FOUNDATIONS FOR FREEDOM

OBTAINING REAL SATISFACTION

1 Timothy 6: 3-19

INTRODUCTION

This past week a friend of mine that works at the GM plant was in a class that everyone who works at GM has to go through.   During the seminar the instructor asked each person in the class to respond to this question, “If you could have anything you wanted right now, what would you want?”   A few people named specific things like health or money or vacation homes but most of them simply said, “to be happy.”   When I worked with college students we would regularly survey thousands of students and one of the questions we always asked was, “How would you define success?”   Again, while some students would name specific things, the majority would simply say that a successful life is a happy life.

Many of you will remember this quote from Blaise Pascal, "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves."   There are many different ways that people pursue the goal of being happy, but all of us are after the same thing.   It is not wrong to want to be happy.   We go wrong in what we pursue to be happy, in what we believe we need to be happy.

We live in a culture where we are inundated with messages promising us that we will be happy if we obtain certain products, drive certain vehicles, take our vacations in certain destinations.   In short, every single one of us faces a daily barrage of messages that money and what money can obtain for you will make you happy.   Billions of dollars a year and the intelligence of thousands of very creative people are invested to persuade you and I that we do not have enough.   We are swimming in an ocean of advertising aimed at one simple thing: to make us discontent with what we have—to promote a desire for more.   If you were to ask the average American if they have enough money, the answer would be no.   Sadly, according to surveys conducted by George Barna, most professing Christians in the U.S. would also say no to that question.   “Content and satisfied” would not be how you would describe the emotional state of the majority of people living in our culture.

God understands completely the magnetic attraction of money and the desire to have more of it.   In 1 Timothy 6 he aims to give us reasons not to pursue money but to pursue him while being content with what we have.   In verse 6 he defines, through the apostle Paul, what makes for the happiest life that can be found on planet earth.   He says that godliness with contentment is great gain.   Godliness does not so much describe a religious way of life but rather describes the preoccupation of a life.   A godly person is a person who is taken up with God and the pleasures that God gives.   An ungodly person is a person who is consumed with enjoying the world and the pleasures that this world provides apart from God.   God says that the happiest way to live is to be engrossed with him and content with the circumstances of your life.   It’s important to note that God does not say a content life is the happiest life.   Rather he says a godly life that is accompanied by satisfaction with your life is the happiest life.

MAIN POINT

Godliness with contentment is the best thing you can have as a human being because…

I.   God opposes those who try to use him to get money (vv. 3-5)

In verses 3-5 Paul describes a group of people who engage in teaching false doctrines.   There have always been and always will be people who will not believe the sound teaching that comes from Jesus and that promotes godly living.   The world in Paul’s day as in our own was full of men and women who did not submit to the only true truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ.   Notice how Paul describes false teachers and their impact.   These men and women will not submit to the truth of Christ as set forth in the Scriptures but out of their own arrogance and in ignorance concoct descriptions of reality that are contrary to what is really true.   The only true truth is that which is contained in the pages of this book.   As Paul says, all teaching about God and godly living that disagrees with the plain teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ is characterized by controversies and quarrels that do not produce godliness but all kinds of evil, relationship destroying activities and speech.   False teaching always originates in corrupt minds and among individuals who have been robbed of the truth.  

Why would people engage in teaching false things about God?   Paul says their ultimate motive is to make money, to get rich.   Those who teach false doctrine have discovered that people will pay them to tell their lies about God.   As we have learned in our country, people will pay lots of money to those who will tell them lies about God.   In the 1980’s Jim and Tami Baker made millions of dollars peddling their brand of false teaching.   Paul is not saying that anyone who gets paid to preach is automatically teaching false doctrines.   We know this because in chapter 5, verses 17-18 he commands the church to financially support the elders who govern well and give their whole time to preaching and teaching.   Just because a person is getting paid to talk about God doesn’t mean he is teaching false things about God, but it might.   Every person who is teaching false things about God ultimately does it in order to gain wealth.   They are using God to get money.

The idea that godliness is the means to financial gain is not limited to false teachers.   In fact, most false teaching is characterized by promising earthly benefit to those who embrace the form of godliness that each particular false teacher promotes.   It is the reason that so many will pay so well to listen to the false teaching.   The teaching merely promises that God will give what the listeners really love, pleasure on earth.   Therefore, people are happy to pay others to tell them that God likes to be used by humans to get what humans really love, money and what money provides.   There are all kinds of false teachings about God but what the majority of false teaching shares in common is that God can be bought off.   If you will do what the false teaching tells you to do then God will make your life on earth comfortable.   It is the nature of fallen humanity to treat God like a bachelor millionaire that a woman marries not because she loves him but because she loves the life of luxury she will obtain by marrying him.   This is how most false teaching treats God.   He is not the goal of godly living, rather something that God will give you is the reason to be “godly”.

