Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text for today is found in Luke 12:13-34. Luke 12:13-34. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Then one from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” And then he spoke a parable to them, saying, “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully.” And he thought within himself, saying, “What shall I do since I have not room to store my crops?”

So he said, “I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” But God said to him, “Fool, this night your soul will be required of you. Then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

And then he said to his disciples, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, nor about the body, what you will put on. Life is more than food, and the food is more than clothing. Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn, and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. And yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothes the ground, grass which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith? And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind.

For all these things the nations of the world seek after. And your father knows that you need these things. But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you. Do not fear, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell what you have and give alms. Provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for these scriptures. We thank you for the great assurance we find herein, as well as a great warning. Bless us now as we seek to attend to these things. Transform us. Make us people who seek first your kingdom, trusting your love for us. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

Well, we’ve sung these Reformation songs, some Luther songs already. Romans 8 from the Genevan Psalter. We’re more familiar with the psalms, but Romans 8, a paraphrase of that. And that really is a wonderful tune both because it reminds us of what happened in Geneva, but it also reminds us of what the reformers had to go through to accomplish what they did.

We think of the Protestant Reformation as producing tremendous material prosperity. And it did. It produced a tremendous amount of work and understanding of the world and tremendous prosperity. But that’s not what they were seeking. What they were seeking was the kingdom of God. And they sought that kingdom of God, being willing, if necessary, to let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. They were ones who properly prioritized the glory of God—soli Deo gloria, solely for the glory of God—was their primary motivation.

And so if we’re going to refuel our Reformation, we have to have the same sense of priorities, trusting God for the increase of material blessings, which are a great blessing.

Today we come to a particular text and we’re talking about this in the context of the series now on the tenth word, on covetousness. And this seems like one of the central texts. Our Savior tells us to beware of covetousness, right? But I got to do—well, I don’t have to, but I’ve decided to do a little bit of talking about words, Hebrew and Greek words. It’s interesting to me, and I hope it is to you, that remember in Exodus, there are two uses of the word covet.

“Don’t covet your neighbor’s house, nor covet your neighbor’s wife or his possessions.” And then in the same Hebrew word used twice: chamad. But in the Deuteronomy 5 version, which is the one we’ve been preaching from, there are two different words used. The chamad, but also a word avah, or to desire something. So don’t chamad your neighbor’s wife and don’t desire your neighbor’s household or possessions.

Now, there’s synonyms, right? Because same two words are used, or there’s not the distinction in Exodus 20. So it’s they’re synonyms, but they’re different. Now, one thing’s interesting about that. You say, “Well, who cares?” Well, it’s interesting to me because in the Genesis account of the fall of Adam and Eve, now Genesis—you know, why do you read Genesis? Why do we read it? What’s it there for?

Is it there to tell us who to blame? Well, that’s an interesting approach and we often take it, but it seems like maybe a better way to take it is to tell us who we are in Adam in our fallen state. And what’s interesting about Genesis is we read in verse 6: when the woman saw—now the devil’s been talking to her. She has been seeing things through the eyes of God, but now the devil convinces her to see things through his eyes. He tempts her to take this stuff.

So she’s got new eyes, sinful eyes. We could say—well, they’re not really sinful yet, but they’re different from her eyes before. Now, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes—that word “pleasant” is desirable. Avah, the second of the two words in Deuteronomy 5:21. And the tree and a tree desirable—that’s chamad. That’s the word for covet in Deuteronomy 5:21—desirable to make one wise.

She took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate.

Okay. So these two words used in the tenth commandment about covetousness are also repeated. The first place they’re combined is in the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden. And so that’s interesting to me. What’s also interesting though is remember that these words are used either positively or negatively. There’s good desire and coveting. There’s bad desire and coveting. And in fact, before we get to Genesis 3:6, we get to God’s creation account in Genesis 2:9, which tells us specifically that the trees that he planted were desirable positively.

So what we have here is a twisting of things, and now an improper desire begins to come into the heart of man. Now the end result of this—imitating the serpent in his rivalry with God—he convinces Adam and Eve to see things in terms of that rivalry with God. God’s motivations aren’t good. And then what happens, of course, is that Adam and Eve—once they move toward an improper desire—Adam sees Eve eating and then he imitates her desire. We could say, but he imitates her eating. And what immediately happens? Rivalry.

When God comes to them, Adam blames the wife. Now, this is who we are. This is telling us what fallen humanity is.

