Luke Chapter 12 Overview
Well, this morning we're in Luke chapter 12, and we're continuing in our series as we consider in this gospel how Luke is convincing us of Christ.
In Luke chapter 12, Jesus is interacting with different people from a raging crowd that is surrounding him. In this raging crowd, there are people competing for Jesus' attention. They're looking for some way to get access to Jesus so they can talk to him, they can ask of him, and they can simply be near him.
Jesus is aware of everyone in the crowd. Being the Son of God, he knows not only that people are interested, but he knows who the people are. He knows every one of them. He's revealed that he knows even the number of hairs on every person's head. He knows before anyone asks what they will ask. He knows why they want to ask it, and he is deeply aware of what they need the most.
Jesus Knows the Heart
In Luke chapter 12, Jesus is reminding his disciples, who are drawn near to himself, that he's not fooled by anyone. There's no religious Pharisee or keeper of the law that is able to fool Jesus with their self-righteousness. Instead, Jesus has told his disciples to beware of the hypocrites, the Pharisees, because they are living contrary to what they say that they believe.
Jesus understood the hard hearts of people who were surrounding him, and he warned them that there would be no secret, no underlying motives that he would not expose. No normal human being would be able to know their thoughts unless this person was none other than the Son of God.
And as Luke is recording this, he wants us to recognize that this is in fact the promised Messiah of Israel, that he is reading people's hearts just as we might read the words of a book, because Jesus knew everything about every individual. Well, one of the things Jesus was working to do throughout his ministry of teaching and performing miracles is to expose people's hearts so that they would see their need for his salvation.
And one way that he regularly exposed their hearts involved their attitudes and their decisions about wealth and resources. We see this throughout the Bible, especially in the ministry of Jesus, where he confronts people who have means and encourages them to give up their resources in order to follow him.
His own disciples were given that challenge when he met them at the water's edge as fishermen and said to leave behind their boats and follow him. And what did the young disciples do? They followed him. What did Matthew, the tax collector, do who was sitting in a booth filled with revenue that he had taken from people? Jesus came and called him, and he abandoned his post to follow Jesus.
Yet there were others that Jesus encountered, including perhaps the man that we'll meet in chapter 12, beginning in verse 13, who Jesus also challenged to leave behind their worldly goods. And they went away sad. They couldn't give up what they thought that they owned in order to commit to following Christ wholeheartedly.
As Jesus is ministering to his disciples, he's comforting them that he will, in fact, give them their daily bread. Remember, when he taught them to pray in chapter 11, that was one of the things that he emphasized: that he would provide all their needs, that the Father God cared for them down to their daily bread and need for sustenance.
So, as Jesus is ministering, exposing the hearts and attitudes of people, he uses wealth and resources to expose what really guides their internal compass. Jesus did not argue with self-righteous people about their rules. He didn't get in tit-for-tat debates about what the meaning of this word was versus the meaning of that word. And he did not argue with religious people about their piety and question their religious pomp and circumstance. Instead, Jesus exposed their self-righteousness and their religiosity through their relationship to their money and possessions.
On more than one occasion, there was a proud Pharisee or a scribe who would boast of their ability to keep the law. And they would walk away when Jesus told them to sell everything that they had because they were not willing to do it. They did not truly love neighbor and God enough to give up their way of life. Instead, they wanted to cling to what they had and hope that they could have Jesus plus that. But knowing those individuals' hearts, Jesus said, "You can't have them both. You must give up what you have in order to have me."
You see, people like this could make great impressions in the temple. They probably looked very sanctified, very religious, and very pious. But these same people would not sacrifice their own comfort or security for loyalty to God. Rather than give themselves completely to him, they held back for themselves, wanting some measure of control over what they thought they had.
This is why it's significant that Luke records the parable of the rich fool immediately after Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the scribes. While they were waiting intently to catch Jesus in some wrong word or misspoken phrase that he might say, Jesus wanted to reveal the various ways that they lived contrary to what they said they believed. Their covetousness violated the law and the tenth commandment, but it also revealed their hidden hypocrisy.
