The Roots of Riches - Part 4

Listen, it is great to see everyone this morning.

If I hadn't had a chance to meet you, my name is Russ.

I'm one of the pastors of the Church of the Grove.

Awesome to have you with us.

We're in our final week of this series called Roots, The Roots of Riches.

And um and here's a couple things I hope you'll walk away with this morning.

Is number one, you are far more wealthy than you even know.

And so you are richer than you even know.

And I'm gonna explain that and and convince you of that in a second.

But but what I also want you to know is that whatever, whenever we talk about financial principles that we learn from Scripture, at some point you've got to put into practice what we're preaching.

And so you've heard the statement where the rubber meets the road.

And so it would, I think it would be irresponsible for us to preach and teach and not give you some practical next steps.

And so what I want to do is introduce you to my friend Kevin Gibson.

And if you've been around Church at the Grove for a while, you know Kevin very well because Kevin is one of the, he and his family are one of the families that helped us start our church 13 and a half years ago.

He um when we started talking about planning a new church, um here's what Kevin said.

He said, Are you crazy?

That's what he asked me, are you crazy?

And I and I started sharing my heart.

He said, Okay, where's the Kool-Aid?

I'm ready to drink it.

That's kind of that's exactly what he said.

And so Kevin has an incredible story.

Um The Lord took him to Florida.

Um he got a terminal cancer diagnosis, and he called.

He said, Man, um, I don't know how long I've got, but I want to spend the rest of it with my home and my in my home and my church with my church family.

And so he and his family loaded back up and transitioned back up here.

And so Kevin is one of the smartest guys I know, especially.

I mean, he's he's smart in a lot of areas of life, but when it comes to money stuff, he knows it.

And so, Kevin, would you come and just give us a little snippet of what you're gonna be teaching starting next Sunday afternoon?

Yeah, good morning.

So, before I talk about next Sunday, I want to say something real quick about Russ's message this morning.

He talks about richness, and and one thing that he didn't say as he introduced me was that this Sunday last year is when we closed another series out and we shared a video, and that's when my story came out.

So, you know, from a richness standpoint, it's nice to be able to wake up every morning and have you know gone another full year now when I got diagnosed with terminal cancer about a year and a half ago.

So, anyway, as we wrap up the financial stuff, uh we're starting a series uh next Sunday.

It'll be at five o'clock here on campus.

Um it's it's really designed to help you understand how to find financial freedom, how to figure out how to manage your money, how to do a budget, how to invest, how to uh you know buy insurance, how to set money aside for retirement, things like that.

So there's a lot of stuff to it.

And it's based on um curriculum or some material from an organization that is called I Was Broke and Now I'm Not.

Um and during those six weeks, we will go through the set the nine steps of what's required really to get to that financial freedom and to figure out how to save money and to figure out how much enough is enough when it comes to saving, how to be able to pay off your credit card debt and get out of debt 100%, including your house.

And through that series, I'll share some of the stuff from my own life.

I mean, it's it's it's nice to be in a position where I am in life and not owe any money.

We owe our house, we own our cars, and so it's nice to not have any debt.

And I want to help others kind of see how to get to that point, and it's not that difficult.

Um, the guy that that kind of leads the video series that we're gonna go through, it took him about 10 years, but he did it three times in 10 years where he got out of debt.

So he would get out, get back in.

And so if you haven't signed up, go ahead and do so today, let Russ and them know because it's the prime time to kind of start this type of series because it's tax refund time.

And a lot of people get their tax refund and they go pay off debt or they plan for a vacation or they put money in savings or whatever.

So let's look at what options you have because maybe the best option is not necessarily paying all that debt off right away, it may be saving some of that and paying some debt off.

So, anyway, it'll be here at campus six weeks starting next Sunday.

It'll be five o'clock, and I think we are gonna have child care as available as well.

Awesome.

Um, listen, I'm telling you, uh it's gonna be a wealth, a wealth of information for you to do that.

Let me tell you, here's here's how you sign up.

Here's how you let us know.

On your encounter card today, just write the word broke at the bottom.

I mean, seriously, that's so if you want to, you can grab.

We still have some of the generosity journey cards that are out on the table.

Um, you can put it on that.

Uh there's a$30 cost just for the materials, but here's what I've told people who've already signed up.

If you attend all six sessions, we will give you$20 back.

