Real Security

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone. Welcome to our worship service. It’s good to see you all here, and welcome to those watching online. If you’re visiting us for the first time today, you should find a visitor card in the back pocket of the chair right in front of you. If you could fill that out and leave it in our offering plate, we would be most appreciative.

You’ll see several announcements there in your bulletin, but I want to remind you of one big one, and that’s the upcoming business meeting on September 8. We’re going to be talking about a lot of things that evening, especially things around doing some repairs to our church building.

The building and grounds team met a couple weeks ago to address some of our most pressing needs. They include replacing the electrical wiring throughout the church and especially in the kitchen area, air conditioning for the non-sanctuary part of the church, and we also have a pretty severe window problem, most notably the wood between the windows and storm windows. That wood definitely needs replacing, but there was talk as well of replacing the windows themselves with more energy efficient ones that would help with heating and cooling.

Those are the major things. There are a few minor ones. So I’ll ask that between now and the business meeting you reach out to members of the building and grounds team and just give them some feedback around what you’d like to see done.

Those members are Danny Johnson, Fred Taylor, Wayne VanDeevender, Christi Almarode, and George Burritt.

Also, please keep Twila’s son Ben in your prayers. He had more surgery at UVA this week and is getting a little better, but his back is still in pain.

Please continue praying as well for the people of Afghanistan, and for the people of the Gulf Coast with the approach of hurricane Ida.

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Father, in a universe that seems so immense it is easy to feel insignificant as we stand here today. Yet we know that we are precious in your sight - unique individuals loved and blessed in so many ways. We stand in awe of the one who has created all things and dedicate this time and all our days to your service. Accept this offering we pray, our sacrifice of praise and worship.

Bless us as we meet together, bless the singing of your praise, the reading of your Word, the sharing of our fellowship, and the prayers that will be heard. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, Amen.

Sermon

There are some people in the Bible who just slide in and out like a shadow. They show up in just a few verses and then they’re never heard from again, but the impact they make in that short little bit is enough to leave them almost as well-known as well as Moses or Paul or David.

I want to talk about two of those people today, the rich brother and the poor widow, and I want to talk about true security in life. I want to talk about the things that truly keep us safe and protected.

We’re in Luke, beginning in chapter 12. It’s the last year of Jesus’s ministry, and his focus is on the cross. He’s left Galilee and traveled south toward Jerusalem, teaching large crowds and the disciples. A lot of Luke’s material in these later chapters isn’t included the other gospels, including this passage right here. Let’s see what happens, starting in verse 13 and continuing through verse 21:

Someone in 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 arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’

But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

And this is God’s word.

This parable isn’t a warning against money. A lot of people can get tripped up on that. The Bible says that money in itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a good thing either. It’s just a thing, like everything else in the world. And just like everything else in the world, that thing can be used for good or for evil.

What Jesus is warning about instead is the love of money. Of putting our faith and trust into the things we can get in life rather than the God who provides those things. It’s placing our security into something that’s fleeting, something that might be here today but gone tomorrow, instead of what’s eternal.

Jesus teaching the disciples here, warning them not to deny him to people and not to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. And apparently he pauses in the middle of his speaking, almost like he’s getting ready to start talking about something else, and in that pause someone listening in the crowd speaks up and asks for help.

“Teacher,” he says in verse 13, “speak to my brother.”

Now this is interesting, because what follows isn’t a spiritual matter at all, it’s a worldly one. It’s a problem that belongs more in a court than in a church. But the man calls Jesus “Teacher,” and that means “Rabbi,” and sometimes rabbis served as judges. This is how this man approaches Jesus.

We don’t know exactly what’s happened here, but the man’s words suggest that he’s a younger son and his father has died, and his older brother has claimed more than his fair share of their father’s estate. Among the Jews, the older brother was entitled to twice as much as any other child. Whatever was left got divided equally among all the other children. Evidently, in this case the older brother took even more. This younger brother wants justice. He wants his share of his father’s money and property.

But here’s the thing. It was rare that Jesus chose to interfere with secular matters. It wasn’t that those things didn’t matter to him — if they mattered to people, then it mattered to Jesus. But his work and ministry was of a higher kind, wasn’t it? He’s talking about spiritual things here, eternal things. He’s talking about the souls of the people he’s with, and this man can’t see past his own worldliness and selfishness to see what’s more important.

Asking Jesus to speak to his brother was maybe the most foolish request anyone had ever made to the Son of God. I’m sure he didn’t mean to, but this man makes himself an example of the very opposite of what Jesus taught. It wasn’t the devil that Jesus struggled against the most, it was the evil inside people. It was the petty little things like this that people were so concerned about, money and their fair share, instead of the most important things like their souls.

