Menlo Park Presbyterian Church
950 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 650-323-8600
Series: No Strings Attached
Luke 6:38
February 7, 2016
“Affluenza”
John Ortberg
I want to say hi to everybody all over the place. What a great weekend. I love this weekend. There are two
very exciting things going on in San Jose this weekend. One of them is the Super Bowl. Who are you all
rooting for? Nobody knows. Gary Lindsay from our staff just posted this actually. "You should be as
excited about church as about the Super Bowl. So when your pastor makes a point this Sunday, pour
Gatorade over his head."
We don't actually practice that, but it does bring up the even cooler thing going on in San Jose. This
weekend, our congregation (Menlo San Jose) and Cornerstone that is going to do this coming together
deal is coming together this weekend! You guys are together as a family for the first time, and we are
thrilled and excited that's going on. Welcome! Welcome! It's so cool. Great stuff. We're working on some
renovation down there for what's going to be kind of home. We'll show everybody that a little bit later on.
We're in this series, and it's about the power of commitments. It's an amazing thing to think I can say to
you, "I'll meet with you next week," or, "I'm going to always be there for you." The power of commitment
is remarkable, but we saw last week, we live in a culture that's very afraid about commitment. "If I make a
commitment, I give up freedom. I give up control. I give up individuality."
There's a lot of fear about it, but there's this kind of alternative opinion that says it's actually only when
you make a commitment that you are free to find the kind of trust that makes for intimacy or that makes
for community. We actually find our identity when we do this amazing thing to make a commitment and,
above all, a commitment to God. We saw this great story last week about this guy Elisha whose
commitment to follow God was so strong that he burned the plow. It's kind of a picture of, "I'm not going
back to my old way of life. I will follow God."
We're in this series on commitment and the tension between freedom and commitment. Today we're
looking at the area where probably more than any place else everybody wants freedom, and that is
financial freedom. It's ironic we're looking at it this weekend. I feel a little badly telling you about this, but
my own ticket to financial freedom actually came just this week in a letter. I don't mean to make you feel
badly, but I have to read it to you because I'm so excited about this.
It says, "John C. Ortberg, Jr., you have been preselected…" Not just selected…preselected. They are so
excited about me, they selected me before they selected me. In Presbyterian circles, this is called double
predestination. The letter goes on, "…in this new year with your new card…" This is from people giving
me a brand new card. I didn't even ask for it. They just sent it. "…you can exercise your new financial
freedom. People with outstanding financial credentials like yours deserve an outstanding credit card like
ours."
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It's actually the platinum gold silver double uranium card. You have to keep it in a lead-lined wallet. The
letter goes on, "Our credit line matches your financial intelligence." In other words, I get the smart rate
reserved for smart people. Apparently dumb people have to pay an even higher kind of dumb tax. "Plus,
with every dollar you spend, we will give you bonus points that raise your credit ceiling." In other words,
if I borrow everything I can today, I'll be able to borrow even more tomorrow.
"With a great rate like this, it makes sense to use your card and use it often. The sooner you start using
your card the sooner you start saving!" Just do the math. The more you spend, the more you save. Now to
give me even more freedom, no matter how much of their money I use, they will let me make minimum
payments that are just a fraction of what I actually owe them. Then there's some stuff that's really
unimportant, so they put it in fine print, but I want to actually look at that with you for just a moment (the
fine print stuff) because this is so amazing. This is my ticket to financial freedom, and it's here.
This is the way you can figure this. The average credit card debt, which at the time this got figured out,
was a little over $10,000. The interest rate this particular offer and many over the years have run is a low,
low 24.99 percent. Then the minimum payment you could make on this much debt is $213.58. That's
hardly anything.
You might be kind of interested. If you make the minimum payment, how long does it take you to be free
and clear? It's kind of an interesting thing. Let's say you make the minimum payment every month (never
miss a single one), and you do this for a decade. After 10 years, you've paid $26,930, but you now owe
$11,790. If you're astute, you will have noticed you actually owe now more than you did when you got
started because of the way that interest and the minimum payment works.
Let's say you double your efforts. You say, "I'm not going to give up on this." You go another 20 years.
You don't miss a single minimum payment. By year 20, you have now paid $56,000 plus, but you now
owe $13,000. You're a person of perseverance, so you keep going. For 50 years, half a century, you're
making minimum payments every month. By year 50, you have now paid $165,000. You now owe
$17,515.
