Everyone wants to be rich. Unfortunately, most people aren’t very good at it. We make the assumption of consumption with frightening ease, and things gradually fall apart from there. Things don’t have to be this way, though. In his first letter to his protege Timothy, Paul offered some counsel on how to be good at being rich. As we wrap up our teaching series, How Big Is Your World, we are talking today about the secret to keeping the world-shrinking assumption of consumption at bay, and living fully in the big world God has for those who trust in Him.

How to Be Rich

If you are someone who still watches major network TV series, we’re in that awkward, in-between season. All of the shows that run on the normal fall/spring cycle have been done for a couple of months now. But it’s not time for the new seasons to start just yet. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing except there aren’t really any sports to watch right now either. Football season hasn’t started. There isn’t any basketball to speak of. And baseball hasn’t gotten in the mid-September playoff chase excitement. Making things even worse is that these days when the competition is exceedingly high among the various networks and streaming services to attract and retain viewers in order to get the advertising revenue that is their lifeblood, while most series wrap up a plotline or two at the end of the season, they’ll also leave the viewers with a cliffhanger of some sort in hopes of drawing them back to find out what happens next. 

As frustrating as a season-ending cliffhanger can be, what’s even worse is when a whole series ends on a cliffhanger. All shows eventually come to an end. But sometimes that end comes sooner than the writers were expecting. There’s still story left to be told, but the viewers aren’t interested anymore, so they get cancelled. Now, for most folks, this is no big deal. After all, the show is getting cancelled because not enough people were watching to make keeping it on the air worthwhile for the network. But for the folks who were invested in the story, this can be really disappointing. 

I remember watching a series several years ago called Revolution. It ran for two years. It was really well done, but it sat pretty firmly in the science fiction genre that is super hard to grab and retain large audiences. Nerds may run the world, but there just aren’t enough of us. As a result, after the second season, things came to an abrupt end. Now, for a series put in this kind of a position, there are two choices. They can either record a new episode that quickly wraps up all the various plotlines, even if not quite in as timely a fashion as the creators would have preferred. Bob Hearts Abishola did that last year. This is nice for the fans, but it costs money the network doesn’t want to spend. So, sometimes, they just go with what they have. This was what happened with Revolution. After being invested in the story for two full seasons, when the show got cancelled, they ran the final episode as planned which ended on a gigantic cliffhanger. The last episode ended with a shocking GASP!, and then the credits rolled. I almost cried. 

Well, last week, I ended things on a bit of a cliffhanger. We talked for about thirty minutes about what the assumption of consumption looks like, how it can play itself out in our lives, attitudes on our part that both lead to and reveal it, and then, just as we got to the part where I was going to tell you the alternative, I left you hanging. The episode just ended without a resolution. Thankfully, after a talk with the producers, the series did not get cancelled, and this morning we are going to spend the next few minutes talking about the practice that can help keep the assumption of consumption from taking hold in our hearts. 

In case you have missed any part of this series, though, let me bring us all up to speed. This is the fifth and final part of our series, How Big Is Your World? The whole idea here is that while we like the thought of living in a big world, far too often, we find ourselves living in worlds that are severely limited by the attitudes and lifestyle choices we have made. Our miniscule universes may be mobile, but living in a mobile, but tiny, world, and an enormous world with plenty of space to spread out and explore are not the same thing. If we want to live in a truly big world, the secret is to be generous. 

We are to be generous because none of the stuff we would normally count as ours is really. God is the real owner. He made it and it belongs to Him. We are merely the stewards of His stuff. He gives us a remarkably long leash to do with it just about whatever we want, but eventually we’re going to reach the end of this rope and get all hung up. Much better is to use the stuff in a manner consistent with His vision for it, and enjoy living within His big world rather than trying to carve out a tiny space for ourselves on the side. 

If we are going to take up the practice of generosity, the place to start is by giving away the stuff He has given us. And, if we’re going to be honest, most of us have the most trouble being generous with our money, so that’s the thing we need to give first. But even as taking up the discipline of sacrificial generosity will set us on a path toward a big world, assuming the stuff we have is ours to consume will throw us off of it. The assumption of consumption, as we saw last week, leads to small living. And, this assumption is sneaky sometimes. It can manifest itself both as stinginess, yes, but also as generosity if we give with the attitude that it’s really all ours in the first place, and we’re just giving it because we’re supposed to. 