So Jesus says to him in verse 14, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”

That first word there, “Man,” is the only time scripture records Jesus responding to someone like this. It was a common way for one man to address another in that time. It was the day’s equivalent to, “Hey, pal,” or “Listen, buddy.”

He says, “It’s not my business to settle things like this. You should take it to the magistrate instead. I’m here for a higher purpose — to preach the Gospel and bring people to God.”

This guy’s heart is in the wrong place completely. He’s so busy looking at the dirt at his feet that he doesn’t realize the stars that are shining over his head.

So Jesus gets to the center of what this man’s real problem is in verse 15: “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Jesus had a way of looking straight into the souls of the people he met, and right here he looks into the soul of this young man. He knows what this young man’s real problem is, the secret he was keeping so well that he might have even been keeping it from himself. He wanted security, and he wanted it so much that it had turned into greed. This man thought life wasn’t worth living unless he had a lot of material things to fill it.

Covetousness, of course, is one of those commandments that God said to keep out of our lives. It’s wanting what someone else has, in this case the man wanting what his brother has. But it’s also a desire to get riches beyond what’s necessary for our wants. It’s not just wanting more, it’s not bothering to see that the more we get will never be enough. Whatever it is that gets in the way of our contentment with God, that causes us to look away from Him, that’s covetousness.

Then Jesus takes it a step further — your problem isn’t just that you’re gripped by covetousness, he tells this man, it’s that you think true security in life depends on the abundance of your possessions.

That word “life” is sometimes taken in the sense of happiness — your happiness doesn’t depend on your possessions — and that might be the meaning that Jesus is trying to convey here, that our comfort doesn’t depend on our things. But that idea doesn’t really fit with the parable that Jesus is getting ready to tell. It’s more like he’s saying that our things won’t lengthen our lives and so they shouldn’t be so sought after. Our things won’t give us more years on this earth, so they’re of little value.

The idea is that we shouldn’t worry about getting more wealth, because no matter how much wealth we have, it won’t give us security. Security — real security — depends on God.

That’s what Jesus is warning against. That’s what he’s telling this man and his disciples to be wary of. Money won’t protect our lives. It won’t keep us safe, it will only tempt us.

Having an abundance of things isn’t the same thing as having an abundant life. An abundant life doesn’t refer to physical possessions, it refers to the things money can’t buy, like real love, like joy, like peace and purpose. It’s life as it was meant to be. A full life, a genuine life.

To illustrate this, Jesus tells a parable that takes up the next six verses. And the story Jesus tells is a kind of warning, not just to the brother but to us all. It’s proof of what he’s just instructed, that our lives aren’t defined by the amount of possessions we have. In fact, this story illustrates the idea that we call the things that we fill our lives with “possessions” not because we possess them, but because they often possess us.

There was a rich man, Jesus says, and his land had produced a great crop, the crop of a lifetime, and from that one crop he obtained so much profit that he realized he would never have to worry about having enough money again.

But the crop was so great that he didn’t have the room to store it all, which became a problem. Then he gets an idea. He’s going to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. He’s going to store his grain and rest from the worry and weariness of business and even from the labor of thought. He’s going to take it easy. Enjoy life. All his working is done. He’s going to live it up.

Now I want you to look at two things here. First, this man isn’t a bad man. He’s not an evil man. He’s become rich not through any sinful need but by the right way, though his own hard work. That’s not where he messes up.

But here’s where he does mess up. Look at this internal dialogue he has with himself in verses 17 through 19:

and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’

Now pay attention to this. Look at how many times the man uses the word “I” in those verses. Six, that’s my count. Six times, the man says I will do this, and I will do that.

Nowhere in those verses, nowhere in all this man’s thinking and planning, is God. God isn’t anywhere to be found. And that’s this rich man’s problem.

Just because we don’t think about God, just because we plan our lives without God, doesn’t mean that God isn’t there. Doesn’t mean that God isn’t listening. And it turns out that God is in fact there and listening, because He shows up and calls this rich man a fool.

He’s relying on the work of his own hands to carry him through, but it’s not going to carry him through at all. He’s a fool not because he thought his riches was all he needed, but because he thought his riches would somehow give him security. That all his grain in all his big barns was somehow like a bubble around his life to keep it going.

But God says that’s not going to happen, because you’re going to die this very night. And what good are those riches going to be for you now? Will they still be yours come morning? Will they buy you off from your punishment? And will they buy a moment’s more of peace or comfort?

There are a lot of things we can learn from this parable, not the least of which was that those who have a lot can be taken from this life just as easily as those who have little. This rich man’s so concerned about storing up treasures on earth that he forgot all about storing up treasures in heaven. Because the things we work to get for this life won’t last at all, but the things we work toward here that are aimed at heaven will last forever.

We often make the mistake of thinking that we’re the owners of the things in our lives. We’re not, because those things can be taken from us in a blink. And anything that can be taken away from you cannot be your security.

