How to Get Rich

Today we’re going to talk about how to get rich.

From what I understand, a lot of people are interested in that topic.

I want to contrast two different ways of getting rich, what might be called the way of conventional wisdom and the way of unconventional wisdom.

Conventional wisdom is that money is just about math. The more you get, the richer you are.

If you give some, then you’re left with fewer, so you lose. It’s just a numbers deal.

I have 10 $1 bills.

If I give $1 away, then I have nine left. If I don’t give any away, I have ten left. So I’m richer if I don’t give; I’m poorer if I do give. It’s just a numbers deal.

Conventional wisdom is, “Make as much as you can and keep as much as you make, because the more you give, the less you have, and the less you give, the more you have.”

If you give nothing, then you have the maximum amount you could have. If you have $10 and you give one, ten minus one is nine. But if you have $10 and you give nothing, ten minus zero equals ten. Ten is more than nine.

Is everyone with me so far?

This is deep. I understand.

In other words, conventional wisdom is, “It’s just math. Keeping is the better strategy to get rich than giving. It’s just math. It’s just numbers.”

There’s another way.

It’s the way of unconventional wisdom.
It’s counterintuitive.
It’s talked about down through history from a lot of different people, but never more clearly than from Jesus.

This is what Jesus said in Luke 6:38:

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

You’ll notice this is not a command. Jesus isn’t saying here, “You ought to give.”

You should, but that’s not what he’s saying here.

This is an observation about the way life works.
This is how things are.
This is a claim that conventional wisdom is wrong.

You can test this. You can be generous… and your heart will know.

What’s interesting is when you start to look for it, you see this claim, this other way, this unconventional wisdom, all through the Bible.

This is from the Old Testament, Proverbs 11:24-25

One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

Once again, this is a claim. It could be empirically tested.

When it comes to resources, finances, and generosity — conventional wisdom is wrong.

The old math will actually lead you astray.

People before Jesus saw this.
Jesus saw it.
People who followed Jesus saw this.
The apostle Paul, in the passage we’re going to look at today, saw this.

We’re going to be in 2 Corinthians 8 today.

Let me share a word or two of background before we read the text.

When Paul started his ministry, there was a lot of controversy over the idea of Paul bringing the Gospel to the Gentiles.

The church was originally made up of Jewish followers of Christ.

So there were Jewish leaders who wanted Paul to have the Gentiles circumcised to live under the law.

But Paul just wanted to proclaim the Gospel.

So there was a meeting of leaders in the church in Jerusalem.

They discussed Paul’s desire… and ultimately they decided they would send Paul out to proclaim the Gospel.

They had only one instruction to give him, and this is what it was. In Galatians 2:10, Paul says:

All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

So remembering the poor is so central to the Gospel that when the leaders sent Paul out to do ministry, it’s the one instruction they felt compelled to specify.

So now Paul travels to Gentile churches, and one of the things that he’s been commissioned to do is to raise funds for this project of helping the poor back in Jerusalem.

Now, we need to understand the particular significance of this project for Paul.

Paul is working with Gentiles who recently became followers of Jesus in these churches.

The great cultural barrier in Paul’s day was between Gentiles and Jewish people. They despised each other. They had no contact with each other.

And Paul was going to Gentile churches and asking them to give money which would go back to help the Jewish poor in Jerusalem…

So for Paul, this project had tremendous significance.

It was a visible expression of the fact that Jesus has torn down what he calls “the wall of hostility” between Jews and Gentiles.

It is a visible, tangible expression — this act of giving — is was a visible expression of the oneness of the followers of Jesus.

It is the redemption of economic relationships within the church.

Now, the real issue when it comes to money is the issue of trust.

Where do you have your trust?

So, I want to do an exercise in trust today.

I want to ask you to take out your phone and open your bank account app, or if you carry a wallet take that out, or if you have a checkbook, take that out — for those of you under 30, checks are little pieces of paper that people use to pay their bills. Does anyone have a checkbook? Whatever you have with you. If you carry cash, take that out for a moment.

Literally, just trust me on this one. Take out your wallet, open your bank app, grab your cash… whatever you have with you. Physically hold it in your hand just for a moment.

You can caress it if you want to.

What you hold in your hand is the God of the 21st century.
What you hold in your hand is what most people in our day believe contains the secret to their ability to experience happiness.

