The Foolishness of Greed
Series: Encountering Jesus (through the Gospel of Luke)
Brad Bailey - September 22, 2019
Series #39
Text: Luke 12:13-21
Intro
We are continuing our ongoing series and focus on “Encountering Jesus” …through the Gospel of Luke.
And this Fall we encounter Jesus engaging us with some of the most defining questions about life… about our orientation and direction.
When disoriented ….we lack clarity in terms of direction… and we will be destined towards a tragic destination.
Ex – My basketball game as child… went and scored… wrong basket
Today…Jesus wants to help us not find that we have gone the wrong direction.
He wants us to understand our relationship to material wealth and possessions.
Luke 12:13-15 (NIV) ? Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." 14 Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" 15 Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
Jesus is in the middle of a sermon teaching his disciples to fear God alone, when he is suddenly interrupted by a man who is dissatisfied over what he considers to be an unfair division of his father’s estate between himself and his brother.
Not uncommon for rabbis to be asked to settle family disputes…but Jesus saw the real issue. This was not the plea of a man desperate for keeping his family bound together in care for one another.
This man really didn’t ask Jesus for a decision on what would be a fair division of the estate, he just demanded, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!”
Here is Jesus… the savior of the world… promised by God… and this man interrupts him to see if he would provide a legal settlement in his favor.
(Tragically the dividing of estates has been the source of that which has torn family bonds apart. Suddenly there is immediate material gain at hand… and all hope and vanity rises up to take hold of it.)
Jesus won’t provide a legal assessment…but rather a spiritual one.
Jesus sees what is at hand… and he names it: greed.
Jesus knew that this family feud over inheritance was only a symptom of a greater problem…. greed.
In fact the “you” in verse fourteen is plural indicating that he presumes that both brothers have a problem with greed. As long as both brothers are suffering from greed… no settlement would be good.
The man wanted Jesus to fix his problem… but Jesus’s response reflects that the most important thing is not for him to solve his problem but to transform his heart.
I think if we are honest… we might consider “How often have we gone to God asking him to change our situation rather than asking him to change our heart?”
Jesus doesn’t see merely the division of material good…but the far larger tragedy of souls whose who orientation about this life is lost.
Warns them…and us… of GREED.
"Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." – Luke 12:15
The word Jesus used that is translated here as “greed”… is sometimes translated as covetousness. [1]
It refers to… a driving desire to get more… to take more… more than we need.
Greed is “the lust to have more than one’s fair share, … more than we need … which is never fully satisfied.”
Jesus saw a life of material management swirling around them… and needs to speak to it… how much more today.
And he confronts greed’s central belief…
“One’s life does not consist in the abundance of His possessions.”
Stop… and listen. Jesus wants us to hear those words.
They are words that nearly everyone would say they agree with this…and yet few if any of us actually believe…as least as deeply as we need to.
Jesus says there is “one’s life”… that is you…and there is possessions… and those possessions add nothing to the essence of who you really are.
And so the lust… driving force…for stuff… reflects what we could call a disorienting control.
Malcolm Forbes was one of the wealthiest people to have lived in our time. The billionaire publisher was the one who came up with the oft-quoted phrase, "He who dies with the most toys wins."
Mr. Forbes has since passed away and like so many others… the very thing that drove them seems to have defied them in the end. [2]
Jesus continues in verse sixteen with a story… or parable…often referred to as “The parable of the Rich Fool” in which the Lord captures the foolishness.
It is a picture of life that is rooted in the belief that our life does consist in the abundance of our possessions.
Luke 12:15-21 (NIV) ? 16 And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17 He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' 18 "Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."' 20 "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' 21 "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."
Before we denounce this guy as a greedy fool… let’s recognize what Jesus doesn’t describe or denounce him as.
He doesn’t tell us that he’s some shady crook.
He doesn’t tell us that he some oppressive landlord.
He’s a farmer… and a hard working farmer. (When you find a man who has made his fortune in farming, you know that he must have had a strong work ethic, he found some good land, he has good business sense, he knows how to manage his resources well, and he has good fortune on his side.)