You're quite old, but you don't give up. You get your family to go on with this after you die. If you extend
it out, by the year 1,000 (I'm not making this up), you will have paid $5.1 billion, but your heirs still owe
$212 million. It turns out, see, that the freedom to get and acquire and borrow and hoard ends up being a
kind of bondage in a lot of ways.
But there's this minority report. There's this alternative wisdom that is deeply imbedded in the kingdom of
God about the role of commitment now this weekend in our financial lives, and Jesus put it like this:
"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over,
will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." This is a
commitment that leads to freedom in all areas, including financially. "Give, and it will be given to you."
Now as we get into this (because this is our text for this message), I need to be really careful to point out
Jesus is not giving here a sneaky way to just get more money. "If I give, then God will give me more and
more." There's actually (some of you will know about this) a kind of parody of the gospel, a perversion of
the gospel, called the "prosperity gospel" that says, "If you give, it's just a way to get God to make you
richer and richer."
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I won't mention him by name, but I know of a quite high-profile television preacher who has actually
literally said these words. He has said, "I gave away an expensive pair of shoes, and three or four more
pairs of shoes came back to me. I gave away several watches, and this very expensive Rolex watch
jumped on to my wrist."
Jesus is not telling you how to get a very expensive Rolex watch to jump onto your wrist. He is saying our
God is a generous God, and God loves generosity. When we become generous people, we step into a
dynamic that is deeply imbedded in the way the kingdom of God works. You cannot outgive God. God
just gives. That's his nature. Jesus makes this very interesting statement. "For with the measure you use,
it will be measured to you."
In other words, if I practice a very little generosity, I will experience quite a little (you know, a small
amount) of the kingdom of God, of the joy and the confidence and the trust and the events that come with
God's generosity. If I practice a lot of it, I will enter into a much deeper experience of the presence of God
and the kingdom in my life, including in my financial life.
A really important question is, "What measure will I use?" Jesus says, "For with the measure you use, it
will be measured to you." "Give, and it will be given…" Again, that's not a prosperity deal. That's not a
sneaky thing. This is just life in the kingdom. We live in a culture that will send us all kinds of messages
about, "Hold on to what you have."
I've noticed over the years that as people begin to grow spiritually, when people get connected with God,
they tend to go through kind of stages of generosity. I want to walk through some of those stages with
you, about four of those stages, in this message and then ask you what measure you are using. What
measure do you want to use? Where are we at as a church? Where are you at as a follower of Jesus if
that's who you are? Here you go. The first level is the…
1. Give nothing level. This level, somebody is just simply not giving anywhere. This will involve maybe
more people than you might guess. A sociologist at Notre Dame, Christian Smith, has done great work in
this area. In a study he did, he found that no less than one out of five US Christians gives away no money
to charity whatsoever, to either religious or secular causes. Just no giving at all. Among folks with no
faith, that percentage is even higher.
Now at each level, there will be thoughts going on that kind of keep us in this level. What's interesting
about folks who give nothing is what will keep you giving nothing isn't what you think. It's what you don't
think. You know, you won't be thinking about, "I'm not giving anything." You won't think about what you
could give. You'll just think about what you don't have.
This is from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. Let's read these words together out loud. "Whoever
loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income." This
experience of, "The more I get, the less I'm satisfied" in our day is actually being called affluenza.
Have any of you seen the news story right now about affluenza? Some kid got into legal trouble, and his
parents got lawyers to try to get him off with the plea (among other things) that he is suffering from a
disease that he has been so spoiled, he has been so entitled by so much stuff, he is afflicted with affluenza,
and it has impaired his ability to know right from wrong.
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Now the Bible does not say if you have a lot of money, you're exempt from moral responsibility, but it
does say money and the love of it and an obsession with it can make us kind of crazy. It will be associated
with a certain way of thinking.
The number one tool the Evil One will use to keep you in the "give nothing" category (if that's where you
are) is just distraction. It's just distraction! It will just be not for you to think about, "What am I giving, or
what I am not giving?" It will just be to think about other stuff and to feel like, "Well, I'd never be able to
give, because there is just too much stuff I don't have." A lot of people are just captivated by that.
A second thought that will be quite common for folks who give nothing (which is a lot of people in our
culture and even 20 percent of people who name the name of Jesus) is, "Poor people must not be like me.
Poor people probably don't work hard like I work hard. They probably don't have the ethic I have. They
probably don't mind being poor. They're probably just different."
It's very interesting. A lot of folks live with the thought, "If I had more money, I would be more
generous." In fact, the lower people's income is, the higher a percentage of money they give away. It's
very interesting when we think about the basic expenses of life. When I was a kid growing up, a standard
rule of thumb was about 10 percent of your income should go toward housing. Has anybody noticed in
California that's kind of crazy? In here, experts will sometimes talk about 30 percent. Maybe 30 percent of
your annual income ought to go toward housing.
