Dennis Tuuri

This morning we continue on our series of sermons on the seven deadly sins. And we’ve come to the fifth of the seven deadly sins, greed or avarice. And this really is not particularly too much of a big jump from what the last couple of weeks after all it’s probably greed that drives both employer and employees into many sins in terms of that relationship. So we want to take a look at greed today and next Sunday again I think that will do it for greed.

What I’ve decided to do this Sunday is to look at Luke 12, the passage we just read. I’ll first do an overview of Luke 12:13-34 and then the second part of the outline we’ll look at the lessons of this passage of scripture as summarized in verse 15 of the text. And then we’ll look at some instructions from this passage on how to avoid the sin of greed.

So, first we’re going to try to understand the sin of greed by looking at this particular passage of the gospels and our Savior’s dissertation on greed and covetousness. Look at it in a broad scope and then narrowing down to a particular verse 15 and then talk about ways this passage tells us how to avoid the sin of greed. That’s the plan.

Now, I’ll just mention very briefly in passing here that we didn’t read the first 12 verses of the passage but they also have some relevance to the subject. Earlier on in Luke in verse 5 of Luke 12, Jesus says he warns you whom you shall fear. Him who after he hath killed hath power to cast him to hell. Yeah, you fear him. So Jesus is saying don’t be afraid of the rulers, the people in the synagogues that may hurt you or whatever. Be afraid of the one who is able to cast both body and soul into hell. That’s God, of course.

So he gives them a correct sense of priorities there in terms of who they are to fear. And then in verse seven of that text he says, “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore. You are more of value than many sparrows.” Verse six he had said five sparrows are sold for two farthings. And if God so watches over these sparrows, in other words, how much more shall he watch over you? And we’ll see that theme repeated in the passage that we just read from.

We’ll talk about that a little more at that point in time. But the point is there’s an assurance given in that part of the text before we even get into the section on covetousness—of God’s care and a proper ordering of our priorities on the basis of God’s power and then God’s care as well. By the way, this is a good verse, verse 7, and the one we’ll get to later in the text, to talk about the relative value of men as opposed to sparrows or spotted owls.

Okay. First, the thing that happens here as Jesus is discoursing to the multitudes is a man comes up with an incident and asks Jesus to judge between him and his brother. Actually, he doesn’t ask him to judge. He asks him simply to divide the inheritance between his brother and himself. He says in verse 13 of the passage, the very first verse we read: “One of the company comes up to him and says, Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me.” And he said unto him, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?”

So we have this incident in these first two verses. Now you could get into a lot of speculation over what this man’s particular sin was. But suffice it to say that the motive of the man was apparently incorrect. He wasn’t really seeking a judicial process. He rather just wanted the part of the inheritance that his brother wouldn’t hand over to him. Jesus simply rebukes the man without explanation to him specifically.

Well, that’s the incident that touches off Jesus’s dissertation then to the masses first. And after he gives instructions to the multitudes, he narrows it down and gives more detailed instruction of a slightly different type on covetousness to his disciples.

So after this incident happens in verses 15 to 21, he provides instruction to the multitudes on the theme of covetousness. In verse 15, which is the central truth we’ll come back to in a little bit after doing this overview, it says that Jesus said unto them—that’s unto the multitudes: “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” That’s the teaching that he gives to the multitudes and he follows that up with a parable. We’ll be coming back to this verse in a couple of minutes, but note here that he tells them to take heed and beware of covetousness.

In the New American Standard Version of this particular passage, verse 15 reads: “And he said unto them, Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed.” Okay? And that’s a pretty good translation. He tells them twice there to really look out and to be on your guard. Take heed and beware of covetousness. And the word for covetousness there is a word that means a grasping after, and it particularly means all forms or every kind of covetousness.

Okay, now this is important. We’ll return to this theme, but it’s very important we see from the central teaching of the text that Jesus warns us strongly against this sin. Take heed, be on your lookout, be very careful about this sin. And the sin is covetousness. And covetousness or greed takes many forms because he warns them against not just greed in a single form, but he says covetousness in all its forms.

That’s what the word means here. And so he warns them also that covetousness takes many forms.

Now I’m going to use the word greed even though the New American or the King James uses covetousness here. And I want to differentiate just briefly now between greed and the earlier deadly sins of covetousness and envy which we dealt with—after pride where we spent one week on covetousness and then three or four weeks on envy.

