American Idols – Money

American Idols – Money
Genesis 12:1-9
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
March 14, 2010

[Note to reader: This is a manuscript and not a transcript.  While I prepare a manuscript, I don’t preach from it.  All the major points are here, but there are bound to be some small differences from the sermon as it was preached live.  Also, expect some “bonus” material that wasn’t in the live sermon.]

Peace, Friends!

What would you do if we gave you a million dollars this morning?  Seriously.  What would you do with it?  Based on the songs you suggested last week that have to do with money, here’s what they would do with it.  Calloway says, “I want money, lots and lots of money, I wanna be rich.”  Abba says, “If I got me a wealthy man, I wouldn’t have to work at all, I’d fool around and have a ball.”  Pink Floyd would buy a “New car, caviar, four star daydream, Think I’ll buy me a football team.”  Lil’ Wayne & Birdman would buy “Lamborghini’s, and them Bentley’s on the V set, Louie lens iced up with them black diamonds, Cartier, Ferrari, the new spider.”  Marilyn Monroe would be happy with diamonds because, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”  What would you do with a million dollars?

Well, we don’t have a million dollars to hand out this morning, but on the bottom of five chairs is taped some cash.  $20 to be exact.  Who’s got the $20 under their chair?  We’ll come back to that later.

It may seem far fetched to think about what you’d do with all that money but several years ago Sarah and I took out some life insurance and had the very morbid conversation of what we would want to have done with it if we both died.  Now we don’t have a million dollars of life insurance on us, but it was a very interesting conversation nonetheless.  What would you do with a million dollars?

Today we’re continuing a series looking at American idols, those things our culture tends to worship.  Money is a big one.  We spend a lot of our time trying to get more money.  Money grabs our imagination and our attention.  Americans worship money.

Let’s take a look at a story in Genesis about being blessed.  It’s the story of Abraham, although at the time he’s called Abram.  God calls Abram to do something and promises to bless him.  Let’s see what happens.

Genesis 12:1-9 (NLT)

¹ Then the LORD told Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. ² I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others. ³ I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”

⁴ So Abram departed as the LORD had instructed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. ⁵ He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth — his livestock and all the people who had joined his household at Haran — and finally arrived in Canaan. ⁶ Traveling through Canaan, they came to a place near Shechem and set up camp beside the oak at Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites.

⁷ Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “I am going to give this land to your offspring.” And Abram built an altar there to commemorate the LORD’s visit.

⁸ After that, Abram traveled southward and set up camp in the hill country between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar and worshiped the LORD. ⁹ Then Abram traveled south by stages toward the Negev.

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God.

God’s call to Abram is a call away from.  It is three-fold: your country, your relatives, your father’s house.  Abram is called to leave all three.  God’s blessing then is also three-fold.  God is going to make Abram a great nation, will bless him (with wealth), and make his name great (i.e. fame).  Sounds pretty good so far.  But what is all this blessing for?  Here’s the point.  God will bless Abram so that he will be “a blessing to others” and so that “all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”  God’s blessing is always a blessing that is meant not be hoarded but to be given away.  To be shared.  To bless others.  An American idol is always kept to oneself.  Worshiping God is always an act of giving oneself away.

This story is perhaps one of the most pivotal in all the Bible.  There is more here than we could imagine to unpack in one message.  What I want to focus on today is how we are called to use our money, our wealth, as a blessing to others.

The first way that we are called to bless others with our money is through a tithe.  This idea of a tithe shows up in two places in Genesis.  The first is in the story of Abram and Melchizedek, the priest of the LORD.  We looked at that story several weeks ago in a sermon on being single.  I pointed the tithe part of the story out, but did not go into it in that message.  Today we’re there.  We read that “Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of all the goods he had recovered [from rescuing Lot]” (Genesis 14:20, NLT).  Then later we read that Jacob sets up a memorial pillar to worship God and says, “I will give God a tenth of everything he gives me” (Genesis 28:22).

What strikes me most about both of these passages is that God doesn’t command Abram or Jacob to do this.  They do it out of a spontaneous motivation of joy and thanksgiving.  I like this because I’m not sure that tithing is ever really a command for Christians.  It is something we do out of a deep joy for the abundance of God’s blessings upon us.