However, what is quite clear in this passage is that God will not be used by anyone.   God is not the means to obtaining some greater thing, whether money or health or children or a job or a husband or a nice car or a meaningful life.   Christ did not die on the cross so you and I can have healthy children, happy marriages, successful careers, or leisurely retirements.   He is the goal of all true godliness and all teaching that is faithful to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ emphasizes that life is about God.   It emphasizes that Christ came and died and rose again so that men and women can find their joy in the eternal, Triune God of creation.

Godliness with contentment is the best thing you can have as a human being because…

•  God opposes those who try to use him to get money

•  And because…

II.   God destroys riches and those who want to be rich (vv. 6-10)

There are two reasons in vv. 6-10 as to why we should pursue godliness for godliness’ sake and be satisfied with what we have.   The first reason is in vv. 7-8.   Paul appeals to the nature of our existence.   We came into the world with nothing and we are going to leave the world with nothing.   As the cliché says, “There are no U-Hauls behind hearses.”   Living as if the goal of life was to find the maximum amount of pleasure in the things of this world ignores the single greatest fact of human existence, you are going to die and leave it all behind.   This doesn’t only include money and what money buys, though this is what Paul is talking about here.   If you make the obtaining of any earthly pleasure the goal of your life, you are living irrationally because all this is going to pass away.   It is all temporary.   Psalm 102:25-26 says this: “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.   They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment.   Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded.   But you remain the same and your years will never end.”

You will leave behind your house, your clothes, your family, your job, your favorite vacation spot, your books, your computers, your TV, everything.   The only one who is permanent is God himself.   We were brought into this world possessing nothing, for this purpose, to know God, to delight in God.   When we make this our objective, then we will be happy forever.   How do the people who invested in Enron or Worldcom feel these days?   A few years ago these investors were riding high as these stocks were some of the best performers on Wall Street.   Then we discovered that these companies had been lying about their income and their stock became worthless.   That is how everyone who lives as though the best way to find happiness is the accumulation of earthly wealth or anything else is going to feel.   However, if you’ve spent your life pursuing your joy in God, then you will never be disappointed.   Paul is acting like a good investment counselor.   He is telling you he knows for sure that you are going to lose any investment you make in the pleasures of this world.

How would you complete this sentence?   “I will be happy when….”   I will be happy when I have a million dollars in my retirement account.   I will be happy when I get a new car.   I will be happy when I see the newest movie.   I will be happy when my children are grown, married and living responsibly.   I will be happy when I graduate.   I will be happy when my husband treats me right.   I will be happy when I have some friends.   I will be happy when I go on vacation.   You will only be truly content when you say “I will be happy when earth has nothing I desire besides God.”   God one day is going to take everything you value on earth away from you.   He will be all that is left.   If you have not made him your goal, then you will be left with nothing and that is hell, which is Paul’s next point.

Not only should we pursue godliness with contentment because God is going to destroy riches but also because he will destroy all who make getting rich their goal.   Verses 9 and 10 are very scary and troubling verses.   Paul does not say that money is evil or that being rich is evil, he says wanting to get rich leads men into destruction; loving money is the source of all kinds of evil; being eager for money causes people to abandon Christ.   The basis of God’s evaluation will not be how much you have but how much you want to have.   God’s evaluation is going to be based upon your contentment level.   The language of verse nine is the language of judgment.   Wanting to be rich leads into a lifestyle of lust and sin which God will judge.   Ruin and destruction is not talking about trouble on earth.   These are the words most often used for hell.  

Wanting to be rich plunges men into many foolish and harmful desires.   This is the language used to describe a person who is drowning.   If you are eager for money you will pierce yourself with many griefs.   This is the language of falling into a patch of inch long thorns and having them drive into your flesh.   My emotional life in regards to money is what I must pay attention to.   Imagine losing your job and your home.   Is your heart full of terror over that prospect?   Imagine losing all your retirement money.   Do you quake at the prospect?   What happens to your heart when you get a new car or new house or new clothes?   What you fear, what you long for, what you rejoice in are the things you must pay attention to if you are going to escape ruin and destruction, here and in eternity.