So let's read, beginning in verse 13 through verse 21, this parable. It says, "Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, 'Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.' And Jesus replied, 'Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?' Then he said to them, 'Watch out. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.' And he told them this parable. The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I will store my surplus grain. And I'll say to myself, You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy. Eat, drink, and be merry.' 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?' This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich toward God."
Jesus knew that his audience had conflicted motives. He understood the sin of their hearts. And he also understood that reasoning with scribes and Pharisees and arguments about the law would not penetrate their motives. The Pharisees had their piety and the scribes had their rules. But Jesus understood that they needed forgiveness of their sins. He used a question from a man in a crowd to reveal their inner covetousness. And he wanted all of his hearers, especially the Jewish leaders, to recognize their need for forgiveness. Ultimately, we see Jesus in this passage showing that even the poorest person on earth can inherit eternal life. And often the richest person on this earth will not inherit eternal life.
It's not to say that wealth is bad per se, but it is to say that the pursuit of wealth and the exclusion of God do not lead to eternal life. So Jesus begins this section by condemning our covetousness.
Jesus Condemns Our Covetousness
And that's my first point this morning: that Jesus condemns our covetousness. After Jesus exposed the Pharisees' hypocrisy, it simply says someone in the crowd interrupted Jesus. As seems to be the pattern, there's no mention of this man's name. There's no family identity. His surname is not listed. It just says a person in the crowd, who's unidentified, was able to get Jesus' attention.
I can't help but think of a media scrum where people are shouting, "Coach, coach, coach," trying to get attention after the game to get his take on something. And somehow this man was saying, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," and he got his attention. He received Jesus' attention because Christ used his question to expose the hearts of more than just the man, but of every person's inner struggle with covetousness.
This man was asking Jesus to resolve a legal dispute that he had probably with his older brother. And he said, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." An older brother wouldn't have said this because under Israel law, the older brother received most of the inheritance, and in many cases, all of the inheritance. So this was likely a younger brother who was saying, "Teacher, tell this greedy, selfish, older brother to give me what I deserve."
And this embittered man did not ask Jesus to consider the law or the merits of his brother's claim on the inheritance. He simply asked Jesus to rule in his favor so that he would receive a portion of the inheritance, whether that was land or money or livestock, it doesn't matter. He simply wanted more for himself. Jewish rabbis would be able to settle some legal disputes like this.
But notice Jesus completely ignored the man's claim. He doesn't get into the law and quote what the Old Testament says. He doesn't ask the man how much he wanted in the division of the inheritance. He misses or skips over all of that. And instead, he used the man's outspoken, shameless desire for a greater inheritance to expose every person's covetous heart.
So Jesus replied to him in verse number 14, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" He was not going to take on the role of being the people's court and Judge Wapner to date me to the 80s and 90s. But Jesus instead wanted to expose the sin behind this man's question. This wasn't simply a legal dispute. It was a matter of the man's covetousness.
Jesus knew that if both brothers remained stubbornly greedy, then the older brother would claim his rights to the inheritance and the younger brother would assert his need for more property. But there would be no financial settlement, no matter how it was divided, that would make either or both of the men happy. Each brother would continue to fight for more than what he received. He would resent his brother for being greedy while ignoring his own covetousness. So Jesus gave both brothers and everyone listening a strong warning about covetousness. He says here, "Watch out."
Beware of All Kinds of Greed
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Life does not consist in abundance of possessions. The verb that's translated "watch out" or "beware" conveys the idea of imminent, deadly danger from the worst enemy imaginable. The enemy in this case is covetousness, that this man's greed is blinding him. So Jesus exhorts him to guard against this insidious threat from within.
The threat specifically is all kinds of greed, which is better translated—I prefer covetousness, as the ESV says. And the idea here is that covetousness is warned against and forbidden in the Ten Commandments. It is the Tenth Commandment, where God says to not covet your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's livestock, or your neighbor's property. Covetousness is when a person has a desire or a craving that becomes a demand for what someone else has. It can cause us to resent someone or anyone who has something that we wish we had or that we think we deserved. Covetousness involves our secret desires, desires that inevitably spill over into our attitudes, our decisions, and our actions.