I want to read a quote here. This is from a lectionary explanation of this text from Genesis. And he’s talking about René Girard here—that I’ve mentioned in setting the table for these discussions. Girard has an article called “Original Sin.” It’s in “A Winter’s Tale,” and he’s going to quote from him. He says one of the aspects he stresses in this chapter is man’s wanting to blame things on woman and Shakespeare’s tendency, especially in his later dramas, to reveal this scapegoating of women. He suggests, quoting now from Girard: “Woman is the preferred vehicle of truth in Shakespeare and of the Adam and story. He says, quoting in his answer to God’s query, Adam blames everything on Eve. He has been repeating this accusation ever since in the teeth of a biblical text that far from condoning his cowardly avoidance of responsibility obviously regards it as a continuation and aggravation of his original sin. There is no biblical reason for singling out Eve as the main culprit from the beginning. And the texts of scripture make this clear.

“Adam has tried to transform a minor point—what Eve was doing—into the total message of the story. He does this in order to elude the truth of his desire. What we inherited from him is both the desire and the appetite for scapegoating that goes with it.”

Men, that is who we are in Adam. And the Bible makes it quite clear that original sin is Adam’s, not Eve. She’s a minor player in the account—not minor, but relatively minor compared to his sin. And the Bible makes that quite clear.

But fallen man—ever since, this is who we are. Don’t tell me it’s not who you are, because the Bible tells me that is who you are as a fallen man. Your tendency is to blame your wife. If you’re a married guy, that’s what you tend to do. That’s the old man. Now, we’re supposed to be putting it off and putting on the new man—of thanksgiving for our wives. But that’s what you do in the old Adam.

It’s evil to complain about your marriage, to complain about your wife to other people, to scapegoat her for the problems in your life—that is exactly what Christ came to deliver us from. Okay? That’s exactly what Jesus came to deliver us from. Don’t do it. And when you find yourself doing that, immediately repent, and if need be, repent to the person. If you’ve spoken to somebody, repent to your wife for ruining her reputation. Repent all around because it’s a horrible sin.

What’s it got to do with this rich man building these big barns? Well, this kind of desire for things, this idea of coveting—these two words now come into Deuteronomy 5:21. And they end up with us desiring the things that our neighbor has, imitating his desire, wanting his stuff. And what happens as a result of that is rivalry with our neighbor, just like Adam and Eve begin to fight.

So we have fights with our neighbors developing over these desires for the things and possessions that we’re in the context of, and isolation from neighbors or violence toward them happens.

Now, in the account today in Luke 12, the particular word that’s used that’s translated covetousness, both in the King James version and in the New King James version—I mean, everybody says it should be translated covetousness—is a particular Greek word: pleonexia.

Okay, he’s going to talk Greek now. He’s really going to confuse me. Well, just know this: it is always a bad word in the New Testament. Now, remember the word for covetousness—the tenth commandment—is not always a bad word. You can covet in a proper way. You can covet in an improper way. Desire isn’t bad. It’s the object of your desire and what you’re doing in reference to your neighbor. But this word that’s in today’s text, pleonexia, is always bad and it’s never used to translate the tenth commandment.

So this isn’t really a text that we turn to in the first case to talk about covetousness, but somehow it is—because that’s what the text tells us the translators do. What’s the relationship? Well, I think the relationship is that evil desiring—which is what the Bible refers to, you know, the violation of the tenth word—creates a situation of rivalry and isolation from community, like it did with Adam and Eve and like it does ever since then.

That isolation from community removes us from the image-bearing capacity of other people that brings us joy, and instead we transfer joy over to the thing that produces the isolation—property, material possessions—which are good in the sight of God, but they become everything to us.

The word pleonexia means more things, more, want more—that’s what it means. And so when people allow the tenth commandment to get into their souls and don’t stop it, it turns into—I think pleonexia, greed—is a word we would say—a desire for more and more and more. And the other thing it turns into—and I read it dramatically for this reason—it turns into isolation from community.

This guy’s all alone. He’s talking to himself, right? He’s dancing with himself.

So that’s what that’s—the relationship I think of this word pleonexia.

The normal word in the New Testament for coveting in the Deuteronomy 5:21 sense, either properly or improperly, is epithymia, which means to have a desire, to be warm toward something. And that is used both positively and negatively, just like Deuteronomy 5, the word for coveting is used in a good sense or a negative sense.

And when we find a list of the ten commandments—in one of those lists, it has this epithymia word. It never has pleonexia. That’s completely always a bad thing. Epithymia can go good or bad. And in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, epithymia is always what’s used to translate the kind of covetousness that’s talked about in the Ten Commandments. And as I said, that can be good or bad.

