Napoleon Christ UMC
Enough Stewardship Sermon #1
October 5, 2014
When Dreams Become Nightmares
(Using “The Economic Crisis” video clip)
Today I’m starting a new sermon series based on the book “Enough” by Adam Hamilton. I’m excited about this series, because it focuses on helping us rediscover what the Bible tells us about our financial practices. Today and for the rest of the month, we’re going to be talking about practical things we can do to pay down our own personal debt, about ways we can learn to make better financial decisions, and about how we can become more generous givers. Along with the sermons, we’re offering a weekly Bible study where we’ll learn about budgeting and setting goals. The study begins this evening at 7 p.m. It’s open to everyone, and there’s no cost to attend.
So let me start by asking you a question. How many of you have ever dreamed of winning the lottery? How many of you have ever thought about what you’d do if you suddenly came into a whole lot of money? I don’t buy lottery tickets myself, but when I hear that the lottery is worth millions and millions of dollars, I can’t help but dream about what I’d do if that money was mine. I’d pay off my bills, I’d buy my kids new cars, I’d probably buy myself a new car! The list goes on and on and on. Maybe you’re like me; maybe you have dreams about what you’d do if you’d win the lottery or suddenly come into a lot of money.
But you know, not all dreams are good ones. Sometimes what appears to be a “dream come true”turns out to be a nightmare. Listen to this story of what happened whena man named Andrew Jackson Whittaker won a $315 million Powerball jackpot in December 2002.Whittaker felt he should share his wealth with those in need, so hepledged 10 percent of his fortune to various Christian charities, he donated $14 million to the Jack Whittaker Foundation, and he even gave a house, a new truck, and $50,000 cash to the woman who worked at the convenience store where he’d purchased his winning ticket.
Despite his generosity, Whittaker’s life took a turn for the worse, and he was soon hit by various legal and personal problems. On Aug. 5, 2003, less than a year after he’d won the lottery, thieves stole $545,000 cash from his car. On Jan. 25, 2004, robbers once again broke into his car, stealing an estimated $200,000. Those robberies were followed by a string of personal tragedies. On Sept. 17, 2004, his granddaughter’s boyfriend was found dead from a drug overdose in Whittaker’s home. Three months later, his granddaughter also died of a drug overdose.
And then in January 2007, Whittaker reported to the police that thieves had completely emptied his bank accounts. Since then, he’s been sued by various people, including a casino ownerwho filed charges against him for bouncing $1.5 million worth of checks that he wrote to cover gambling losses.At one point, Whittaker said to reporters, “I wish I’d torn that [lottery] ticket up.”
Now his isn’t the only “dream turned to nightmare” story out there. A few years ago, a man named William Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery. Shortly after he won, his ex-girlfriend sued him for a share of the winnings and won. Then his brother hired a hit man hoping that he’d inherit some of his money; the hit wasn’t carried out though. But within a year of winning all that money, Post was $1 million in debt and had filed for bankruptcy. Today he lives on food stamps and a $450 monthly stipend.
You know, there are lots more stories like those, where we hear of people who come into a lot of money, but within a relatively short amount of time, lose it all. But somehow – for some reason – many of us still dream about striking it rich, making our million, leaving our mark on the world. That’s the American Dream, isn’t it? And for most of us, that dream has to do with a subconscious desire for achieving success and satisfying our desire for material possessions. It’s our opportunity to have more and to be more than we are right now. And you now, we tend to measure our success by the stuff that we possess.
Did you know that the love of money and the things money can buy is the driving force behind most of what we Americans do? We want to consume, acquire, and buy our way to happiness—and we want it now. Unfortunately, the American Dream has become an American Nightmare due to two distinct yet related illnesses that impact us both socially and spiritually.
The first is called affluenza. Affluenza is the constant need for more and bigger and better stuff, as well as the effect that this need has on us. It’s the desire to acquire, and most of us have been infected by this virus to some degree.
Just listen to this: The average American home went from 1,660 square feet in 1973 to 2600 in 2013. That’s an increase of almost 1000 square feet of living space, even though the size of the average family has decreased. And as big as our houses are, they can’t even hold all of our stuff. Today it’s estimated that there’s 1.9 billion square feet of self-storage space in America. 1.9 billion square feet. That’s a lot of storage space, isn’t it?