This rich man was a fool. God even calls him a fool. He was smart and wise in gaining wealth but foolish in thinking that wealth would give him security. He didn’t involve God at all in gaining all that he had, and he didn’t involve God in deciding what he should do with it all, either.

He asks, What will I do for me? instead of What will I do for God? What will I do for the poor, or the hungry, or the thirsty, or the naked? What will I do to nourish my soul instead of my body. None of that. It was only, What will I do for my goods? What will I do to protect what I think is mine alone?

You see? He fell into the same trap that we fall into all the time: we think we’ll never die. Of course we know that’s a lie deep down, the greatest lie we’ll ever tell ourselves, but in spite of all our faith and all our praying and all the words we tell ourselves and everyone else, death is a thing that looms so large in our lives that we think we’re better off not dwelling over it.

Don’t worry about that, we say. Eat, drink, and be merry. What a phrase that is. Paul repeats it in 1 Corinthians: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Shakespeare repeated it as well, about a thousand years later.

It’s echoed in what the world now tells us to do every day, the way the world tell us to live. This is all there is. Might as well live it up. Get all you can. Live for today. Live for the moment.

But the problem with living for the moment is that the moment is always gone, and no matter how much we try to live each day to the fullest, every day will pass until we reach the end that’s always coming.

Jesus says have that day in mind always, not just this one. He says work today to make that day better. Don’t worry about laying up treasures here, because everything that we lay up here will rust and die and fade and wilt. He says lay up treasures in heaven, because those treasures will never fade.

And because the rich man never bothered to think beyond the moment, God calls him a fool. He thought a secure and abundant life here on earth was his real goal. He thought that because he had gained so much, somehow his life would just go on forever, that he couldn’t be touched, that he couldn’t suffer the death that comes to us all.

But in a single moment, all of his hopes are gone. He’s prepared to live out the rest of his life but he hasn’t prepared at all for what comes after. He’s more worried about the single flicker that his life represents instead of the eternal flame that his soul truly is.

We’re more than our worldly wants. That’s what Jesus is saying. The fools of this world are those who live just for themselves, and it’s those people who are as far from true happiness as anyone can be.

They forget that riches and honor and power are never really theirs to have but theirs to borrow. They don’t consider that God has put these things into their hands for the good of others, in order to improve their own souls.

But just when they think so highly of themselves for all they’ve gotten, God suddenly strips them of all their joys and treasures. Because their end is no different than anyone else’s. No matter who we are, no matter what we have, we all still end up the same in the end.

Live for the day? Jesus says no. Live for eternity. Let that be your focus. Make sure your soul is in good shape. Make sure your relationship with God is strong. Make sure you’re faith is solid and your trust is deep, and then worry about those earthly things that won’t last. Because that’s the way to true happiness. That’s the only way to feel safe in this world.

Now let’s move over to Luke 21 and the first four verses. This story is called the Widow’s Mite, and it’s one of the most famous ones in the New Testament.

Most scholars believe this event happened on the Tuesday before Jesus was crucified. Jesus is sitting in the part of the Temple known as the collocate, which is just a long row of large columns. Set against the wall there were thirteen chests where people could put offerings of money for the temple treasury. That’s where we pick up, starting with verse 1 and going through verse 4:

Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

There’s a lot to talk about in these four verses, but what I want to mention first is the first three words that we find in verse 1: Jesus looked up.

That’s a strange expression in the Greek, because it seems to show that until that moment, Jesus was sitting there looking down at his feet. The Greek work means “downcast eyes”. In other words, Jesus was sad.

We see this often in the Gospels. Jesus was a joyful man, no doubt, a man filled with love, but we know from our own experience that many times the more we love, the more we hurt. The more we love others, the more we suffer along with them. That was Jesus.

Jesus’s number one priority in coming down into this world was to die for us, to stand in our place so that we could have eternal life, Jesus also came into this world for something very special: to understand what it meant to be a human.

It’s a great comfort to us, isn’t it, that we have a God who so thoroughly understands everything that we go through in this life, all the suffering and want and hardship, because he went through it too. We go to God in prayer for whatever hard thing we face, and we can rest knowing that God truly does understand whatever horrible feelings we have because he was subject to them as well.

What exactly had left Jesus sad on this day isn’t said. It could be because he knew all the pain and suffering that was coming in just a few short days. But it could be something else as well, and it’s right here in verse 1 — the sight of these rich men putting their gifts into the offering box.

This story of the widow and her gift is told in Mark as well, and Mark tells us that the gifts these rich men made were large. Remember when Jesus told his disciples that when they give they should do so in secret, without other people knowing it? Well, these rich men were doing the opposite. They were making a show of all the money they gave. They didn’t care if God saw, they just wanted everyone else to see, because then everyone could see how rich they were.

You have to imagine how we would react if we were in Jesus’s place: I’m here getting ready to die for these people? These ignorant people who are so worried about making a show of themselves, these rich fools who flaunt their money and who would rather impress others than God?

Jesus, of course, didn’t see things this way. But it’s easy to see why he’d look upon something like this and be a little sad.

But right when he’s getting a little down, there comes this poor widow. Out of all the people there, it’s the poor and the lonely that Jesus notices, just as he always did. These are the ones who were always in his care, the ones who were overlooked and even despised by others.

Luke’s word for “poor” is different than the word that Mark uses, and it seems to have been carefully chosen to describe the fact that this widow was still having to work for the very little that she had.

She hadn’t fallen to the point yet to where she was a beggar, which was the more common word for poor. This is more someone who had to work but gained nearly nothing by it. Someone barely scraping by. Someone working and working but never having enough to get out of the hole she’s in. That’s the word Luke uses here, and that word is found nowhere else in the New Testament.

And this woman Jesus is watching comes up to the box and places in two small copper coins, two mites. The mite was the smallest coin used at the time, and it was also the least legal offering that could be dropped into these boxes.

Now the disciples are looking at everything Jesus is looking at, but they’re not seeing what he’s seeing. They’re looking at all of the outward things these people are doing, Jesus is peering into their hearts.

And then he says something that seems so backwards and so opposite of what the disciples think is true that they’re almost certain it’s another of Jesus’s great teachings, right? Because that’s how it usually goes with him. The world thinks one way, he thinks another. The world does one thing, he says no, we’re supposed to do it this way.

And he says in verse 3, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them.”

What? What’s that supposed to mean? You can think of Judas sitting there, the man who’s in charge of keeping all the money that Jesus and his disciples are using to get around, the man who in just a few days’ time is going to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, you can imagine him thinking, What in the world is all this? Don’t you see these rich people putting in all that money? And here’s this poor woman putting in two coins that most people wouldn’t even bother picking up if they found them in the road somewhere?

How much do you think these words right here played into what Judas would eventually do? You have to wonder. Judas was all about the money. All about the power. He’d expected the Messiah to come and save Israel from the Romans. He was like most of the Jews, thinking the Messiah would be a general, a warrior, a man who shed blood.

Not this guy who goes around helping the poor and healing the sick and hanging around the temple watching people give their sacrifices. Not this guy who doesn’t seem to have any clue about money at all, because why else would he think this woman here gave more than all the rest combined.

But Judas just didn’t know, did he? He couldn’t see past his own narrow vision to the deeper truth that Jesus was talking about here.

Jesus explains what he means in verse 4: For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.

Judas would ask, How can two mites be better than a treasure? Jesus would answer, It’s not how much is given, but how much remains behind. It’s where you put your security — in the things of this world, or in God. These rich folks right here might be giving a lot, but they have a whole lot more than that back home. You think they’re giving a big sacrifice to God? No. God’s just getting the leftovers.

But this woman, she’s giving all the money she has in the world. She’s going all in on God. She’s laying up treasure in heaven. It’s a sacrifice, sure — she’s making a bigger sacrifice than everyone. But it’s also an investment that’s going to collect interest for eternity.

We don’t know what happened to this woman. In fact, the way these verses seem to tell it, Jesus never speaks to her. This poor woman giving everything she had to God might never have realized that God was standing right there watching her. We don’t know her name, don’t know how much longer she lived, don’t know if she ever managed to have anything. She lived and died in anonymity.

But do you know what this woman managed that few ever did? She managed to lift Jesus up. Can you imagine that? How special is that? Here he’s sitting there mourning over all these rich people making a show out of giving a little out of the much they had, and this woman comes along like a ray of sun that pierces the night.

And Jesus thinks, Yes, this woman here understands. This woman here has her heart in the right place. I’m going to die for these others to save them from their ignorance, but I’m going to die for her to save her tender heart from a hard world.

It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? So much of life depends on that. We can live our lives focused on this world or we can live our lives focused on the next, and it’s only when we live focused on the next that we really learn to live right and live well.

Over and over again, whether it’s the man who felt cheated by his brother or this widow giving her two coins, Jesus tells us not to live the way other people do. He’s not telling us to live in some upside down way, he’s telling us that it’s the world that’s upside down. Get your heart right, he says. That’s the path to true security in life. Do that first, and everything else will follow.

Let’s pray:

Father, our cares are so many and our worries often outpace our joys. There are so many things in our lives that we’re tempted to put our trust in, our faith in, our security in, and yet You are the one true source of all those things. You are the one who will never let us down. You are the one that will never let us escape your loving grasp. Help us in the coming week to remember that, and help us to look at all the fear and worry in the world and know that they are tiny things when compared with Your promises and Your hope. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, Amen.