What Jesus describes is simply what happened when the man had more than he needed. He had all the grain he needed, more than he expected, and he had nowhere to put it.
Jesus is not condemning this man for working hard and being successful. The problem is not his material success. The problem is his relationship to material possessions. His material success was the source of his identity… his source of well being.
God pronounces him a fool…not because of his mental abilities… but because of his spiritual discernment. A fool in biblical language was not a description of mental ability but of spiritual discernment.
Running through this little story Jesus conveys what we might call the flow of foolishness.
Greed’s Controlling Path…
(We find here the anatomy of greed… or the path of how greed gets control of us.)
1. We become identified with what we have… attached and entitled to the gifts of this life… as if we were their source.
Jesus said the root of our problems is not understanding that we do not consist in the abundance of our possessions.
The root of the issue is that we do identify with stuff.
Where did this man’s material wealth come from?
“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.”
How does the man refer to it?
“my crop”… “my barns”… “my grain”… “my goods.” [3]
[Could show quick clip- Humorous baby wining “mine” -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDgz0YD_Fvs ]
Could any of us stand up here and produce wealth?
No. We would ask for something…some source to gain it from.
The Bible says the source is never us…but we are managers who are entrusted to work with the owners materials.
That is why God never honors a man for his wealth…but rather for his work…and integrity.
Discipline… development of skills… integrity and fairness… are truly honorable….but wealth itself is not defining. [4]
2. We trade present contentment for the vanity of a “bigger” future.
When we hear this story we hear about the man coming into wealth… and seeking a way to store up his new wealth. But what’s notable is how Jesus introduces him at the start…as a rich man.
He was already wealthy… but his focus is on bigger barns.
He already had barns that were full… but now they must be torn down because they’re insufficient.
As it have been described [5]…
“Greed starts with discontentment, the enemy within that forges its chains. Discontentment tells us that happiness will not occur until the next purchase, the next possession, the next upgrade.”
This is the addiction we all fight. [6]
A study revealed that no matter what the income level is of an American, they believe that if they only made 20% more per year, they would have it made, they would be successful. The person, making 25k felt they would be happy with 30K, the 50k household would be happy with 60k and so on. It crossed all economic scales. It’s kind of like I got a 2 bedroom house and 2 barns, I sure wish I had a 3 bedroom house and 3 barns. And once I get that I would sure like to look for that 4 bedroom house with an attached 4 barns.
3. We become focused upon ourselves… reduced to consumers rather than producers.
I’ll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."'
We might call this selfish…. But it is also smallness….because it reduces us.
The mandate God declared upon human life was that were we to be would manage the resources of creation so as to “be fruitful”… that is to produce good from it…. to bring forth the most.
We are most like God when we produce…when resources flourish.
It is only separated from God that we became self oriented.
Greed flows from feeling small… grasping for more…while generosity flows from feeling our potential to meet the needs of others.
How many of us drift into shopping mode…perhaps when down… bored… without any real need?
Not necessarily buying…but browsing… the new “window shopping”…
How many of us find that such self-consumption is more satisfying than when we give to help others?
Greed kills the human spirit.
We can almost feel the disconnection from others that this man has. He seems to have has no one to talk to but himself. There are no family and friends to share his fortune. Perhaps his greed and selfishness drove them away. Like Howard Hughes, he is lonely in the midst of his wealth. It’s hard to eat, drink and be merry by yourself.
4. We lose life’s natural humility as we presume more control over the future than we actually have.
Verse 18…
"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.
This man thought that when he put his plan into being that he would he would have it made for years to come. But all of this is based on the fact that this man expected to control the fate of the future.
Greed assumes more control over life than we have. And when we presume such control….we become proud of our plans… and attached to our plans in a way that will prove in vain.
The book of James speaks to just such an attitude (4:13-16) when he says,
James 4:13-16 (NCV)
Some of you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to some city. We will stay there a year, do business, and make money.” 14 But you do not know what will happen tomorrow! Your life is like a mist. You can see it for a short time, but then it goes away. 15 So you should say, “If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that.” 16 But now you are proud and you brag. All of this bragging is wrong.
