Live Like You're Rich

How?

Growing up, my family was poor. Single mom, 2 kids. She was a secretary at a TV station.

My g-parents helped some. But we had to stand on our own 2 feet, well, my mom did.

I didn’t know how little she made until I was about done w/ college. I had finished my undergrad and was prepping for my Masters in Education.

Working on the financial aid package for that year she told me she’d never made $9000 in year.

This was 1982. Part of my masters work I was going t/b an intern in a high school in TX. I was going to teach business and PE classes. I’d just have one less than the regular teachers.

And, I’d get paid $1000/mo for the 9 months.

I grew up on less than $9000/yr.

Calculating for inflation, that’s the equivalent of $24K today. Think about how much you make now or made when you were working.

I’ve been fortunate to work for churches during my career who take good care of their pastors, including this one. I make a nice salary, allowing me to live in MP. We bought our house at great time. It’s gone way up in value. Timing. Who knew?

Most pastors, nearly all, know, we are not going to get rich in the ministry. I’ve wondered what it’s like to be wealthy. I have some very wealthy friends, and I have great friendship w/ a few of them, I didn’t invade any privacy, but as we would sit around and talk, I’ve asked them, what’s it like to live like a millionaire?

I see their houses and cars. But, what’s it like, how do you do it, what goes on inside you? What do you think about? How do you plan? How do you feel about it?

I’ve been poor or middle class all my life. How do you live like you’re rich?

Every person I’ve asked, not many, at different times, they all came back with the same basic answer. They’d say it in different ways. But they all meant the same things.

The way you live like you’re rich is to live like you’re poor.

My follow up Q was, what do you mean?

Well, when you’re poor, you can’t buy stuff. When you’re rich, you don’t buy stuff.

If you have money, and you set out to buy all that you want, soon, you’ll be poor and can’t buy what you need. B/C, there is always more. Always something else.

The Nat’l Endowment for Financial Education does research and they offer this statistic. 70% of all lottery winners file for bankruptcy w/in 3-5 years after winning their jackpot.

Too many ppl think money will solve all their problems.Buying stuff. Buying more stuff. They will finally be happy, satisfied, content if only they had more money.

Truth: It’s as much of a burden as it is a blessing.

Give someone a pile of cash who’s not used to having a pile of cash, and bad habits are bad habits. Money doesn’t change them.

Careless spending, greed, and a desire for more are the 3 most common culprits that break their bank.

My friends, the ppl I talk to, all believe in God, or at least that there is a God, they understand it’s not their stuff anyway. We all get to use this stuff while we’re here. But nobody is taking any of it w/ them when they die.

Somebody else is going to get it, either after you die, or while you still alive if you spend it all.

Except, there was this one guy who tried hard to take it w/ him. He had a scheme and he thought he’d figured out how.

He was a hard man. A nasty man who worked too much and paid too little attention to his family. Out of spite, he did not want to leave a dime to his widow.

In his will, he had his lawyer write, that he wanted to buried w/ his vast fortune. 9 figures. Word leaked out to the mourners and they all came to the funeral curious how big his casket would be to hold his remains and his money. $1 bills? $10s? $100s. There aren’t that many $1000 bills in circulation. Gold coins? Awfully heavy. The poor pall bearers. A piano case? Bleeker box, container? Train car?

Every showed up, and to their surprise, his casket was normal sized. Just like everyone else’s they’d ever seen. Someone finally got up the nerve to ask his widow. I thought he was going to be buried w/ all his money.

She replied, “He is. I wrote a check.”

Anyway, heaven, earth and our stuff.

What does it mean to live like you rich? You don’t want for anything. Satisfied in life w/ whatever you have no matter how much or how little.

It’s not necessarily having all that you want, b/c there’s always more to want. But be happy w/ what you have.

It’s important to plan and budget. It’s okay to invest and earn divs and int. Things break unexpectedly. We want to retire someday. Take vacays. Then, leave a little to the kids, g-kids, and your favorite church.

Choices and plans have t/b made.

Even if you’re not, you can live like you’re rich, satisfied with what you have, no matter how much or how little, by choosing and doing what Jesus said to do in this passage.

Rich or poor, you can be totally satisfied with what you have if you live like this.

We are in Mt. 6, still in the Sermon on the Mount. This is Jesus’s investment program. And there are 3 things we can do to live like we’re rich even if we’re not.

First, include these investments in your portfolio.

Treasures in Heaven

Matthew 6:19–21 NIV

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Budgeting, saving, investing for your future is wisdom. He’s not saying not to here.

He is saying, besides whatever you put into the markets or gold or bank, invest more in eternal things. Not necessarily more money. But more energy, emotion, thought, more interest in things that will pay eternal dividends.