Covetousness was a clear violation of the 10th commandment and it infected everyone. It wasn't just this younger brother who was mad at his older brother, but it was the Pharisees who were coveting the influence that Jesus had. It was the scribes who wanted Jesus' authority. And it was people who were desperate to get Jesus to heal them, desperate for Jesus to do something to change their life short of eternal life.
Jesus warned this man that life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. The man had become so obsessed with his inheritance that his inheritance was consuming him. Coveting is more than merely desiring something we don't have, but it also involves craving what someone else does have. This man wanted his brother's inheritance, and he wanted it so badly that he pressed through a crowd, interrupted everyone, and commanded attention for Jesus to respond to him.
The world believes that wealth leads to happiness, fulfillment, and contentment. But Jesus says the exact opposite. He warns that life does not consist in an abundance of things. While Jesus does not condemn wealth and resources, and he doesn't say that we must take a vow of poverty, he teaches that a satisfied life involves far more than the accumulation of money and material resources.
Think of this illustration. When toddlers play in a room full of toys, like some of our children are right now in the nursery downstairs, a covetous child's interest in a particular toy heightens, especially when another child grabs hold of a toy that now the covetous child wants. Before the kid took the toy to play with, the covetous child wasn't even paying attention to that toy. But now that someone else is holding the toy, it becomes an object of desire. That is a great picture of covetousness. And the covetous child, if you watch them and don't intervene, will inevitably find a way to snatch the toy that he desperately wants from the kid who's already playing with it. And the thief will go over, grab the toy and say, "Mine," when it wasn't his or hers at all.
And then what does the victim do? The kid who is playing with the toy yelps in anguish and starts a vicious tug of war for this now highly coveted toy. And he says, "Mine." And now we have a battle of the wills. Who's going to win out? Who's going to play with this toy? And mercifully, a parent usually intervenes.
Well, I'm prepared to say, as adults, we're not much different than toddlers. We're more subtle, we're more sophisticated, but we continue to covet what other people have. Coveting makes us critical about anyone else when they get what we want.
I will take my water. Thank you for my water team there. There's something about this room that is dry, and I think it's the heat of the lights that shine down on this that keep drying me out. We will keep working on that.
But what I was saying about covetousness related to us as adults is that we're more sophisticated, we're more subtle, but we still covet what other people have. I find it almost amusing how people try to get stuff they didn't even know they wanted, and I'm going to put it in air quotes, until they saw somebody else have it. No hate on doodle dogs, but doodle dogs are a great example of something that a lot of people didn't know existed until the past 10 or 15 years, and now everybody wants to have one. The idea being that covetousness drives us to get what we think will make us happy. We think that if we have what other people do, that somehow we will be more content. Yet coveting makes us more critical, especially when someone else gets what we don't have. It could be the higher grade in class. "Oh, why did they get that grade? They didn't study as hard as I did." Or maybe it's the more lucrative promotion at work. "Why did they get promoted to manager when I've been here longer?" It could be a romantic relationship with a significant other when you say, "I've been putting myself out there."
I've been praying desperately to find a mate. Why did they get that person? Or maybe it's the dream house in a desirable neighborhood that we want to live in. Whatever the case, covetousness makes us say we deserve better. We should have what they have. We instinctively compare ourselves to other people and we normally resent it when we cannot get what they have. "It's not fair," we say. "It's just not right. They don't deserve it. Why them? Why not me? I've worked hard. I've done all the right things. And why isn't God blessing me?"
And we suddenly become determinists in our theology. Jesus' half-brother James comments on our covetousness in his epistle. He says, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?" You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. James heard Jesus' teaching, internalized it, and now reflected it in his own letter. He understood, as he had observed people, that covetousness created all kinds of animosity. Coveting creates such a strong desire that we end up scheming to get what we want.
Imagine this man who's interrupted Jesus. All he can think about is the inheritance. We don't know how long it had been. We don't know how much was involved. And we don't know even how wealthy this person was. But we know this man is so consumed that he goes to Jesus and rather than asking, "What might I do to inherit eternal life?" he asked Jesus to tell his brother to give him more money. Coveting completely corrupted the man.
