TWELVE BIBLICAL CHARACTERS AND THEIR MONEY...2 1. THE RICH FOOL Greed Defined Greed is a self-centered desire to have something (money, time, toys, your neighbors wife, etc.) for self-centered
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The Money-Idol Replaced ................................................. 10
5. Paul
A Life Upended ................................................................. 13
6. The Poor Widow
Knowing God .................................................................... 15
7. The Macedonians
Modeling the Gospel in Giving ......................................... 17
8. The Good Samaritan
A Difficult Lesson in Giving .............................................. 19
9. Job
God as the Supreme Treasure ........................................... 21
10. The Philippian Church
Giving is Not Only about Giving ....................................... 23
11. Mary and Judas
The Contrast of Two Witnesses ......................................... 25
12. Jesus
Rejecting Earthly Wealth for Eternal Gain ....................... 27
The real measure of our wealth is how much we would be worth
if we lost all our money.
– J. H. Jowett –
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1. THE RICH FOOL
Greed Defined
Greed is a self-centered desire to have something (money, time,
toys, your neighbor’s wife, etc.) for self-centered purposes or to
have more than we should. Greed and a God-dependent, content
life are enemies.
Interacting with Jesus often creates an unexpected outcome. In
this encounter, someone who was hoping to get part of an
inheritance became the catalyst for a lesson on greed and a
wasted life. In order to make his point, Jesus told the story of a
wealthy man planning for retirement.
Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus], “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 [Jesus] 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.” – Luke 12:13-21
The man in Jesus’ story was focused on funding a secure and
independent lifestyle. To achieve this he dedicated his efforts to
building his retirement assets. Sounds reasonable, right?
Two thousand years ago there was no public safety net. No Social
Security and no health care system that would come to the
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rescue. If you didn’t build your assets and/or family support,
running out of money meant you were in big trouble. So, you
could make the argument that having as much money as possible
was actually more critical two thousand years ago than it is today.
Maybe that’s why Jesus used this particular example. What could
be more important than doing everything possible to sustain
yourself as you age?
But this was not how Jesus thought about it. It wasn’t even close.
You cannot serve God and money (Luke 16:13). It will be one or
the other. Since the driving force of your life will determine what
you do, the top priorities will get the resources. But can’t we just
live a “balanced” life? Nope. There is always a core filter through
which we think about everything else. This core filter controls
how we see life. The balanced life isn’t really balanced.
While the man in Jesus’ story had a tight grip on things that were
temporal and would vanish, and no grip on the Kingdom. You
might ask if we can we save for retirement and care about the
Kingdom at the same time? Of course we can. But that is not
Jesus’ point. The Kingdom did not have first place in this man’s
life. Money and the personal benefits of money had first place.
Aligning with God’s heart came in a distant second or third or
fourth, or nowhere.
For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or
impure, or who is [greedy] (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in
the kingdom of Christ and God. – Ephesians 5:5
Now, the tendency might be to breathe a sigh of relief and claim
that this story has little connection to me. My financial situation
is not remotely like this rich man’s situation. But again, that’s not
the right observation or the point of Jesus’ story.
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Greed will always follow a heart that has the wrong focus
because, by definition, resources (time, money, talent) will be
poured into the wrong priorities. And priorities reflect our reality.
Even though this is very tough stuff, we should ask how our
spending and savings would change if we were focused on
following Jesus in everything; if we were given wholeheartedly to
God’s mission. If we use an earthly lens we would see this rich
man as very successful. If we look through the eyes of Jesus, he
is a greedy fool who wasted his life and, in the end, comes out
with nothing.
Rich people are greedy for the same reason poor people
are greedy, because they are people.
– R.C. Sproul Jr. –
2. THE RICH RULER
Commendable but Lost
The Bible is the Word of God that exposes the heart. We can fool
everyone around us and meet the best expectations of society
while still being lost. Like Judas, we can walk with disciples and
lose eternal life. To say this is difficult is an understatement. In
this story we see the Word expose a rich man’s heart.