And so, in essence, it'll be a$10 investment.

And so we ask for the$30 up front.

You we want you to have a little skin in the game, right?

And so, and then if you attend all six sessions, we'll provide child care.

You've got to let us know if you need child care.

And I'm telling you, this is this is this is gonna be where the rubber meets the road.

It's practical stuff.

And so you walk out with some goals and uh and begin to put those goals into practice, and then you'll wake up one morning and you'll have some emergency funds set aside, you'll be out of debt and moving forward in life and realizing that you're rich.

Now you say, Russ, I'm not rich.

Let me just let me tell you flat out that you are rich.

And the reason I say you're rich is because I know where you're sitting, and I know that you live in a community, in a culture, in a society, in a country that just by living here, you are rich compared to the rest of the world.

And so you are.

And so this passage of scripture we're going to look at, where Paul writes to his protege, his young disciple Timothy, his first chapter, uh 1 Timothy chapter 6.

1 Timothy 6 · chapter mention

He says, he says, Timothy, I want you to tell the rich in this age.

And so he's writing to people that are rich, and they may not know they're rich, like you.

You're rich, but you may not know it.

I know you're rich.

If you're sitting in this room, you know why, you know how I know you're rich?

It's because some of you have houses for your cars.

You've bit you've built dwelling places to park a car.

And so you're you're rich.

You know that over seven million teenagers own automobiles in America, but 92% of the population on this planet do not have automobiles.

And so you're rich.

I mean, listen, if you if you in your everyday conversations, if you say things on occasion like this, I don't have good cell phone coverage, my computer crashed, or my latte wasn't mixed right, then you are rich.

You get it?

You get my point?

You get what I'm saying?

I I know all of you are rich because I know, I know that you listen, most of us in this room, we have a room in our house that we walk into every day.

And you could, you listen, you and your wife could sleep in that room.

Probably some of your kids could have room to sleep in that room.

But you walk into that room every day and you just stand there and you look around at everything that's in that room, and then these words come out of your mouth.

I don't have anything to wear.

But wall to wall is closed, right?

Are you with me on this?

All of it, listen, we're we're all rich.

We don't we don't even know it.

You may not know what an IRA is, you may not know what Roth is, you may not know what all of those things.

Kevin's gonna teach all these things, 401ks and 403Bs.

But you, listen, you may not know all that, but you are rich.

You need to understand how rich you are, and then listen, you need to understand that you can do something with what God has made you rich with.

My wife grew up in a little small town called Soperton in Trotland County, Georgia.

And if and listen, if you don't know, if you've never heard of Soperton, most people on this planet haven't heard of Soberton, okay?

So if if you don't know it's there, you wouldn't ever go there.

And so her uh she grew up on a farm out in the country in Trotland County down below Dublin, and so probably six or seven years ago, we were in the car with her mom, and we were driving down this highway, and and uh her mom looks out the car and said, It's really sad what happened to Mr.

Jackson.

And I turned and looked, and there was a house that was partially burned down.

And I said, Miss Janie, what happened to Mr.

Jackson?

What's the story with Mr.

Jackson?

She said, Well, he he he he was an older man in our community, grew up very poor, and he worked for one of the wealthy business owners here in Troopland County and lived his whole life in that house, and and the house caught on fire, and tragically he was not able to get out, and he died of smoke inhalation.

And so she goes on to tell me this story when the firefighters went in and put the fire out, and they began to kind of uh pull everything out of the house, they found$240,000 cash stashed away in little bank envelopes hidden in that house.

Now, the firefighters said there was a lot more that burned, so there's no telling how much that Mr.

Jackson had in that house.

Now, let me tell you the sad part is Mr.

Jackson didn't even know probably how much he had in that house because here was his life.

He would go and work for this for this wealthy business owner, probably at a lower-level type job, and he would take his paycheck every week and he would go get it cashed at the local bank, and he would ask the cashier, would you put it in one of those little white bank envelopes?

And he would pull out just enough for him to stop by the grocery store and take care of all of his basic needs, and then he would go and hide the rest in a little spot in his house.

And so when they went and started pulling everything out, they found hundreds of these little white envelopes stuffed with cash that he had just put away, living his simple lifestyle.

And so Mr.

Jackson probably had no clue that he had that kind of wealth because if you'd seen the house, you would have never thought that he was a wealthy man.

Now let me tell you why that's sad to me.