Now, one other brief comment before we proceed with Luke 12. I did tell you a couple weeks ago that when our Savior gives a list of the Ten Commandments—or at least the last half of them—he doesn’t use epithymia, and of course he doesn’t use pleonexia, greed, because that’s not the word—it can lead to that, but that’s not the word—but he uses a word that is translated properly: defraud. To defraud somebody of something. And so we know from our Savior’s inspired words in the New Testament that to covet something is not just an internal attitude. It means a defrauding of somebody else.

Now, that word that Jesus uses is only used a couple of places, and it’s very interesting where it’s used. First, it’s used in James where you don’t pay your workers. You defraud them through some kind of tricky arrangement. That’s covetousness in action. Another place it’s used a couple of times is in 1 Corinthians 7, where men are tempted to go to law court against other brothers over minor matters. And Paul says, “Allow yourself to be defrauded. Allow yourself to be the subject of his covetousness. That’s better than going to a law court over a minor matter between you and another believer.”

So again, it’s this defraud action.

Now, here’s what’s interesting. Again, men and women, husbands and wives. The other place it’s used is when Paul is talking about—and I’ve made this reference before—but when Paul is talking about the relationship between men and women, and he says that a woman doesn’t belong to herself, her body belongs to her husband, and the husband’s body belongs to his wife. They’re this mutuality of ownership of each other. And he goes on to say that you’re not to defraud one another in this matter by staying apart for extended periods of time in terms of physical intimacy.

So both a defrauding in terms of money and also a defrauding in terms of physical intimacy in the context of marriage are violations ultimately of the tenth word. And what Jesus says—that’s interesting, I think, and it’s again it’s a warning to us, you know—that that’s what we’re doing when marital couples allow isolation to happen over a period of time. And it really is reminding us again that the root sin of all that stuff—really, you could say the root sin of fallen men—is this covetousness, this evil desiring. Okay? And that produces the breakdown of community—even in the context of marriage.

And God says don’t let that happen.

And today’s text is—you know, it’s happening on steroids in the case of this particular story that their Savior tells here. It’s happening in a tremendously heightened way. And as a result of that, it’s a tremendous teaching opportunity that Jesus uses here to help us understand his warning: Don’t let this happen. Okay?

You’ll end up like that guy in the front cover of your order of worship. He looks like a prosperous guy. I mean, he’s got wine. He’s got all kinds of food. He’s got a nice tapestry of some sort on the wall. He’s okay. He’s got good possessions. And death says your soul. God told him, “Your soul is required this night.”

We don’t want to end up that way. And so Luke 12—actually the whole chapter—is kind of an exposition of a warning against a violation of the tenth word that will become a tremendous desire for things and an alienation, isolation from community and an internal talking to ourselves and ourselves alone in no relationship really to God or to his kingdom.

So Luke 12 is that kind of warning. It’s an exaggerated account to help us to remember to avoid violating the tenth word.

It’s interesting. By the way, you know, when Israel comes out of Egypt, they’re kind of like a new creation, right? They’re going in the wilderness and the Holy Spirit is hovering over them just like he hovered over the new creation. There are these, you know, parallels to this new creation coming out of Egypt and then going into the promised land.

And what spoils the conquest of the promised land? Do you remember what—why did things start to go bad? First one, great. Jericho, great. Ai, not so great. Right? What happens? Covetousness happens. And it says specifically in the text that Achan coveted the things that he saw and thus violated God’s prohibition against taking things—the same way that Adam and Eve—or really Adam—particularly coveted, imitated Eve’s desire, imitating the serpent’s context, coveted the thing that was prohibited.

And so the fall and then the retelling of the fall in the invasion of the promised land—and the fall of that invasion—again tells us that kind of the root sin of everything else is this covetousness stuff. So it’s central. You know, if you look at the second tablet of the law, very simple things going on: don’t kill, you know, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t bear false testimony—very simple. And then a big, long commandment, because that’s the base of all that other stuff. Okay?

Let’s look at Luke 12, then. First we’ll look at an overview of the text. An incident happens, and Jesus responds to the incident by instructing the masses and then giving his disciples even more instruction. And of course that’s his normal way: something happens and he interprets the event for the public, then he interprets the event for his disciples. And once we look at that, then we’ll go back and look at this central verse of chapter 12:15. I believe that kind of is the central point of his teaching. And we’ll look at that.

And then we’ll look specifically toward the end of the chapter and focus in on the ways Jesus doesn’t just tell us don’t. He tells us what to do to avoid this kind of sin. And he’ll tell us the remedy for greed and by way of implication remedy for covetousness. Okay. So let’s look first at an overview of Luke 12:13-24.