The Bible does not discourage us from looking to the future with great expectation. However as we make our plans, whether in business, in relationship or in our personal lives, we are to do so from the perspective that ultimately God is in charge. In other words, we need to plan with humility.
5. We find we have treasured what will not last at the expense of what will.
Verses 20-21
"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' 21 "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."
Jesus says, “this very night your soul will be demanded of you.” The verb translated demanded (apiteo) conveys the idea of life as a loan that must be repaid to God upon demand. [7]
Closing.
With this Jesus brings the choice home.
Your life does not consist of your material possessions.
Your life finds it’s true home in God… and the substance of our life is about our faithfulness to that relationship.
The “rich towards God” are those who use what God has given them for others.
Every day we seek to honor God… his will… his compassion…his purposes.
Responsive closing song: Living For Your Glory
Resources: John Hamby (The Folly of Seeking the Comfortable Life);
Notes:
1. Regarding the word translated “greed”…p?e??e??a? (pleonexias)?Strong's Greek 4124: Covetousness, avarice, aggression, desire for advantage. From pleonektes; avarice, i.e. fraudulency, extortion.
2. Christopher Winans, in his book, Malcolm Forbes: The Man Who Had Everything, tells of a motorcycle tour that Forbes took through Egypt in 1984 with his Capitalist Tool motorcycle team. After viewing the staggering burial tomb of King Tut, Forbes seemed to be in a reflective mood. As they were returning to the hotel in a shuttle bus, Forbes turned to one of his associates and asked with all sincerity: “Do you think I’ll be remembered after I die?”
Forbes is remembered. He is remembered as the man who coined the phrase, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” That was the wisdom of Malcolm Forbes. In fact, that was his ambition. That’s why he collected scores of motorcycles. That’s why he would pay over a million dollars for a Faberge egg. That’s why he owned castles, hot air balloons and countless other toys that he can no longer access.
The Lord Jesus Christ gave us words of superior wisdom when he said, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). It is a fatally deficient wisdom that declares “He who dies with the most toys wins.”
Family Survival in the American Jungle, Steve Farrar, 1991, Multnomah Press, pp. 47-48
3. In the original Greek the personal pronoun “my” occurs four times and “I” eight times. Even in the English we see the pronoun “I” five times and “my” four times. Notice he how he says my crops, my barns, my goods. He is confused between ownership and stewardship. It is not ours to own it is ours on loan.
4. The very nature of our economic system that has produced the greatest wealth for the most people emerged from the Bible.
It views work as a value and not a vice.
It views the value of relative ownership.
But it rooted everything in one’s responsibility to the ultimate owner.
As that element is lost… capitalism loses it’s heart…it’s moral center.
One may value this good summary of Biblical or “Christian Economics.” In regards to how stewardship should root capitalism, see “Capitalism and Christianity – Stewardship” by Stephen DeKuyper . “We may have a long-term claim on the earth and all that is in it, but it is necessary to recognize that true ownership still lies with God.” Also - CAPITALISM, RELIGION, AND THE ECONOMICS OF THE BIBLICAL JUBILEE By Paul Williams
How the American dream turned into greed and inequality - Alberto Gallo - 09 Nov 2017
5. Appears adapted from Dave Harvey in Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World
edited by C. J. Mahaney
6. The Apostle Paul captured the goal we should all see:
Philippians 4:12-13 (NIV)
I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
7. Everything you have will one day be left behind. It is yours now to use or to abuse, but one day it will be taken from you and you will stand before the Lord and give an account of how you used it. “Then whose will those things be which you have provided” – Similarly we read in Eccles. 2:21-23 (NLT). “For though I do my work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, I must leave everything I gain to people who haven’t worked to earn it. This is not only foolish but highly unfair. So what do people get for all their hard work? Their days of labor are filled with pain and grief; even at night they cannot rest. It is all utterly meaningless.”
