¹⁷Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. ¹⁹In 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.

²⁰Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, ²¹which some have professed and in so doing have departed from the faith.

Grace be with you all. (NIV11)

Jesus wants you to live the good life.

There.  I could have made that the theme of this sermon.  It’s true, but if someone had read that in the bulletin or on the screen, they could have too easily ended up with a false impression of what the message would be.

Because there are plenty of preachers — and hucksters — who would have no problem telling you that all that sin and grace stuff — all that suffering and death, cross and tomb stuff — is a distraction from what you really want your religion to be about:  getting rich, so you can have “the good life” — a heaven here on earth.  Many of those preachers make it “easier” for you to accept this message by demonstrating this in their own lives:  fancy suits, expensive cars, extensive vacations — sometimes even private planes and palatial mansions.  They usually count on their followers not making the logical connection between the “good life” the leaders are living and the “give the church your money to make God bless you” message they repeat every week.

But you don’t have to listen to those purveyors of the “prosperity gospel” to be told that the way to “the good life” is through wealth.  That’s pretty much the default position of most human societies, and what experience tends to show us.  When you define “the good life” as living in the lap of luxury, or at least as having the ability to always do what you want to do instead of what you have to do, well, yeah, you pretty much have to be rich to be served instead of serving, to have the best of everything, to vacation wherever you want whenever you want, to have no reason to be concerned about paying your bills.  And you expect it’s going to feel very good to be that rich and have that kind of life.

So people invest themselves in all sorts of efforts or schemes to get it.  Some simply choose hard work, but that’s distasteful for people who are aiming for an easy life, so the world is full of get rich quick schemes, lottery sales, multilevel marketing scams, and gambling. And movies, TV shows, and advertising of all sorts constantly underscore this message that the good life is to be gained by having wealth.  

It is no surprise, then, that Christians like you and me and our fellow church members absorb and adopt this idea that the way to the good life is getting — and staying — rich.  And the thought often follows that once you’ve gotten rich, it must be because you deserve it somehow, more than everybody else — because after all, wouldn’t everyone be enjoying a life of wealth and comfort, if no one deserved it more than others? 

Things were no different with the believers Paul and Timothy were dealing with in their era.  In fact, they were probably worse, because there was little to no “middle” between the upper and the lower classes and the poor were very poor. If you were wealthy, you had “the good life” — leisure time, luxury goods, being waited on, fashionable clothes, fancy homes — and you merited it; if you weren’t, you didn’t.

And so, as Paul closes out his first letter to the young pastor, he makes sure to address this attitude, because it’s not good and it leads away from Christ.  He writes, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain.”

One of the phrases there makes the apostle’s point very … pointedly: “rich in this present world”.  All those who have earthly wealth — including the Warren Buffetts, Bill Gates-es, and Elon Musks of our era — have it only for this life.  The old saying, “You can’t take it with you,” has persisted because it is true:  death is the great leveler, and on the other side of the grave, or at the Judgment when Christ returns, there will be no difference between the rich and the poor.  So thinking that wealth should define you — or seeing its pursuit as the purpose of your life — is the ultimate form of short-sightedness and failing to plan ahead.

But even in this life it’s not wise to put your trust in earthly riches, because, Paul reminds us, they are uncertain.  Stocks can lose their value, inflation can shrink the worth of cash, disasters can destroy property, and gold, silver, and precious gems can be lost or stolen — and all of these things can happen in just a day. Or a moment.

So don’t be arrogant, thinking that you deserve what you have and that it makes you better than others, and don’t put your hope in the money and property and investments you have gathered to yourself, because there is nothing there to hold onto — nothing permanent, nothing of lasting value, nothing worth grasping at for eternal life.  

Instead, put your hope in God, and in him alone.  He, after all, is the one who gives whatever wealth you have.  We might think of a 13-year-old boy going through a growth spurt:  if his hope for food to satisfy his cravings is based on counting on the refrigerator and pantry always being full, that’s a misplaced trust; instead his trust — and thanks — should be given to his parents, who work to provide that food and stock it where he can find it.  In the same way, believers will recognize that our confidence and comfort are not to be found in the abundance of our blessings, but in the love and faithfulness of the Lord who blesses us abundantly.

There is, however, a more important reason not to put one’s hope in riches — whether the riches we have now or the riches we’re striving to gain.  It’s that no matter how good wealth may make our life seem, it cannot save us from our sins.

And we are sinners.  It’s very tempting — and common — to think that having more and enjoying more will calm our consciences and make us feel better about the guilt we carry.  But neither escape into excesses nor donations to charity can actually remove the stain of the things we have done wrong and the things we have failed to do right.  The offense of our disobedience remains as an obstacle between us and God, and any thought that we can use earthly wealth to gain his favor is laughable, given that it all comes from and belongs to him in the first place.