Understand, I’m not saying that money is bad. Money is a good thing.

But the truth is that, as fallen creatures, we are tempted to make our bank account the home of a god we serve.

We’re tempted to allow money the power to make us feel secure or successful or valuable.

It is a very difficult thing to surrender control of our bank account.

So, an exercise of trust. Just go with me on this for a moment.

Hand it to the person next to you.

And, now, we’re going to take a special offering… and I want you to give like you’ve always dreamed of giving.

I’m kidding. Go ahead and give it back. Give it back. You can breathe a big sigh of relief.

Now, you will remember if you were here last week that the Corinthians are fairly recent followers of Jesus and that they’re living in a market-driven, materialistic hub of the financial community.

Paul is writing to people who live in the midst of bank account-worshippers.

So, he starts by giving them an example of what gracious generosity looks like.

Look at 2 Corinthians 8, starting at verse 1:

And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches.

Macedonia was a province in Greece. It contained several different churches. The Philippians were one of those churches.

And he says in the next verse:

In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.

He writes about them living in “a very severe trial.”

He says that these Macedonians were characterized by two traits — number one, a remarkably high level of joy. He says they were overflowing with joy.

And number two, a very deep level of poverty. He says they were extremely poor.

Now, does anything strike you as unusual about those two phrases going together?

See, here’s the formula that Paul is laying out:

“The grace of God has been granted to the churches of Macedonia. For during a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.”

Here’s the deal, here’s the formula.

Overflowing Joy + Extreme Poverty = Rich Generosity

Paul says: “Overflowing joy plus extreme poverty equals rich generosity.”

Think of it like a mathematical equation.

He says, “Overflowing joy added to extreme poverty, and the sum, the result, is rich generosity.”

I want to suggest that the reverse is also true.

Abundant Discontent + Extreme Affluence = A Trickle of Generosity

That is, abundant discontent plus extreme affluence equals a trickle of generosity.

See, the truth about people is, people don’t start giving when they have more money. People start giving when they have more joy… because then they’re no longer dependent on what’s in their bank account for their next happiness fix.

There’s a very interesting study done by an economist by the name of Richard Easterlin, and he found that, provided basic needs are met, he found that affluent people are no happier on average than non-affluent people.

He found that an increase in affluence does not bring an increase in perceived happiness.

You know, we all think that if we just had more stuff, we’d be happier, but he says, in fact, it’s not true. They don’t go together.

He said that the reason is people tend to measure their affluence by how much they consume relative to their neighbors — that is, that our goal is to get ahead of other people.

Now, we have a saying for this dynamic in our society. We call it “keeping up with the Joneses,” but there’s a problem. What do you do when the Joneses refinance, which they’re apt to do?

See, if everyone tries to get ahead, Easterland says, they all tend to rise together, so everyone’s frustrated in their efforts to achieve happiness by getting ahead of other people.

This is what he says: “To the outside observer, economic growth appears to be producing an evermore affluent society — higher and higher and higher standards of living.

But,” he says, “to those in this society, those involved in the process, affluence will always remain a distant, urgently sought but never attained goal.”

They never get there, and it’s true.

There have been studies that have shown that as people’s income grows, people that have higher levels of income actually give a smaller percentage than people with lower levels of income — a smaller percentage.

So, Paul says: “I want you to understand. There is this kind of grace that’s been at work amongst these people in Macedonia.”

He says, “There’s this strange mathematics of giving that I want you to grasp.”

Look at verse 3:

For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.

‘They gave what they were able to give,” he says, “and then they gave what they were not able to give. They gave beyond their ability.”

Now, how do you do that? How do you give beyond your ability?

Well, clearly, God has enlarged their capacity to give. God’s enlarged their capacity to give.

Paul talks about the same thing in the next chapter.

2 Corinthians 9:11-12.

Paul is still talking about this project, and he’s explaining to people what happens when you begin to give, and this is part of what he says:

You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.

“You will be enriched in every way.”

When you give, it sets a divine, supernatural process in motion that enriches the one who receives and the one who gives.

“This is what you need to understand,” Paul says. When you give, it sets a divine, supernatural process in motion, and it enriches not only the people that receive what you give, it enriches you.