It's sad because obviously he died tragically in the fire, but what else is sad is he had all that wealth and he never was able to do anything that he possibly could have done with it, not knowing what he had at his disposal.

See, there was no will.

There was no paying it forward.

That's the big idea for today.

You can't take with you what God has provided you, but you can send it ahead.

You can pay it forward.

And so that story is sad because he was never able to invest it in some type of eternal cause or eternal destination or handing it over to the next generation.

He wasn't aware of his wealth.

And because he wasn't aware, he couldn't do something with it.

Now, here's the interesting thing.

When they everybody found, when people in that community found out how much money was in Mr.

Jackson's house, they were all suddenly related to him.

But can you imagine the mess?

Can you imagine how cutthroat it would have been for people scrambling, trying to get their hands on that type of wealth?

Here's what Timothy's saying in this passage.

He's saying, He's saying that there are those of you that are rich, and I know he's talking to rich people because it says in 1 Timothy 6, verse 17, he says, command those who are rich.

1 Timothy 6:17

So who's rich?

We're all rich.

We're all much better off than we think.

So he says, command the rich in this present world, the people who have who clean out their refrigerators with left from leftovers so they can get more leftovers in their refrigerator.

The people who who who who get frustrated because they wait in line at the tag office for their big SUV, or the people who get frustrated because it takes 30 to 60 seconds for the water in the shower to go from cold to hot.

He said, tell those people in this present world that are rich.

Here's what he says.

Verse 17.

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth.

So he says, hey, don't be haughty.

And I love Kevin's story because Kevin, he'll tell his story in detail, but Kevin will tell you at the age of 21, he had over$100,000 in credit card debt.

At the age of 21.

And then, and you heard now, at his place in life, he's completely out of debt.

Not just out of debt, he is at a point where he can invest in eternity substantially.

Don't be arrogant or put your hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, right?

In 2008, we know it's uncertain.

But put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

Now, let me tell you what he's not saying.

He's not saying, let me step over here.

This is my non-spiritual side of the podium, okay?

He's not saying that you can never have any fun.

I mean, we we had, you know, you know, Tyler said probably close to 100, you know, 65, 75 guys at least, maybe more, that gathered yesterday and had fun.

There's nothing wrong with fun.

That's not what the Bible says.

The Bible does not say that it's wrong.

It doesn't say that it's wrong for you to have nice things, for you to enjoy life, for you to have a car, for you to have a house, for you to have some nice clothes.

That's not what Paul is saying here.

He's saying, listen, there there is a certain amount of enjoyment in this present world.

But he's saying, he said, he differentiates the present world from eternity.

And at the very end of the passage, he says, he said, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

I love that.

But he says, he says there's life, and then there's life that is truly life.

What does he mean by that?

He's saying there is an eternity.

There is an age that is to come.

And he's saying that that matters more than the age that we live in right now.

As a matter of fact, let me give you a brief explanation of the grand story that we're talking about here.

When God created everything in the beginning, if you go back to Genesis, it gives us this idea of this beautiful garden where He gives Adam and Eve, He creates Adam and Eve, and He gives them responsibility.

He says, you take dominion, you be fruitful, you multiply, you fill the earth.

And so that's God's plan.

And it says that he would walk with them in the cool of the day.

And so there's this perfect shalom, this perfect peace of relationship between humanity and creation and God, the Creator.

He says, Don't eat of, you need to enjoy everything in this garden.

He said, But this one tree.

Don't eat of this tree.

And so what do they do?

They decide that they can do things better in their own strength, their own power.

And then they're deceived and they eat of that tree.

And at that point, everything is broken.

Everything is broken.

Paul refers to it in Romans 5, verse 12.

Romans 5:12

He says, When sin entered, death came as a result.

So everything that you see broken in this world, it goes back to that.

All the sin, all the disease, all the sickness, all the sadness, all the depression, all the death, all the brokenness, all the environmental issues, everything that we look at with this world and we say, there's not, there's something that's not right with that, it all goes back to that point where brokenness entered the equation.

But here's what God said.

He says, Because I love my creation, because I love the people that I created, I'm not going to leave them to their brokenness.

And so we see the beginning of the gospel, even in Genesis chapter 3, he says, he looked at Eve and he said, The seed of this woman will crush the head of the evil one, which was prophetic to the one who would come, and his name is Jesus.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And so God says, I'm going to send my son in this world, and he is going to live a righteous life.

