A Fool and his money

A Fool and his money

Luke 12:13–15 (ESV)

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 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.”

Warm Up

If you haven’t already gotten a grip on the essential, foundational principles of who Jesus is and our relationship with him, then this material might sound very strange to you.

The principles the Bible lays down on our internal motivation and our external guidelines for giving and using wealth won’t make sense.

They may even be offensive; they may be a turn-off. If you don’t know who Jesus is, and you don’t have a grip on that relationship,

then the implication for how you use your money won’t make sense. [1]

“One of the main ways you will learn who Jesus is and understand who he is and what he’s done is if you see him talking to his disciples about their money.” Tim Keller

Therefore, we will look and see what he says to Christians about their money.

If you are here, and you’re not sure what you believe, here’s my suggestion: Let nothing I say and nothing I tell you Jesus says here today … Let you interpret nothing here as a request for your money.

Jesus is not asking you for your money. I am not asking you for your money. If you’re not quite sure where you stand with him, I certainly am not. As we will see, you will be asked for something, but it’s not your money.

But if you want to understand him, you must hear what he says to his disciples about money. Isn’t that something?

Introduction

Two men were embroiled in some kind of family squabble over inheritances.

In the middle of the very weighty discourse that Jesus is giving the multitude about the danger of committing the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,

somebody from the crowd interrupts him with a crass and selfish concern.

He rushes up to Jesus, and says, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ Obviously these

Two men were embroiled in some kind of family squabble over inheritances.

Why is Jesus Asked this Question?

Here’s why he’s being asked. He’s being asked because, if you would be willing to read through the book of Luke (or actually all the Gospels, but just the book of Luke) in one sitting, the thing that would immediately amaze you is the fact that

Jesus talks about money more than he talks about any other single subject. except maybe himself. But even there, I don’t think so.

He talks about money relentlessly.

He talks about wealth and possessions and justice and mercy with money constantly.

It’s a constant emphasis. I don’t even know how to even begin to go about telling you about it. Most of chapter 12 is about it. Most of chapter 11 is about it. Most of chapter 16 is about it.

Luke is continually talking about it, and 11 out of Jesus’ 39 parables are directly on money and on what we’re supposed to do with our money.

At least 28 percent of the time Jesus Christ opened his mouth, and maybe more, he was talking about money.

That’s the reason this man asked this question!

Jesus is continually talking about the proper use of your wealth, and so he asks Jesus, “Help my brother with this.”

You know, that’s like many of us.

We sit in the sermon, we listen to the sermon, and we say, “I wish so-and-so would hear.”

Okay? Well, that’s why the man is doing it.

The man is so used to hearing Jesus say, “Be generous …” He’s so used to hearing Jesus relentlessly, continually, talking about money and wealth and how we should use it, that he says,

“Fine, would you talk to my brother about this?”

You say, “Okay, that’s interesting.” But let me apply this;

If you look at what the Bible says about giving and trying to come to grips with why Jesus would talk this much about it (and frankly, coming to grips with why I talk so little about it, why I’m afraid and why Jesus talked constantly about it), I began to realize that

Giving is not just a duty that lies here along with the other duties like worship, evangelism, prayer, loving others, and helping the poor.

The reason Jesus talks so much about the giving of your money is because generosity is at the heart of every single thing a Christian is and does.

If you look at the whole scope of everything the Bible says about everything a Christian is and does, giving is at the heart of every part of it.

Let me show you what I mean.

Take a look at everything a Christian is. The whole range of Christian character … faith, hope, and love.

The three cardinal virtues of the Christian life are Faith, hope, and love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 (ESV)

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Faith. Why don’t we give more?

Let me talk personally. Why don’t we give more? “

I don’t have faith. I’m scared. I wonder whether God will take care.

I wonder whether he’ll really care for me if I give.” That’s not just a lack of generosity; that’s a lack of faith.

Hope. Why don’t we give?

Hope means, what do you really get your value from?

What do you really get your sense of worth from? Is it in Christ, or is it in how we live, the restaurants we can eat at, the clothes we can wear?

One of the reasons we don’t give is also because of hope.

Love. What don’t we give?

We don’t give because we lack sympathy and sensitivity to the unbelievable needs in the world.

We don’t even want to know about those needs.

We get scared. We don’t feel them. We cut ourselves off from them.

Therefore, the only way to build faith, real faith, not faith you say you have …

Giving is a reality check on every one of the virtues.

You can say, “I have faith,” but here’s how you know it. Do you see? Because money is quantifiable. It’s concrete. It’s a reality check.

Hope … Do you want to build your hope? Do you want to have a hope that’s real, not just sentiment, not just something you’re talking about?

Here’s how you do it: you give.

Do you want to have love that’s not just sentiment? Here’s how you do it: you give.

Let’s take a look at not what a Christian is (that’s faith, hope, and love; that’s the range of character), but let’s talk about what Christians do. The whole range of duties is we’re supposed to serve God, and other Christians, and the world. When you read what the Bible says about that, you can’t serve God unless you say,

“Everything I own belongs to you.” Otherwise it’s just lip service. It’s sentiment. It’s not real.

You can’t say to other people, to other Christian brothers and sisters, “I love you, but I’m not going to share my material wealth with you,”

because then again, that’s just sentiment; it’s not reality.

If you go to Acts, into chapters 4, 5, and 6, you will see that because Christians gave their money away in astonishing proportions, that showed the world something real had happened to them.

If you say to the world, “God has changed me,” they’ll say, “Fine. That’s nice. I mean, everybody says that.” But when the world saw Christians giving their money away in ways nobody else did … do you see?

The reality of God’s generosity to us will never hit the world until they see our generosity to everybody else.

Here’s the point: reality.

Giving is not just something over here; it’s at the heart of everything.

You can’t worship God; you can’t love your brothers and sisters; you cannot change the world without radical giving.

A lack of giving is not just, “I’m just being kind of stingy.”

It’s at the heart of everything. It’s lack of faith; it’s lack of hope; it’s lack of love. The way to build faith, hope, and love is through giving.

Giving is at the heart of real Christianity.

The reason Jesus Christ is talking about it all the time is because it’s not one subject.

It’s not like, “Gee, here’s the giving subject. When is he going to get to the other subjects?” It is all the subjects! It’s at the heart of all the subjects. It cuts through everything. That’s the reason the man made the request.

He asked the request because Jesus was always talking about money, because

There is no way there can be any reality of God in your life, there can be any reality in your community with other Christians, there can be any reality of impact on the world, no way you can have the reality of God’s character in your life, unless, concretely, we treat our money differently than anybody else does.

We are remarkably different. We are visibly different. We’re concretely different. That’s why this man asks the question because Jesus never stopped talking about this.[2]

It’s an interesting thing to just yell out in a crowd. That’s really something to work out inside the family. If there is an inheritance to be divided, that means there is a death to be mourned. One of your parents has died, probably this person’s father, and he doesn’t seem interested to find help with mourning or grief. The man is not at the funeral. He’s not talking with his brother. He’s trying to find someone with authority to tell his brother to split the money.

A Selfish Request

The situation is all too familiar. A man had died, and two sons were squabbling over the money he had left behind. Both men wanted to get what they had coming to them.

One of them was sure he was getting shortchanged, so he asked Jesus to adjudicate.

That is not quite what the man was asking, however.

He was not looking for an objective opinion about a fair distribution;

he wanted Jesus to settle the estate in his favor.

Remember the context. Jesus had been teaching people how to take a spiritual stand, fearlessly living for Christ against all opposition.

But rather than listening to what Jesus was saying, the man was preoccupied with his own situation.

He wanted his rights!

So, he did what people sometimes do when they are having a disagreement: he asked a spiritual leader to get involved, in the hope that he would settle the matter by telling other people what they needed to hear.

Jesus refused to get involved.

In fact, he gave the man the apparent brush-off, saying, with obvious disapproval, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” (Luke 12:14).

Jesus was clear about his calling.

One day he would stand in judgment over everyone for everything. But the day for judgment had not yet come, and in his earthly ministry,

It was not his calling to resolve this dispute. Israel had a legal system for settling small claims; Jesus had come to seek and to save the lost.

How important it is to know the difference between what we are and are not called to do.

We are not called to do everything, including some things that we are asked and able to do.

To know what things God truly wants us to do, we need to be clear about our calling, as Jesus was.

In this case,

It was not his place to decide who got what, but to challenge people about their ultimate priorities.

He was “not showing indifference to the claims of legal justice, but was insisting that there is a greater gain than getting an inheritance and a greater loss than losing it.”3

A Sober Warning

Jesus did not give the man what he wanted but what he needed.

Instead of settling the estate, Jesus responded to the man’s selfish request by giving a sober warning: “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).

Jesus loved to make this kind of editorial comment. He would take a conversation and turn it into a teaching opportunity. Here his warning was partly for the man who wanted to get more of his father’s inheritance.

Jesus knew the man’s heart, and he could see that he was guilty of the great sin of coveting, of what the Puritan Thomas Watson described as “an insatiable desire of getting the world.”4

This helps us see that the warning Jesus gave is really for all of us.

Whether we are among the haves or the have-nots, we are all tempted by the desire to have things that God has given to others rather than us.

The poor are tempted to want all the things they do not have, while the rich are tempted to want even more of what they have.

Jesus warns us all to be on our guard against all kinds of covetousness.

The Greek word used here for coveting (pleonexia)has to do with excess.

The word used for coveting has to do with the attitude of always wanting more beyond what we even need. The covetous heart is never satisfied.

Even when you get what you want—the job, the home, the automobile, the furniture, the clothing, the merchandise—you soon find yourself craving something more.

The Scripture says, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income” (Eccl. 5:10).

That is why Jesus did not give this man his inheritance. It would not have satisfied his real need.

That is also why Jesus tells us to be content with what we have, not coveting what God has not given.

Rather than always wanting a higher standard of living, Jesus calls us to be satisfied with what we already have.

This requires constant vigilance.

Jesus is giving an emphatic imperative here. When he tells us to “take care,” he is telling us to watch out. Far from saying that greed is good, as some economists might say,

Jesus is warning us that there is real danger here, and that we need to be wary.

Take heed against greed!

Even something we have never coveted in the past may become a temptation for us yet.

Our wants may seem small: a nicer vacation, a more reliable car, a slightly larger house, a somewhat bigger paycheck.

But little by little we get drawn into discontent.

Possessions are always trying to possess us until we finally give in to the cravings of a covetous heart.

Jesus warns us that this is not what life is all about. Life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions.

Here again the word he uses has to do with excess. Abundance (perisseuein) in this sense means surplus, a superfluity of stuff.

Having more than we need does not add anything to our lives.

Even if we had all the things we could possibly want out of life, we would not have any more of life itself.

How can we find life in the things that we consume?

T. W. Manson commented, “It is true that a certain minimum of material goods is necessary for life; but it is not true that greater abundance of goods means greater abundance of life.”6

Possessions do not add life to us.

In fact, with all the demands they make on our time and effort they usually end up taking life.

away, as we work harder and harder to keep living in the manner to which we have become accustomed. J. C. Ryle said, “The more acres a man has, the more cares. The more his money increases, the more of his time is generally consumed and eaten up in thinking about it.”7

Some people live for money, and for all the things that money can buy.

It is how they keep score, how they find their sense of satisfaction.

Their daily thoughts are driven by the debts they have to pay off. Or they are consumed with the financial goals they have set. “By the time I’m forty, I want to have this,” they say, “or I want to be able to do this when I’m sixty.”

But that is not what life is all about:

Not what we possess, but what we are, is the important matter.…

The real life of a man has little relation to what he possesses. Neither nobleness nor peace nor satisfaction … has much dependence on property of any sort.…

Covetousness is folly because it grasps at worldly good, under the false belief that thereby it will secure the true good of life,

but when it has made its pile, it finds that it is no nearer peace of heart, rest, nobleness, or joy than before, and has probably lost much of both in the process of making it.

The mad race after wealth, which is the sin of this luxurious, greedy, commercial age, is the consequence of a lie—that life does consist in the abundance of possessions.

Alexander MacLaren 8

How Money Lies

It was saying: “If you lose me, you lose a very large part of your life. If you lose me, you lose what life can be for you. I am your life. Do you realize how big I am? Life will be real life—truly life—if you have me.” That’s what the inheritance was saying.

And Paul knew that’s what riches say. Which is why he told the rich in 1 Timothy 6:18–19, “Be rich in good works … be ready to share … take hold of that which is truly life.”

In other words, don’t be deceived by the message of money that woos you with the words: “I give you life. Your life will be drab and boring and empty and meaningless and unhappy without me. I am your life.”

And to this Jesus says in verse 15b, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

It’s a lie. Don’t listen. “Take care and be on your guard.” This lie will awaken covetousness, and covetousness is idolatry (Colossians 3:5); therefore, the hazard here is huge.

Not only is this inheritance not your life. It is about to take your life.

This is exactly what Paul said about the hazard of money in

1 Timothy 6:9, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”

Beware! Be on your guard! This inheritance is about to kill you.

This is more or less what I said in the dispute a few weeks ago:

The issue here is not mainly whether you get your fair share, but whether wanting it so much will destroy you.

If that is the lie, what is the truth?

The truth is that all life is found in God, not in us or anything in this world.

The Bible says that Jesus is the life (John 14:6).

True life is to know the only true God and his Son Jesus Christ (John 17:3).

It says that we do not live to ourselves, but to the Lord (Rom. 14:7–8).

It says that to live is Christ (Phil. 1:21; cf. Gal. 2:20). So this is life: to know Jesus and to live for him.

The things of this world cannot make us live. In fact, to the extent that they pull us away from finding satisfaction in Christ, they only keep us from really living.

They may give us a temporary lift—the surge of pleasure that comes when we get what we want. But watch out! Nothing in this world can give you life.[4]

What Life Really Is

How vulnerable the fallen human heart to feeling that having lots of things equals being really alive.

Jesus is urgent and passionate (verse 15): your life does not consist in having lots of things.

Life consists in knowing God.

Life is not having things. Life is knowing God.

[1]Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [2]Keller, T. J. (2013). The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive. Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [3]Anyabwile, T. (2018). Exalting jesus in luke (p. 205). Holman Reference. 3 D. G. Miller, Saint Luke (London: SCM Press, 1959), 110. 4 Thomas Watson, The Ten Commandments (1692; reprint Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 174. 6 T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1937), 271. 7 J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Luke (1858; reprint Cambridge: James Clarke, 1976), 2:76. 8 Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 6:339–40. [4]Ryken, P. G. (2009). Luke (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; Vol. 1, pp. 656–661). P&R Publishing. [5]Piper, J. (2014). Sermons from John Piper (2000–2014). Desiring God.