The Good Confession

1 Timothy 6:11-21

November 13, 2016 (Generosity Sunday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

Video Opener

It is good, right and appropriate this morning that we have taken some time to honor those who have fought for and protected our country. It’s so appropriate, as well, to have Veteran’s Day come in the same week as the election, especially this year, as it gives us a pause, a time to remember that this freedom we value, this life we have, even the ability to vote and choose our leaders for better or for worse, is due in part to the many brave men and women who have given their all to provide and ensure that freedom. Thank you this morning to Tom Greenlee for helping us remember those who have fought the good fight.

We borrow that phrase often, of course, from the passage of Scripture we read this morning. Paul, in writing to his young son in the faith, Timothy, encourages Timothy to “fight the good fight” (6:12) and then later on, in what is probably his last letter, Paul describes himself in the same way: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day…” (2 Timothy 4:6-8). Literally, that phrase means “to agonize the good agony,” and it came not from the world of death or military action, but from the world of sports. It originally meant to win the athletic contest, to struggle to be the best, to exert every ounce of energy it takes to win (Earle, “1 Timothy,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 11, pg. 386). Paul then uses that imagery to describe the Christian life. In other words, he is saying that this faith is worth giving everything we have, all that we are, in order to, as he says elsewhere, “win the prize” (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:24). Paul calls Timothy, and us, to give all that we are, all of our heart, to the pursuit of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness (6:11).

Yet there are so many things that call for our attention and distract us along the way. My wife is very distractible, and I have her permission to share this story. It wasn’t too long ago, we were upstairs finishing a project and she told me she was going downstairs to do some cleaning. I said fine, I’d be down shortly, and when I did go downstairs, I found her making apple crisp. What happened to the cleaning? Well, she went into the kitchen and suddenly thought, “Oh, I’m hungry for apple crisp.” And so it goes at the Ticen household…and elsewhere. We are easily distracted in this world. So many shiny things! It’s hard to run the good race and fight the good fight when there are just so many other things that call for our attention. That’s part of the reason we are taking these three weeks to ask the question, “What Has Your Heart?” We began laying the foundations last week as we talked about the ways service begins to focus our hearts. But there are other areas of our lives, areas that Paul specifically addresses in this last part of his first letter to Timothy, as he calls Timothy to be true to his good confession.

Sermon Study Guide

In this passage, Paul uses the phrase “the good confession” twice, first in reference to Timothy (6:12) and then in reference to Jesus (6:13). A lot of ink has been spilled in the commentaries over exactly what Paul meant here, so take that into consideration as I offer my best understanding of it. We usually think of a confession as either an admission that we have done something wrong, like in a confession of sin or the confession of a crime. Sometimes we narrow the word down to a simple statement of what we say we believe, such as when we might recite one of the ancient or modern creeds of the church. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth…” and so on. But here’s the problem with understanding “confession” that way: Jesus hadn’t done anything sinful or wrong. He hadn’t committed a crime. And he didn’t need to state what he believed; he is the one people are called to believe in. It’s also important to note where Paul says Jesus made his “good confession:” in front of Pontius Pilate. Remember what happened during that trial? Jesus sealed his fate by at first refusing to answer Pilate and then by reminding Pilate that Pilate had no power over Jesus except the power given to him from above (cf. John 19:11). The “good confession” Jesus made in that moment was a determination to do what his heavenly Father had set before him. Despite his prayer the night before in Gethsemane, when he begged God the Father to choose another way to save the world, in front of Pilate, Jesus was undeterred. He was obedient, even to death (cf. Philippians 2:8). The “good confession” is a determination to follow Jesus, even when it gets hard, even if there is persecution, even if no one else understands. It’s not just singing, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus;” it’s actually following wherever he leads. In the presence of “many witnesses,” that’s the confession Timothy had made (6:12) and, by God’s grace, it was the confession he would never turn back from.

But that confession is not just for Timothy, because it’s in the context of that confession that Paul turns to one final matter in his letter. Throughout these chapters, he has been giving advice to Timothy and to the church at Ephesus where Timothy was the pastor. But there’s one area he hasn’t touched yet, one final area he even seems reluctant to talk about because it comes after the benediction. That topic is still sometimes a difficult one to talk about, and it’s the topic of money. Here’s the context Paul wants us to think about: if we make “the good confession” and determine to follow Jesus wherever he leads, then that involves everything our hearts can become focused on: not just our minds but also our wallets. So what advice does Paul give to young Pastor Timothy when it comes to Christians, our money, and our confession?

There are three clear instructions Paul gives to those who have money in Ephesus (whether they had money before or made it after they became a Christian isn’t clear and doesn’t matter in the long run), so let’s look quickly at those three instructions, their implications and then consider whether Paul’s word to the Ephesians then has anything to do with us today. So, the first instruction Paul gives to those in Ephesus who have money is this: “Do not be arrogant” (6:17). Literally, he says, don’t be high minded. To the Romans he had put it this way: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment” (Romans 12:3). Just because you have money doesn’t make you better than anyone else. If you remember from a few weeks ago, when we followed Paul to Ephesus, there were these luxury apartments built above the main street in the ancient city. Those who had wealth and privilege could literally look down on the rest of the people. Paul would have walked by those apartments frequently; he may have even been invited into some of them. He knows what the lifestyles of the rich and famous in Ephesus is like. Don’t look down on others, he tells them. If you want to live out your good confession, don’t be arrogant. You are not better than your brother or sister who doesn’t have what you have.