Now I didn’t read the first 12 verses. I could have—maybe I should have—because in the first few verses he warns them. Not in what we read, but in the leadup to what we read, he warns them not to fear those who can kill you, but to fear the one who can throw you into hell. And this was what the reformers did: Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill. God’s truth abideth still. So he says, don’t be fearful. And to reinforce the lesson in the first few verses of chapter 12, he says, look, you know, don’t worry about it.

I mean, let’s see—he says in verse 6, “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” So he tells them that God has care for sparrows—that are the cheap bird. And as we know, as we’ve already read, he’ll get around to talking about other birds toward the end. So there’s kind of a bookmark here or a set of bookends where he’s assuring them not to be fearful and knowing that God cares even for sparrows.

So that’s kind of the context. That’s the way we get into the particular stuff that Jesus talks about here.

And what brings up the teaching is this instance of greed. This is not a parable. This actually happens. Somebody comes up to him and says, “Hey, make my brother divide his inheritance with me.” And Jesus rebukes them. He doesn’t, you know, he says, “No.” And then he uses that. He says, “That’s an instance of covetousness or greed—when we want to try to get somebody else to force our brother to divide the inheritance with us. That’s not Jesus’s job.”

And so he analyzes the event that’s going on here. He says, “Who made me a judge or a divider—a divider of inheritances?” But also, it’s interesting because he doesn’t say divider of inheritances. If Jesus does this, what else will he divide? He’ll divide the two brothers. And the end result of covetousness is this division of humanity. That’s what happened in Genesis 3. So I think that’s why the word “divide” here is left a little bit abstract. It isn’t tied specifically to the inheritance.

We’re supposed to read, I think in the subtext, that Jesus doesn’t want to be a divider of people and over covetousness. Now, he will divide people, but not over covetousness. So he gets to the motivation of man, okay? And he simply rebukes this young man.

And so that’s the incident that produces the teaching. And he then provides an instruction on these matters to the masses in verses 15-21. And the central truth is found in verse 15, which we’ll return to in a couple of minutes.

And he said unto them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.”

So Jesus gives this statement of warning to the masses that are around him watching all of this happen. Beware. And so take heed. And so it’s like really watch out for this thing, because this is going to be destructive of community and destructive of life. Greed, as I said, this word for covetousness could be translated greed. It means more, more, more. It wants things. It’s eager to get gain. There is—it’s not the same word as the word and concept used in Deuteronomy 5:21, but I think it’s the result of that in somebody’s life.

Tom Wolfe in “The Bonfire of the Vanities” is where he talks about envy primarily in that book, but he also as a leadup to it, he talks about the money fever. The money fever. Now, we sit here this side of a financial collapse produced in part by the money fever on Wall Street. Now I know the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, you know all that stuff—but in part what was going on was what Wolfe described many years earlier as the money fever: desire to get more and more and more and more. And people that saw themselves as captains of the universe—not willing to make a couple of million. They wanted tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars.

There is this thing at play in a culture that is completely moved away from God and violated the tenth word repeatedly—moved into this idea of more.

Augustine talked about the great eagerness of the fallen heart to have earthly things—not restricted to money or property. It can’t extend to all created things.

Now let me make this real personal for us today. We live in the new normal. You know, we live in a time when it’s likely that many of us—our kids—will not do better than we did. And that was always the great American dream. We live in a time of diminishing wages in relationship to prices. I don’t think that’s going to turn around. Now, it might. I don’t know the future, but let’s say it doesn’t. Let’s say this is the new normal—in spite of who we can elect, you know, Herman Cain and all that. Let’s say what’s your response to that?

And I guess what I’m saying is this text warns us in a purely financial analysis of the times in which we live and warns each of us not to make our bottom line economically the determining factor of how we’re going to live our lives. Okay? It’s really important. I think I’ve been thinking about this a lot. You know, a lot of people in our church and other Christian communities—people are living together again. Married couples are moving back in with mom and dad for a while or a season. We got several that going on here. Single people move back in. I got a couple of older guys living in my house.

You know what? If what God wants is not what you want—surprise, surprise. Isn’t that frequently the case? We want independence. We want things. We want houses that we own. We want bigger barns and bigger houses for our kids. Right? But God has decided in his providence to have a new normal of constriction. And what has he done? He’s recreated community.

Tremendous prosperity in the case of the rich man here in this text produces isolation. And God is interested in community. Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Let’s say we live ten years of the new normal and we got a lot less stuff, a lot less gadgets, but we’ve got relationship back. Is that a good swap? Yeah. Right. I mean, it’s obvious when you think about it. That’s a good swap.