Godliness with contentment is the best thing you can have as a human being because…

•  God opposes those who try to use him to get money

•  God destroys riches and those who want to be rich

•  And because…

III.   God is better than everything (vv. 11-16)

In vv. 3-10 Paul has dealt with the negative reasons to pursue godliness with contentment.   He warns us of the negative consequences of loving money, of pursuing a life of earthly happiness.   In vv. 11-16 he describes the positive reasons for pursuing godliness.   He begins by calling Timothy a “man of God”.   It is another way of saying Timothy is godly.   This is a way of describing every Christian.   Christians are people who belong to God and who are taken up with God.   If you are a person who is taken up with God then you are a person who is fleeing from the love of money.   You are fleeing from using God to get something else.   You are pursuing with all your might righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.   You are fighting to trust in God and not trust in anyone or anything else.   You are seizing eternal life.   The Christian life is a life that is full of passion.   This idea that you can be a Christian and not be energetic in your pursuit of God is one of the great lies of our day.   We are not saved by what we do but when God saves us, we flee danger and pursue safety.

We’re like the person who has chest pain.   He goes in for a checkup with his doctor and after doing a stress test is told that one of his arteries is 80% blocked and he will need immediate bypass surgery.   He gets the surgery done and then the doctor explains that he will be having the same surgery or be dead in three years unless he stops eating high fat foods and starts exercising.   So he changes his whole lifestyle.   He eats right and exercises every day.   He flees the danger of a heart attack and pursues the joy of living by eating right and exercising.   In the same way Christians flee from loving money and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness because they value eternal life.

Paul gives Timothy and us at least five reasons to flee, pursue, fight and hold fast.   First , God called or summoned you into eternal life.   The death of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in your life has secured eternal life for you.   What’s at stake here is eternal life with God.   Second , God sees everything.   You are living in his presence.   He knows everything about you.   He knows every emotion, every thought, every word, every action.   This one before whom you live is the one who gives life to everything, including you.   Third , you are living in the presence of Jesus.   Jesus knows everything about you.   This is the same Jesus who made the good confession before Pontius Pilate.  

What does that mean?   The good confession that Jesus made was this: Pilate asked him if he was the king of the Jews.   Jesus replied that yes, he was.   Jesus could have avoided being killed on the cross if he would have denied being the Son of God.   If he would have denied being the king of the Jewish people he could have escaped death.   However, as the writer to the Hebrews says, Jesus endured the cross, despising its shame for the joy set before him.   He knew that it was only through dying for the sins of the world that he would obtain what he really loved, the manifestation of the greatness and the glory of his Father forever.   By acknowledging that he was the king of the Jews, Jesus confessed that his hope for happiness did not lay in the pleasures of this world but in the pleasures of life with God forever .   This is what everyone who is a Christian confesses.   We deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow after Jesus.   We do not seek to save our life in this world but we lose it for the sake of Jesus.   Just as the only way that Jesus could gain the glory of heaven was through his death on the cross, so the only way any of us will gain the joy of heaven is through fleeing the love of money and pursuing life with God.

The fourth reason we should fight the fight of faith is because Jesus is coming back again.   Every human being will one day stand in front of the God who made them and gave them every joy they ever experienced and before Jesus Christ who shed his blood for the sins of all who will trust him.   Each one of us will give an account to this great, Triune God who knows everything we ever thought, felt, believed or did.   There will be a final exam at a time to be determined by God, not us.   The fifth and final reason Paul gives us to flee the love of money and pursue a life that is taken up with God is because of the greatness of God himself.   Paul cannot contain himself.   As he is encouraging Timothy and us to pursue godliness with contentment he breaks out into praise of God.   Paul isn’t being “religious”, he can’t help himself.   He is declaring what makes God great and seeking to get us to join in the joy.   Every person sitting in this room has done with someone or something what Paul is doing in praising God.   There are a number of men in our congregation who become almost poetic when talking about hunting on their favorite piece of property.   There are women among us who will talk your ear off extolling the wonder and beauty of the newest ink stamp or scrapbook paper.   There are teenagers who won’t say a word to you about how school is going but if you ask them about their favorite band or movie will talk non-stop about how cool the music or the movie is.   You cannot help praising what you admire and value and delight in.   Paul is extolling the greatest and best being in the universe.   There is no one like God and nothing that is greater than God.   The best thing that could ever happen to you or to any human being is to be loved by this God, to know him and be his child through faith in Jesus.   Why would you be satisfied with the trivial pleasures that money can give you when you can have the greatest and highest joy in the universe in knowing God?

Godliness with contentment is the best thing you can have as a human being because…

•  God opposes those who try to use him to get money

•  God destroys riches and those who want to be rich

•  God is better than everything

•  And because…

IV.   God’s gifts are better than money’s gifts (vv. 17-19)

Verses 17-19 are written for everyone in this room because they are written to the rich.   I know that hardly anyone in this room would say they are rich but that is only because you live among rich people.   Randy Alcorn in his book, “Money, Possessions and Eternity” says this, “If you only made $1500 last year, that’s more than 80% of the people on earth.   Statistically, if you have sufficient food, decent clothes, live in a house or apartment, and have a reasonably reliable means of transportation, you are among the top 15% of the world’s wealthy.   If you have money saved, a hobby that requires some equipment or supplies, a variety of clothes in your closet, two cars (in any condition), and live in your own home, you are in the top 5% of the world’s wealthy.”   The average teenager in America has $1500 of disposable income each year.   That means the average teenager in America has more money than 80% of the adults living in the world.  