And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No
one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not
commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false
witness, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said, “All these I
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have kept from my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him,
“One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the
poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was
extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How
difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for
a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” – Luke 18:18-25
Jesus encountered a wealthy man – sometimes we call him the rich young ruler – who sincerely wanted to be faithful to God and accepted by God. And based on his commandment-keeping (we’ll take this at face value), he was a very good man (In Matthew’s account we also see the critical, love-your-neighbor-as-yourself element). If he was even close to the man he thought he was, he was amazing. I’m sure he had a fantastic reputation.
Despite all of this, the man was insecure and perhaps afraid. He was unsure as to whether he was on the right path. At a minimum, he was trying to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He may have known that his good works could not make him good enough. And it’s possible that he even knew the answer to the question he was going to ask. Regardless, now Jesus was near and he could know for sure.
One of the interesting things about this story was how Luke took the time to tell us about this man’s response. The man became sad when Jesus told him to sell everything. Instead of arguing or dismissing Jesus, he responded as if he knew who Jesus really was and he knew that Jesus had it right. He was deeply moved, but he still didn’t leave his money.
So, among the many questions we might be asking, here are three:
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What was Jesus doing with this man?
Jesus was bringing this man face-to-face with his god. In the commandment-keeping that Jesus initially asked about, he didn’t ask if the man had any other gods that came before God (the first commandment). Can you imagine the response if he had asked that? I’m sure this man would have denied any other loyalties. So, Jesus directly confronts this man’s idolatry by making sure he knows that this god, money, must go. If we’re to have a right relationship with God, there is no room for idols. God must be our God. This man should have dropped to his knees in sorrow, confession, repentance, and worship. But he wouldn’t do it.
This story reminds me of a discussion I had with a young man who was on the wrong path. He was sexually involved with a girl who was pulling him away from everything he believed. As we talked, he began to cry. He recognized the problem and desperately wanted to do the right thing and follow Jesus. And I remember the next sad event as if it happened yesterday. As he picked up the telephone for his break-up call, he looked at the phone for a few moments and then put it down. He couldn’t and wouldn’t leave his idol.
Should everyone sell everything?
This story of Jesus’ encounter contains his instruction to the man to sell everything. Since he was focused on this man and not speaking to the crowd, we need to be careful in the conclusions we reach. There is no directive for everyone to do the same. While “everyone should sell everything” doesn’t stand up to the clear teaching of the New Testament – see 2 Cor 9:7, 1 Tim 6:17-19 – it is clear that that:
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• every idol must go (Ex 20:3; Luke 12:34; 1 John 5:21) • we should live as stewards of God’s resources and
relinquish the concept of autonomous ownership (Luke 14:33)
• all that Jesus is for us should erase any competing loyalties (Mt 13:44)
What’s with the camel analogy?
Is it more difficult for God to save a rich person than a poor person? That’s not what Jesus said. He’s not comparing the money-idol to any other form of idolatry. He is simply focusing on the strength of money’s deception and our inability to defeat it. Without the salvific call of God, the love of money will take our souls.
A biblical comparison
The story of this rich young ruler, at least for Luke, is incomplete without the contrasting story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). Here we have an amazing contrast of two rich people. While both were rich, the community loved one and hated the other. One was exemplary in his lifestyle, and one was reprehensible. One clings to his wealth, and one releases it. One is lost, and one is saved.
The comparison of the rich ruler to Zacchaeus is not an accident. One of the strong messages here is that we can appear to be very close to God in our conduct, and still be in idolatry. This was also the case with Judas. When Jesus said that one of the disciples would betray him, the disciples didn’t seem to have an obvious candidate. And it’s interesting that money was Judas’ god too.
The rich young man in this story was trying to do the one thing that can’t be done. He was attempting to serve both God and money. The Bible is clear that we will love one and hate the other