It's very similar to Achan in the Old Testament. Achan was a man who had stolen treasure from Jericho and buried it in his tent because he coveted gold and fine clothes. He was so desperate to acquire these resources that he stopped at nothing to obtain the treasure. And he allowed covetousness to consume his desires and ultimately it took his life.
Our sinful desires follow the same progression as Achan's and the same progression of this brother's. First, we see something that we want. Then we start thinking about it until it totally dominates our thoughts and it spills over into that's all we can talk about. Next, what we want becomes our obsession. And we are plotting and scheming. How can we get it? What do we need to buy? What do we need to sell? What do we need to change? What can we do extra? How can we get this thing? And it takes over our lives and we convince ourselves we cannot live without it. Then we decide to do anything that's necessary to get it, no matter the cost.
And finally, if we get what our object of desire is, what we wanted now owns us. We become a slave to it. We have to have the good job to make the payment on the house that we so desperately wanted. We have to keep up appearances because the pressure has increased in order to maintain this desire that we have. Ultimately, this covetousness is why married men commit adultery because they want someone else's wife. It's why married women leave or harm their children because they want something different for themselves. It's why employees ruin their companies through greed and graft. It's why church members destroy churches because of competitiveness and entitlement. And it's what causes fights and quarrels that always end in destruction.
Back to James' words in his epistle. If God truly wants us to have something more, then we can be assured that he will give it to us. If we need spiritual gifts to serve him, he will give them to us. If we need better skills for our vocation, he will equip us with those skills. If we are missing something that we truly need to glorify God, he will supply our every need. He said that in chapter 11. We should not think, "If only I had this or that or more of this or that." Instead, we must know and thank God that he supplies everything that we truly need.
Jesus decisively condemns covetousness. He has no category for us to let our desires run awry and to overtake us. This is why he moves to share a parable to show us that our covetousness deceives us.
How Covetousness Deceives Us
And this is the second thing I want you to see from our passage this morning, that Jesus not only condemns our covetousness, but he shows how covetousness deceives us in verses 16 to 19. He does not merely confront this man about being covetous over an inheritance. He illustrates it with a compelling parable meant to convict everyone that was in his audience.
Jesus described a wealthy farmer with a bountiful harvest, and the farmer's storage facilities were already full, so he needed more space to store this unexpected bumper crop. That's what he's saying when it says, the ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. So he thought to himself, what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.
Jesus explained that the source of this rich man's wealth was a natural resource called the ground. The farmer literally prepared the soil and planted the seed, but it says the ground, not the man, yielded an abundant harvest. The man's good fortune came directly from the hand of God, not from his own hard work, his own ingenuity, or his own good luck. The man's wealth was a gift from his creator.
But the rich man's response revealed his own covetousness because he says he thought to himself, what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. Then he said, this is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger barns. And there I will store my surplus of grain. And I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy. Eat, drink, and be merry.
I read that with emphasis on I and my because Jesus described the rich man's intent with 12 first-person pronouns. And these pronouns are meant to reveal the man's utter selfishness. Four times the rich man said my, and eight times he says I. The rich man was obsessed with his own comfort and ease. He was obsessed with the wealth that he had been given that he thought he deserved. But he had no regard for God or anyone else, including his own family. The rich man simply mused to himself, I'll take life easy now. I'll eat, drink, and be merry.
The rich man's plan to build bigger barns for his surplus grain appears to be perfectly logical and wise. But it was the man's hidden motivation and his covetousness that revealed his sin. Jesus is not condemning wealth. He's condemning greed, and this man was completely given over to greed. He was building bigger barns for himself. Notice he was not building bigger barns to provide for his family or others in need. There's no acknowledgement of the source of this harvest. No acknowledgement that God provided everything the man had. He only cared about his own comfort and ease.
Contrast this with Joseph in the Old Testament, who built grain silos for Egypt and blessed the whole Mideast region during an incredible seven-year drought. God used Joseph to accumulate resources that benefited Egypt and many other people, including his own father and brothers. This rich man, who is a hypothetical man in the parable, is only caring about himself, saying, my barns and my grain and what I will do with all of these things.
Daryl Bach concludes this. He says, Jesus is not saying that possessions are bad, but he is saying that the selfish pursuit of them is pointless. He's saying it's pointless because ultimately this man is going to die before he enjoys any of it.
