Luke 12:15-21 “Life Does Not Consist in Possessions”

1:02Literally fancy pants. Literally a fancy pants guy. This is Louis XIV. He was the king of France in the late 17th century. He was so rich he was called the Sun King. If you want a sense of how rich he was, here's an image of his home. This is the Palace of Versailles, not too far away from Paris. And he was almost certainly the richest man in Europe in the 17th century. So here's what I want you to imagine. Now, let's take Louis XIV, fancy pants and all, and Bring him to this room, and he looks at all of you.

1:35He looks at you very closely, and he says, Seque voche. That's French for holy cow. That's actually all the French I know, so we're going to have to switch to English. He would look at you, and he would say, Do you know that some of you are wearing materials that are more comfortable and valuable than anything I own? And the air in this room is so nice, it's almost as if you're conditioning it somehow to be nice.

2:06And it actually smells kind of normal in here. I know Versailles looks fancy, but like our plumbing and hygiene is like not so great. So Versailles actually stinks really bad, and here it's actually nice. And you have the ability to travel long distances easily. You have the ability to communicate over long distances easily. And your grocery stores, if I spent all my money, I could not acquire a pineapple. And you can get one for less than a dollar.

2:37You are rich. You are rich. Now, some of you may say, like, no, wait a minute, Louis, I know you may think that, but you're actually wrong. We have football coaches who are paid millions of dollars to do literally nothing. Those people are rich. A baseball player recently signed a contract. This is true. A baseball player recently signed a contract. He's going to be paid $700 million. Over 10 years. Those people are rich. Some of you in the room may be college students. You're like, I have no income. I'm not rich. Please leave me alone. Some of you may say, Louis, I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. Don't tell me I'm rich.

3:14And Louis would say, You know you are. You know what I mean. Anyone in my entire century would trade you places because you live a life of comfort, ease, and security that no one in my entire century can comprehend. You are rich. So that's fact number one. You are rich. You are. Here's fact number two. We're going to spend the bulk of our time on fact number two. Fact number two is that the Bible contains terrifying warnings to the rich.

3:52Do we believe both of these facts? I can remember being young and thinking, like, there's kind of some scary stuff in here about rich people. Like, is anybody else seeing this? What's going on? And so I want us to sit and just believe. Like, if these two facts are facts, if these two facts are true, this should concern us. In fact, it turns out some of you may already be thinking, like, okay, there's got to be a way out of this. There's got to be a way for fact number one or number two to not apply to me. But I want you to sit and live with the difficulty of this. Today's passage in Luke 12 is a hard one. And the hard passage is a scripture, you may be tempted to say, like, just ignore that. I don't want to think about it. The hard passage. Are meant to conform us to Jesus.

4:33We can't skip right over those hard passages. We have to let them conform us. The Gospel of Luke repeatedly talks about the topic of riches. Last week, a week ago was Christmas Eve, and we sang a song that came from the Magnificat, Mary's song. And even in the Magnificat, in Luke 1, Mary sings about the rich being sent away empty. In Luke 16, there is the frightening story of the rich man and Lazarus. A poor man named Lazarus dies, and the rich man also dies. And Lazarus is carried off by angels to Abraham's side, and the rich man dies and finds himself in Hades and torment.

5:12And he calls out to Abraham and says, Please send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. And Abraham said, Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. That's terrifying. Yes? In Luke 18, we have the famous story of the rich young ruler who says, Teacher, what do I do to get eternal life?

5:43And he's told about the, Jesus tells him about the commandments, and the rich young ruler is like, yeah, I kept all the commandments. Sure, you have, right? And Jesus says, okay, let's see how you do on what you value over God. Sell all you have and give it to the needy and follow me. And it says, the rich young ruler. Went away sad. Luke 18, 24, Jesus says, 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.

6:16That's scary, right? And some of you may say, like, right, maybe Jesus is like using hyperbole. What if he is? That's the reason to listen to him more, not less. I find it terrifying to think of the disciples coming to this room, just like Louis XIV did, and saying, how difficult it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. That's frightening. So finally, we come to today's passage in Luke 12. As David said, we're in Luke 12, page 871, your Bibles. I want you, I know we'll turn to lots of passages, but kind of keep your finger in Luke 12.

6:52The context is this. Jesus is speaking to the crowd, and someone says, Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. And Jesus says, Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? And then Jesus says, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. Covet is one of those weird Bible words that we don't use just a whole lot, right? When you think of the Ten Commandments, when you think of the Ten Commandments, we think like, okay, don't steal, don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't bear false witness. Like, these all kind of make sense. Like, if I were making the Ten Laws, that might be in my top 10 as well. But coveting, that's a weird one. I don't use that word very much.