And that leads to the second instruction Paul gives. In order to combat our natural arrogance, he reminds us of the uncertainty of money. “Don’t put your hope in wealth,” he says. Not only can’t we take it with us, we can’t even be sure we’re going to be able to keep it while we’re here (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Pastoral Letters, pg. 77). Some of us know that all too well. The stock market can change overnight, and suddenly a lot of money that used to be there isn’t there anymore. I had a friend who went into a deep depression when his pension, his security, suddenly dried up and virtually disappeared. What was he going to do? His depression lasted for many, many months as he worried about money; it had become his source of hope. A recent Harris poll found that the number one thing Americans are stressed about today is money—surprised? I’m not. (The second largest stressor, by the way, was “the annoying habits of the people I live with.”) Twenty-two percent of all divorces today center around conflicts over money; it’s the third-leading cause of divorce in America today. Credit cards, whose usage went down after the credit crisis eight years ago, have again begun to take prominence in our lives. They promise things we can’t yet afford. I remember being in Wal-mart several years ago and telling Christopher there was something he wanted we didn’t have the money for right then, and his immediate response was, “Well, just put it on the credit card.” He was genuinely confused when I explained to him that you still had to have money to pay the credit card company! For those who carry credit card debt today, the average balance for someone who doesn’t pay off their card every month is $15,674. The interest alone on that is about $2,500 a year. Beyond that, the average American has $28,000 in car loans, $48,600 in student loans, a mortgage of $172,341 and all of that on an average income of $75,600 per household. We’ve bought into the lie that hope lies in money, in wealth, and that’s in essence put us into a new form of slavery. We’re owned by the banks, the lending companies and our only hope, we think, is to somehow get more and more and more. But Paul says, “Don’t put your hope in wealth.” It’s uncertain. It will lie to you and it can disappear in a heartbeat.

Then the third instruction Paul gives sort of hearkens back to last week’s message, but I want to take a different direction this morning. To those who trusted in wealth to get them everything they wanted (like us), Paul says this: “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and wiling to share” (6:17). Now, a quick theological point here: Paul is not talking about salvation here. This is addressed to folks who have already determined to follow Jesus, who have made “the good confession,” and so these “good deeds” are not about earning our way or buying our way into eternal life. Good deeds, generosity, and works are all a response to Jesus, a response of gratitude for the way he has saved us and loves us. Paul urges Timothy to command those who have money to do good, not for their salvation, but for the sake of the broken and hurting world. You see, in Ephesus, just as in our own world, there were people and places where brokenness seemed to be the order of the day, the way things always would be. What if the folks in Ephesus who were people of means got together and determined to make a difference? What if that happened today?

Because the thing is, as I mentioned last week, as a nation we are wealthy. We may not feel like it, and many of us may not be in the income category that declares us as “rich” in this culture, but we do have means. If you have more than one set of clothes to wear, if you have a car that runs and food to eat, you are better off than many in our world. So often, we lament and complain about the problems in our community and in our world, but what if instead of that, we took what means we have and determined to live out this faith we say we believe? What if we made the “good confession,” and used the resources God has blessed us with to make a real difference? Yes, this is the stewardship sermon, the generosity request, and I’m not ashamed to ask you to reconsider the way you give because I know and believe there is great potential for Mount Pleasant to move from being a good church doing a lot of good things to being a great church changing the world. I believe that, and I know most of you do, too, or you wouldn’t be here. To be able to do that, though, we have to do what Paul says: put aside our arrogance and our overwhelming trust in money and begin to catch a vision of what God could do if we set out to become rich in good deeds, generous and willing to share.

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To see those things come to be, it will require us to move from a mindset of scarcity to abundance. Do we really believe what we say we do? Do we believe in a God who longs to open the gates of heaven and pour out blessings on us if we are faithful? Malachi says that’s what God wants to do. In fact, Malachi (an Old Testament prophet) is the only one who gives us permission to put God to the test. God, through the prophet, says this: “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” (Malachi 3:10). Obviously, in Malachi’s day, the tithe and the gift were in agricultural terms; that was what passed as money or as the way business was done in those days. The crop that came in was what was most precious, most important to them. Today, we generally don’t get paid that way. So the “tithe” or the “offering” today refers to the time, talents and treasures we give to God. Do we really believe that, if we were faithful in our giving, God would pour out so much blessing that we wouldn’t be able to handle it? Do we truly believe we serve a God who made the world, the universe and all that is in it? A God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills (cf. Psalm 50:10)? A God who is called Father and longs to give good gifts to his children (cf. Matthew 7:11)? Do we really believe this? Do we believe in a God who calls us to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world? Not just the transformation of you or me, but the transformation of the world. This is a big mission, and it calls us to have a mindset of abundance, that what God calls us to he will provide for (cf. Hebrews 13:20-21)—not supernaturally, but through the faithfulness of his people, people who want to change the world for eternity, not just pile up stuff. Do we really believe this mission is vital, important, critical? Do we believe the world hangs in the eternal balance?