What I promised you last week, though, is a practice that can serve as a kind of counterbalance to the assumption of consumption. This practice is actually similar to the practice of sacrificial generosity, but broader in scope. Here at the end of the series, I want to step back and give us a big picture of what living in a big world looks like. We know we need to be generous to get there, but what does a lifestyle of sacrificial generosity actually look like? 

For an answer to this, come with me to Paul’s first letter to his protege, Timothy. At the very end of the letter, just before signing off, Paul gives Timothy a penultimate piece of advice. At first read, it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the rest of the letter. Pretty much everything else Paul wrote to Timothy in this first letter was about how to pastor a church and keep it out of the theological weeds. It is a marvelous tool in that regard and should be studied by anybody interested in seeing the church work like it was designed. And indeed, his final instructions for Timothy following the passage we are going to examine are to hold tightly to the truth and stay away from false teachings. But just before that, Paul gives Timothy some instructions to pass on to the rich people in his congregation. This prompts the question: Why didn’t Paul give some more thematically relevant advice here? Well, take a look at this with me and see for yourself. 

If you haven’t already done so, grab your copy of the Scriptures and find your way with me to 1 Timothy 6:17 and look at this with me: “Instruct those who are rich in the present age…” Let me pause there for just a minute. The word my Bible translates “instruct” could perhaps even more directly be translated “command.” Paul is not giving Timothy some suggestions to offer his congregation, but some commands to be followed. So, what is he to instruct or command them to do? Keep reading: “Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth…” 

So then, how is this on point on Paul’s part? Well, what is arrogance? It is an attitude of superiority toward somebody else. Okay, but why would someone carry this kind of attitude? Because they think they’re better than you. But why? Well, that’s a tougher question to answer, but I would suggest that it’s because they think they have more of something highly valued by society than you do, making them more valuable to society than you are. Now, what exactly this thing is could vary, but in most societies across human history, money has pretty well fit the bill. All human societies have valued money in one form or another. Rich people have more of it than you do, and are thus more highly valued by society than you are. Or, to put it more simply, they are better than you. In other words, they have an easy temptation into arrogance. This arrogance reveals something else, though. It reveals that they have placed their hope in their stuff. They have to do this because if their value is in their stuff, and the stuff goes bye-bye, then so does their value. Absent any real sense of value we wilt. Thus, the hope of these folks is in their wealth, leading to arrogance. 

Stay with me here for just a minute longer. If someone’s hope is in their wealth, what is their baseline assumption about that wealth likely to be? That is theirs for the consuming, of course. In other words, rich people like this very naturally make the assumption of consumption. Come a bit further here: If we understand theology to be the sum total of the things we think about God, and Paul’s concern in this letter to Timothy is that he help believers think right things about God, if people are making the assumption of consumption, are they thinking right things about God? Not in the slightest. In other words, Paul’s near-closing admonition here is not only right on track with what he’s been writing about for the previous six chapters, but it also turns out to be right in line with what we have spent the past month talking about together. 

Okay, well, if Paul is talking about the assumption of consumption here, what is his alternative to it? Come back to the text with me, and let’s keep reading. “Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God who richly provides us with all things to enjoy.” Got all that? Instead of making the assumption of consumption, we are to place our hope on the God who is certain, and who generously shares His stuff with us so that we might enjoy it. God wants for us to enjoy His stuff. He wouldn’t give it to us otherwise. 

Think about this in terms of your relationship with your kids. With perhaps an exception of two, you’ve given them everything they have, right? And why? So they can enjoy it. You take pleasure in their enjoyment of your gift. In fact, the more excited about it they get and the more they enjoy it, the greater your joy is, right? The same thing applies here. God is generous with us so that we can enjoy it. Stick with the analogy here just a bit further. If your kids started trusting in the stuff you gave them instead of you, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense, would it? You already knew that, though. How about this: Do you give stuff to your kids so they can enjoy literally however they want? Think about that now. No, you don’t. You give them stuff so they can enjoy it however you want. Come on now, I’m right, aren’t I? You may have a pretty broad range of ways you want for them to enjoy that easily encompasses many of the ways they want to enjoy it such that they have a lot of freedom within those boundaries, but if they go outside of that range, you’re going to stop them. If they start thinking that they are the real owners, you are going to remind them they’re not. 