Moths eat clothes. Vermin, rats eat you furniture. Metal in jewelry rusts, oxidizes, tarnishes and corrodes.

And, thieves are getting so much smarter. Our paper has a story about 2 of our friends who were taken for thousands of dollars recently.

In Deut. 28 God promised that He would bless the ppl materially if they lived faithfully and obediently to His word. He also promised to discipline them by taking away their wealth if they didn’t.

C.1 Jewish leadership saw wealth as a sign of God’s blessing and a result of them earning it. Their highest goal was to accumulate wealth and get rich. Appearances were most important to them.

Wealth became their priority. But, even in this situ, wealth is a fruit, an outcome, a result of the right work; faithful obedience. They should have focused their energy on loving and worshiping God, then He would have blessed them materially.

Then, Jesus brought a change to the NT believer’s mindset. Bring the same focus to God, but the blessing probably won’t be material. Satisfied. Content. At peace w/ whatever you have will be the result.

Here, Jesus is saying the lack of security in the stuff we can accumulate should lead us to accumulate eternal wealth. Earthly things are temporary. Heavenly things are eternal.

The stuff is not evil. Money is not evil. If it has too high of a priority in someone’s life it produces evil.

Jesus said the things most treasured will occupy your heart. What do you value the most? What, who is most important to you? Your heart will be drawn to whatever that is.

Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment of all.

Let God occupy your heart above everything else. Then, let the ppl around you occupy what’s left.

Paul wrote about investing in eternal things in 1 Cor.

1 Corinthians 3:10–15 NIV

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

You see the picture Paul drew here. When you die and stand before God, all the work that you did during your life is put on a conveyor belt and passes thru a furnace.

The things that produced nothing eternal will burn up and waft away into the air like the sparks from your deck fire pit.

The things you did that produced eternal dividends, the things of eternal quality, weight, depth, precious metal-like; these will come out the back side of the furnace and you will be rewarded by the amount that survives.

Different amounts of rewards for different individual believers in heaven. Even the one whose work all burns up still goes to heaven, but has less to show when he gets there than those who invested heavily in heaven.

What rewards in heaven? I don’t know. It doesn’t say. But this should be enough to motivate us to invest more time and energy in the investments whose dividends will pay eternally, forever, and can’t be taxed away by any government entity.

What are the words that produce eternal dividends? Anything that leads anybody closer to Jesus.

Anything, everything you say and do that encourages anyone else, including yourself, to get closer to Jesus and more committed to walking w/ Him thru life.

Convos on your deck, words and notes of encouragement, ministries you lead, and activities you participate in where Jesus is the focus of attention.

Speaking of the focus of attention, that’s the next thing Jesus said to do to live like you’re rich.

Focus

Matthew 6:22–23 NIV

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

When he speaks here of your eye, he does not mean a casual glance. He means, what you stare at, desperately want above everything else, fantasize about having, owning, using.

This was Lot’s wife’s problem when they fled Sodom. She didn’t just stop and look or even make a casual glance. She stopped and longed to be back, she preferred the lifestyle, she missed her friends and the decadent and immoral parties they threw. She was offered a lifeline but let it go and was turned into a pillar of salt.

There is always more to want. No matter how much money you have to spend, it will take numerous credit cards with huge credit limits to buy all that your eye sees that your heart wants. And if you follow thru on these desires, soon you will be poor.

Where should we focus our eye? What did Peter learn when he asked Jesus to call him out of the boat, onto the water, and in the storm?

He began to sink when his eye focused on the storm. He stayed afloat as long as his eye focused on Jesus.

What do you want more than anything else? That is what you eye will focus on.

No matter how much stuff you have around you, a mansion or a hut, an estate or a cabin in the woods, a brand new Suburban in the driveway or an old beater at the curb; eyes on Jesus and you will be satisfied w/ whatever it is you have.

Research tells us that porn rewires your brain. Staring at, longing for, deeply desiring what you see on the screen or on the page will change you mentally and emotionally. It even has physical effects.

This happens to both men and women.

Coveting something you see that your neighbor has, or in an advertisement, fantasizing about it, will affect you more than you realize. Longing for these things will change the way you respond to the ppl around you and stuff you already have.

The temptation is to love your stuff. Jesus told us, whatever you treasure the most is what you will love the most. And, he goes on to say, whatever you love the most, is what you will make the most sacrifices for.

IOW, you will choose to be a slave to whatever you want in the worst way. And only 1 can occupy the throne in your life. Nobody has two thrones. Nobody has 2 masters.

We have to choose 1 or the other.

The 3rd thing Jesus says we can do to live like we’re rich and be completely satisfied in life is to choose the right, best master.