7:26Usually, I always think of coveting as like envying other people's souls. Stuff. But Jesus here seems to even apply coveting in the context of evaluating your own possessions. Children in the room, and I know you're here. I brought some of you here. So, children, listen. I heard a pastor describe to children, he said, children, if you want to know what does it mean to covet, it means to want something so much that it makes you grumpy.

7:52I thought, that's pretty good. Yeah. The theologian William Barkley described the Greek word for coveting, which is pleonexia. He says, it's an accursed love of having. I love to have this thing. That's what coveting is. Jesus also says here in this phrase, he says, take care. Take care and be on your guard. That's like saying, watch out. The reason he has to say, take care and watch out, is because coveting is one of these sins you can commit without knowing that you're doing it.

8:20Right? Some sins, if you say, you know, you're doing it. But coveting, you could do and not even realize that you're coveting. So he says, watch out. Jesus then continues on and tells them what's often called the parable of the rich fool. So the rich man's land produced plentifully. Here we are now in verse 17 of Luke 12. He thought to himself, What shall I do? I have nowhere to store my crops. He says, I'll do this. I'll tear down my barns. I'll build larger ones. There I'll store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to my soul, Sol, you have ample goods and laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.

8:54So, what would be an American evaluation of this man? He is successful. He is planning for the future. As his income rises, he tries to change his lifestyle to deal with that larger income. He's planning for a nice, comfortable, relaxed retirement. So America would look at this person and say, wise. And God looks at this person and says, not wise. Not wise. In fact, God says to him, Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

9:33That sounded kind of harsh the way I said it. Do you ever wonder like what tone of voice should we read the Bible with? Kind of hard to know. There actually is a clue that I may have done it incorrectly just now with that harsh tone of voice. The reason I say that is in the very next chapter in Luke, Jesus laments over Jerusalem with a very different tone of voice. He says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you are not willing? Do you hear the sadness and the lament? So maybe that's how we should read this passage. God's saying, Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you've prepared, whose will they be?

10:22You have valued things that won't last, and you've not been rich toward God. Reason, this passage is the one that hits me the hardest. The idea that God would look at my life and say, Fool, you have valued things that won't last. At this point, you should say, Okay, so this person is rich and he's a fool. Is it possible to be rich and not a fool? That would be great. And you're right, actually, it is possible to be rich and not a fool. But it does seem like all of these passages are warning that money is spiritually hazardous to you. And you should say, Why?

11:06Many of you know there's a wonderful musical called Fiddler on the Roof that raises this question repeatedly. It's about a Jewish community in Imperial Russia in the late 1800s. They're trying to survive amidst the impending threat of a pogrom. Our main character here, his name is Tevya. He has five daughters. He's very worried about how he's going to provide for them and what their financial state is going to be and who they're going to marry, right? And so, this musical talks a lot about money. In fact, there's a very famous song from this musical where Tevya, it actually, the song is addressed to God. And Tevya says, Here's how it begins: He says, Lord, you've made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, it's no shame to be poor, but it's no great honor either. So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?

12:00If I were a rich man. That's right. He sings a song about what he would do if he were a rich man. The song ends with him saying, Lord, who made the lion and the lamb, you decreed I should be what I am. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man? I think Tevya deserves an answer. Like, Lord, why poor? Why is wealth somehow hazardous? Does wealth have some eternal consequence? Fact number two seems to say, yeah, maybe so.

12:37Later in the same musical, Tevya has a friend who's kind of a proto-Bolshevik. His name is Perchik, and Perchik says, Money is the world's curse. And Tevya says, Oh, may the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover. So, why does Jesus warn against wealth? Why is wealth a danger to us? The writer David McLemore says, God is not against rich people because they're rich. However, quite often, rich people are against God because they are rich. There's something about wealth that is hazardous to us. So, what is it? The passage seems to hint at a few of these possibilities. One is that money can lie to us. Children in the room, I know you've been to the store, you go to the store and you say, like, we need apples. What can I exchange for apples? Money. Money will get you apples. Money can get you candy, right? Car needs gasoline. Money can get you gasoline. You quickly think, oh, money can buy you anything. Money can buy you anything. Money can buy you anything.

13:42That is not true. But your day-and-day out life tells you that implicitly, money can buy you anything, which means if you have money, you are self-sufficient. That's a lie that money tells us. Many times, people don't really, they're not really after money. Another thing money does is it serves up idols to us on a platter. Here you go. That happens to our rich fool in this parable. The rich fool is after a number of other things, not exactly money. He says, What I'd really like is comfort. Comfort means you would like pleasure and not pain. That's good.