My mom taught me this principle of tithing when I was a young child.  She set us up with a weekly allowance of ten dimes.  Then she prepared envelopes for us to put some of the dimes in.  I don’t remember what all the envelopes were for, but I remember two of them: the savings envelope (I think we put one dime in that envelope) and the tithing envelope, where we put one of our dimes (one tenth).  (Parents, teach this to your children at a young age.)

My mom was also teaching me something about some of the basic questions people have about tithing.  Do you tithe on your net income or your gross income?  To put it in other words, before or after taxes?  What did my mom teach me?  Before taxes.  I tithed on my “gross” weekly allowance.

Again we can look to Genesis for some direction.  In the story of Cain and Abel we read that “Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering” (Genesis 4:4, NRSV).  Abel brought the “firstlings of his flock.”  It was the best that he had to give.

Why the “firstlings”?  Why gross income?  Why before taxes?  Because it is out of joy that we give back to God.  Joy knows only abundance.  Joy doesn’t count beans.  Joy blesses abundantly.  God is worthy of being praised and worshiped joyfully and abundantly.

Another question that is often raised about tithing is whether you should give your tithe entirely to the church or to other charities.  My mom taught me that the tithe went to church.  I would take that dime, one-tenth of my allowance, and put it in the offering plate every Sunday.  I think this is a commendable practice, but I also am not sure that we are commanded to do so.  Tithing in the Bible was often a way of providing a kind of social security to the poor in the community.  It was the ancient version of caring for the least of these.  It was also used to support the worship of God at the temple, in the synagogue, and later in the local church by providing for the leader of the church so that the leader could focus more time and energy on ministry.

To answer this question more fully, let’s take a look at how the giving of our church actually works.  Right now our giving is very healthy.  We as a church are receiving what we need to cover the basics of our life together.  Recently, we are even beginning to build a small amount of  cushion week by week.

So where does this giving come from?  We have 130 households that gave to SCC in 2009.  The median household income in Lansing in 2008 was $38,101/year.  Let’s take that number as our average household income for SCC.  This means that on average if everyone in our church tithed, they’d be giving joyfully back to God $3,810/year.  Let’s do a little math here.  130 households times $3,810 = $495,300.  That’s a lot of money!  In 2009 those 130 households gave $253,914.  That’s about half of what an average tithe would be for our church.  Let’s break that down even further.  Of our income:

3% (4 households) give 20%

5% (6 households, including the previous 4) give 30%

10% (13 households, including the previous 6) give 50%

20% (26 households, including the previous 13) give 70%.

So 26 households gave about 70% of our total income of $253,914.  These numbers don’t actually take into account tithing.  This is just raw giving.  For example, Sarah and I tithe but we’re not in those 49 households.

So what’s the bottom line here?  The bottom line is that I as your pastor, the one who is responsible in many ways for your spiritual growth, would be delighted if everyone tithed.  I would be delighted if everyone tithed and gave some of that to the church and some away to other charities, but I’d be even more delighted if we lived even more fully into the spirit of what I think the Bible teaches about money: we’re blessed to be a blessing.  That means that we all would give even more than 10% of our money away, and then we wouldn’t have to ask this question about whether to give it all to the church or not.  We’d give 10% to the church and another 10%+ to other charities.

Giving more than a tithe is founded in the Christian discipline, habit, or practice of simplicity.  Richard Foster says, “The tithe simply is not a sufficiently radical concept to embody the carefree unconcern for possessions that marks life in the Kingdom of God.  Jesus Christ is Lord of all our goods, not just ten percent” (Freedom of Simplicity, 50).  This is living into a different kind of spirit than one that asks about percentages and keeps track of every dollar.  It’s a practice of abundance.  There is more than enough for everyone.  We live into the freedom of having enough and what a freedom that is!

So now it may seem that I have set an impossible ideal before you.  Many of you are struggling to even imagine giving 10% of your income away, let alone more.  How do you do it?  How do you live simply so that you can give away more?  How do you live into your blessings in such a way that you can bless all the people of the earth?

