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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
Someone in the crowd
said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
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.”
Luke 12:13-21
This ends
today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
I want to open this
devotion with a couple of quick questions.
What did you bring into
the world with you? You know, like when you emerged from your mother’s womb,
what did you have besides flesh and bone?
Unless you were like
some baby I have never heard about you were born without anything. Nada.
Not a stitch of
clothing. No little infant jewelry. No possessions of any kind.
You came into the world
empty handed but of course that wouldn’t be the way you would stay now, would
it?
You would quickly be
clothed and fed, nurtured and cared for over your childhood until you broke out
on your own and were self supportive. It was then that the world would offer
you all kinds of opportunities to acquire and gain things from prestige to
money to an abundance of possessions you would be able to secure with that
money. And as you found yourself growing older and older and older, it seems
the things you had continued to grow as well. Seemingly death would be the only
thing that might slow you down.
Speaking of death, I
have one more question for you.
How much will you be
taking with you when you pass away?
The answer is easy. You’ll
take away as much as you came into the world with.
That would be nothing.
Perhaps then, this life
pursuit of material worth and possessions may be one of the most fool-hearted
ventures we engage in south of living our whole life rejecting Jesus. Why do we
invest so much time accumulating assets that we’re only going to abandon
anyways?
This was the point that
Jesus is trying to make as we see Him turning to His preferred teaching method,
the parable. Look at these words from the twelfth chapter of Luke:
Someone in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide
the inheritance with me.”
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.” Luke 12:13-21
What prompts Jesus’
teaching moment?
We see it is a dispute
that has come up between brothers who are sniping at each other about none
other than material possessions, specifically an inheritance left to them from
some unknown person. We see one of the brothers goes to Jesus to try and get
Him to settle the matter saying:
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
To which Jesus replies:
“Man, who appointed Me a judge or an arbiter between you?”
Indeed, Jesus didn’t
come to earth to squabble over valuables the world might offer. Rather, He came
to bring the most valuable gift that God could provide for His people, the gift
of salvation. Indeed, through Jesus, there is no need to worry about how much
worth you accumulate here on earth. The greatest treasure you will ever have
won’t come until after you die and leave this temporary life behind, trading it
in for the eternal life that comes through a belief and trust in Jesus Christ.
If the brother who was petitioning Jesus had only realized this, there would
have been no quarrel about an inheritance because a greater one was ahead.
And so Jesus decides to
teach those present and try and make this point about the fleeting nature of
material accumulation and the sinfulness it can drive a person to in the way of
greed.
To make His point, Jesus
tells of a man who was already rich. He already had what he needed and yet he
was seeking to gain more and gain more he did, in a big way when he finds a
harvest becoming extremely abundant.
How abundant?
Well, it was so
plentiful that he found he lacked storage space to keep it all.
It was quite a quandary.
So what would the rich
man do? Would he take the surplus and give to the needy, trying to help the
less fortunate?
Not exactly. For as we
see in Jesus’ parable, the man decided to hoard everything he had gained. In
fact, he was willing to go to some pretty extreme measures to do so, tearing
down the barns he had to build even bigger barns to store all he had gained. It
was a grand plan intended to leave himself on easy street able to:
“Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”
No need to worry about
anyone else. He was set on making sure he would be find, even if there was no
way he could ever expend everything he had. As we see through the words of our
Savior, it was an attitude that the Lord would not endorse or support:
“‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then
who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”
Did I mention that you
can’t take anything with you?
Let me also mention that
no one knows the day, time, or place when this worldly life will end.
We don’t but God does
and in the case of the rich man in the parable, his time was up. The Lord was
about to demand his life and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. All
his riches, his full barns of grain, would be left for others to partake in.
And just so we wouldn’t
think this to just be a fictional story concocted by Jesus, one that wouldn’t
come true in real life, we find Jesus letting His listeners (and us as well)
know otherwise:
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves
but is not rich toward God.”
Earlier in His ministry,
Jesus put the same idea this way:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and
vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for
yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and
where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your
heart will be also.”
“No one can serve two masters. Either you
will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Matthew
6:19-21, 24
The rich man decided to
store up his treasures on earth. He served the master of money above God and
when he passed, he had nothing left of value to his name.
If he had only decided
to store up treasures in heaven instead and devoted himself to the will, way,
and purposes of God, allowing Him to be the Master who would lead him to
salvation through His Son. He would have not worried about what the world could
offer because he already had more value through the hope of salvation than
anything he could find on earth.
And so this leads me to
two last questions before I close:
Will you be as foolish
as the rich man and seek to accrue material riches you have to leave behind?
or
Will you see the eternal
life through Jesus, a gift given because God so loved the world (John 3:16), to
be more than you would ever need and be satisfied with knowing the best comes
after this earthly life is over?
Perhaps these final
words of Jesus will help you choose:
“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not
consist in an abundance of possessions.”
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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