14:16And the rich fool says, Yeah, I would like to live out my remaining years in comfort, please. He also wants security. He wants to be able to say, I want protection, I want certainty, I want to live out my retirement years and not worry. And money can get that security for me. For many people, the idol that they really want, they want power. The power to influence other people. Money can definitely help with that. The rich fool doesn't bring that one up. One interesting last one I'll bring up is approval. The rich fool kind of begins this parable by boasting, I've been so successful, I don't even have barns to store my grain. Money can get you approval. I actually heard of a new concept. I've never heard this phrase before. It's called Conspicuous consumption. Have you ever heard this phrase? Conspicuous consumption. That's where you spend money for the sake, not of the thing you are buying, but to show that you are wealthy and successful. Right? There are entire cities dedicated to conspicuous consumption, cities like Las Vegas and Dubai. You can imagine someone buys a luxury watch, and the watch, what does the watch do? Well, it tells me at what time it is. The watch also tells what kind of person I am. It tells everyone else, oh, this is a wealthy and successful person. That's conspicuous consumption, money for the sake of approval. Now, these idols I just mentioned, comfort, security, power, approval, are not bad, right? Comfort's good. Security is good. Other people's approval is good. Power can be used for good. But when we make them ultimate, when we make them an idol and say, that's what I need, money says, I can help you with that. You need me. You need to be devoted to me because I can get you what you desire most.

16:00One interesting thing that our rich fool says in this passage: he says, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry. Who's he talking to there? He's kind of talking to himself. This idea of reassuring yourself and saying, Soul, find your rest, is actually a pattern that we see in the Psalms. Almost. The point where the rich man could go and change the Psalms. He says, he could go, Psalm 18, Psalm 116 sounds really similar. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. The rich man says, Actually, let's change that around a little bit. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord, no not the Lord, money has dealt bountifully with you.

16:51He's effectively changing a psalm. He could go to Psalm 46 and say, Money is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Now, some of y'all might be saying, like, ooh, that's horrible. You're taking psalms and like, marking out God's name and putting money there? That's right. That is horrible. And that when you, when this rich man says, soul, take your rest, relax, eat, drink, and be merry. He is effectively singing to himself. So money doesn't just lie to us implicitly. It teaches us to sing a song. We say, reassure ourselves, it's going to be okay. Money is there for you. Money has dealt bountifully with you. Singing psalms to money. This is why the Psalms are so relevant. If you ever think, like, oh, what did the Psalms tell me? Go through the Psalms and see what happens if you start marking God's name out and putting money and things like that in its place. Because that's what this rich fool does.

17:46He's putting something else in the place of the reassuring presence of God. He says, I will have money be the thing that assures me. The other thing is this phrase, you know, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat. Drink and be merry. It almost sounds like a commercial, right? It sounds like a commercial jingle. And indeed, effectively, every advertisement that's aimed at you, every commercial that's aimed at you, is trying to get you to covet. And saying, you need this thing. You love to have it.

18:15One of the things that worries me is how many times we say, like, I'm going to go on this website, I'm going to look in this app, and hey, check it out. The app is free. The website's free. If you're using that app or that website, whatever it is that's free, then what's the product? You are. Lots of advertisements are saying, oh, your eyeballs. That's what I really like because I really want to do everything I possibly can to get you to covet.

18:42So our society, our culture, our economy is shot through with an economy of coveting, commercials and advertisers trying to get you to covet. So I want you to think about what kind of songs you hear in your daily life. People telling you, life consists in possessions, life consists in money. I recognize many of the college students are probably gone, but I'm going to talk to the college students for a second anyway. I am going to tell you this. I'm a professor at Texas AM, and I have never, in all my years in academia, I have never seen a university more obsessed, not with money, but with a resume. Right? I know Aggies who will join organizations, lead organizations, even start organizations that they do not care about, in order to list it on their resume. Why? Because the resume. Check, check, check. Look what a good job I've done. Please approve of me. Please give me a job. Please give me security. Do you see that for college students, it may not be money that is the currency, it may be the resume that is currency, filling that same kind of function. Devote yourself to me, and I'll get you what you need. It's the same exact problem. One other reason money is dangerous is it tends to isolate us. Take a look back through Luke 12 and look for pronouns. I know people fuss about pronouns a lot these days. We'll talk about that here in church in the coming weeks as we have our coffee and conversation focusing on the topic of gender and sexuality. But the rich fool here has a very different pronoun problem. He has a pronoun problem of he only uses pronouns that are like I, me, mine, over and over and over again. The idea of saying you, they, does anyone else have a need, never even shows up, never even occurs to him. He is worrying about himself, planning for himself, building for himself, reassuring himself, maximizing his own convenience. He is isolated and insulated from the outside world. Sadly, this is something that we as Americans tend to prize. He is independent and self-made. Good job.