Remember we said then that covetousness in terms of the tenth commandment has and says, “I want that. I’m going to try to get it.” And it usually implies an improper or defrauding method of getting that thing. Envy says, “You have what I want. I can’t get it and I’m going to hurt you or I’m going to destroy the thing you have.” That’s the difference between covetousness and envy. Greed is something altogether different—well, maybe not altogether different, but it’s different. Greed simply wants more. Greed is a grasping after more. It’s like the miser, you know, you think of the guy, Scrooge McDuck or whatever his name is, sitting on his big pile of golden coins and wanting more and more and more. It isn’t so much that he looks at his neighbor’s goods and desires those and tends to defraud him of them. And it’s not that he wants to hurt the neighbor because he can’t get the goods.

Rather, it’s this overabundance of goods that he desires. It’s a strong grasping after things. Okay? And so it is different from covetousness and envy. Although it’s related to it, of course.

I thought I saw an interview a couple weeks ago. William Buckley interviewed Tom Wolfe, who wrote a book called “Bonfire of the Vanities,” which is a very interesting fictional novel. I found it very interesting reading. I would recommend it. Couple of places in it there’s some off-color stuff going on, but overall it’s an excellent portrayal of New York City today. That’s what it is. And Tom Wolfe was discussing this with William Buckley and he said really what he tried to depict in the book more than anything else was the money fever that everybody now is catching—the money fever. And so you have this tremendous grasping after money in New York City at every level of society and by correlation of course in the entire country.

This isn’t particularly new in the history of man but it does seem in America right now to have reached kind of a fever pitch. Money fever. And by the way the classical writers talking about greed or avarice frequently used the concept of a fever to picture what that was all about. Augustine said that the eagerness—greed is the eagerness of the heart to have earthly things. The eagerness of the heart to have earthly things.

See, so it isn’t really about wanting what your neighbor has. It’s more just a complete desire to have things that you can have in your own possession. It’s not restricted to money or property. And we’ll see this as we go through this passage from Luke. Although it starts with money or property here in terms of inheritance, greed occurs in many forms and it has many objects. It can extend to all created things and attributes such as glory, knowledge, prestige, children and other good things from God that he would give us, and yet a greedily grasping for them and wanting more and more and more—in and of themselves to take pleasure in and of themselves—and not see beyond those things that God gives us to the person of God.

That’s greed—a grasping after many things, created things.

Chaucer said that greed takes away from Christ the love that men owes to him and it turns it backwards and thus against all reason and it causes the avaricious man to have more hope in his property than in Jesus Christ, and hence more diligence to the guarding and keeping of his treasury than in the service of Jesus Christ.

And we can see that in the parable that Jesus goes on after this central teaching to the multitudes, the parable of the man with many barns. He put a lot of work and effort into protecting his treasures. No effort—at least recorded in the parable—of service to Jesus Christ or to God.

It is important to note here that greed is not particularly a sin restricted to the rich or to the poor. It affects every realm of society.

It’s interesting that in Dante’s Purgatorio, we’ve talked about that a number of times, you have these seven cornices or layers of this mountain that he travels up and they represent the seven deadly sins. On the fifth cornice, this cornice of avarice, it is more crowded than any other cornice in the mountain of purgatory. It is just wall-to-wall people as it were, and they’re all laying down flat on the dust with their faces down to the dust, based on Psalm 119 where it says, “My soul cleaves to the dust.” Penance in purgatory, as Dante saw it for avarice or greed, was a flattening out on the ground. And the point is that there were tremendous numbers of people there—more than any other cornice—and so it was seen to be a tremendous problem for all kinds of people.

Now I say here that this passage also says against every form of greed. It takes lots of forms. In Dante’s Purgatorio he talks about two sorts of people on the cornice of greed: the wasters and the hoarders. Now the hoarders we’re more familiar with. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about primarily today. Next week, I’m going to talk some more about wasters. So, in other words, greed is not just keeping things to yourself. It’s an inordinate desire to have money and then do things with money as well. It’s a delight and a joy not in God ultimately, but in things themselves.

Compulsive spending—we’ll talk more about this next week. Compulsive spending really comes under the heading of greed or avarice according to the classical writers, and we’ll look at biblical evidence for that next week.

One of the books I read said that, you know, when the going gets tough in America, the tough go shopping. And you can see in that little statement a reliance upon purchasing things and goods rather than upon God for deliverance. And it sounds sort of funny, I know, but the point is it’s true. Many people when they get stressed, when they want to get enjoyment, get a sense of joy back in their lives, they go to the mall. You know, shop till you drop. Okay.