Now the other illness that we’re suffering from is called Credit-itis. Credit-itis is an illness that’s brought on by the opportunity to buy now and pay later, and it feeds on our desire for instant gratification. Our economy today is built on the concept of credit-itis. Unfortunately, it’s exploited our lack of self-discipline and allowed us to feed our affluenza, wreaking havoc in our personal and national finances.
Back in 1990, the average credit card debt in America was around $3,000. Today it’s over $9,000. And economists tell us that when we use a credit card to pay for our purchases, we tend to spend about 125 percent more than if we pay with cash.
Credit-itis isn’t limited to purchases made with credit cards; it extends to car loans, mortgages, and other loans. The length of the average car loan and home mortgage continues to increase, while the average American’s savings rate continues to decline. Affluenza coupled with credit-itis has become the way of life for many Americans, and as we know, it’s causing a lot of problems for many people.
Let’s listen to a couple of economists talk about how these same human vulnerabilities have affected the larger markets and the current crisis and why our best economic advisors didn’t fully see this last economic crisis coming. SHOW VIDEO CLIP “THE ECONOMIC CRISIS.”
There were two things that the second man said that I really love. First, at the very end, he said that “Maybe just maybe, we can…resist temptation and live slightly different lives than in the past.” He’s saying there’s hope, right? But what he said before that really is the heart of his message, and of this message too. He said, “There is a saving grace…perhaps faith can take us into ways that we can fight this way of inevitable human nature.” In other words, through our faith in Jesus Christ we can fight off affluenza and resist credit-itis.
You know, folks, even though we were created in the image of God, our lives have been distorted. We were meant to desire God, but we’ve turned that desire toward possessions. We were meant to find our security in God, but we find it in amassing wealth. We were meant to love people, but instead we compete with them. We were meant to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, but we busy ourselves with pursuing money and things. We were meant to be generous and to share with those in need, but we selfishly hoard our resources for ourselves.
You know, God knew that we’d be tempted by money and material things, and so this issue is addressed time and time again in the Bible. In fact, financial matters are mentioned more often in the Bible than prayer, healing, or mercy. Just listen to a few passages. In 1 Timothy 6:10b we hear, “Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”In Ecclesiastes 5:10, it’s recorded that, “The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity.”
Jesus Himself spoke about money many times. In John 10:10, we hear, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” And in Matthew 16:26, we hear, “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”
You know, the devil doesn’t need to tempt us to do drugs or to steal or to have an extramarital affair in order to destroy us. All he needs to do is convince us to keep pursuing the American Dream—to keep up with the Joneses, to borrow against our futures, to enjoy more than we can afford, to indulge ourselves. By doing that, he’ll rob us of joy, make us slaves, and keep us from doing God’s will.
You know, although we receive a changed heart when we accept Christ, in a sense we need a heart change every morning. Each morning we need to get down on our knees and say, “Lord, help me to be the person you want me to be today. Take away the desires that shouldn’t be there, and help me be single-minded in my focus and my pursuit of you.” When we do this, God comes and cleanses us from the inside out, purifying our hearts.
Christ works in us as we seek first His kingdom and strive to do His will. And when we do that, we begin to sense a higher calling—a calling to simplicity and faithfulness and generosity. We begin to look at ways we can make a difference with our time and talents and resources. By pursuing good financial practices, we free ourselves from debt so that we’re able to help others in need. And so with God’s help, we can simplify our lives and silence the voices that are constantly telling us that we need more stuff. We can live counter-culturally by living below, not above, our means. We can build into our budgets the money to buy with cash instead of credit, and we can build into our budgets what we need to be able to live generously and faithfully.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to explore ways we can overcome our human nature and live the lives that God has planned for us. We’re going to look at what the Bible says about wise use of our money, how we can begin to find contentment in simpler living, and tips we can use to help us give up the need for instant gratification. And we’ll also learn how we can become generous givers.
I invite you to make every effort to be here in worship the next few weeks so that you can become the person God wants you to be, and alleviate some of the worry and concern you may be experiencing in your own life. I also encourage you to attend the Bible study on Sunday evenings at 7:00. Even if you can’t make every class, come as often as you can. I promise that you’ll learn a lot of practical tips and suggestions that will help you.
As we close today, please join me in prayer: Change our hearts, O God. Clean us from the inside out. Make us new. Heal our desires. Help us hold our possessions loosely. Teach us generosity and help us have joy. We offer you our lives today and always. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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