20:40One last thing that money does, that Jesus calls out at the end of Luke 12, is that money directs our heart. Jesus says, and I think a lot of you know this famous phrase, Jesus says in verse 34, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Now, I always thought that phrase meant that, like, well, your money is like an indicator. Where your heart is. But Jesus actually seems to say more than that. It's not just that your money reflects where your heart is. It's that the money, where you put your money, actually may direct your heart, which means that if you invest heavily in earthly barns, you are, in a sense, trying to tether your heart to the earth.

21:18When you invest in something, your heart follows it. These are some of the reasons that money might be spiritually dangerous to you. Okay, so what do we do? So we've given fact number one, we're rich. Fact number two, the Bible has these terrifying warnings toward rich people. So what do we do about it? Christians have tried through the centuries a number of different ways of saying, like, okay, how do I practically deal with these warnings? One of the things that Christians have done is they have said, okay, fact number one, I'm rich. Let's do something about that. Let's not be rich. There are many Christians through the centuries who have taken a vow of poverty. It's not super popular now, but don't laugh at it. Don't dismiss it. The reason they would do that also comes from Luke 12. In Luke 12, 33, Jesus says, sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide yourself with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. It's really ironic that you are far more common, it's far more likely, it's far more common that you will hear in a church in America that God wants you to be wealthy. In the first, second, third century church, you are far more likely to hear the opposite.

22:30Christians saying, no, that's the one thing you should not desire to be, because money is spiritually hazardous. So, some Christians have sought to avoid the problem. They say, if I don't have wealth, I'm not prone to these warnings. What's more likely to be the case for us here in the room is the second approach, which is we say, can I please have a checklist? Give me a checklist. Give X percent to the church, Y percent to missions, Z percent to charity. If you do X, Y, Z, you get to not worry about these warnings.

23:02That would be great. That would be great to not have to worry about the warnings anymore. Do you see that? And by the way, this checklist can be maybe a good thing. I read a book recently by Randy Alcorn on this topic, and it included the phrase, tithing, the training wheels of giving. And I was like, okay, ouch. The checklist is nice, but it doesn't really solve the problem because Jesus is not just after your outward actions that you can solve with the checklist. He's after your heart. The Pharisees were champions of checking off the checklists, but Luke 16 says that they were lovers of money.

23:40Martin Luther said, coveting is the kind of sin that happens under your hat, which means it's inward. It's not just your outward actions. You could get to the point where you're awesome at the checklist, but you still have a problem with coveting. The third thing that Christians are prone to do, and I think we're all really prone to do this, is to, especially tomorrow's New Year's Day, right? New Year's resolutions. We say, let's resolve. I hereby resolve to not be greedy, to not be covetous. I will be generous. That's my New Year's resolution, right? We even have a story about this. A week ago, Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve evening, three ghosts visit you, and the next morning you say, like, whoo, that was bad. I resolve to be a more generous person, right? And that's how it works.

24:21So I'll just ask you, do New Year's resolutions, like, what's their track record? Not great. Not great. Because they rely on human willpower, which usually peters out after a couple of weeks. So saying, I resolve to be less greedy and more generous, it's not going to work that great. In fact, all three of these approaches, trying to get rid of wealth, trying to get a checklist, trying to New Year's resolution your way to being a generous person and not a covetous person, they all have the same thing in common, which is they are human effort, human solutions to a spiritual problem, which means they're not going to work, and that's not the gospel.

24:59Thankfully, we are not left at that point. There is a third fact. Fact number three is that Jesus tells you here in Luke 12, fear not. Here's the passage. Jesus says, starting in verse 29 in Luke 12, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried, for all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock. It is your father's good pleasure. to give you the kingdom. Jesus is saying, you are prone to fear not having enough. He's warning us, you're prone to fear not having enough. Now, the response to that warning should not be more fear. Instead, the response is, fear not, trust your Father, who graciously gives you the kingdom. So I don't want you to respond to these frightening warnings in the Bible with more fear, because the response is actually to fear not. I don't want you to respond to these warnings by resolving to try harder. Jesus is not out to tell you, try really hard. Instead, he says, trust.

