Sermon Tone Analysis

Bling Week Two

Bling Week Two

Blingthink

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

August 3~/5, 2007

 

Good morning and welcome to our new series, Bling.

I know I am glad to be here.

I had a great time away, at the beginning vacation and sailing and for the last couple of weeks study break…it was awesome…but I actually cut it off earlier than planned, because I was ready to get back.

I can’t wait for this next year…do you realize what is happening around here?

What God is doing?

Can you believe he chose people like you and me to do his work here in this area?

This is going to be a great year.

I also was so honored to pray for you, those who gave me prayer requests.

My guess is that there were about 1600 prayer requests, but I walked away so encouraged by them…because what you wanted me to pray for was great stuff…struggles at times…but I was so impressed with your perspective, what you really want from God, and I trust that he will give it.

Let’s get to Bling, a series about stuff.

Again, this is not a series designed to get something from you, but to give something to you.

Jesus talked more about money than any other subject, but he never asked for it.

He just knew that money is so central in our lives and is one of the biggest practical and spiritual issues we face.

How we think about and handle money and stuff is perhaps the biggest indicator of where our heart is as related to God.

Today we are going to talk about a big problem that most of us in this room have with money and stuff, and that is what to do with more than we need, with extra.

Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Extra?

You kidding.

I don’t have extra, I need more!

I don’t have enough!

Do you know how much financial pressure I feel right now?”

I know a lot of us feel pressure in this culture, even though we make more money than any other part of the world.

If you live on more than 2 dollars a day, you are in the top half of the world’s wealthy.

I understand because of our lifestyle choices we have a lot of imposed pressure, but almost everyone in here has more than they absolutely need to survive.

We live in a culture of extra, where most people have more than they need.

When I was in college, some of my friends picked up a foreign student from the airport.

I went to a Christian college, and this was a guy from Burundi if I am remembering right, who had never been outside of his little, rural, poverty-oriented African village.

Some missionaries talked the college into accepting him and he got a scholarship.

His name was Kabachia Minyuri, and he was a really great guy.

So, they pick him and his wife up from the airport, and on the way home they stop at a grocery store to get them some groceries for their apartment.

Now, he had never been in the US before, and therefore never been in one of our grocery stores.

When he walked in the store, he was absolutely overwhelmed with all the stuff…he literally fell back and sat on the floor just totally overwhelmed.

He couldn’t move for a while.

He said, “I just never imagined this…all this food and all these things in one place.”

We live in a culture of plenty, of lots of stuff…a culture of abundance, where we have more than we absolutely need.

And that gives us very unique challenges and very unique opportunities.

Since most of us in this room have more stuff and more stuff available to us than in any other culture in any other time of history, the question we are looking at today is, “What do I do with extra?

What does Jesus think about stuff?

How can this be a really great thing in my life, instead of something that produces pressure, guilt, anxiety, and discontent.

How can I experience joy and peace and contentment in a world of extra?

Today we are going to look at a story that Jesus told to answer the question, “What do I do with extra?”

In a culture like ours, it is a question we need to be asking ourselves all the time.

Why does God give extra to us?

How are we to think about it?

Jesus tells this story about a man with that problem, and this man had some perspectives completely contrary to God’s perspectives that kept him from experience peace and joy…in fact, in the end this guy experienced complete and total ruin…all because of his mis-perspectives about money and stuff.

As we look at this story, I want to uncover some of those myths, those mis-perspectives, to learn God’s perspective on extra, on stuff…because I believe most of us in the room tend to think more like this man in the story than we think like God when it comes to stuff, and no wonder money issues get so consuming and pressure-producing.

What we think, our perspective, determines how we act, the choices we make.

Therefore, it is so important to get our thinking solid about stuff.

Let’s read the story, and uncover the myths:

 

Slide: ___________) Luke 12:15-21

 

/15 Then he said to them, “Watch out!

Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.

17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do?

I have no place to store my crops.’

18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do.

I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years.

Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool!

This very night your life will be demanded from you.

Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21 “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” /

/ /

Jesus gives us a warning about stuff, and the guy in the story has a real problem.

He has extra, more than he needs.

Notice that he is already “rich,” and in the Bible rich is someone who has more than he needs.

Relative to Bible times, you and I are rich like this man.

So, he has more than he needs, and he gets a windfall because of a good crop.

He has worked hard for this, it just didn’t drop into his lap, but now he has a problem, a good problem, but a problem.

“What do I do with my extra?”

He is going to answer that question based on some presuppositions about the extra, about his stuff.

This story is called the story of the rich fool.

He wasn’t a fool because he was rich.

He worked hard to get rich.

He was a fool though because he didn’t think well about his riches, about his stuff, and he made all the wrong decisions.

So, let’s think back through the story and uncover the foolishness, because the same myths that ruled his thinking tend to rule ours in this culture of extra.

Slide: ___________ Mis-assumption One: My money is my money.

The first myth is that his stuff was his stuff, and you can see why he thought that way because, after all, he worked hard for it.

So, when he gets extra, he naturally asks the question, “What do I do with my extra money?”

The way Jesus tells the story really accentuates this.

He doesn’t look to God, but thinks to himself.

He says,

 

Slide: ___________) “What shall */I/* do? */I/*/ /have no place to store */my/ *crops.

*/I /*know what */I/* will do.

*/I/* will tear down */my/* barns and build bigger ones,  and there */I/* will store all */my/* grain and */my/* goods.

And */I/*’ll say to */myself/*, ‘*/You/* have plenty of good things laid up for many years.

Eat, drink, and be merry!’

Count the personal pronouns, and what number do you get? 12! In three sentences, he uses 12 personal pronouns, I and my.

Actually in the Greek text, there are 13, because when he says, “I will say to myself…” in the Greek, it adds another self, so it literally reads, “I will say to myself, /self…/ This guy is even talking to himself.

His basic fallacy is, “My extra belongs to me, so therefore it is mine to consume.”

Extra is for my consumption.

Now that basic lie is what fuels our whole culture today.

My extra is mine, and therefore mine to consume.

When we believe this, our only question is, “How do I want to spend my money?”

But this is a lie.

The Bible makes it very clear that we are not owners of our money and stuff but stewards of our money and stuff…meaning that all that we have belongs to God, and he gives extra to us so that we can use it for him and not just spend it on us.