The purpose—the point of all these things—Jesus says, the reason why they’re all wrong, in verse 15, he says that life does not consist of one’s possessions. Very simple. Your life doesn’t consist of your possessions. You cannot add a whit to your life. What your life is is the gift of God. You have life, but with possessions—no matter how many or how few possessions you have—it doesn’t affect the life principle, the fact that you’re alive and been given life from God.

So Jesus does summary teaching first to the multitudes and then he gives them this parable—the parable of the rich man who’s had productive barns, verses 16-20. And you know it’s interesting, we read this and I won’t read it again yet. But you know the man says to himself, “What am I going to do? My land’s productive. I need more barns. I’ll tear down the old barns, build new barns.” And then he says, “Well, I can be at ease now. Eat, drink, and be merry.” Now the interesting thing about this particular parable which most of us are familiar with is: what do you suppose it is that this man has done wrong? Why is this man called a fool by God? Why is he condemned by God so strongly? What is his sin?

It’s certainly not a sin to be rich. Scriptures are clear that God many times gives material blessings to people. Some people misinterpret this parable because they think riches themselves or material wealth at all is wrong. That’s not the point.

His land was productive. He apparently was not a slothful man. He apparently was working his land. His land was being productive. He was value-adding, as it were, to God’s gift of his land by growing the crops and everything. He was extracting the riches out of his earth, so to speak. Remember we read from Deuteronomy about how God’s people will suck treasures out of the sea and delightful things out of the earth.

By the way, I’ll just make one short digression there. I was teaching my kids on the Puritan way in history a couple weeks ago and I came across this quote based on that passage that we’ve talked about a couple of times now about how God’s people will suck the abundance of the seas. Cotton Mather related that one man in Puritan New England, quote, invited his friends over to a dish of clams at the table, gave thanks to heaven, who had given them such abundance of the seeds of the treasure of the sand. So the Puritans saw that in terms of clams, for instance, which you dig alongside the sea and kind of suck them out of their shell, I guess.

Well in any event, this rich man had productive land. He wasn’t slothful apparently. He needed to store his crops. Is that a sin? To store your crops, protect them from the weather? I don’t think so. I think God wants us to be good stewards and protect the things that he’s given to us. So there’s no sin involved there, it seems, in terms of storing his crops.

Well, he built bigger barns. Is it wrong if you have a lot of production in your business to create larger warehouses to hold what you’re storing and everything? I don’t think so. Again, the scriptures seem to say—the scriptures don’t advocate a no-growth position in the economy. Just the reverse. Remember the story of the man with talents. We’ve used that one many times in sermons about sloth. You’re given a few talents. You’re not just supposed to hoard them and take care of them. You’re supposed to have them grow. And certainly as you have one talent and you get ten talents to give back to the master when he returns, you’re going to have to have a bigger purse, a bigger barn, a bigger something to put them in to give it back to him.

So, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily sinful in this man’s building bigger barns.

Perhaps it was a sense of joy. Maybe it was this idea that he was going to eat, drink, and be merry. But again, here, remember, we pointed out before from Isaiah 65:13: “Therefore, thus sayeth the Lord God, Behold, my servant shall eat, but you shall be hungry. Behold, my servant shall drink, but you shall be thirsty. Behold, my servant shall rejoice, but you shall be ashamed.” So God says his servants were supposed to eat, drink, and rejoice or eat, drink, and be merry.

I remember Barbara Garrett gave me a mug. I’ve got it at home with that “eat, drink, and be merry” on it to remind me—and help remind you too—that these things are good gifts that God gives us. And that’s what we do on Sunday. You know, it’s an important part of what we do. We come together as a church in convocation and we eat, drink, and rejoice down at the rejoicing time at the meal before communion. So, I don’t think that was really a sin of his either.

What did he do? Well, you know, when God calls him a fool, God says, “Now who will own what you have prepared?” You know, maybe he didn’t have a will. Maybe that was his big problem. No, that’s a joke.

What did he do wrong? Well, I don’t think he did anything wrong per se. I don’t think he did anything wrong. I think his sin was not a sin of commission but a sin of omission. It’s what he didn’t do in this process. I think that God takes him to task for. He fails to use his wealth to God’s purposes.

And so at the end of this parable, God says your soul is required of you. And then in verse 21, Jesus says, “So is the man who lays up treasure for himself and isn’t rich toward God.” His sin of omission was that he omitted to be rich toward God. He was a fool.

