get peeled open, and you're going to see what a selfish, self-centered person you are. But I'm convinced that a lot of parents I know are praying for their kids to come to Christ, not because they care about their soul. They just don't want a bunch of calls at 2 o'clock in the morning. They don't want to hear from the bail bondman again.
The Root of Our Desires
Ask yourself, You make me so mad. Well, I can't really make you mad. All I can do is bring out what's already in there. Why is that house so important, car so important, job so important, schools? Why is it so important?
And again, I pontificate here with no basis. Education has become that now. It's what the housing market was. We operated under a theory that everybody should own their own house, which sounds really good, unless you can't afford it. We're now doing the same thing with college. We're sending everybody to college under the idea that it's a good thing, and nobody's going to school to learn anything anymore.
Why do they go to school? I'm going to send my kid to college. Why? To get a job. Got to have a degree to get a job. Well, okay, let's say yes. Then don't major in English with an anthropology minor, and you don't want to teach. That isn't going to get you a job. Go get the catalog at ASU. You've got a course, Beatles 101. But you've taken college, and you've made it like this great thing.
When you have a whole bunch of people there that don't belong there, that's not a judgmental thing. And that's okay. And a lot of it driven by parents that are proud. They don't want to go to the Christmas party, and they'll say, how's Biff doing? He's doing great. He's got a job. Where's he working? Well, he's a welder. You don't want to say that. You're embarrassed by that. You'd rather say he's a salesman making no money, working on commission, but he's got this great car that he can't pay off. Isn't that interesting? That's just the way we are.
The Secret to Contentment
Well, He says, I found the secret in here. Verse 7 is the key to contentment. So it reads this way, verse 6. Godliness plus contentment is a great game. Verse 7, we came into nothing, we leave with nothing. Verse 8, food and covering, we should be content.
And to me, verse 7 broke up the flow until I realized, when I'm going back between that and the Ecclesiastes 5 passage, is verse 7 is essentially identical to Ecclesiastes 5:15. And the reason it's there is this is the secret to contentment. I came in with nothing, I leave with nothing. The more I have, the more I leave. The more I understand the temporariness of this stuff, the less it becomes the driving factor to me.
The Navy Suit Story
Larry turned me on years ago to Ray Steadman, and now that everything is so available through internet, I mean, I love Ray Steadman's stuff. And Steadman tells a story, and this is back in the old days now. He's going to Boston to speak to a pastor's conference, and the best they can tell is luggage goes to Miami. And it's not like now where you can wear the clothes you travel in. And he needed a suit and felt compelled to get it.
And as I remember it was late on a Saturday afternoon and he's walking down this street in Boston and he sees this Navy suit in the window and goes in and then realizes it's a pawn shop. So he goes in and he said, I saw the suit in the window. And he said, what size are you? And he said, I'm a 44 long. And he said, well, that's a 42 short. He said, oh, that's too bad. And he said, no, no, no. Come on in the back.
So he takes him in the back. And here's a whole rack of Navy suits. And so Stedman says, well, what are you doing with these suits? And he said, well, there was a mortuary in town that went out of business that had all these suits made for them. It's amazing to me. We don't care how we look when we're alive, but we want to look good when we're dead. That seems stupid to me, but away we go. So the mortuary went out of business and I just bought these suits that were made for them.
And Stedman said, well, do you have a 44 long? And he said, I do. And he got it. And the guy said, listen, I have a friend around the corner who's a tailor. Stedman explained the situation. And he said, maybe he can get this fixed for you today. So he goes in and they cut it all up and move it and cuff it.
The Powerful Picture
So the next day Stedman's getting ready to go deliver this powerful message. And he puts on his pants and his belt and his shirt, his tie. And he gathers the things off his dresser and he goes to put them in his pants. And what? I don't need pockets when I die. I'm not taking. And it's just that it's that powerful picture.
When I get that, when I understand that, well, all of a sudden I've got perspective. And I realize. And what's amazing is you've got to get to the end of your life for this. I don't know why that is. Because we're not very smart. We realize that it's something you knew all along. And yet stuff drives so much of what we do.
Life Cluttered with Stuff
And now my life becomes cluttered with stuff. Stuff that by definition, I say, isn't even important to me. I don't have to have this. This is how we can think. I don't want this to be an idol. Do I have to have this? No, I don't have to have this. I don't even need it. Oh, then you can get it. Because it's not an idol to you.
So now my life is filled with this stuff, which I got. And as I was getting it, I said, I don't even really need it. It's not really the driving force in my life. Whoever loves money never has money enough. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. It was Jim Elliot in that passage from His diary at
age 22 that observed that the more we have and the more we meet needs, the more needs increase. Let me read to you from his diary. Elliot writes this. I've been musing lately. He was about 22 when he wrote this.