He's going to live the life that none of us can live because we're broken and we've been stained by sin.

And so he lives this righteous life on our behalf.

But here's what else he does: He says, I'm going to allow my son to die and pay the penalty that everybody deserves to pay for their brokenness and for their sin.

And so he allowed Jesus to be arrested and beaten and then cruelly crucified on a Roman cross.

And in that crucifixion, he took all the sin, all the punishment that all you and I deserve.

And he took it upon himself.

In our place.

And they took his body after he'd finished breathing.

And they put him in a tomb and buried him.

But he didn't stay there.

Amen.

He ended up getting up and walking out of that tomb, resurrected, restored.

With life.

Is truly life.

And it points.

Thank you.

Somebody's with me on this, okay?

One Pentecostal down here with me, right?

There's two Pentecostals in the room.

Maybe three back there, right, Kurt?

So he comes back to life to point to a life that is truly life.

And if you will put your faith in this man who would give his life, suffer, and die for us, and then rise again to show that he has power over sin, over death, over brokenness, then you can have the life that is truly life.

And so this whole series that we've been talking about over the past few weeks is to take what we have through Christ, and I wrote this in my notes, we are now blessed to be a blessing.

That is the purpose of our life.

We are blessed to be a blessing.

And so that becomes the purpose of our life.

So why do we want to be blessed to be a blessing?

Why do we want to store up treasure?

Why would we take the commands that Paul writes to Timothy to heart?

Why would we experience that?

Why would we want to pay it forward?

Why is it does it matter how we handle our wealth and our finances and our money?

Because eternity hangs in the balance.

And I don't want to be like Mr.

Jackson and have spent my life earning a living to have it all burned up.

I want to pay it forward.

Listen, I'm certainly going to enjoy.

I'm going to enjoy life.

I'm going to enjoy my family.

That's not the issue, is to condemn any of you for enjoying the things that you enjoy.

But why would we store up treasures in heaven?

Here's a few things.

Because heaven, not earth, is my home.

Here's what Paul says to the Philippians.

He says, For as I often told you before, now tell you again, even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their destiny is destruction.

It's a description of the world we live in.

Their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.

Their mind is set on earthly things.

Listen to what he says, verse 20.

But our citizenship is in heaven.

And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So he said, hey, listen, your citizenship is not here on this earth.

Your citizenship is in heaven.

And one day Jesus is going to return and he's going to restore everything back to the way that he created it.

We're going to have a new heaven and a new earth.

And we'll live in complete peace and shalom and perfect unity with our Savior again.

And so, because heaven, not earth, is my home, why else will we store up treasures in heaven?

Because the line is longer than the dot.

Look at this picture up here.

Here's what I want you to see: is that your life is a dot compared to eternity.

And so when we when we understand that we live in the dot right now, but we're going to live forever in eternity.

But your dot matters in eternity.

How you live here matters.

And so in Hebrews 11, it says, people who say such things show that they're looking for a country of their own.

If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had the opportunity to return.

Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

Why else we store up treasures in heaven?

Finally, because it's a smart thing to do.

It's a smart thing to do.

That's what Jesus says.

He says, Don't store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and vermin destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and vermin do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Last week, I laid the bucket here on the stage and I said, you know what?

What really God wants, rather than just for me to throw a few dollars, it's almost as if I could crawl up in that bucket with my whole life.

That's what he wants.

To give myself to God.

Number two is to act and live like a steward, not an owner.

And what does that mean?

It means that everything you have comes from God.

Everything we own, we are stewards, we are managers of it.

And we recognize that God has blessed us with everything that we have in our possessions.

It might be your marriage, it might be your family, but it's also your physical possessions, your automobiles, your home, your clothing, everything you have, your bank account.

And so he says, act as a manager or act as a steward.

Don't live as if you are an owner.

And that's the difference between the me tree and the he tree.

View everything through the lens of eternity.

Listen what Hebrews 11 says.

Moses chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as a greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward.

And if you don't know the story of Moses, the story of Moses is a young man who was raised in the palace of Pharaoh and he walked away from it so he could obey God and set his people free from slavery in Egypt.

Number four, be intentional in your generosity.

Be intentional with your generosity.

And it's this idea of you know what?