Remember the scripture—the Proverbs tell us that a fool is one who God is not in any of his thoughts, the thoughts of the fool. And the parable here has no reference to God throughout on the part of the rich man. The things he did with a proper attitude and the proper goal of serving God and being used for God’s kingdom were all in place. But he failed to see his things as things from God to be used for God’s purposes.

The rich man’s wealth apparently had become the very center of his life. His wealth was to no other purpose apparently than its accumulation and his ability to live a life of ease and luxury.

The rich man was among other things very self-centered. I will now reread this parable for you and note the emphasis I put on it. He says, “The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?’ And he said, ‘This will I do: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, So thou hast much good for many years. Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’”

There are 61 words in this parable. And 13 of these words are words that refer to me, mine, myself, or I. The man was self-absorbed. He was centered upon himself. He was not thinking of God, nor of the rest of God’s creatures, nor of men who might have need of some of his productivity. So, he was self-centered.

Secondly, the rich man failed to thank God for his goods. Very important thing here. You know, the rich fool and the righteous man, they may do the same things in terms of working diligently, gathering goods, being blessed by God. But the righteous man thanks God at the beginning of that process and sees all things coming from his hand to be thanked for. The rich man doesn’t thank God for his goods.

That’s why one reason why I, in my newer form I’m developing, and why we’ve talked at various times about communion as Eucharist—it doesn’t mean we want to go back to the Roman Catholic Church. Eucharist means thanksgiving—and it was an important aspect of communion. Remember that Jesus before he took the elements gave thanks for them, and communion is a thanksgiving for the elements and all the blessings that they represent.

The rich man was not thankful. He didn’t thank God for his goods.

Third, the rich man failed to tithe. Tithe is also an acknowledgement that God owns all these things. And there’s no reference here to the rich man tithing his increase.

And then fourth, he failed to give alms to people. He failed to share the gracious gifts that God had graciously given him with other people in need. Alms. And we’ll see that as we get to the instruction to the disciples. That’s the one corrective that Jesus gives by way of action against the sin of covetousness or greed. The action is alms-giving—gifts to poor people that need help.

The man lacked a future orientation. Let’s see—he had a future orientation. He wanted to do all these things so he could live a life of ease in the future. He was future-oriented so he gathered up goods. And we’re trying to adjust all of our thinking to be future-oriented, but he wasn’t quite future-oriented enough in his thinking because God had to come and remind him: your soul is required tonight.

The rich man failed to understand that his future involved a heavenly state or a hellish state. He failed to consider the long-term orientation of heaven and hell. And that is a grave mistake that can lead to greed.

All these mistakes—self-centeredness, a failure to thank God, a failure to tithe, a failure to give alms, a failure to understand and meditate upon our future state—these things all are indications of, or actually devices that lead us to a state of greed or grasping.

The Religious Tradesman, the book I mentioned before reprinted by Sprinkle recently, has a chapter on contentment. And one of the keys to contentment it says is to impress upon your mind the reality and importance of the future state. Very important that we teach our children that—to think that eventually we’re going to end up in heaven or hell. And what we do here on earth builds up treasures in heaven or it drives us into hell. So that’s very important to recognize.

The rich man did things wrong by sins of omission rather than sins of commission.

So he gives him this parable and then after the parable he then explains that as I said in verse 21: “So is he that layth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

From the general teaching here that our Savior now goes on to a specific teaching in terms of his disciples. And so we have first in this an incident that occurs, then we have his instruction to the masses. That instruction consists of a simple teaching, a parable, summation of the teaching, and then he moves into a different set of instructions for the disciples based on the same theme. And that’s what we’ll be getting into now.

Okay, and as we shift here, I’ll just mention this as we do this shifting: there is a shift of what he gives the people in terms of understanding and what he expects from them in terms of obedience. To the multitudes, he gave a very simple message: Beware of greed. It’ll send you to hell. Your life consists of more than your possessions. Be rich toward God. But to the disciples, he takes a little different tack. And we’ll see that as we go through it.

He instructs the disciples. The beginning of verses 22-34 is the phrase “for this reason.” And that links what follows to what we’ve just been discussing and shows that this is a continuation of his teaching on greed. And this was frequently our Savior’s method of discourse—to give a teaching to the masses and then a specific teaching to the disciples in more depth.

In this particular section, I’ve broken up his teaching to the disciples under two headings which I’ve got to acknowledge Roy Garrett’s titles for. He gave a communion talk I believe in Matthew 6 some time ago and talked about it as “don’t worry, be holy.” You know that big song was going around, “don’t worry, be happy.” And Roy said the scriptures tell us “don’t worry, be holy.” And that’s really what Jesus tells his disciples here in relationship now to the sin of greed and the many forms that it takes.