The only way anyone can escape a sentence to death and hell for his or her sins is the way that God himself provides — the way that doesn’t ignore the reality of our impotence and unworthiness but meets it head-on: the way of Christ and his cross.  Jesus, the very Son of God, came down to earth, giving up the infinite wealth that was his in heaven, and became one of us as the son of Mary, so that he could live under God’s law in our place, obey it in our place, and then, with his innocent suffering and death, pay the price for our disobeying it in our place.  This was the only way to remove our guilt and satisfy God’s righteous wrath against our sin, and he did it.  Christ’s blood washes us clean, and his resurrection on Easter morning proved not only that he had succeeded in defeating our worst enemies — sin, death, and Satan — but that eternal life in heaven belongs now to everyone who puts his or her trust in our crucified and risen Savior.

So, no, don’t put your hope for this life or the next in earthly riches, human effort, or some kind of personal merit.  Trust instead, and only, in Christ, who gave us the richest gift of all:  full salvation from our sins and a home forever with him in heaven.

And there’s a bonus:  the same God who gave his Son to save us also “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”  Worldly wealth and distractions cannot truly satisfy us, but the Lord who meets our deepest and greatest needs — cleansing and eternal life — still wants us to enjoy the things he gives us for our earthly lives.

Paul goes on to tell Timothy to instruct Christians, having abandoned their hope in riches, to instead be wealthy in a different and infinitely better way:  to be rich in good deeds.  Love your neighbor — meet his needs, help her feed her family, attend to the sick, visit the lonely, honor your parents, be a good spouse and raise your children well, uphold marriage and protect life, speak well of others and put away falsehood, and in every way seek to serve others, thinking of their needs ahead of your own.  Be generous with what you have been given, and willing to share.  Blessings from God are amazing things — the more you spread them to others, the greater they grow.

Now at this point, your old nature might well be arguing:  “I’m not rich; none of this applies to me!”  Well, it does. In the first place, everyone has something, so everyone has something to share, and even if you had nothing, there is still plenty that you can do to love your neighbor.  

But also consider how many of the things that you take for granted would have been unattainable luxuries just a few generations ago — and still are in some parts of the world:  running water in your homes that you can drink without fear of getting sick — and it comes from the tap hot or cold.  Fresh, nutritious food in every season of the year.  Medicine to not only cure diseases that kill but also to improve or eliminate conditions that irritate or inconvenience.  Multiple changes of clothing, reliable heat in the winter — and cooling in the summer.  Transportation that can take you wherever you might want to go.  And the ability to communicate, in multiple ways, anywhere, with anyone you might wish to talk to.  Face it, by just about any measure that matters, you are wealthy — which means you have plenty of opportunity to be rich in good works.

And when we do all this good, out of thanks to God and love for others, in the power of the gospel that saves us, we build up for ourselves a treasure.  Not anything we can spend, like money, but something solid, lasting, and of inestimable value:  a foundation for the future — for eternal life.  It’s not that we’re basing our hope of heaven on good works, but our good works are evidence that heaven is where we belong. 

And this, Paul says, is “the life that is truly life”.  Faith in Jesus.  The gospel.  Christ’s cross.  The grace of God.  This, and the fruits that faith brings forth in us — service, generosity, kindness, consideration, holiness, compassion — this is the real good life.  These are the things that we can look at and say, “Now this is really living”.  These are the things that we can experience and say, “I want to live like this all the time.”  These are the things that we can see in other believers and say, “That’s good living!  That’s a Christian who has been blessed by God.”

Now, Paul’s not quite done.  He gets personal here at the end and tells Timothy to guard what has been entrusted to him — the truths of Christianity — to keep them safe and pure.  That means to believe and teach only what the Word of the Lord tells us, and to proclaim it all as true and relevant.  It also means to turn away from everything else that sets itself up as greater or better “wisdom”, but is really godless and empty, contrary to Scripture, and falsely called “knowledge”.  

This isn’t just an apostle trying to maintain Christianity’s “brand” or something — he reminds Timothy, and us, that when believers profess what is false, that means they abandon what is true — and turn away from the faith, the only thing that saves.  That’s not good — not for them, not for the church, not for the unsaved, not for anyone.  

And so you and I together will work and pray and pay attention to make sure that neither we nor our congregations nor anyone we have responsibility for or influence with turns away from the solid and saving truth of God’s Word. Instead, we will make sure that we always maintain, protect, and promote true knowledge as we find it in the Bible.  This, after all, is how we find and how we keep “the good life” which is the foundation for our and every believer’s future.

And that is what it’s all about.  This is the life we want to have — and it doesn't take tons of money — ours or other people’s.  It starts simply, with saving faith in Christ.  Blessing upon blessing follows from that, and good work upon good work follows in, through, and from us.  This is who you are, who you are meant to be, and what you have been created to do.  Jesus wants you to have the good life.  Amen.