Like the rich man in the parable and the greedy brother who wanted more inheritance, we all struggle with covetousness. The way we react when other people have something that we want and the way we manage our wealth and resources reveal our hearts and our motives. Our relationship to money and how we use it indicates what we believe about God and eternity. This is a sobering and convicting passage to say that we should invest in God's glory and eternity rather than merely ourselves.
Yet our whole world system is designed to glorify ourselves. Think of all the lists of the richest men and women in the world. They're constantly changing. I remember I was a teenager when Ted Turner broke the billionaire mark. He was the first person to become worth a billion dollars. And then within short order, through some business deals that he seemed to lose control of, his net worth was cut in half, seemingly overnight. And yet over time, his wealth did build back up. But he is a poor man by today's standards compared to the technological or technology barons that have billions upon billions of dollars.
Whatever the case, even if we are a person of normal means, we can still be covetous. We still want more. Our object of desire, whatever it is, no matter how modest it may seem, pales the moment we get it. It loses its luster when we have our hands on it. And then we start wanting what's next. We're no different than the toddlers who are fighting over the toys in the nursery, but we are now adults fighting over the resources in our lives. Jesus warns us that covetousness kills. And our covetousness deceives us.
It tricks us into thinking that we are the source of our own strength and the source of our own wealth. Yet Jesus warns this brother and warns everyone listening that that covetousness will cost them their very lives.
Generosity Toward God Delivers Us
And this leads to the last thing I want you to see in our passage this morning, and that is the only remedy is that generosity toward God delivers us. Generosity toward God delivers us. What does it deliver us from? It delivers us from our selfishness and from our covetousness.
Jesus called the rich man in his parable, "You fool. You fool, all this that you have done for yourself is now going to be meaningless to you." The man wrongly assumed, like an arrogant fool, that he had control over the days of his life, that he had control over his wealth and over his future. But Jesus said, "This very night, your life will be demanded from you." In other words, this man was going to die instantly in that time, not on his schedule or time frame, before he could relax, before he could enjoy all of the fruit of his labor. This man would die. Rather than enjoy a life of comfort and ease, this man would lose his health and his wealth before he could ever enjoy it.
The sin of the foolish man involved living in the moment with no regard for God and eternity. The fool says in his heart, "There is no God," Psalm 14. This man did not fear God. He lived for himself in a life of comfort and leisure. He didn't honor God and prepare for eternal life by confessing his sin and trusting Christ. He reveled in his good fortune without considering God or others. And this foolish man lost his life and his wealth.
So Jesus asked him, "Who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" The question was not a legal question about who would inherit the man's estate. Jesus was asking about the man's property to reveal that he was short-sighted and greedy. Ironically, the brother who was asking Jesus to divide his inheritance would not make any provisions for who would inherit his wealth when he died. He simply wanted to revel in his receipts.
It's no different than the parable that we'll come to in Luke chapter 15, where the older and younger brother are locked in a battle where the younger brother demands an inheritance from his father. He receives it, he goes out, and he ruins it. He spends it all and ends up eating among the pigs. That young man was just as covetous as this young man. Perhaps it could have even been the same man. We don't know. But the point is, their covetousness consumed them. What they thought they wanted actually took life away from them.
So as Jesus is confronting this situation, He is reminding us that we should prepare for eternal life after we die. Non-Christians are seeking the wealth in this world and accumulating treasure for now and treasure for their legacy. They want their best lives now because this is the only life they have. But we are investing with Christ and we must use our God-given resources to glorify God and spread the gospel.
Jesus said it this way in Matthew 16:26, "What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world and yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?" And the answers to those questions are nothing. That what is most important is what is eternal, not what is temporary.
Jesus commands us to be rich toward God in this passage. What does it mean to be rich toward God? It simply means that we must humbly acknowledge everything we have comes from the good hand of God and that we should generously use whatever he gives us for God's glory and the spread of his fame. We can honor God with our time, with our money and our talents, all of the resources that he has given us.