When people’s hearts become captivated by the desire to give, God enables them to give in ways they could not have anticipated, and their lives become adventures in giving, and they overflow with joy.

And Paul says, “I’ve seen it happen. I can testify to it. In fact,” he says, “I want you to see the spirit that gracious generosity raises up in people’s hearts.”

He says in verse 3:

For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.

And then this is remarkable when you look at it. He’s talking about the people of Macedonia, and remember, they’re in desperate poverty:

Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people.

‘They pleaded with us,” Paul says.

Now, usually in fundraising, you think of the fund-raiser as the one that has to do the begging, and the people that give the money are the ones that have to be begged.

Paul says, “With these people, it was the other way around.”

He says, “I was saying to them, you know, there’s so much poverty here, I don’t know that you should do this. And the people said to Paul, ‘Please, please, please, we want to give.’”

Fundraising usually doesn’t work like that.

Churches have all kinds of things to pressure or gimmick people into giving.

You know, some of you at different churches have experienced them or have invited people to churches where they were concerned about coming because they’re so afraid that church is just interested in them for their money.

There’s a church in the Twin Cities — I am not making this up — a church in the Twin Cities had a financial shortfall and brainstormed: What are some ways they could motivate people to give?

This is what they did.

At the end of their offering for a period of time, it was their custom to pull one offering envelope out of the basket and whoever it was that had given that particular envelope got twice the amount that they put into it.

It’s kind of a lottery deal for people that gave an offering to the church, given back as a bonus deal. It’s a true story.

Now, Paul says, “Not only will I not pressure people, but people in the church there, they had the kind of urgency that we tend to have about acquiring stuff. There’s something you really want and you beg to have it.”

Paul says, “That’s the kind of urgency that was inside of them — not to get, but to give.”

He says, “If that’s what it can look like, now here’s the challenge.”

Here’s the challenge. Look at verse 7. He says:

But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

This is such fabulous language. “Since you excel at everything…”

Paul wrote this letter to the church at Corinth — a place where people were really into how gifted they were, and they could actually get a little boastful and competitive about it.

So there are kind of air quotes around that statement — since you “excel in everything…”

I thought how appropriate that expression is here in the Bay Area, where we get all pumped up about how much we know and how much we do and how much we achieve — the pressure to excel around here is intense.

So these words come to us —

Since you excel in everything, see that you also excel in the grace of giving.

There are two words that describe two dynamics in giving that are so striking.

One of them is this word excel.

This is a real stretching word.

Excel at it.
Don’t just do it; excel at it.
Pay attention to it.
Study it.
Practice it.
Work on it.

Just like so often people will work super hard to excel in their work

or in leadership
or in scholarship
or at golf
or at a hobby or something…

Excel — aim at excellence in generosity.

Then he doesn’t say…

“Excel in your obligation to give”
or “Excel in the duty to give”
or “Excel because there’s pressure on you to give.”

He says, “Excel in the grace of giving.”

Don’t be a gritted-teeth giver.
Don’t do it with clenched fists.
Don’t ask, “How much do I have to? How much am I supposed to? How much must I?”

Turn your giving into dancing. Excel at the grace of giving.

This is the challenge Paul sets forward for the people of Corinth and for you and for me.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed this little word “grace” keeps popping up in this passage.

In the first verse, he talks about the “grace of God” in Macedonia.

In the fourth verse, he says the people begged for the “grace of sharing in the ministry and the giving.”

In the sixth verse he says, “Titus should go back and complete this act of grace among you.”

Here in verse 7, he says, “May you excel in the grace of giving.”

There is this intimate connection in Paul’s mind between giving and grace.

Authentic, generous, freely offered giving is an unmistakable sign of the grace of God.

Often, when we talk about God’s grace, we restrict it. We just think of it as God’s readiness to forgive our sins. Amazing grace is that time that God said, “I will forgive you.”

But the grace of God is much more than just his willingness to forgive sin.

God was gracious before the fall ever occurred, before any sin needed to be forgiven.

And the word that lies at the heart of the grace, the graciousness of God, is this word “give.”

To say that God is a gracious God is to say that God is an irrepressible giver.

And so Paul says, “I want that same kind of grace that characterizes God to characterize you, his people.”

I’ll never forget the day when our first child had her first tantrum.

She had been this sweet, cute, loveable, adorable little infant.