Come on back out to the bigger picture. The same thing applies here. God gives us stuff because He wants for us to enjoy it. That’s why. But He wants for us to enjoy it in the ways He wants for us to enjoy it. And, He can do this because just like you with your kids’ stuff, He’s the real owner. But with God things go one step beyond even this. Not only is He the owner of the stuff and thus entitled to set some limits on how it is used, but because He is the source of all wisdom, He knows the way for us to enjoy it that will lead to the most enjoyment of it. In other words, if we operate on His terms, we are going to get more out of it than if we try to use ours. Our terms will lead to ends that steal our life and make our world small. That’s why the assumption of consumption is so poisonous to our attempts to live in a big world. 

So then, what’s the alternative? If we are going to enjoy God’s stuff best when we are using it like He wants us to use it, and if using it like He wants us to use it means being generous, what does that look like? Look back at the text with me in v. 18. “Instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share…” Now, it looks like Paul lists three different things here, but really he’s just saying the same thing in three different ways, making it a little stronger each time. If we want to avoid the assumption of consumption when it comes to our stuff, we need to be rich in good works. Yeah, but how does that work? Can’t we still assume it’s ours while doing good? Well, we sure can, but it’s a lot less likely. Notice, Paul doesn’t stop at simply commanding that we should do good. We should be rich in good works. If we are striving to be rich in good works, then we are naturally going to be focused on other people and not us and our stuff. The more into doing good we get, the more we are going to be on the lookout for opportunities to do good. Doing good like this, though, often takes resources. If we’re the ones seeking to be rich in good works, it is going to take our resources to achieve that aim. The richer in good works we get, the more resources it is likely going to consume. We’ll start looking for ways to get more resources in order to do more good. We’ll start looking at the stuff we have as well as the stuff we might one day have through the lens of how we can use it for the benefit of someone else. We’ll start thinking of ourselves as merely short-term caretakers of the stuff God intends for other people. We are only the middlemen in the distribution process from God to the people who really need it. Yes, we need to cover our overhead and be able to take some time off now and then to rest, but when we are seeking to be rich in good works we are going to make sure that overhead is as low as possible. 

Paul lays out the result of this in the next verse. Look at this with me: “…storing up treasure for themselves…” That was always the goal, right? This satisfies the spend twin from last week. “…as a good foundation for the coming age…” Again, that’s right on track with our vision for our stuff. This satisfies the save twin, meaning whichever path you take with regard to your stuff, you can win with this approach. “…so that they may take hold of what is truly life.” And isn’t that the whole point? Laying hold of that which is truly life? We play at life in our little worlds all the while God is calling us to real life in His big world. Here’s how we get there: We make sure our hope is set and our work is right. When we can do this, big living will always be the result. Big living comes when our hope is set and our work is right. Indeed, when our hope is set on the God who is good, our work won’t be able to help but to be right, meaning our living is going to be big. Big living comes when our hope is set and our work is right. If you want to live in a big world, you need to make sure that your hope is set and your work is right. 

That sounds nice, but how? What are some ways we can make sure this happens? I’m glad you asked. I want to close our series by giving you some practical ways to think about this kind of big living. Let’s think about this in three different categories. We can practice being rich in good works with our treasure, with our time, and with our talents. Being rich in good works when it comes to our treasure is by far the simplest category. As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, we need to make sure that we are actively incorporating the spiritual discipline of sacrificial generosity into our lives. We should practice prioritized, percentage-based, progressively increasing giving. Big living takes sacrificial giving. We should give until we feel it. If we don’t feel it, it’s not doing us any good. We should give generously, but wisely. And we shouldn’t limit our giving to money either. Even if you don’t have a lot of extra money right now, you probably have some extra stuff sitting around because you’re American and that’s kind of a cultural thing to do. Being rich in good works means looking for ways to put that to good use as well. You already knew all that, though. 