See? So I want this to be personal to us. I’m not trying to, you know, make you feel better about a bad situation. I’m trying to get you to say this parable that Jesus talks about helps us to reanalyze the situations in which we find ourselves based upon our innate tendencies. And as Adam and Eve, their fallen tendency is to covet things and eventually become greedy about them and to evaluate all of life, you know, based on an economic norm.

Okay. Chaucer said that greed is to take away from Christ the love that men owe to him and turn it backward. And this Chaucer said against all reason. Against all reason. It causes the avaricious men to have more hope—hope in his property than in Jesus Christ—and hence more diligence in the guarding and keeping of his treasure than in his service to Jesus Christ. That’s a good comment.

If you are more looking to what you have to protect you—looking at that more than your relationship to Jesus—what are you going to spend more time pointed toward? Right? You’re going to be more concerned about guarding your property than guarding your relationship to Jesus Christ.

Dante, in his Purgatorio, the particular cornice that represents greed—it’s filled with all kinds of different people. There are wasters and hoarders. Some people hoard things. Some people like to spend things, but both of them are into material—a materialistic evaluation of their lives. And they’ve taken a good gift of God—material prosperity—and turned it against God himself. So it comes in different forms, and Dante recognizes this.

There are people on his cornice, you know, that have been stripped bare of everything. So it doesn’t mean a guy’s got a lot of money necessarily either. Poor people can be just as greedy as rich people. That’s what we’re seeing, you know, some of these protests around the country. So on his cornice, some people are stripped bare of everything, including their hair is all gone—to show the effects of their greed.

Whereas other people, you know, are all burdened up with their goods. Anyway, Wordsworth said that getting and spending lays waste to our powers. The wasters are pictured, as I said, by Dante at judgment as standing bald, stripped of their very hair before God’s judgment, whereas the hoarders stand tightfisted before God.

So greed is what the big thing to be warned about here that Jesus talks about.

And then he goes on to describe this by a parable. And so you’ve—I’ve read the parable—and notice, you know, in the parable that the man is completely taken with wealth. There’s no thought of God in his mind as related to us in the parable. The personal pronouns are used. He even talks to—he addresses himself, his own soul, his psyche, you know, soul. He starts to talk to himself. He’s in complete isolation.

Now, what did he do that was wrong? Is being rich wrong? Well, according to some people, yeah, but the Bible says Abraham was a rich guy. Being rich isn’t wrong. Is building big barns wrong? No. If you’ve got a lot of produce and you’re a farm that’s growing, it’s not necessarily wrong to expand. And in fact, frequently expansion is what businesses are aimed at. There’s nothing wrong with building big barns, right?

He apparently wasn’t a slothful guy. He was adding value to his fields, and he was blessed in a sense. God increased the produce of the things that he had. He was a value-adding man. He had stored his crops. He was taking good care of them. You know, in the parable of the talents, Jesus berates the man who doesn’t grow his talents. Right now, if you grow your talents and you get more gold and silver pieces, you might have to get a bigger purse to carry them in—a bigger bag, right? If you’re doing a good job.

So there’s nothing wrong with bigger storage vessels. There’s nothing wrong. In fact, Jesus says there’s something wrong with just hiding your talent and not increasing what God has given to you—attempting to, at least. So what did this guy do that was wrong exactly? Well, you know, maybe—his—he says he wants to eat, drink, and be merry. And people say, “Well, that’s the problem right there. He likes to eat, drink, and be merry.”

But, you know, that’s actually—there’s nothing wrong with that. As it turns out, let me read you a verse from Isaiah 65:13. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, “Behold, my servant shall—my servant shall eat, but you shall be hungry. Behold, my servants shall drink, you shall be thirsty. Behold, my servants shall rejoice, be merry, but you shall be ashamed.”

God says that his servants are supposed to eat, drink, and be merry. We’re going to do that at this table, and we’re going to do that in our homes. Even if we don’t have a lot of things, we’re going to eat, drink, and be merry. There’s nothing wrong with the rich man wanting to eat, drink, and be merry.

What did he do wrong? Well, I’m not sure he did anything wrong. Well, he did some things wrong. He’s obviously talking to himself. But it seems like his sin is a sin of omission.

He has not had God in his thoughts, and he is not looking at how to use his goods and services for the purpose of the kingdom. And you know, so God comes to him. So he hasn’t prepared in terms of his relationship to God. He’s not using his wealth for a particular purpose. His wealth has become his source of value. It’s the center of his life. And so his sin is mostly a sin of omission rather than a sin of commission. He’s self-centered, of course.

I—he’s the kind of guy that would have an iPad, an iPod, an iPhone, and an iMac. As you read through it, I’ll do this. I did this. I did this. My soul, let’s do this. He’s totally turned inward in an internal dialogue. He’s the absence of relationship with either God or man.