Master

Matthew 6:24 NIV

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Joshua, when he led Israel into the PL, in his inauguration speech, he challenged the ppl to choose that day who they would serve. As their leader, he said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Who created you? Okay, your parents had something to do w/ it. But who designed you?

Jesus did.

You can fight this if you choose to, but you will lose. There is only 1 throne in your life. Only 1 thing can occupy it and only for that thing will you will make the greatest sacrifices for.

Job. Hobby. Family. All good things. But none worthy to sit on the throne of your life.

Money makes a wonderful slave but a terrible master. If you can master it, then it will serve you well. You can buy all that you need, much of what you want, and invest it in ways that make you more so you can buy more.

But you have to be in charge of it. Debt will consume you. Desires to have more stuff will break you.

God will lead you to buy all the stuff you need and He will encourage you to buy some of what you want.

Psalm 37:4 NIV

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

By focusing your eyes on Christ. Investing for eternal dividends. Making Jesus your Master, then God will change what you desire for yourself and bring it in line w/ what He desires for you and lead you to get that stuff.

If you do these things. If you choose to do what Jesus is advising you to do here. If your attitude toward money, stuff, material things is in the right place and priority, then it will have a positive affect on you emotionally.

Then it becomes possible to live your life w/out worrying about the things you need. Less worry. Less angst. Less stress. Less problem.

Living like your rich even when you aren’t the way Jesus advises us here, will lead to much less worry in our lives.

Don’t Worry

Matthew 6:25–32 NIV

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

These verses start out, “Therefore.” What’s it there for?

If you do what Jesus says in the preceding, then you will not worry about meeting your fundamental needs, what you will eat and wear.

W/ everything in the right perspective and right priority we will have much less to worry about.

If your priority is the accumulation of wealth then your worry level goes up b/c of the possibility of losing it.

Do you know worries who the least about losing $1 million? Those who don’t have it. If you’ve got it, you can lose it.

Your faith can never be stolen from you nor will it rust or fade.

In Mark 10:25, Jesus said, “It’s easier for a camel to pass thru the eye of a needle than a wealthy man to get into heaven.” Why? B/C the wealthy man is relying on his wealth to for his contentment and happiness. And a wealthy man will never, ever have everything he wants that will make him content. There’s always more to get.

Far too many of us it’s too easy to pull out a credit card when something isn’t right.

And we worry too much about all the extra stuff that we don’t really need. If we would see them as extras, then we can enjoy them that much more.

Christ is speaking to everyone who does not have faith t/b saved when he compares the religious leadership to the Pagans. Neither have faith in God and both are obsessed w/ collecting stuff.

God promises us that he will take care of what we need. We don’t need to worry about those things, at all.

W/ faith, God provides.

He then summarizes what he has just said.

Above all Else

Matthew 6:33–34 NIV

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

If you have never memorized any verses in your life, this would be a great place to start.

Above all else, see first the things of God’s kingdom and keep your relationship w/ God good and tight. If you do these things, then your need will be met today.

God will take care of today. And, when tomorrow is today, he’ll take care of it, too.

Therefore, if you...

Seek first his kingdom. Invest in the things that will still be around in the kingdom. Anything that leads some closer to Jesus. Either directly, or indirectly, will yield dividends that you can cash in, in heaven.

Focus on Jesus. Long for, ache for, want to be closer to and look forward to the day you arrive in heaven.

Make Jesus the Master of your life. Make sure He is the only one on your throne and has no competition in your life for that position.

Then, you won’t worry about a thing.

Make these things your most intense pursuit and then you don’t have to worry about a thing today. You’ll only worry about tomorrow if you’re too occupied about it.

Take care of things today. Tomorrow will take care of itself when it gets here.’

Applications

Portfolio

What’s in your portfolio that will pay dividends in heaven?

What ministry are you involved in? Formally, here at the church. Or informally, around town?

What are you doing that leads someone closer to Jesus.

Be intentional, active, and involved. Either directly by participating in it yourself. Or indirectly by supporting those who do.

Do you need to adjust your investments?

Focus

What is it that you don’t have that has your attention?

You’re not in heaven, yet, so that would be a great place to have your attention.

If there is something material that you are fantasizing about, dreaming about, counting the days until you have it, then it might have too much of your eye.

Do you need to change focus?

Master

Whatever or whomever you serve has your heart. You will love whoever sits on your throne more than anything else.

What do you make the most sacrifices for?

Your Master is changing you. Is it for the better, or worse.

Do you need to make a change on who you allow to sit on your throne?

How can you live like you’re rich even if you’re not?

How can you be totally satisfied w/ whatever you have?

Even if you’re not, you can live like you’re rich, satisfied with what you have, no matter how much or how little, by choosing and doing what Jesus said to do in this passage.

Rich or poor, you can be totally satisfied with what you have if you live like this.