Theme:
True riches, true life
Arguments over family estates, wills, and inheritances are nothing new. We even hear of one in Luke’s gospel, though there are no lawyers here - things are a bit simpler. A man in the crowd shouts out to Jesus - tell my brother - who must have been nearby in the crowd - tell my brother to divide the estate and the family inheritance with me. Traditionally in Jewish law the older brother inherited two thirds of the estate, the remaining third went to the younger brother. The man shouting out is almost certainly the younger brother. And we can guess that if he is shouting out from the crowd, he is obviously agitated about the inheritance - it looks as if getting his share of the estate, and the money has come to dominate his whole life. Otherwise he wouldn’t be shouting out in a huge crowd demanding that his brother pay him his share of the estate.
So, the man in the crowd
shouts out.........
But the Lord Jesus refuses to
act as a lawyer.........
Quite the opposite - instead Jesus makes this a live moment of truth. Turning to the crowd the Lord says: watch out, guard yourselves against every kind of greed; because a person’s life is not made up of things he owns, no matter how rich he may be,
human life does not consist in
how much you have ’
Then the Lord goes on to tell
this story. A story of amazing compactness and beauty. It’s about a rich man.
A rich man has several acres
of ground. At harvest time there is a great yield, unlike anything previously.
Now the man, who has some farm granaries and buildings realises he will not be
able to store this huge harvest. So, he makes plans to demolish the old
buildings and build bigger, more modern granaries and storehouses. He will be
able to store both the grain, and the goods he is going to buy with the sale of
the grain - furniture, carpets, rich wines etc. And so the rich man maps out
his future.
Then God breaks in, and
declares to the rich man - this very night you will have to give up your life.
Then who will get all these things that belong to you ?
What is the teaching of Jesus here ?
Is Jesus teaching here that
riches are bad ?
That the plans of the rich man made were worth nothing ?
What is the teaching of Jesus
here ?
Well, in this story Jesus confronts us with a stark, severe picture of a man without any living relationship to God at all. This man’s life is marked by the complete absence of any relationship with God. Instead the centre of his life is material wealth and possessions. The rich man in the story of Jesus is a man without a living centre to his life, a man lacking the most important relationship of all,
life lived in walking with the
living God.
This is how it is with those who pile up riches for themselves and are
not rich in God’s sight.
says the Lord Jesus.
The teaching of Jesus is this: that our relationship with God is central, fundamental to life; God’s kingdom is central, and everything else in life is placed around that. The teaching of the Lord Jesus has to do with the shape of our lives - like a circle, human life has a centre and at that centre, says the Lord is the living God. Everything else in life has its place round the living God at the centre, and what is wrong with the rich man in the story that Jesus told is that he has riches, possessions, but nothing at the centre of his life....... no relationship with the living God.
To have the living God at the
centre of life is to be rich.
Long ago, many men and women gave up all the luxuries of life to live in monasteries as monks or nuns, or in caves in the desert,
went begging for food, living with very few possessions........... doing without.
The Lord Jesus, however, rather than speaking of doing without things, almost always lays the emphasis on the riches that God gives. The Lord tells the story of a man who trades in pearls, who, finding the most beautiful pearl he has ever seen sells all the other pearls he has to buy that one pearl.
The Lord Jesus lays the emphasis on the riches that God gives.
- such riches that we let go of other things
in order to be filled more deeply by all the riches that God gives.........
What riches are these ?
In 2 Corinthians 4,
Paul writes to the Church at
the inexpressible
gifts that he gives us,
this, he declares, is
treasure, the treasure. And when Paul uses the word treasure, here, he is
taking it directly from the word of Jesus about the riches God gives............
Let us think, for a
moment, as Paul does, of the riches we have been given in the gospel ! In those
times when we wonder what life is about, the word of Jesus comes to us, I am
the way, the truth, the life - and we find our purpose renewed. When we are wearied, disappointed, anxious,
Jesus declares - Your Father in heaven knows what you need - do not be so
concerned about these things.
When we are reminded
of our sin, burdened down with our guilt and
our failure before God
we turn to the Cross
of Jesus, and know that he has taken up our sin, and taken it away........... and
that in Jesus Christ there is no condemnation ...
When fearful of the
future......... we know that Jesus has ascended into heaven and the victory
over all things is His.
The gospel of Jesus
Christ comes to this confused, chaotic, bewildered world, and tells of the coming into history of a force of immeasurable range which
brings a new dimension to life,
transforms human life.
The New Testament
calls this again and again.......
the riches, that God
has given us, and is giving us day by day,
and will give us as
life unfolds !
What is it to be rich,
as Jesus says, in God’s sight ?
Well, Paul in a prayer for the
Church at
its a prayer for riches in
God’s sight:
may you be, he writes,
encouraged in heart, united in love, may you have the full riches of complete
understanding, may you know the mystery of God, Jesus Christ, in whom are
hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge...........!
Surely,
that is our great need today: a far deeper sense of the riches God
gives, a far deeper sense that the all surpassing power is from God, and not
from us
a deeper, more loving knowing of Jesus Christ and
His Cross,
for here are given all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge...
Let us ask God, in His loving mercy and grace,
to give us, to grant us, more of these unsearchable
riches............
in Jesus Christ
so that we may be - rich in God’s sight.