He first tells his disciples, “Don’t worry,” verses 22 through 30. He says, “Take no thought for your life that you shall eat, neither for the body which you shall put on. The life is more than meat. The body is more than raiment.” Then consider the ravens. They neither sow nor reap. They neither store in a barn. God feeds them. How much more better are you than the fowls?

Again, a good verse for spotted owl fanatics. And “Which of you taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If he then be not able to do that which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?” Now the terms there—”take thought” in verse 22, 25 and 26—the New American Standard translates “to be anxious.” And it has this connotation of being worried, being anxious about how these things are going to be given to us.

Verse 27, he tells them to consider the lilies of the field. And in verse 28, he addresses them as men of little faith. Verse 29: “And seek ye not what you shall eat, nor what you shall drink, neither be ye doubtful in mind, for all these things the nations of the world seek after and your father knoweth that you have need of these things.”

So in this section on “don’t worry,” Jesus tells his disciples, he assures them of God’s material provisions for their life, for food, drink, clothing—for the material provisions of their life. He says in verse 22 of this teaching, essential teaching: don’t be anxious. He tells them to have a proper sense of priorities again. And then he says that God’s care—he gives him assurances that God will provide the food we have necessary to care for the things that he has given us to care for.

In verse 24 we see that God feeds the lesser things, the ravens, and he says if he feeds the ravens he’s sure going to feed you. You’re of more value. And then in verse 27 he talks again about care for lesser things in terms of the lilies of the field. And he says, “If he clothe the lilies of the field, he’s certainly going to provide clothing for your material life.” And the end of all this is found in verse 29. He says, “Don’t worry. Don’t be of a doubtful mind.” And then in verse 30, he says, “God knows all your needs. The Gentiles greedily grasp after all these things. You don’t need to do that because you don’t have a God in heaven who is somehow vacant or absent from your scene. You’ve got a God who cares and loves you.”

He didn’t give this to the multitudes. We don’t know if they were believers or not. He convicted them of their sin of greed. But to the disciples—that’s a different thing. And to disciples of Jesus Christ, he tells them first, in terms of trying to solve the problem of greed and covetousness and grasping after material things, he tells them, “Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of all this stuff for you. I’m providing all these things for you. Don’t worry.”

And then after he tells them not to worry and to have a correct sense of priorities, then he tells them in verses 31-34, “Be holy. Don’t worry, but be holy.”

Verse 31: “Seek ye the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” That’s a matter of course. We usually know that verse. We sing it. Next verse is very important also. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Seek the kingdom. And then again in verse 32, he assures them, it’s your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Don’t worry about that either.

In other words, then in verse 33, he gets to some corrective actions. “Sell what you have. Give alms. Provide for yourselves bags that wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not.” Again, “your treasure is where your heart is,” he tells them. And so, put your treasure into heaven. He gives correctives to greed here.

And the single action, as I said, is alms-giving—the specific thing that’s going to help work through a greed problem. Okay? So, he gives them a correct priority as to values. He tells them the assurance that God will provide for them. And he says that the kingdom is the correct priority—to prioritize all the needs that we think we have and all the possessions that we have and the use of them.

Alms-giving, I think, is the single action given here because it points to the correct sense of priorities in terms of our material possessions. Alms-giving is an essential aspect of kingdom work yet recognizes that we’ve been graciously given gifts by God and it turns around and shows that graciousness to those around us who have needs.

So, alms-giving points the disciples to correct prioritization in terms of the kingdom of God, the expansion of that kingdom being the thrust of all we’re to do. Greed stifles kingdom work; generosity and a correct sense of priorities and the use of our possessions enhances kingdom work. That’s what’s going on here.

Then he gives—okay, so that’s an overview of this passage. We move from the teaching of the incident to the multitudes to then the disciples. The multitudes are convicted of sins—sins of omission, thanklessness, and that kind of thing, and hoarding. And then the disciples are gently by Jesus moved away from greed and covetousness and a grasping after things by being assured of his provisions and then called to correctly order their lives and run kingdom work.

Now, we’re going to go back to verse 15 and use that as a three-point outline here on lessons about greed.

And as we said, Jesus, the first things he tells me is to take heed and beware of covetousness. So greed is a sin to be guarded against. Okay? And this applies to us as well. We should be very watchful of ourselves. That’s what the word means. Self-examination relative to how we use our possessions is what Jesus is demanding of us here to avoid the sin of greed.