Now, that’s what he’s really doing wrong. But that’s a sin of omission and not developing his relationship with God in the kingdom or with other people.

He then explains—Jesus explains the parable, right? So he says that so is he that lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. So there’s the analysis, rather, by our Savior. To look at our property for ourselves and not to see what God has given to us in terms of material possessions—whether they’re small or great—in relationship to God and his kingdom.

He then instructs the disciples in verses 22 to 34, and he says “For this reason”—and this links this section where he describes these things to what he just talked about. So there’s an incident, he gives the analysis of it, and then he says “For this reason,” and he goes on to explain what happens in the next 13 verses.

So what does he say? Well, number one, he says quite simply: don’t worry. Verses 22-23. Don’t be anxious. Take no thought for your life—what you should eat or drink for or for your body that you shall—what you shall put on. Life is more than your possession. So the first thing he tells his disciples in terms of avoiding his sin is to don’t worry, and he gives them various examples of how God takes care of things with people or objects in nature that God takes care of with material possessions.

So he tells us not to worry. He says don’t be anxious. Now, right away again—there—it’s important that we understand that the kind of desires that come out of the fallen nature create anxiety, and anxiety breaks down relationships. So God tells you today: don’t worry. It’s a sin to be anxious, to worry in this way. It’s a sin. Don’t do it. Repent of it.

Now Jesus tells us more than that. He doesn’t say just don’t worry. He tells that, and he says the way you can get away from it is to have proper priorities, to properly prioritize kingdom work. And then he says God is going to care for you. He cares for very things of great lesser value than you. So he’s going to care for you as well.

Worry is ineffectual. He says, “What can you do by worrying? Can you add a cubit to your height or any length to your life?” No. So don’t worry. God is caring for you. Get doing the right stuff, and you won’t worry so much. And look at how silly worrying is. You can’t really do anything for you. It’s not effective.

Then he again returns in verses 27 and 28 how God clothes things, and he again tells them not to worry and that God knows our needs. We don’t need to worry about it because God knows who we are and he knows what we need. So don’t worry is the first half of the message in terms of putting off this sin.

The second half is to be holy. And this is found in verses 31-34.

But rather—So he’s told them what they’re not supposed to do. But rather, what are you supposed to do? How do you put on the new man?

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock, for it’s your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

He takes away money. He takes away individual houses. He brings people to live together again in our country in the last three years. What is he giving you? He’s giving you the kingdom. The kingdom consists in relationships. That’s the root of it. And so he’s giving you the kingdom. He’s not giving you what you might want, but he’s giving you the thing of great value, which is the kingdom itself.

So it’s the father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

“Sell what you have, give alms, etc.”

So you know, understand that if you store up—if your primary thing of value is the material possessions—thieves can break in and bad things can happen to it. But where your treasure is, your heart will be. Have your treasure be in heaven. Produce spiritual benefits that cannot be stolen or taken away.

Matthew 6:19 lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.

So he gives them a sense of correct priorities, knowing what to value. The kingdom is the correct priority. God will give us that kingdom.

So yes, Jesus’s message to keep us from greed and covetousness is: don’t worry, be happy. No. Don’t worry, be holy. That’s it. Don’t worry, be holy. Sing that song today. Hum it to yourself with the correct words in there. Don’t worry, be holy.

It’s that simple. And you don’t worry by remembering his care, by understanding that, you know, you can’t change things by your worry and anxiety.

Now, these are important words for us pastorally today. You know, we’re in a mess financially, and it’s probably not going to get better. It’s probably going to get worse no matter who’s elected. That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Don’t be sinfully anxious.

Yeah. You know that I’m going to be exhorting you for the next twelve months to be involved politically and try to change what’s happening. But but understand that anxiety and worry in terms of your physical possessions is sin according to Jesus. And to take care of what you should be doing, you got to replace that with something else.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does God. Put off worry. Put on holiness toward God.

So the lesson is summarized in verse 15. He said unto them, “Take heed, beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.”

What is the essence of life? It’s not our material possessions. They’re important. They’re good. We’re not Gnostics. You know that ultimately we want to be able to exercise more and more control over more and more property. God says the meek shall inherit every bit of property. But understand the priority. The priority is—that happens as you—like the reformers—don’t seek after that, but seek rather the glory of God and his kingdom, and all these other things Jesus says will be added to you.

Greed is insatiable. You know, greed will eat you up. It never is satisfied.

I’ve got some verses. Proverbs 27:20: “Hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied.” Ecclesiastes 5:10: “He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loves abundance with increase. This also is vanity.” You can’t do it. You can’t ever satisfy that kind of hunger.