"I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous cumulative effect of earthly things. One might have good reason, for example, to want a wife. And he may have one legitimately. But with a wife comes Peter the pumpkin eater's proverbial dilemma. He must find a place to keep her. And most wives will not stay on such terms as Peter proposed. So a wife demands a house. A house in turn requires curtains, curtains, rugs, rugs, washing machine, etc. A house with these things must soon become a home and children the intended outcome. The needs multiply as they're met. A car demands a garage. A garage, land, land, a garden, a garden, tools. And tools need to be sharpened. Woe, woe, woe to the man who would live a disentangled life in my century."
He's making reference there to 2 Timothy 2:4. No soldier in active duty entangles themselves in the affairs of everyday life.
God Blesses Us to Bless Others
Pushing toward the bottom line for me. The bottom line is that God gives you things not to hoard them. He blesses you to bless others.
In this passage you're looking at, Paul has a warning there in verse 9 and 10. Love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. But then He says, verse 17, instruct those who are rich in this present world two things. Number one, don't be conceited. Number two, don't fix your hope on the uncertainty of riches. But fix your hope on God who supplies you all these things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works.
Now here's the problem with this. And I had to learn this too. Rich is a very difficult word to define. And most of us will define it this way: anybody who has more money than us.
The Problem with Defining "Rich"
So years ago I'm having lunch with a guy. He's one of those guys who wants me to know how much money he has but he doesn't want to tell me. That's a very difficult position to be in. So he's telling me through his watch and he's telling me through his card. He's telling me through everything.
Finally we're talking about this. I'd been speaking a little bit about contentment and stuff. And he said, "You know, this is an issue. I get it." He said, "I just got done with my accountant. So now I'm going to get the number. My net worth is right around $10 million."
Okay, that's a good number. I could retire on that. $10 million. I said, "Wow. That's got to be cool." And he said, "It is." I said, "It's got to be a burden too, right?" He said, "I don't know. What do you mean?"
I took him here. I took him to verse 17 and "instruct those who are rich." He said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not rich."
So here's what I've observed about people. They want to be perceived to be rich. They want the benefit of rich but they don't want the responsibility of rich. Because God's saying there's a responsibility here.
The Warning Against Conceit
There's a warning. Don't be conceited because the minute you have stuff, you believe you did it. You think you earned it. And people start telling you, you're really amazing. And after a while, it starts with, "Oh, no, God's amazing." And then it's "God's amazing." And then it's "God's amazing and God blessed me." But the undercurrent is, and why wouldn't He? Look at the rest of the schmucks in this room. Who else is He going to bless but me? Look at my resume. Look at my talent.
He said, don't be conceited nor fix your hopes on the uncertainty of riches.
The Uncertainty of Riches
I'm going to give you two things here. Number one, the reality that it's like a greased pig. You can have it. Boom, you squeeze it. It's gone. So there's a whole bunch of you in this room who, a couple years ago, lost a third, half, maybe more of what you had. You were prudent, played by the rules. Isn't that part of what makes you mad right now? "I really feel like I played by all the rules, and I'm going to get jerked around here at the end of the game." Well, it's the uncertainty of riches. You think you have them, and then they're gone. That's one.
The other uncertainty, and I think it's bigger, is you think, "If I have that, I'll be happy. I'll be secure. I'll be fireproof." I'll bet there's some in this room who thought that. You got so much that even if you lost, they could never get to me. They'll get to you fast.
"I'm so happy. I've got my happiness in this." We love to go to our place and have Thanksgiving there and Christmas there, and it makes us happy, and as long as we have that place, we're happy. As long as that kid's there, it can be anything. It can be rich. It can be health. "Boy, as long as I have my health, I'm happy." Well, what happens when the health is gone?
Living as Stewards, Not Owners
He said, here's what I want you to do. Understand that God has blessed you, and He's blessed you for a reason, and the reason wasn't to see how much you can get. He blessed you so that you can generously bless others. He's the owner. You're not, and if I can just see this as all temporary, somehow I'm less attached to it.
None of you wash a rental car before you turn it back in. I'll guarantee you, and some of you might. Some of you might have so trashed this thing that you do. None of you change the oil on a rental car. I'll guarantee you that because it's not yours. It doesn't matter.
All of a sudden, I can see this stuff and go, this isn't permanent. My attachment to it is distant, and what that does is allow me to be the man or woman that God's called me to be. That's why it's important.
Finding Freedom from Materialism
God is not anti-stuff. He's not anti-material. He's anti-materialism, thinking you're going to find meaning and significance in that. All of a sudden, I'm now somewhat disentangled from the world around me. Now I have a level of freedom. That's what we're going to talk about next week is freedom in Christ.
Let's pray. Father, thank You for these awesome and amazing truths.
In one way, it seems so simple, and it is. It's simple to understand. It's hard to do.
God, help us love You. Displace our hard affection for stuff and replace it with our affection for You. Draw us close to You. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.