How about our time? We should be rich in good works with our time, but what does this mean? Think about it like this: Do you ever make the assumption of consumption with your time? Is that even possible? Of course it is! Have you ever had extra time? What was your assumption about that time? That it was there to be used to honor God and do good, or for you to use however you please? Be honest now. How about your time generally? Is it yours to schedule however you please (even if you aren’t happy with all the scheduling choices you’ve made), or God’s time that you’ve been loaned for the purposes of advancing His causes through the means He provided you? I’ll be honest: I make the assumption of consumption here all the time, and I can get rather grumpy when one of the other choices I’ve made asserts itself when I was planning on making another one. 

Now, I know as well as you do that there are some things you have to do like work and spend time with your family. Those are valuable things and I’ll be the first to say that you are going to spend the bulk of your time pursuing one or the other. But how much extra time does your current financial situation allow you to have? I can guarantee it’s a lot more than most other folks in the world. What are you doing with your extra time? Spending it on your own interests, or actively looking for ways to be rich in good works? Let me make you feel really badly about yourself: If you spend an hour a day on social media, by the end of the year you will have spent 15 days doing nothing but social media. That’s two full weeks, twenty-four hours a day, endlessly scrolling on social media. If you spend two hours a day, that’s a month by the end of the year. Or whatever else it is you waste time on, the ratio is the same. 

But listen: I know you need to rest some. My batteries get recharged when I spend time totally by myself doing what I want to do. But for me, it’s a really easy line to cross between recharging my batteries and making the assumption of consumption with my time. So, let me offer you a suggestion: Think about your time in the same sacrificial terms that you are using to think about your money and use the extra time you have along those lines. Get involved in serving to advance the kingdom of God if you aren’t already. The opportunities there are endless. 

This brings us to the last area to be rich in good works: your talents. First a truth: this church is full of phenomenally talented people. How are you using those talents? As you see fit, making the assumption of consumption? Or do you think about them sacrificially? There are some great examples of people here using their talents to serve God through this community. Let me highlight one in particular this morning for you. Right now—even as we speak—there is a group of folks who give both their time and their talent to helping facilitate Gospel learning among our students and young children. They make this investment on Wednesday nights. They make this investment on Sunday mornings. They make this investment during the week preparing for those other two times. They think carefully and creatively. They take lessons they are given and use their talents to fill them out to make them engaging and encouraging for the students they will be teaching. I have seen over and over again how these folks have given generously from their time and their talents to make sure that every student God sends our way—and that’s a lot right now—has the chance to encounter the Gospel and the love of Christ through this church. They are giving selflessly and sacrificially to make sure we are indeed a people with whom anyone—no matter how young—can connect to grow in Christ and reach out for His kingdom. This is but a single example out of many, and many of you have talents that could be put to use for the sake of the kingdom. The assumption of consumption can apply here too, and being rich in good works with your talents is a great way to combat it. 

We could keep going here, but I think the point is clear. If we want to live in a big world, being rich in good works is the way that’s going to happen. Big living comes when our hope is set and our works are right. The only thing left to sort out, then, is this: How big is your world? How big of a world do you want to have? If you are content in your little world, content to enjoy postcards instead of experiencing the wonders of God’s big world for yourself that’s fine, but you need to know that you are missing out on real life. You are missing out on the full experience of the life of God in Christ. There’s not another way you will find to experience it. 

So then, how much do you want to live? How big do you want to live? If you want to live big, it’s time to step out and do it. Big living comes when our hope is set and our works are right. If you want to live big, then make sure your hope is set, and get on to right works. Be rich with the stuff God has given you to manage for Him. Be rich with your treasure. Be rich with your time. Be rich with your talents. Be rich with your life because it is not your own. It is a gift from God that was bought with a price, and when you live within His guidelines, you’ll live bigger than you’ve ever imagined. Big living comes when our hope is set and our works are right. How big is your world? Why not live in a big one? You won’t regret it.