Greed is insatiable. Beware of it. It will eat you up. It’s never satisfied.

Ecclesiastes 6:7: “All the labor of man is for his mouth. And yet the appetite is not filled. The appetite can never be filled. With a rebel yell, it cries more and more. More. Pleonexia. Greed. More. It’s never satisfied.”

Greed is destructive to yourself and to society.

Proverbs 15:27: “He that is greedy of gain troubles his own house, but he that hateth gifts shall live.”

He troubles his own house. We don’t know what the rich man had. Did he have a family? They’re irrelevant in the story. Did he have a family that he now is single and isolated from? I’ve seen it happen where desire for material possessions produces divorce, isolation from community, troubles his own house.

The story of Achan—this is what happens. Gehazi, right? Elisha’s servant. Oh well, you know, Naaman—the Syrian. Elisha didn’t take any money, but Gehazi goes gets some money from the guy and does that, and he tells a lie to get money. He’s greedy. He’s covetous. Gehazi, the servant of Elisha. He’s not learned from the master. It’s like a disciple of Jesus who decides that, oh no, what I really want is things. And what happens to Gehazi when he comes back? You know, Naaman had been cured of his leprosy. Gehazi ends up leprous. Elisha says, “That’s it. You and your descendants will be leprous.” And immediately Gehazi becomes leprous.

The judgment of God resides upon those people who are covetous in this evil way.

The love of money, 1 Timothy 6:10 says, is the root of all evil, all social—excrement, kaka. That’s the Greek word here. And the root of that or the root of most of that is the love of money, materialism in an improper sense—exactly what we’re talking about in the tenth word and its more radical forms in terms of greed.

So people covet after these things and err from the flesh. We’re told in 1 Timothy 6:11: “Thou man of God, flee these things. Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith.”

It’s not easy to put away the Adamic nature which wants things and is driven by covetousness and imitation of desire, which leads to rivalry and leads to isolation. It’s not easy. You got to fight the good fight of faith to resist that kind of sin.

You know, America’s had a lot of money, a lot of cocaine abuse. You know, Robin Williams said that cocaine is God’s way of telling you have too much money. And there’s a lot of things going on in our culture that seems to be God’s way of telling us you got too much money. You’re becoming addicted to things that have nothing really much to do with the kingdom. And instead, we’re distracted from it.

And God, you know, he loves us and he wants to give us the kingdom. He desires relationship with us. He will bring it to pass. And I’m convinced that one of the big lessons that we’re learning over the last couple of years is God prioritizes relationships, not independence, not isolation in our own houses with our own little things that surround us so that we don’t got to enter into community.

God is saying no. The new normal may be the best thing that ever happened to us. If the old normal was lots of prosperity and lots of isolation in relationships, if the new normal is not much prosperity and going backwards and our grandkids going backwards—but they have relationship and they’re focused on the kingdom—what’s wrong with the new normal if that’s what God is doing? And in your life, this may be precisely what God is doing.

And it is certainly your task today to not whine and complain about the money all the time. We’re in that time that David sang of—after the money’s gone, what do you have left? Well, what you have left is the stuff that really is of the greatest value. The money’s gone in this culture. But that doesn’t mean the kingdom is gone. In fact, it’s God’s gracious way of getting us off the cocaine and getting us back to an understanding of reality.

And the reality is nothing is more important than human and divine relationships. And the money and the goods are supposed to serve the kingdom, not the other way around—detract from it.

Greed is a sin that comes in many forms, in many different ways of being, and it’s a sin that ultimately is idolatry. You know, we said before that there are a couple of verses in the Bible—three times God says that covetousness is idolatry. But actually it’s not the epithymia word, which would be more directly Deuteronomy 5:21. What it says is this word right here in Luke 12—pleonexia, greed. Greed is idolatry.

Because by the time you move from a simple imitation of desire and trying to get stuff, and you’ve let that rivalry break down relationships, and now the only thing you’re left with is the possessions themselves—the image-bearing relationships you had, you’ve isolated yourself from those. This guy’s all alone, talking to himself. I, I. It’s all he is. By the time you get there, you are now in full-blown idolatry mode.

Idolatry is having something else. Where your heart is, there your treasure will be. And this guy’s heart is totally given over to material possessions. And that—the Bible says that—three times—pleonexia, greed, more and more. This is idolatry. This is the ultimate violation of all the commands of God, and certainly the first word and the tenth word.

Instructions from Luke 12 on how to avoid greed. Well, it’s a pretty bad thing. Let’s talk a little bit quickly about how to avoid it.