And if we do, are we willing to line up our own priorities behind this mission? To make the “good confession” in our lives may require us to make different financial choices, set different priorities in our lives so that money isn’t what has our heart. The antidote to the hold money gets on our heart is generosity. John Wesley once said, “When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart” (qtd. in Stanley, How To Be Rich, pg. 73). I’ve shared before that when we were in seminary, only married a couple of years or so, Cathy and I made the decision to begin to follow the Biblical model of firstfruit tithing, giving our first ten percent to God through the church we are a part of. At that point in our lives, we didn’t have much. We were basically a one-income family, trying to get through seminary with as little debt as possible. She was working full-time at Asbury College for not much pay, and I was going to school as well as working on campus at the seminary. We were getting government subsidies and eating a lot of rice and beans. We would share grocery shopping twice a month with another couple and what we got on that night had to make it two weeks. And we got our television through rabbit ears while secretly being jealous of the building across the street where everyone somehow got free cable. Yet we knew that to be faithful to God, we had to fight the good fight against the hold that money and greed have over us. So I began, over twenty years ago, writing the first check each payday to the church. Ten percent in those days wasn’t much; I doubt Harrodsburg Church would have missed our offering if we hadn’t given it. But we needed to give it. We needed to follow Paul’s word of not putting our hope in wealth but in God instead. And, I’ve shared this many times over the years, I don’t know how it worked. To look at it on paper, matching income to bills, it didn’t make any sense. And yet we never had to borrow anything to attend school—either for my Master’s or for Cathy’s. God has been so good and so faithful as we’ve been faithful to him. To this day, I write the first check to the church when we are paid. And as God has blessed us, we’ve also been able to support other causes, including four different missionaries and two World Vision children. I don’t tell you that to draw attention to us, or to get any accolades, but to let you know that my experience is this: what God has said is true. When we are faithful to God, he will bless us richly so that we can bless others even more.

Now, I don’t know your financial situation, but I do know this: whatever it is, the call to generosity is the same. I also recognize that not everyone can get to giving away a tithe right away. Because we’ve generally bought into the lie that “the good life” consists of things, and because the American dream today means debt, we can’t just realistically jump to a ten percent tithe. I get that. It takes time to break the hold money has over your life. In fact, one financial planner says this: “Once you see the money problem in your life and begin to deal with it, it can take at least seven years to work it out” (Doudera, Wealth Conundrum, pg. 58). So the question is this: what can you do this next year, 2017? Considering all the possibilities of ministry that could happen here, can you step up 1% this next year?

In your bulletin this morning, you should have found the 2016 edition of our pledge card. If you’d take a moment and pull that out right now, let me say something you might not expect this morning: I don’t want you to fill it out or turn it in today. What I’m asking us each to do today is to take this pledge card home, so that families can talk and pray about it, and so that each of us can ask God what he would have us do, how we can each be a part of this ministry. Then, bring your card back next week to turn in during our Thanksgiving service. Prayer is the first and most vital part of our commitments to God, and sometimes, in our rush to make a commitment, we rush past that. But you’ve got a whole week to ask God: what is my part? What can I do to ensure that this church is able to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?

So here’s the information we ask for on this year’s pledge card. At the top is your opportunity to express your commitment to God through the church for the year 2017. Then, below that there are several choices. For some of you, this might be the first time you’ve made a pledge. You may have given to the church before, but you’ve never made a commitment in writing before. I’ll tell you why it’s important to me to do that: first, I want my church leadership to know they can count on me to be a part of the ministry here, and second, when I put something in writing, I’m more likely to do it. So if this is your first time to make a pledge in writing, please mark that item. The second choice is about tithing, giving ten percent of your income to God. If you’re at or above that level, or making steps toward that type of giving, check that line. The third choice is if you would like to do your giving online; we have a simple way to do that and we would love to help you get connected to that service. And then the fourth line is about the building fund. What are your plans to help continue paying off the ReBuild project? We’re two years into our plan and we would love to report in a year that we have it all paid off. Can you help in that regard? Remember, that is “above and beyond” giving, going beyond our normal pledged giving. The other thing you might notice on this pledge card is that funny little dotted box. That’s what’s known as a QR code, and if you scan that with your smartphone QR reader app, you will be taken to a place online where you can fill out this same card. We’ll also put this link on the Facebook page this week. So take this card home, pray about it, and bring them back next week or fill it out online.

One final word Paul has for those who have money. He’s called them to not be arrogant, to not put their hope in wealth, and to do good. Then there is this final word: “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 truly is life” (6:19). That’s the promise to those who learn to use well and manage what we have been given here, that in the end, we will inherit more than we could possibly imagine, a life that really is life. Jesus says to us, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48). We have been given much; Christ is asking us to make the good confession, live out our faith with everything we have and are, including our finances, so that we might inherit the life that really is life. Towar that end, then, let’s pray.