This is not a warning simply to people that are rich. However, you define rich. And most of us define rich as simply the guy who has slightly more than us when, in fact, all of us are rich compared to most people in the world. But only those who live for this present life—no matter how rich they are—if all you live for is now, you will die poor. You cannot take your wealth into eternity. There are no bank accounts that transfer from here to heaven.
This is why Jesus said, "This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves." That means the poorest person on earth who confesses their sin and believes in Jesus will inherit eternal life. They will walk on streets paved with gold and live in mansions prepared by God.
If we were to meet with a financial planner and they offered us an investment that was guaranteed to make at least a 10% return year after year, most of us would sign up for the plan. We might ask a few questions about what kind of investments they are, how it's going to work. Maybe a cynical person would even ask, "Are you sure you can guarantee 10%?" But most of us would take the deal. We'd decide how much wealth we wanted to accumulate, and we'd pick a date for when we wanted to start relaxing, eating, drinking, and be merry.
And while it is certainly wise to manage our resources and plan for the future, including retirement, more importantly, we must plan for eternity. If we fail to invest our lives in the kingdom of God, we may come up short in eternity.
How we manage our God-given resources in this life says more about what we believe about God and what we actually think about the future than anything else. We can know all the religious rules. We can appear to be righteous, and we can go through all the motions.
But in our heart of hearts, how we use our money reveals what we really believe. If we hoard our resources for ourselves and we fail to care for others or invest in the kingdom of God, then we are consumed by covetousness, and the objects of our desire will kill us.
Investing in God's Kingdom
The challenge before us is: how are we investing in God's kingdom? How are we being rich toward God with our finances? And this is not a question of, once you reach a certain net worth, then you need to get serious about giving to God. God calls upon everyone to give according to their ability. This is why he records a widow at the temple who gives two copper coins that are meaningless to most rich people. But Jesus said she gave everything that she had. The widow did not hold back and say, "Well, I'm a widow. I don't have to give up what I have. I'm a widow. People should be giving money to me." No, the widow gave what she had, and God blessed it and used her, recording her in his teaching to challenge us.
So, are you being rich with God with your finances, no matter what they are? With your time, no matter how much you have? And with your abilities, no matter how he has gifted you? If everyone in our church invested their time, their talent, and their treasure at the same level that you are doing, how would that impact our church? For some of you, you'd think, "Well, if other people were working as hard as I was, giving as much as I'm giving and trying to do what I'm doing, our church would be overflowing financially." Others of you, if you're honest and answering that question, would say, "Well, if people gave like I give, we wouldn't have anything. We'd have very little."
And this is not to put a number amount on how much you give. It's to say, what is the proportion of your giving? We don't teach tithing in our church because we believe grace giving is even more than tithing. In other words, tithing is a great starting point. But God, who has given us the riches of Christ, has asked us to give him our very lives. Are we giving Christ our lives? Is that evident in our checking account? Is it evident in our financial planning? And is it evident in the way we use our time and in our talents?
So many times it's easy to get consumed with just what we see before us and be jealous of other people and miss what God has for us. This is not to say that we can buy our way into eternity, that we're in some sort of Ponzi scheme, that if you give now, you'll get a greater mansion later, or that the gold on your street will be shinier than the gold on someone else's street. But it is to say what you do with your treasure now reveals what you believe about eternity.
And this passage is a convicting passage for all of us because we all struggle with covetousness. We all say, "If I had just a little bit more, then I could be more generous. If I had just a little bit more margin in my life, I could include this Bible study or that outreach in my schedule. If I had just a little bit more ability than that person, then I would volunteer to help in that ministry." But God wants us to be engaged where we are with what he's already given us and watch him make up the difference.
Think of it this way: If we were building the New Testament church, we wouldn't have chosen the 12 disciples that Jesus would have. I mean, on the bare face of it, we would have said, "Judas, no way, he's out." Like, the Son of God, he should have known better than to have Judas in there. And then we would have said, "Really teenage fishermen? Probably not the best leaders that are out there." And we would have designed it all differently in order to accomplish our purposes. And yet God used the weaknesses of his disciples to magnify his strength. And in just the same way, God chooses unlikely people like us to build his church against the gates of hell.