And then we adopted her sister… and she needed to share a doll with her sister.

The word came out of her like a volcano: “Mine!”

She got red in the face, and she was trembling all over, and she was “clutchy” and greedy and angry and violent… this tiny little cherub.

I was trying to think, “Where did this come from? Who passed this mutant gene on to my innocent child?”

I tried to think of which one of Kathy’s relatives it could have been.

Here’s the interesting thing about kids. No kid ever had to be taught the word mine. Do you ever notice that?

No 2-year-old ever looked at a parent and said, “Now what’s this concept of personal ownership again? How do I clutch? How do I grab?”

We have to learn yours.
We have to learn ours.
We have to learn share.

No kid ever had to be taught the word mine.

Here’s what I’ve found.

People who excel in the grace of giving… and so many of you do. I have to tell you at our church one of the things I love… I get inspired by people at our church, whatever their resource level, who excel in this grace.

People who do this get really clear on their financial life in general, including their savings and especially on their goals for giving.

They get really clear, really intentional.

People who do not excel in the grace of giving stay fuzzy on their finances. They’re kind of in a fog.

“How much did you give last year?”
“I don’t know.”

“How much do you plan to give this year?”
“I don’t know.”

“How much will you save?”
“How much will you spend? On what?”
“How large is your debt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

People who excel in the grace of giving give because they decided to give.

People who don’t usually didn’t decide to not give; they just didn’t decide to give, so they live in this kind of fog.

Someone was telling me about Chuck Feeney.

Chuck Feeney started the duty-free shops.

You know, those shops where you can buy stuff and you don’t have to pay customs on it.

He made a fortune. He was listed a few decades ago by Forbes magazine as one of the 20 richest people in the world.

It turns out Forbes was mistaken, and they wrote another article about this. His fortune was actually larger than they had thought, but when they wrote the article, he had already secretly (because he didn’t want attention) given his fortune away to a foundation that was devoted to philanthropy.

The foundation has given away over 8 billion dollars of Feeney’s money.

Feeney called it, “Giving while living.”

I mean, you think about it, what could be more fun than that?

He said, “It’s more than money. It’s satisfaction that you’re achieving something that is helpful to people.”

The more recent article about him was called “The James Bond of Philanthropy.”

Feeney left himself with about $2 million worth of wealth to live on for the last ten years of his life — less than .001% of the $8 billion he gave away.

He said this was his ultimate financial goal:

“I want the last check I write to bounce.” Isn’t that great?

Some of you are thinking, “Hey, I’m bouncing checks right now. I’m already there. I’m not even dead yet.”

People who excel in the grace of giving get really clear.

And what an incredible way to live — “I want to give away so much that when I get to the end, when I write that last check, there’s nothing left in the account, because I’ve just wanted to enrich God’s world and make a difference in people’s lives.”

Get real clear on what you want to do, what your goals are around giving and around spending and around saving.

Get out of fuzzy. There’s no life in fuzzy. There’s no effectiveness in fuzzy. There are people who spend their lives in this financial fog, and it may lead to debtor’s shame, but for sure it never leads to excellence in the grace of giving.

See, when Paul talks about this challenge of excelling and becoming a gracious giver, this is what he’s after, and that’s why he is so careful to keep this business of giving under grace, not law.

Look at chapter 9, verse 7 this time — chapter 9, verse 7.

You see, as you follow Paul through the text, how careful, how hard he works at keeping this business of giving about grace.

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.

“Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give.” It’s got to be up to you.

Each of you must give not reluctantly, not under compulsion, because what would happen if they were to give under compulsion is it would destroy the grace of it. It destroys the whole purpose of it, which is for us to become graciously generous people.

“For God,” Paul says, “loves a cheerful giver,” because that’s the kind of giver that God is. God just has this, for lack of a better way of saying it, this need to give.

Look back at our text, chapter 8, and you see over and over again how careful Paul is to put this under the category of grace in verse 3 when he’s talking about the Macedonians.

He says:

For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.

Some texts say, “They voluntarily gave.” They did it of their own free will.

He says down in verse 8, when he is giving this information, he says:

I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others.

“I am not commanding you.” You see, what he’s doing here, he’s saying this is not a compulsory thing.

Down in verse 10, he saying:

And here is my judgment about what is best for you in this matter.