I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty.   Paul does not say that being rich is a sin.   You should not feel guilty for having money.   You should feel guilty if you don’t think you have enough money.   While the Bible does not condemn the rich for being rich, it does recognize that the wealthy face particular dangers and temptations.   So Paul gives some commands to us who are rich.   These commands are given to us for our own good.   Living as a Christian in America is the most dangerous place on earth to live, far more dangerous than China or North Korea.   The danger for us is self-deception.   We can easily say that we are trusting in God when the fact is that we are trusting in our secure jobs, our retirement accounts, and our insurance policies.   God is giving us some direction here to help us find out what we are trusting in, our money or him.

The first two commands are negative commands regarding our attitudes.   We are to avoid being proud of what we have.   Possessions are not to be status symbols.   We are not to want things in order to boost our image or to show off our “success”.   We are to not put our hope in wealth.   In other words when we think about our future without fear it should not be because we have excellent retirement accounts or a paid off mortgage.   Rather, our confident expectation of good in the future must lie in God and his promises to care for us and bring us safely to heaven.   Wealth is very uncertain and those who hope in it are going to be disappointed, if not in his life, most certainly in the next.   But also notice that God is the one who gives us wealth and the pleasures that money provides.   It’s good to enjoy these gifts from God as long as we recognize they are gifts and not our status or our security or what we are due.   We don’t deserve to be wealthy, we haven’t earned the right to enjoy the possessions we have.   Wealth and the pleasures of wealth are a gift for which we should give God praise and which we should use to display his mercy.

What behavior shows that you are not proud of your possessions nor are you hoping in your wealth?   That is what the four commands in v. 18 tell us.   It is good to enjoy what God gives but enjoying money is not the reason we have been given money.   We are given wealth so that we can use it to do good for others.   Our lives are to be taken up with doing good.   We are to be rich in good deeds.   We are to be generous and willing to share.   We are to be using our homes, our cars, our fishing boats, our vacation homes, our money to help others to know God.   We are to use what God has given us to help others to see the love and mercy of God in our generosity.   It’s not just writing checks.   We are to be involved with others.   We are to be doing good, not just giving money to good causes.   We are to use the resources we have to build friendships and a sense of community in our church.   We are to use our resources to promote the welfare of the community in which we live.   We are to invest our time and money in building Christ’s church around the world.   We are doing what Paul commands in v. 18 by sending this team of nine to Mongolia and by supporting Todd to go to England and Ed and Mel to go to France and Jacob and Karen to do Bible translation and Tom and Lynn to lead the church in Mongolia.

Let me be specific and practical for a moment.   When you invite another family, whether someone from church that you don’t know well or perhaps a neighbor into your home for a meal you are declaring that you don’t need a clean house to be happy.   You are saying that your hope for pleasure doesn’t lie in getting to watch your favorite TV program.   You prove that getting to spend the evening shopping or working in your wood shop isn’t what you are depending upon for joy.   When you volunteer your time on a Saturday at ECHO you show that you do not love a perfectly manicured lawn as much as you love God.   When you pledge to give $15,000 over the next three years to build a new sanctuary you are saying that your delight is in the glory of God, not a new car.   When you take $10,000 out of your retirement account and give it to a missionary or to help build a clinic in a developing world country you prove that you are trusting the promise of God, not the promise of money.   Using our time to do good and giving away our money is the only sure antidote we have to the fatal disease of loving money.   If you are not doing good and being generous you are loving money and the pleasures of this world, it’s that simple.   Use this means that God has given you to fight for faith and to lay hold on eternal life.

Look at the promise in v. 19.   If we who are wealthy will not be arrogant or put our hope in our wealth; if we will do good and be generous then we will be laying up treasure in heaven.   Our use of wealth to do good will produce for us a firm foundation for the coming age and it will be a taking hold of the life that is really life.   Contrast v. 19 with v. 9.   What do you want?   Do you want ruin and destruction or do you want to take hold of the life that is really life?   Do you want to be infinitely happy forever or do you want to experience the fleeting and paltry happiness that comes from money and what money can buy?   Flee the love of money, pursue a life taken up with God by using the wealth God has given you to do good as an expression of your hope in God, not money.

Godliness with contentment is the best thing you can have as a human being because…

•  God opposes those who try to use him to get money

•  God destroys riches and those who want to be rich

•  God is better than everything

•  God’s gifts are better than money’s gifts