July 28 – Luke 12:15-21

Main focus: You can’t take money to the grave with you so leverage it for the glory and mission of God.

Thus far we’ve looked at the effect money has on our hearts (week 1) and at Jesus’s definition of generosity (week 2). Now we’re turning to another money topic: greed. In Luke 12 we’ll see Jesus address our tendencies towards greed and hoarding and find the solution not merely by renouncing those two things but by supplanting them with gratitude for God’s generous provision.

We last read Luke 12 in the third week of our Ecclesiastes series, when we discussed the Teacher’s conclusion about earthly pleasures. Jesus’s teaching on the matter carries a similar feel to it; chasing earthly pleasures is like chasing after the wind, you never quite catch what you’re after, and inevitably you die and take none of it with you. The story Jesus tells in verses 16-21 illustrates this perfectly; a man receives an amazing windfall, tells his soul to find satisfaction in this abundance, and then loses his abundance and his soul all at once.

Jesus is showing all kinds of problems with greed and hoarding, including their logical folly (you can’t take it with you, v.20), spiritual folly (don’t be anxious, God will provide for you, v.22-31), and ethical folly (give to the needy, v.31-33). In this we can see all sorts of things that work on the human heart like our propensity to avoid our mortality, fret over our well-being, and forget to think of anyone but ourselves. But Jesus lovingly confronts us with these things in order to free us from the hold that hoarding and greed tends to have on us.

In particular Jesus focuses on the nature of God and his loving kindness towards his children. Jesus goes immediately from the story about the rich fool to saying “therefore I tell you, do not be anxious” (12:22). He’s exposing how often our hoarding and greed is from a place of fear; we worry we won’t have enough or feel safe enough. We pad our bank accounts and 401ks just in case. We buy new things to keep up with trends in fear of being looked down upon. We stake our happiness on things, amounts, and certain milestones (ex. being debt free), and wring our hands hoping it all works out. This fear is exacerbated by feeling like it’s all up to us and knowing we could fail at any moment.

This, Jesus says, is a troubling way for a child of God to live. God’s people can find freedom from all this worrying by looking around at the world and seeing God’s constant provision (“in him all things hold together” Col 1:17) just as surely as we can see examples of his provision in our own lives. In many respects, to experience anxiety over provision is to view the world as godless. And, when we consider our own meager abilities to ensure our wellbeing and happiness, we’ll only be left with frustration and fear. But when we consider God, our loving and kind Father, we can displace our greed and hoarding, and the fear beneath them both, with grateful response to the God who takes care of us.

We’ll close discussion with a tangible point of application from verse 33—we’ll ask how each of us could try to “sell your possessions, and give to the needy.” Feel free to be pointed about it: what’s one thing you have that you know you don’t need that you could give away or sell this week? And please feel free to caveat it this way: you don’t have to give that thing or that money to Vintage. This is not a fundraiser! This is meant to let Jesus take us to task just like he took his audience to task. If we want to grow in being able to hold wealth and possessions loosely, in being more interested in God’s kingdom than our earthly possessions, one of the quickest ways to expose our misaligned affections is by disrupting the relationship and seeing what it does to us.

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