I'm gonna put some thought, I'm gonna put some prayer, I'm gonna put some some little, I'm gonna put some elbow grease into how I handle my finances so I can make the most of it and be intentional with it.

2 Corinthians 9 7, the Apostle Paul writes to the church there, he says, each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

And so there's no guilt, there's no condemnation.

As I say all the time, this room is a no guilt, no shame, no condemnation space, right?

So there's no compulsion.

But there is this recognition, finally, that there is limited time and incredible opportunity that lies ahead for us.

I told the gathering at 9:15.

I don't consider Church at the Grove to be a big church.

You know, we have two campuses, we're one church, two locations, and I don't think of us as big.

On occasion, I run into people, they say, hey, you're you're you know, you got a big church, you got a lot of people, whatever.

I think we're a small or a medium-sized church.

But I do say this: we might be a small church, but we have big dreams.

And part of that is that we want to impact eternity.

We want to impact eternity here in Walton County.

We want to impact eternity in the East Metro area.

We want to impact eternity in Newton County, Rockdale County, Gwinnett County, Walton County, Oconee County, Morgan County.

We want to impact eternity in our local community.

We want to impact eternity in the state of Georgia.

We want to see a nation maybe potentially changed because a small group of people that live on the edge of suburban Atlanta decided that eternity matters.

I want to impact places like Romania, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, places where we invest resources already and support churches and support ministries.

There's dreams about new campuses and new churches.

And so God is simply waiting for those of us who understand this to begin to prepare and be intentional with what we own and what we have.

Next week we start a new series that's called For the Grove or For the City.

So in Social Circle, it'll be all about for the city, for the circle.

Up here, it's for the grove.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna teach for three weeks.

And then on March 22nd, rather than gather here, we're gonna scatter.

And so instead of having church here, we're gonna send you out in teams to do ministry in our community.

We're gonna partner with people at Walnut Grove High School and Walnut Grove Elementary and Youth Elementary and some of the other surrounding schools, and we're gonna partner with the city of Walnut Grove, and we're gonna partner, and so, and and some of you will do some physical things off the property.

Some of you, if you feel like, hey, I can't do a lot of physical labor, then we're gonna have you gather here and we're gonna pack care baskets and boxes for first responders, and and we're gonna love those that love and serve us sacrificially.

And so God has put within us together something that is of a dream that would impact the world far beyond after many of us are gone.

That's why we talk about the next generation all the time.

So would you pray with me?

There's a gravestone that's found in Cairo, Egypt.

And it's a burial spot for a guy named William Borden.

He lived from 1887 to 1913.

Borden was a graduate of Yale.

He was a uh he inherited great wealth.

He felt God calling him to take the gospel of Jesus to some of the people that were the least reached.

And so he he pretty much sold everything he owned and he went and he went to Egypt to share the gospel of Jesus with the Muslim people.

His gravestone is not very, it's not very impressive.

Matter of fact, it's very simple.

It's a little placard that says, apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.

And it's put there by the people that he reached that were Muslims before they turned to put their faith in Christ.

Not far from where he's buried, you can go look at an exhibit to the Egyptian King Tut.

He died when he was 17 years old.

But he was buried with all this wealth and all this gold and all this opulent um gold plated and and and and just all of the stuff that he had.

It filled up his tomb that was discovered in 1922.

And I want you to think about comparing these two lives.

One man lived in opulence and he called himself king, and now he is living in a misery, in a Christless eternity.

The other lived a modest life and walked away from his inheritance here on earth so he could serve the Lord, the one true king, and share the gospel.

And now he is enjoying his everlasting reward in the presence of his Savior.

I think he made a decision.

William Borden did.

He said, I've got it made here on this earth.

But I know that there's something more to this life.

There is a life that is truly life.

And he put his faith in a Savior that could give him that true life.

And he knew at that point it mattered that he became more like Jesus over and above just becoming the best at anything else.

And with that prayer, God led him to use his wealth to carry the gospel message to unreach people.

May that be our prayer this morning.

Father, more of you, less of me.

Make me more like Jesus in every way.

If you've never put your faith in Christ, this would be a great morning to do so.

If you've put your faith in Christ, maybe your step this morning is to take a step in obedience in how you steward everything God has provided you.

Would you stand with me as we conclude this service?

Just let's just all stand together.

And let's make this song a prayer and a declaration in such a way that we are seeking a life that is truly life.