This is a question of what you get used to.  Our culture tends toward us moving up in our tastes and our spending habits.  Let me give you an example from my own life.  I love cheese.  When we lived in Durham we would shop at Whole Foods because we think buying organic is important for caring for our creation.  One of my favorite parts of Whole Foods was the cheese department.  Oh, what a cheese department.  It was heaven on earth.  You could go back and see all these imported organic cheeses.  You could ask them to cut off a slice for you so you could try it before buying it.  I loved that part.  I would try at least three cheeses before buying one.  I got used to really good cheese.  This really good cheese came with a price tag.  $10/pound.  $12/pound.  $16/pound.  $22/pound.  I haven’t yet found a cheese department like this in Lansing, but the other day I went to Kroger and decided to get the best blue cheese they had.  It was $7/pound.  You know what, I didn’t like it.  I had gotten used to what $14/pound imported organic blue cheese tastes like.  In some ways, I had lost the freedom of having enough.  I read this week that “artisinal cheese is one of the fastest growing segments of the $59 billion gourmet food industry, with cheese and dairy expected to see double-digit growth through 2012, according to consumer research firm Packaged Facts” (Empty Tomb).  Apparently more and more people are having the same experience I am.  We like fancier and fancier cheese which means we’re spending more and more on cheese.

What we get used to in our culture is an ever increasing standard of living that tends upward rather than downward, but I’ve seen examples of it working the other way.  There was this great PBS show on several years ago called Frontier House.  They took three families and plopped them down in the wilderness of Montana and gave them frontier-age tools and training and followed how they managed it all.  It was fascinating.  Before the families went out on the frontier, they also interviewed them in their modern settings so you could see what the change was like.  When they interviewed one young boy, his attention was fully focused on his computer games.  He wouldn’t even look at the camera.  It was like he was drugged or something. When he first went to the “frontier” he complained constantly about not having any toys, especially his video games, but after several months, his attitude had changed.  His birthday came around and his family had made him a hand-carved wooden chess set.  He loved that chess set.  What he had gotten used to changed in the downward direction.  Unfortunately, when he went back to modern society, he ended up back in front of the TV playing video games.  Transformation and salvation is never static.  You can lose it.

Maybe another way to think about moving our tastes in a downward direction that is closer to home for all of us is remembering what it was like to get our first mortgage.  I remember when Sarah and I first bought our house in Petoskey.  It stretched our imagination (and our budget) to pay that monthly mortgage, but over time we got used to it.  We changed the rest of our lifestyle so that it wasn’t hard at all.  Now it feels like nothing to pay each month.

When you live simply to dethrone the idol of money in your life, it becomes easier and easier to give a tithe and more!  Living simply means being able to bless others with the blessings we have been given.

So what are some options, some steps into this kind of living?  Maybe you’re drowning in debt so much that you don’t even have enough to pay for the basics of life.  A first step is to get rid of that debt and one of the best ways to get rid of debt is to follow the principles of Financial Peace University.  We offer an FPU class every year.  We’ve currently got one going.  If you can’t wait till next year, you can always pick up Dave Ramsey’s book and read it on your own.  Then live those financial principles and get out of debt.

A second step could be giving something, anything, regularly.  Make a commitment to give $1/week or $10/week or $20/week.  Make a commitment to give something and stick to it.  If you’re already there, then a next step for you would be to increase that giving by 1%.  If you’re giving 5% of your income, plan on giving 6% this year.

A fourth step would be to go cold turkey and tithe.  Make it happen.  Give 10% of your income.  Drop an expense or two that you know you don’t need (even though you’ve always wanted it), and give 10%.  Many of you can do this if you change around some of the priorities in your life.

A last step is for those of you who are already giving 10%.  Give more!  Give more to the church.  Give more to charities in Lansing, Michigan, the United States, and the world.  Give generously.  Live a simple life.  Live radically different than those who are making the same amount as you are.  Live in a smaller house.  Drive a basic car.  Eat simple food.  Wear simple clothes.  God has blessed you with the ability to make money.  Now bless others through it.  Make all you can (in honest ways).  Save all you can by living simply.  Then give the rest away!

God blesses not so that you can keep it all yourself.  That’s an American Idol.  God blesses so that you can be a blessing to others and to the entire world.  As you bless SCC with your giving, we too will continue to bless Lansing, Michigan, our nation, and our world.

Next Steps (Share your stories in the comments section)
1. Begin tithing or take a step toward it (10% of your gross income or increase your giving by 1 to 2% each year)
2. Cut something out (i.e. bring a sack lunch to work, buy less new clothing, buy something used, etc.)
3. Give something away (i.e. find a way to bless someone with something, money or things, this week)
4. Other