I want to ask us to take a guess. Every venue right now, if you don't mind, turn to the person next to you.
Guess how much of the annual household income gets eaten up by housing in East Palo Alto, not far from
where I'm speaking? Turn to the person next to you. Just take a wild guess. What percentage of the annual
household income from one household gets eaten up by housing in East Palo Alto? Take a guess. Okay?
This is from a ministry called Able Works. The correct percentage figure is 105 percent.
How is that possible? I will tell you how. You'll get two or three or four or five families crammed together
in a little space that was built for one. You'll get a whole bunch of people trying to live in a facility that
was never built for that many people. They do it day after day, week after week, year after year. That's a
couple of miles from where I'm standing right now, and that's just life. That will be some folks in this
room.
See, when you live and you don't have resources, you generally live really close to other people who don't
have many resources, and they're real people. They're your brother or sister or your mom or dad. You ache
to give to them, and you do. But if you have a lot of resources, there's this kind of weird thing where
under-resourced people just become kind of an abstraction, just kind of a number.
The Evil One will keep us thinking that way, and that's part of what props up a mindset that says, "I'm
okay with just not giving anything." But that's not where the kingdom is. "Give, and it will be given to
you with the measure you use." A lot of times when you get to know God and you begin to pursue
spiritual growth, you'll say, "I have to get out of that category. I can't just keep living without giving
anything." That will often lead to a next level, which might be called the…
2. Occasional giving level. "If I'm here, I'll give sometimes." But it tends to be pretty episodic. "If I'm at
church and the offering plate is going by, it might be kind of embarrassing not to give anything, so I'll pull
out my wallet, and I'll take a look. If I have a bill in it and it's not too small (because that would look
goofy) but it's not too big (because that wouldn't be good), if it's the right amount, I'll throw it in there."
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Or, "If I see an ad for a really hungry kid in another part of the world and I get moved in the moment, then
I might give. But I don't want to be committed. I don't want to be tied down. I'll just give when the Spirit
moves me." In that research I mentioned by Christian Smith at Notre Dame, one guy (a follower of
Jesus)… Actually, I thought this was a really interesting quote. He said Jesus said we are to give as we
feel led.
Can anybody tell me what the Bible verse is where Jesus says, "Give as you feel led"? That's a really hard
one to find in the Bible. You know, Paul says God loves a cheerful giver, but the idea is, if you're not
cheerful, don't give. You know, I want to learn how to love giving the way God does. There's this weird
thing where if I give based on guilt, the problem with it is when the guilt goes away, my motivation to
give will go away.
There's an old story (true, as far as I know). The IRS has an anonymous account where, if people have
been cheating the government out of their taxes and their conscience bothers them, they can actually send
money anonymously. Supposedly it got a note one time, "Dear IRS, I have been cheating you on my taxes
for years, and my conscience is bothering me. Enclosed find a check for $1,000. If my conscience doesn't
feel better, I will send the rest."
The idea is, "If I'm just giving as a way to assuage my conscience, well then when my mood changes, then
my giving will change." The Bible has quite a different kind of message around giving, and this is what
the apostle Paul says: "Now about the collection for the Lord's people: Do what I told the Galatian
churches to do. On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in
keeping with his income, saving it up…"
In other words, giving ought to be systematic, it ought to be proportional in keeping with your income,
and it ought to be intentional (saving it up). This leads to that next level of giving that will often occur for
folks in their spiritual journey, and that's…
3. Tithing. I want to talk about this because this is really important for our church and for following Jesus.
Tithing is talked about quite a lot in the Bible. It goes way, way back. In an Old Testament book called
Leviticus, we're told to give, "A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit
from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD." There was this teaching that that first tenth
just simply belongs to God. They wouldn't even talk about bringing a tithe. They would talk about giving
an offering, but they would just say, "We bring our tithe."
The next question about this then is, "What exactly does it mean to tithe?" I address this one because the
word tithe will get thrown around a little loosely. Somebody will say, "You know, I tithed $5 last week."
Well, it would be tithing $5 if you make $50. A tithe literally means one-tenth or 10 percent. To tithe
means I give 10 percent of the income God blesses me with to God.
Part of the teaching around this is that I give the first tenth. The Old Testament was written in an agrarian
economy so that usually meant crops. They would use the word firstfruits. I give the very first tenth. This
means if I'm paying my bills, the very first check I write is 10 percent that goes to God. For those of you
who don't know, a check is a little piece of paper we used to use that is just like cash. Cash is a little piece
of paper that works kind of like a check. Tithing is something I do off the first 10 percent.