The question is, are we investing in his kingdom? Are we investing in the advance of the gospel? And are we investing in the furtherance of the church? This is not a message to raise money and say, "Let's take an offering and have everyone give more." But it is to say this passage should confront us with our covetousness and say no matter how much resources God has given us, we should all be looking at them as God's resources that we are called to steward. Otherwise, we're no different than the toddler who's in the nursery fighting for a toy.
Several years ago, some of you may remember this, I taught a lesson on the 10th commandment about covetousness. And the lesson focused specifically on envy and how we look at other people and what they have and what we wish we had in comparison. And before I started the lesson, most guys in the room—this was a lesson for men—didn't really think they struggled with covetousness. They thought, "I'm content. I've got what I need. My life is going pretty well." But before I started teaching my lesson, I organized a bridge-building game.
And in the bridge-building game, I instructed my game leader to rig it. He divided the men in our group into four teams, and he gave each team a different amount of supplies to build their bridge. Because I rigged the game, I had one team get extra supplies. They had straws and tape and staples and toothpicks. They had popsicle sticks. They had all kinds of resources to build an incredible bridge that would support a model car setting on it.
But my game leader gave two of the other teams adequate supplies. They didn't get everything that I just mentioned; they just got enough to build a suitable bridge. But my team got insufficient supplies. I told him, "Make sure my team only gets straws and nothing else."
Every team had the same challenge. They had about 10 minutes to build a bridge out of straws to support a model car. And the team with extra supplies obviously won. It was easy for them. My team absolutely failed. But I designed the game that way to reveal envy, and it worked beautifully.
Predictably, the teams compared their resources as they were being handed out. The team with extra supplies were giddy because of their good fortune. They couldn't believe it. They were so excited. They knew that they would win. And they quickly built a strong bridge, and they sure enough won. The average teams, they grumbled a little bit about not getting this or that, but they built acceptable bridges and their cars drove across them.
But my team complained a lot. In fact, one of the men on my team, as soon as the resources were handed out, he literally ran from our place in the room to the front to the game leader and he said, "This is not fair. Give us popsicle sticks. Give us tape. Give us staples. Give us more stuff. We can't compete if you're just going to give us straws." And it was almost comical, if it were not so sad, to watch his reaction. Now this brother and I have talked about this more than once and we both laugh about it now.
But it perfectly illustrated that all of us struggle with greed. We all want more. And at the end of the game, I explained to the men what my real agenda was. And then I opened up and I read the 10th commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
Before the game, most of the men in our church considered themselves content and not prone to covetousness. But after we played the rigged game, all of the men recognized their natural struggle with envy, and they all saw that they wanted more. They wanted what was fair, what they deserved, what would make things work better for them, etc. Even the guys on the winning team who had it all recognized their giddiness and greed and the delight they took in receiving more.
The point in all of this is Jesus is teaching his disciples and us that the poorest people on earth can inherit eternal life, and the richest people on earth may be in peril of eternal destruction. As we consider our own hearts, where are you investing your treasure? Have you acknowledged God as the source of your treasure, your time, and your talents? And are you reflecting that by actually stewarding them in a way that honors God? Or are you simply like the giddy team that had all the resources and said, "This is great. This is amazing. I'm going to win." When in fact, you may not win unless you have a right relationship with Christ.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we commit this to you, I pray that you would help us as each of us struggle with covetousness. In one way or another, we wish that we had more. We're longing for something we don't presently have. We're discontented with what we do have. And in all of it, we undermine and undervalue how much you are worth to us. God, help us in this to see it, confess it, and forsake it. Help us to own the fact that we don't own ourselves. Help us to recognize that you are the Lord of our lives and that you can call us to give you anything and everything.
God, help us to be a church that's faithful with the resources you have given us. Help us not to hoard our money as a church and set on our bank accounts, but help us to invest in your kingdom and the advance of the gospel through missions, through church planting and church revitalization. And God, help us as individuals to not hoard our resources, but help us to give generously, whether we have little or much. Help us to give proportionately to what you have entrusted us to steward. And we ask that you would most of all help us to commit to you unto eternal life. That we would not live for simply the here and now, but we would live for eternity with you in heaven. We pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen.