The Lie of Greed

Imagine being the owner of a ten-thousand square foot, four-million-dollar mansion – a 22-room, three-story house that looks more like a castle out of Arthurian legend than it does a home built in the 21st century.

Jeff and Maria Decker didn’t have to imagine. That was their home.

Was.

That was until the fire.

While the Decker family was away, their 4-million-dollar castle caught fire. You could see the smoke for miles. Over 70 firefighters tried to put out the fire, but they couldn’t save the house. Everything inside was destroyed. It would cost the Decker Family tens of millions of dollars to rebuild and replace what was lost.

It took years to build their four-million-dollar mansion. It only took a single night to reduce that castle to rubble.

Turns out, ice-cream isn’t the only thing with an incredibly short shelf-life. Sure, our castles full of treasures may withstand a 90-degree day, but there comes a time when even castles can’t withstand the heat. Everything in this world has a shelf-life – our castles included. You don’t have to be the Deckers to know how fast the ‘stuff’ of this world is here today and gone tomorrow.

And yet, we still invest eternal value in ‘things’ that are the metaphysical equivalent to ice-cream.

We anchor our identities in the clothes we wear or the cars we drive. We hinge our happiness on how much money we have or how big our house is. We affiliate our life’s meaning with materialism and our purpose with what we purchase.

But what happens when our wealth is gone, our cars are stolen, and our castles burn to the ground? What eternal value do they really have?

All Kinds of Greed…

That is the question Jesus puts before his audience in Luke 12:13-21.

We’re told that thousands of people were crowding around Jesus – to the point where people were even getting trampled. Everyone had different reasons for wanting to see him. Some wanted to hear him speak. Others wanted to see more miraculous displays of his power as the Son of God. But there was one guy who was pushing his way through the crowds for a completely different reason. And once he got within earshot of Jesus, he let his heart be heard.

“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

Presumably, this man’s older brother had received all of a certain inheritance from within his family. And this younger brother – the man shouting at Jesus – felt entitled to some of it. Rabbis were often consulted for Scriptural advice on legal issues like these.

But this guy isn’t asking Jesus to lay out what the Bible has to say about dividing an inheritance between brothers; the younger brother is simply demanding that Jesus rule in his favor.

His thinking was, with the endorsement of the most popular rabbi at the time – Jesus – his brother would have no choice but to share with his sibling.

In short, this guy wasn’t running after Jesus; he was running after money, and Jesus was just a stop along the way.

But Jesus hadn’t come to be the arbiter who would arbitrate an inheritance between two bickering brothers; earthly wealth isn’t why the Son of God came. This man needed to be reminded of the dangers of fixating his heart on material possessions – and he wasn’t the only one who needed the reminder.

Jesus sees this man’s struggle with greed as a teaching opportunity – so he turns to the crowd and says to all of them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”

And we’re like “Yeah! Go get ’em, Jesus! Get after those greedy, self-serving, billionaire pigs!”

But greed isn’t as one-dimensional as you think it is.

Note that Jesus doesn’t say “Be on your guard against greed.” He says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” ‘All kinds’ means there is more than one way to be greedy – and that means this isn’t a warning just for brothers fighting over an inheritance. That means this isn’t a warning just for those in the highest tax bracket sitting large in their ivory towers either.

Jesus is cautioning everyone crowding around him, from the richest tax collector to the poorest widow.

…Proceeds from a Self-Obsessed Heart

To illustrate, Jesus shares a parable. “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’” Now this man isn’t saying he didn’t have any barns; his concern is he already has too much and doesn’t have room for more. His barns were already full. He was rich before his barns were busting at the seams. But he wanted more.

So, he planned to build more barns so he can store more stuff. And he isn’t stockpiling his goods and grain to serve God and neighbor. He isn’t seeking to express appreciation to God in how he manages even more wealth. No, this rich man is stockpiling purely to serve himself.

Every kind of greed proceeds from a self-obsessed heart.

Can you hear how self-centered this rich man is? “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry!’”

Did you catch how many times this man said the word ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, or ‘myself’? This rich man’s heart bleeds greed. He gives no thought of using his God-given abundance to help others, no thought of sharing any of this wealth with his servants, and no thought of even thanking God – the Giver of all that he has – or seeking his advice for what he should do with his insane amount of wealth. All he’s thinking about is ‘me’. “My wealth is so great, there is absolutely no way I will ever be in need. I will never have to worry about anything ever again! I can live it up, retire early, and relax the rest of my life!”

This man’s security, his peace, his comfort, happiness, and joy – he invests it all in his investments. He defines his identity by the abundance of his things. But a man’s life isn’t defined by the abundance of his material possessions, and this man would discover that reality the hard way.

God interrupts this man’s self-obsessed monologue and says, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”

Everything he had stockpiled for himself would now be enjoyed by others. There was nothing he could do for his wealth after he died – and there was nothing his wealth could do for him after he died, either. To God, his deep pockets were as good as empty, and God had come to collect.

In the world’s economy, he was quintessentially rich; in God’s economy, he was bankrupt. This rich man’s wealth wasn’t enough for him; ironically, it wasn’t enough for God, either.

Notice how God doesn’t define him with all the lavished, prestigious titles the world gave him for his wealth. God defines him as he would anyone who invests eternal value in temporary treasures – who stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards God: God defines them as a ‘fool’.  

All about “I…me…my…myself…”

If your tax bracket suggests you’re rich, it’s incredibly easy to relate with this rich man.

But maybe you’re thinking, “I’m not rich! I struggle to pay my bills every month! I’m thousands of dollars in debt! My salary is so small and my expenses are so high, I have to apply for loans, food stamps, and all other kinds of financial aid! I buy my clothes only at second-hand stores because I don’t have enough money! I don’t even know how I’m going to make my rent next month!”

‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘myself’.

Greed comes in many forms.

Greed is investing our hope in money instead of God. Greed is calculating our value and worth according to bank accounts instead of God’s promises. Greed is exchanging the eternal joys of heaven for the temporary joys of materialism. Greed is loving the created more than the Creator. Greed is a lie, a lie that says that happiness, security, our status, and identity are actually found in things and not God.

You don’t have to be rich to buy into the lie of greed, but you don’t have to be poor to be in desperate need of Jesus, either.

Spiritual Debt Requires Spiritual Payment

Whether you consider yourself rich or poor, without a right relationship with God, you have nothing. By nature, you and I were born abundant in sin and spiritually bankrupt – spiritually the opposite of rich.

Financially speaking, we would not even have a balance of “0”.

We could work 24/7 365 days a year, but we couldn’t earn our way into heaven. We could accumulate all the wealth in the world but we still wouldn’t be able to pay God what we owe.

Why’s that?

Spiritual debt requires spiritual payment.

To be rich towards God means our ledger needed to show ‘perfect’ before God. And in light of our sins of worry, doubt, self-centeredness, and greed, God could rightly call us a ‘fool’ and send us away from him forever.

Christ Has Made You Rich

So, when neither gold nor silver could buy us a clean slate, God would with his own blood.

For the sake of saving this world from its foolishness and greed, our God, who is rich in love, sent his Son who denied the wealth of this world and became poor – so that through his poverty we would be rich towards God.

When our world would lose itself over its love of earthly wealth, Jesus would give up his life for us – because we are his treasure.

Christ would leave the mansions of heaven for a time so you would be able to call them your home for an eternity! Jesus took the debt of our sin onto himself and died with it on the cross – and in exchange gave us the wealth of his perfection so we would be rich towards God.

And that Christ rose from the dead assures us of the treasures of heaven to come.

You, in Christ, have a clean slate. Your debt has forever been paid.

Through the reading of the Word and through the waters of our Baptism, the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts and assures us that we are heirs of God’s riches.

We do not stand empty-handed before God. Because of Jesus, God sees you and says, “My child!” When your money is all gone, your cars are stolen, or your castles burn to the ground, you still have Christ as your treasure. Through Christ, we have access –right now – to the vaults of God’s promises, the richness of his mercy, and the abundance of his grace!

The wealth of this world pales in comparison to the richness we have forever in Christ.

You are not defined by the treasures that are here today and gone tomorrow. You are defined by Jesus – and who he has declared you to be.

The joy that Jesus gives lasts forever, and because of him, all of our barns are already full! So, let the temporary blessings God gives us be just that: temporary blessings. Let Christ be your one and only treasure. Through faith in him, we have everything! Through Christ, we are rich!