First, be assured of God’s care and love. He loves the sparrows. Prior to the teaching, that’s where he began the first few verses. Then we got the stuff on Greek and avoiding it. And then at the end, he says he loves the ravens in verse 24. And he takes care of the lilies. Many, many verses here and throughout the scriptures that talk about God’s love and care for us.

Understand, believe today the care that God has for things of very little value compared to you—ravens, sparrows, lilies—compared to you, compared to the human soul. You’re compared to the image-bearer of God. And yet God cares for all these things in wondrous ways. And he tells us, look, I care for these things. You should be—I’m telling you this so that you’d be assured of God’s care for us.

He does this to put our fears and our worries to rest. He gives illustration after illustration, calming fears, restoring a proper sense of value. Because one of our primary motivations in coveting and in greed is fearfulness. The bookends are: don’t be fearful. So one of the things that drives us is the sense of security that material possessions provides us.

And God says don’t be fearful. I’m going to take all that away, but I provide all kinds of things, and I’m going to love and care for you. So he cares for these lesser things. And then it says he cares for us. So understand and appropriate the love and care of God for you in your life. This is a way of dealing with greed.

Secondly, let kingdom work prioritize your life. Already talked about this, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven and do kingdom work. We’re headed toward advent season, and Dante, rather in his discussions—(one of the whips of avarice)—one of the things that Dante used as an illustration in terms of a literary device in purgatory to get people clear of greed was St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas, who gave his wealth to help those of lesser value or of lesser income rather.

So let kingdom work prioritize your life. “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things shall be added to you.”

And third, recognize that God himself is our exceeding great reward. One of my favorite verses in the scriptures is found in Genesis 15:1. After these things, the word of the Lord came upon Abram in a vision, saying, “Fear not, Abram. I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.”

God himself is the source of all value. We’re to seek kingdom work because that’s where the King is found. And the King ultimately is the source of all value and satisfaction for the new man. It was the rejection of the King that created our Adamic nature—isolation, envy, and rivalry. And it’s a love again for God, a prioritizing of his kingdom, because he’s in the center of that kingdom. The person of God himself is the one that we seek.

In Dante’s Purgatorio, the cornice for greed—they’re all lying face down on the dust, those that are guilty of the sin of greed. And he says in his purgatorio that this is because they refused to look up to heaven on earth. So here they are, forced in penance to have their faces in the dust.

So you know, seek God. Lift up your hearts. Lift up the center of your being to seek relationship with God. And this is through his church, of course. And God says this will be a great way to put to death the sin of greed—having a proper sense of priorities, remembering that God himself is our exceeding great reward.

Hebrews 13:5: “Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have. Why? For he has said—Jesus has said—’I will never leave you nor forsake you.’”

That’s the key. God will not leave us or forsake us.

Proverbs 23:5: “Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” God doesn’t do that. When we set our affections upon God, that relationship builds and is maintained. Riches come and go. Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always.”

You know, there was a story of a guy who died in the desert. And I don’t know, you know, you never know about these stories, right? But they say it’s a true story in Death Valley. So supposedly a group of tourists found this—found this skeleton of a man out on a sand dune way off by himself. And he was holding in his hand a piece of mica with pyrite in it. Fool’s gold. You know, it’s not true gold. It looks like gold, but he thinks it was gold. So he got this skeleton. He’s died in Death Valley. He’s got this piece of what he thought was gold in it, but it’s fool’s gold. And he thought it was gold. And on a piece of paper next to this guy, a bony finger had apparently scrolled the words: died rich.

So as he’s dying, he’s got gold in his hand and he writes out “died rich.” Well, he didn’t die rich. It was fool’s gold. What he did was he died deceived. He died deceived by what glimmers rather than the true source of relationship, which is God.

May the Lord God grant us that we don’t die deceived, improperly giving an idea of riches to that which is transitory, and as a result not entering into relationships with one another and with the Lord God. May he deliver us from this primal sin of covetousness, which leads to greed, alienation, and dissatisfaction.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for today. Thank you, Father, for warning us against covetousness, but doing more than that by telling us the answer, the key, the ways to get away from that—to properly prioritize you, trusting your care and love for us. We thank you for that care and love now.

And may you bless us, Father, with a sense of putting on a right relationship to you and to other people. May we be thankful for the new normal, knowing that you are most wise, most holy, and most sovereign in all your dealings. And at least for this time, you’ve caused us to increase relationships with each other. Men don’t go to work as much. Men have to move in with other men. Families have to move in with other families.

And so it seems like you’ve given us a time to focus on relationships. May we not be ungrateful and unthankful for the important value that relationships have in our life, and particularly as we see them mediated through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to trust you, Father, not to doubt, but to trust and to seek first your kingdom. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.