Now, it’s very important. I mentioned the Puritan way earlier from “The Light and the Glory,” a book that we’re using in history this year from American history. The Puritan way was big on self-examination—evaluation of one’s life and alignment with God’s word—was an important part of their responsibility. They understood this concept of to beware and to be very heedful of what we’re doing.

And they recognized too that the heart is deceitful above all things. And that’s why the Puritans were real big on the concept of a covenanted community and getting together with believers for prayer over specific priorities in our life and discussion of who we are. The Puritans knew that the worst sins in our lives are ones that we hide from ourselves and that we’re blind to ourselves. We have need of a local body. We have need of prayer groups and such to remind us of the sins that we fall into and yet delude ourselves into thinking they’re not sin.

And this is one of those things. If we’re going to take heed and beware and the use of our possessions, we should be open in listening to people in the covenant community that God has brought us into in terms of corrective statements from them about those areas of our lives as well. And we should feel free to encourage and exhort each other to faithfulness in areas. That doesn’t mean you got to go convict your brother of sin, but it means hopeful words sometimes to help them avoid the sins of covetousness and grasping after things is certainly called for. Very important that we develop this concept of prayer groups—cells in the body, so to speak—for mutual confession of sin, for prayer about difficulties, and just for discussion and helping us all to be examining of ourselves and to be open to examination of our lives by others as well.

It’s very important. In Dante’s Purgatorio, as he leaves the cornice of sloth, as he’s about to go up to the next three—greed, lust and gluttony—a siren comes to him, a woman who at first looks like an old hag. And the more Dante looks at this old hag, the more beautiful she becomes. And he’s entranced by her beauty and everything. And then a woman, Beatrice, comes and tells Virgil to wake Dante up. Virgil is Dante’s guide to purgatory in the Purgatorio. And Virgil rips the clothing off of this siren who has become beautiful in Dante’s sight through his gazing upon her and then a foul smell comes out and she’s ugly and it’s just rotten. She’s really deaf.

Well, this is a picture in Dante’s Purgatorio of the next three sins—greed, lust, and gluttony. All of them at first glance look ugly. But it’s when we begin to become entranced rather by our material possessions, for instance, that they begin to take on beauty and appeal to us. And so it’s very important that we guard against that first gazing upon those things as it were that sucks us into those sins. And obviously the application to lust and gluttony will be obvious and easy to make as we go into this in the coming weeks. It’s staring at those sorts of things—it’s beginning to develop our lives around a pattern of enjoying those things in and of themselves instead of seeing behind them to God that leads into these deadly sins.

Now sin is to be guarded against. Greed is to be guarded against, you see, because our Savior says so quite frankly. But then also because greed is insatiable. Greed has a way of sucking us in, as I said, and you can’t get out of the maelstrom, as it were, once you get sucked in. Now you can, by God’s grace, but it’s very difficult.

Of all the three love-excessive deadly sins—greed, gluttony, and lust—greed is seen by the classical writers as worse than the others because it’s never satisfied. Again, Dante here’s a line from his Inferno, hell. Take you she-wolf—talking of greed—”who in the sick feast of your unquenchable appetite have taken more prey on earth than any other beast.” So many people have been taken by it, and one of the reasons is it’s an unquenchable appetite.

Proverbs 27:20 says that hell and destruction are never full and so the eyes of man are never satisfied. Ecclesiastes 5:10: “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase.” This is vanity. You see, it’s insatiable—this desire that comes upon the greedy.

Greed, one author said, “pines in plenty up to its chin in water. It is still thirsty.” And in the Religious Tradesman, he said that greed is like a fever thirst. When you have a fever, you’re thirsty, but you can never quench the thirst because that’s not really what your problem is. So greed is insatiable. And that’s one reason why we got to guard very carefully against it.

Another reason is because greed is so destructive to ourselves and to society. Proverbs 15:27: “He that is greedy of gain troubles his own house.” Greed is destructive of ourselves. Greed is also destructive of society. 1 Timothy 6:10 says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” And the term there for evil means social wreckage—is how some translators have translated it. The love of money is the root of social wreckage done in the streets, as it were. Not literally done in the streets, but the point is that it leads into all kinds of other actions which are completely destructive of community and society.

Two examples here that you may want to look at on your own: Gehazi is a good example from 2 Kings 5:20 and following for the destructiveness of greed to ourselves. And Achan of course—in his sin of coveting when the people went into the promised land—is a good example of the greed of man being shown very visibly to affect the whole of the society he is in the midst of.