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Next question: "Wasn't tithing part of the Old Testament Law Jesus came to free us from?" Let's talk
about this a little bit, because sometimes you'll hear an idea like this one. Actually, tithing goes back
before the giving of the Law. You might know Moses at Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. He
brought the Law. Tithing was practiced actually a long time before then. Abraham, who came way before
Moses, gave to a priest named Melchizedek a tenth of everything he had. It actually goes back before the
Law.
Then when Jesus comes along, he doesn't actually say, "Now that I've come, you don't need to tithe
anymore." In fact, he does mention tithing in the gospel of Luke. Jesus says, "What sorrow awaits you
Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore
justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things."
In other words, Jesus says tithing is a good thing, but it's really kind of like having training wheels on a
bike. It's going to move you toward justice and generosity. One of the ways I'll think about this one is for
most of us, if I think about, "Here's 0, and here's 100 percent of everything I have, and here's 10 percent of
what I have," is being generous likely to give less than 10 percent or more than 10 percent?
Well, for me for sure it's going to be on the more side, and my guess is for a good number of folks who
are listening right now, after Jesus came and brought the love of God and gave his life for me and gave me
the Holy Spirit, probably being generous is not going to be to the left of tithing. Here's why I think tithing
can be a helpful benchmark. It's not a legalistic thing. It's helpful because it's kind of a gauge. It's kind of a
concrete way of asking, "Am I growing in generosity?"
When I drive a car, on the dashboard there will be little lights that indicate if I have trouble in a basic area.
Does anybody know what we call those little lights? Warning lights or idiot lights. My family was on
vacation not long ago. I'm driving, and I noticed the car is almost on empty. It's a rental car. It's a van,
because everybody is in it. It's almost empty.
Then I have this thought just from out of the blue. "I think I could make it back to where we're staying
before the fuel idiot light comes on. That way whoever drives it next will have to fill it up and spend the
time and the money to do that. I won't look bad because the idiot light did not come on yet." I just had that
thought. Then my next thought was, "Really do I want to be that guy? Do I want to be the guy who gives
as little as possible so he can just escape getting in trouble for it but sticks it to somebody else?"
I thought, "No, I don't want to be that guy." So I took it to the gas station. I mean, it took a couple of
minutes and a few dollars, but it just felt good. Then I was returning it to the rental company. Once again,
it was just on E. I thought, "Do I want to give it back to the rental car company on E?" Does anybody
want to guess? Yeah! Actually, that's exactly what I wanted to do, because I don't love the rental car
company. I don't want to mention them, but their bills are so high, it "Hertz."
Anyway, here's another question some folks will have when it comes to tithing. "What if I can't afford to
tithe?" This is really interesting. This actually is the primary thought that will keep most folks from
tithing. In this research Christian Smith did, only about 10 percent of people who follow Jesus give a tenth
or more of their income to God. The number one reason behind it will be, "I couldn't afford to tithe. I can
barely afford to live on what I'm making right now. I could never afford to do that."
Now every once in a while when I'm talking with somebody, if I know them I'll respond to that one with,
"You know, I have hardly ever met anybody who got so generous with their giving, who got so carried
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away with it, who gave so much that they starved to death." For most people I know, given our networks
and our resources and education we have access to, I have not known many people who gave so much that
they starved to death, so they literally could not afford to do it.
I was talking to a friend not long ago who kind of turned this scenario around. Let's say just as an example
that you got so carried away with generosity, you gave so much away that you ended up with nothing.
You had no resources. You had no money. You had nothing left to eat, and nobody around you cared
enough for you to help you eat. You literally starved to death because you were so generous.
What a great way to enter the kingdom! What an amazing way to go to heaven! Can you imagine showing
up in heaven and saying, "Jesus, I'm sorry I showed up a little early. I just got so carried away with
generosity that I ended up with no money at all, and nobody would help me. Do you have anything to
eat"? What an amazing experience that would be! What a great funeral you would have.
Here's the thing. I think it's very unlikely that will happen for anybody, and here's part of why. We tend to
think, "You know, I can barely make it on 100 percent of what I'm living on. I could never make it on 90
percent of what I'm living on." God is not asking you to make it on 90 percent. God is saying, "Trust me
with the first 10 percent, and then see what you and I will do with your resources together."
See, the money thing is really a trust thing. This is a fundamental principle that money will bring us
around to. You cannot understand the value of money if money is your greatest value. It's an old saying.
Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. This is kind of a goofy story, but it makes the point. There's this old
couple, Pete and Maude. They go to a carnival, and there's this pilot giving rides in an old biplane for
twenty bucks. Pete really wants to go, but his wife Maude says, "No, twenty bucks is twenty bucks. I don't
want to go on it."
The pilot says, "Do you know what? I've been hearing that debate for decades. I'm tired of it. Here's what
I'll do. I will take you up in this plane. If you don't whine, if you don't say a word, the ride is on me. But if
you make a sound, you each have to pay twenty bucks." They get in this old biplane. He goes up in the
sky.
It's an unbelievable ride. He is doing like barrel rolls, somersaults, loop the loops. He goes around twice,
not a peep out of them. He lands the plane. He says, "That's amazing. That was the most daring ride I
could give you. I can't believe it, but I didn't hear a sound. You didn't make a peep." Pete says, "Well, I
almost did when Maude fell out of the plane."
I thought it was funny anyway. Twenty bucks is twenty bucks, except here's the thing. You know,
followers of Jesus said, "Five loaves and two fish are five loaves and two fish except when you give them
to Jesus. Then they're not just five loaves and two fish anymore. Then God does amazing things with
them."
Twenty bucks is twenty bucks, except when you give it to Jesus, and then you don't know. There's this
passage in the book of Malachi. God says, "'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be
food in my house. Test me in this,' says the LORD Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the
floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.'"
As far as I know, in all the Bible, the only place where God invites people to test him is in this business of
tithing. It's like he knows we're so afraid, we're so unlikely to do that. That's why as a church, we actually
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have this deal called the Tithe Challenge. The idea is really simple. Just go online. You can go online on
our website. You can text. I think there's information coming up on the screens about this, or at all of our
sites, there's a little piece of paper called the Tithe Challenge. You can get that and find out more about it.
Go online. Sign up for this.
For 90 days, tithe. Give God the first 10 percent of whatever God gives you. If at the end of that 90 days
God is clearly not involved in your financial life, if it is clearly not sustainable, we will refund everything
you have given during those 90 days. We had, I think, over 130 people who signed up and did the Tithe
Challenge last year. To my knowledge, only two people found it wasn't sustainable. One of them doesn't
even live in our state. They're like way far away but just decided to give it a try.
Once you see God involved in your life… I've had so many conversations with people even this week.
There was somebody who was telling me, "You know, I sit in the back every Sunday, and I had never
given before. I just decided I can't not give anymore. I have one question." I wondered what it was going
to be. Their question was, "How can I give more?" "Give, and it will be given…" That leads to one more
level I just want to say a word about.
4. Sacrificial giving. Jesus was watching folks give one time, and there was a widow. She gave two of the
smallest coins that existed. He said to his friends, "She has given more than everybody else, because she
has just trusted God with everything." Some of you guys know way more about this than I do. Nancy and
I have tasted this every once in a while. We have always tithed plus to our local church, and then we give
to other ministries.
There have been some times in our lives when we have felt like adjusting our lifestyle or doing something
out of the ordinary would be a good thing. I was talking to a guy this week. He and his wife, he said, give
over 30 percent of what they receive to God. He says, "We haven't hit the pain point yet." You know, the
biggest risk you can run financially is to not trust God with your money and forget that one day your life
is going to end, and money is not going to save you.
I just read this week a parable. A guy gets visited by an angel, and the angel says, "I'll give you anything
you want." He says, "I would like a copy of the Wall Street Journal from one year into the future." He
gets it, and he goes immediately to the stock market. He starts writing down stock prices. He is thinking
about, "I'm going to make a fortune this next year." Then he looks over, and on the obituaries page, he
sees his name.
Here's the deal. Money doesn't love you. Money didn't die on a cross for you. Money can't save you, but
God loves. God loves to give. To be a part of the kingdom of God, to just test God in this and say, "God,
I'm going to trust you with this," leads to a kind of financial freedom that just hoarding or acquiring never
will. "Give, and it will be given to you. […] For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Let's measure really well living as we do in the greatest wealth-producing center in the history of the
human race. Let's use a really good measure. Would you pray with me right now?
Heavenly Father, you know the truth about us. You know we're just easily scared when it comes to
finances. It will just feel to us like our security or our identity or our worth or our success or our peace or
our satisfaction is all wrapped up in a house or a bank account or a lifestyle. Thank you, God, that you're a
generous God, and that you love to give. Help us to learn that kind of generosity. Help us to follow Jesus
with great courage and trust. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.
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