And the nuance here is, “I’m not giving you an order; I’m giving you advice, wise counsel.”

Then he says in verse 11:

Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means.

That is, respecting the fact that there may be limitations — whatever you have. Paul wants to keep their giving under grace, not law.

But the challenge that he gives to them — this is the challenge that I want to lay out for you and me today.

Here’s the challenge.

The challenge is to take the next step in the quest to excel in the grace of giving.

Take the next step.

That step would look different for Corinth than it would look for the churches of Macedonia and it will look different for all of us.

For some people in here, you’ve never given, and the next step is just to start, to get in the game, get on the field — whatever level, just start. That’s your call today.

Again, this is not under compulsion. This is a free deal.

It may be that you’ve been giving inconsistently, and the next step for you is to begin to give consistently.

The writers of Scripture talk about the tithe or giving 10 percent of your income — as kind of a benchmark but not a legalistic deal, but if you’ve never done it before, if your giving has been inconsistent, then the next step for you may be to bring it to that level.

It may be that you have given before but your giving has been giving reluctantly, and the track for you is to become a gracious giver, to ask God to fill you with a desire to give.

Paul talks about giving according to your means, and it may be that you’re giving at the tithe level. But you can survive on less than what you’ve got and you want to up the percentage that you’re able to give, because you want to excel at the grace of giving.

It may be that you have been giving but your giving has been kind of safe. It has not stretched you, and what God wants to speak to you about today is this business of, you know, “They gave what they could and beyond what they could.”

Now understand, I’m not talking about being irresponsible. Obviously, you’ve got to honor your debts, your financial obligations, but maybe the next step for you is a stretch. Maybe it will involve some trust issues.

See, it’s possible for you and I to use our money to express the heart of God. It’s possible for you and I to use our financial resources — our stuff, our bank account, the god of this world — to express the heart of God.

This brings us to one of the most beautiful verses in all of the Bible. Look at verse 9. It’s one of the great verses of the New Testament.

Now, Paul is just going to bring it right to the theological foundation.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

It’s a very countercultural verse, and I want to spend a moment or two on it.

See, in our society, our heroes almost always are people who start out poor and end up rich.

An article in ‘Forbes’ magazine not too long ago about people in the entertainment industry who were the highest earners for 2024 — Taylor Swift, Christiano Renaldo, The Rock, Lionel Messi, Beyonce, Lebron James who all made over 150 million dollars last year.

All of them grew up poor and became rich.

In our world, heroes start out poor and end up rich.

But there is another world. It is called the kingdom of God.

There’s another world, friends, and it is characterized by downward mobility.

In this world, you must descend into greatness.

In this upside-down world, in this world, the hero starts out rich and becomes poor. You see?

Paul says: “See the grace of Jesus Christ who possessed all the riches of heaven — glory, honor, power beyond imagination — and he leaves it all. He was born in a blue-collar family, born in a barn, ekes out a living in an obscure village in a poor country with an unimportant family, grows up and becomes an itinerant teacher.”

“Foxes have their holes, birds have their nests, but the Son of Man doesn’t have a place to lay his head down.”

Paul says, “He’s poor, not because poverty’s a good thing — it’s not — but so that we can become rich.

“In this kingdom, the upside-down kingdom, the hero starts out rich and becomes poor. And when you understand this, and when you come to desire it at least a little bit, you draw close to understanding what is at the heart of the kingdom of God.”

I started today by having you pull out your wallets.

As we leave, I want to give you a piece of homework.

In verse 5 in this text, Paul says about the Macedonians:

“They gave themselves first to the Lord. They gave themselves first to the Lord, and then they were involved, then they gave themselves to us.”

In other words, then they got involved in the financial contribution, in giving.

Okay, here’s what I’m going to ask you to consider doing.

Sometime this week, when you have time to pray, just pull out your wallet or when you’re looking at your bank account… do what these people did that Paul talks about. Say to God, “It’s yours. This belongs to you.”

Now, you may need to confess some other things. You may need to talk about some fears you have relative to your resources, some anxieties, or, if you’re like me, just some plain old greed.

But as best you can do it, asking for help, tell God, “It’s yours,” and then follow the leading of the Spirit to take the next step, because imagine what would happen if this church just excelled, abounded in the grace of giving.

Alright let me pray for you.