So greed has to be guarded against because it is destructive, very destructive of self and also of community.

In 1 Timothy 6:10, after he says that money is the root of all evil—and it really means all sorts of evil—then verse 11 goes on to say: “Thou, O man, flee these things.” Again a strong admonition to flee that kind of covetousness or love of money and follow after righteousness. He says “fight the good fight of faith” in verse 12 of 1 Timothy 6. Again a warning to us that this is a very difficult to avoid—this particular sin. We have much social greed in our world today.

Taxes and the rise in taxes are an indication of greed on the part of politicians. Civil rulers who are enriched in office is a good example of men who have become greedy in office. Probably one of the classic examples of that was Lyndon Johnson who entered office poor and when he left the presidency was a multi-millionaire after the end of his political life. I don’t think that they’ve cleaned it up with all the ethics acts they passed in Washington DC and Salem. It just is not the case.

Deceit in the marketplace—of course, we’ve talked from Micah about an honest source of money being necessary for good transactions and the prohibitions against puffing up the value of something we’re going to sell, putting the best apples on top of the bushel that you’re going to sell at the market, for instance, making our cars look nicer than they really are. Improper deception and merchandising really comes forth. It’s a social result of greed.

Labor unions, as I said earlier, and tyrannical employers both are many times a result of greed for material possessions and grasping after things instead of a delighting in God. Gambling debts, TV preachers—the list goes on and on. We’ve talked about the terribleness of debt in society and to the believer. And debt really comes about primarily as a result of greed—the desire to have things that God’s providence has not given to us right now. And we should be satisfied with what he’s given to us.

Greed and drugs. Of course, drugs are driven in this country largely, as a result in terms of the people that supply them, by greed—a greed for more money and wealth coming into the coffers of the drug dealers. Robin Williams said that cocaine is God’s way of showing us that we have too much money.

Lottery. Here we have institutionalized greed in the form of gambling. Gambling bases its whole motivation on greed. It attempts to play to the greed principle in fallen man. And here we have the state of Oregon paying your tax dollars to encourage people to be greedy, to try to get the big hit, to try to make all this money, to grasp after these things. And now we’re actually talking about a national lottery that’s being discussed now in the talks of Washington DC, how to balance the budget.

All these societal ills that are coming about as a result of greed in our society are the result of the money fever that’s talked about in these scriptures that our Savior warns man against.

Greed is also probably one of the largest factors in the nation having a tremendous number of working women away from the children they should be taking care of at home and in Christians keeping their kids out of public school. Greed has to play a factor there too. A desire to have possessions—to trade away the education of our children for a second car, for a nice home, for weekends at the coast or whatever it is. I am continually disgusted frankly by men who get involved in the tax protest and yet send their kids to public school. They thought through their money real carefully, but they don’t think through the education of their children—that God process—that’s going on in their lives.

All these things come about as a result of greed.

Greed is to be guarded against and, as we said earlier in verse 15 again, greed comes in a variety of forms. Every form of covetousness must be guarded against and there are many forms of it.

Anxiety. Our Savior went on to talk about specific greed in terms of hoarding of possessions by a rich man in the parable to the general people. And then to his disciples he talked about greed in relationship to anxiety over matters of sustenance in terms of his disciples. That’s another form of greed that he was warning the disciples to guard against and not to give into.

And when we prioritize our lives incorrectly—not around the kingdom, but around our possessions—that is yet another form of greed. We may not have many possessions, but when they become the center of our life, that is another form of greed.

And next week, as I said, we’ll talk about the wasters.

Greed is a sin of idolatry. Verse 15 says, because it reads that “a man’s life consisteth not [in] the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” Martin Luther said that “whatever thy heart clings to and relies on, that is properly thy God.” And the greedy man clings to and relies upon his wealth to save him and the wealth then becomes his God.

Colossians 3:5 says quite explicitly that covetousness is idolatry.

Idolatry because it values things that are given to us by God to point to his value—behind those things. Next week we’ll talk about gold and silver and why I believe they’re to be used as money in our society and in our transactions. And it’s not because of their scarcity or their ease of valuation or anything like that. It has to do with God’s valuing gold. He puts value on it because it reflects attributes of his.

The things that God give us that delight our heart—money, possessions, children, vocations, knowledge, various giftings—all these things are given to us to demonstrate aspects of who God is to us. And we’re going to be delighting in God behind those things.

And so if we delight in any of these things—our possessions, our work, our children—and don’t go behind it to say that what we’re really delighting in is God has given us these things, and these things are reflecting aspects of his character, that’s idolatry. Idolatry stops at the form here that God has given to us to demonstrate and to further communicate who he is to us.

Now, I think that a self-conscious apprehension of the creation—that we have no atoms out there that are irrelevant to the person of God—is a necessary corrective for greed. And we’ll talk more about that next week. But it’s idolatry to stop at the good gifts God gives us and not to recognize in them aspects based upon the character of who God is.

And if we slip in that kind of idolatry, then we slip into a grasping for these things. And when they’re taken away, that’s when the proof of the pudding comes. And if our wails go up to God, instead of saying, “Well, the Lord gave and the Lord take away”—that it shows that we’re grasping too hard at those things which are all good in and of themselves.

I remember hearing a preacher, some many years ago now, 15, 20 years ago, a daughter asking if their dog is going to be in heaven and he said, “Well, if that dog is necessary for your happiness, it’ll be in heaven.” Now, that sounds a little cute, but it’s true. The point is that whatever God gives us here that causes our hearts to delight—what we’re really delighting in is aspects of God’s character. And so whatever those things are, whatever those things are that we like in a biblical truth sense and delight in, those will all be in heaven because they are reflections of God’s character and will assemble around his throne room and praise him forevermore.

You see, they’re not in and of themselves cut off from their creator. That’s idolatry. The greedy man stops at the thing instead of going behind it to recognize the person of God.

Okay.

Finally, instructions from Luke 12 on how to avoid greed.

First, be assured of God’s care and love. As we said, he has care for sparrows, for ravens, for lilies, and how much more so for you. It is amazing to me this passage of scripture. It is amazing and it’s both very comforting as well.

Notice here the gentle way that Jesus dealt with those who attended to his teaching, the disciples. Now, they were in sin. Worry, anxiety, not correctly prioritizing your lives. These things were all falling short of the mark God calls us to. They were sinning. But Jesus didn’t just rebuke them and say, “Get it together. Let’s move on.” No, he very gently informs them of God’s great love and care. And he uses a number of examples.

He does this throughout his teaching to his disciples. He says, “Hey, you know, God loves ravens. God loves lilies. God loves sparrows. He delights in these things. He delights more in you. And if he cares for these things, how much more so for you?” He didn’t just tell him, “Hey, get your act together.” He very graciously, tenderly pointed out the father’s great love for his people and he used that to assure them of the grace that they could be given if they would believe it and move forward on the basis of it.

The Savior gives many reasons to put our fears and our anxieties and worries to rest. He gives us rational reasons and he gives us reasons that the Holy Spirit takes and writes upon our heart and uses to comfort us. He gives illustrations after illustration calming fears and restoring a proper sense of value to our lives.

In this text, the Holy Spirit takes these teachings of our Lord and he uses them in our lives the way that Jesus used them in the lives of his immediate disciples. The Holy Spirit ministers to us from these words. And I pray that this afternoon that work is completed—that these words minister to us and help us to recognize we don’t have to grasp onto things. We’ve got a heavenly father who loves us and is providing all things for us. And that should lead to contentment and thanksgiving.

1 Timothy 6:6 says that godliness with contentment is great gain. “Having food and raiment, therefore be content with what God has given to you.” Why can we be content? Because God who loves us enough to send his own son to die for us has provided what we need for goodness and for joy. So we’re to be content in that and there are to be thanksgiving to him as well.

So first Jesus assures them of that and then he calls them to prioritize their life around kingdom principles. In Matthew 6:19 is a repeat of this passage from Luke. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, but rather, you know, seek first the kingdom of God.”

Alms-giving is the beginning. As I said, this should be a corrective to us as well. As I said, greed stifles kingdom work and generosity and proper stewardship extend kingdom work. We should analyze the priorities in our lives. We should see what are we trying to defend? What are we trying to work to do? Possessions are good. Are they being used for kingdom work? Is everything that God has entrusted to our stewardship being used as kingdom stewards?

Are we being kingdom stewards and using them for kingdom work? Kingdom work includes a whole lot of things including help for others, care for others, etc. It also involves rest of the Sabbath. It also involves a proper lifestyle, preparing for hard times for our families. It’s not wrong to save money. That’s not what’s going on here. But our saving money too should be to a purpose, and that purpose should be for, in the case of our families, the kingdom work required to build a godly household so that kingdom work can proceed on to the next couple of generations.