26:16Fear not. You have a gracious Father who is ready to give you the kingdom. And in being part of God's kingdom, that not only means that your needs are met, it means that your heart is changed to be like his, to be a generous person. I want to tell you something that, and children in the room, this is one of those things I wish someone had told me when I was a child. I thought when I was a child that the Christian life was, I confess that I'm a sinner. I repent of my sins. I turn to Jesus. Now I'm a Christian. Now I try really hard to do the right thing. It doesn't work that way. Part of the reason that we had a repentance, a corporate repentance this morning, is because the Christian life is actually, I confess that I am. A sinner. I repent of that. I turn and trust to Jesus. Tomorrow, same thing. I confess that I am struggling with the sin of covetousness. Lord, I repent of that. I turn myself over to you. Lord, change my heart. The next day, same thing every day. The idea that you have to repent of idolatry toward money every day is normal. It's normal.

27:24When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door in Wittenberg 500 years ago, thesis number one reads as follows. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance. When I was young, I thought, repentance, that's what you do when you start being a Christian. What do I do? Why am I still having to repent? That is normal. It is normal to repent every day of this ongoing battle with not trusting Jesus, trusting in money, trusting in the world instead.

28:01Hey, wait a minute. Look at that. A minute ago, I said, Jesus tells you, fear not. Fear not you. But it actually doesn't say, like, fear not, you little singular sheep. It says, fear not, little flock. So instead of you, we need some kind of like second person plural. So what was second person plural? What would the word for that be? Y'all, very good. Okay, great. So I used to live in Massachusetts, and I tried to like take my Texan accent down. A little bit so people wouldn't judge me. It did not work. But I could not give up the word y'all because it's too useful. It's too useful. And it turns out it's actually a spiritually useful word because a huge percentage of the time in the New Testament that you look in these little Bibles and it says you, a huge percentage of the time, it does not actually mean you. It means y'all. It is second person plural. And my mom told me yesterday there is a website, a wonderful, God-glorifying website called y'allversion.com. And what you do is you go there, in any English translation, you say, ESV, please change all the second person plural Greek. If it's second person plural and Greek, change it to y'all, and it'll do it. Amen. Right, William Tyndale would be proud. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, but I have these sad friends who live in Pittsburgh. And in Pittsburgh, they don't say y'all. Do you know what they say in Pittsburgh? They say yens. There's this weird thing, Y-I-N-Z. And you say, does the y'allversion.com, does that work for the poor Pittsburgh people? Amazingly, it does. It does. It'll stick yens in there.

29:34That's maybe less God-glorifying, but that's okay. The reason y'all is important is because this is not something you do solo. This is not something you do on your own. It shows that Jesus is speaking to us in community, and this happens throughout the New Testament. It turns out, we as Christians have a built-in immunity to covetousness. Our rich fool, we already said, he's I. He's using first-person pronouns. He's focused solely on himself. But we as Christians, because Jesus is not just redeeming you, he is redeeming y'all, we live in community, and the love of money is thwarted when you live in community. The love of money is thwarted when we live in community because we naturally grow to care for each other and think of each other's needs and community. Now, I know that is not necessarily the American way, right? The American way is to say, I am independent. This is my house, my finances. I don't share my needs with you. I don't share my resources with you. Everybody, to be self-sufficient, do it for themselves, right? That's the American way. One of the believers in this church that I appreciate the most sadly graduated a couple of weeks ago. His name is Yusuf. He's a believer. He's from Egypt. And I'll never forget what Yusuf told me one time in this very room. He said, You Americans, you're always trying to declare independence from something. It's good you declared independence from King George, but you don't have to declare independence from everything. I cannot tell you how many times that phrase, you don't have to declare independence from everything, has popped into my head as I think, oh, right, I'm trying to be insular and be self-sufficient. Imagine if we as a church said, we are going to be open about our needs and we are going to be generous. Here's what I suspect. I suspect that some of you earlier who said you're up to your eyeballs in debt, I suspect that some of y'all have needs, and because of your American culture, You have not shared those needs with anyone. But imagine if you did. What I suspect would happen is that in the hearts of other church members, the Holy Spirit would well up that sense of generosity to meet those needs. That's actually what happened in the first-century church. Paul describes the Macedonian church. He says, In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. A wealth of generosity. Wouldn't that be a beautiful descriptor for our church? Because we are not isolated little individuals like the rich fool. We say, like, oh, I actually share with my family. Oh, and my family is bigger than I realized. It extends to my church family. And it actually extends to my brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. You already heard that my brother Austin Vetter is back here in College Station. He's here today, and he's going to be sharing at 11. One of the great things that Austin gets to do is he gets to see up close and personal the fact that our brothers and sisters in Christ extend around the world. And we care for each other. When they hurt, we hurt.

32:38That's what makes generosity possible: we live in community. We are a flock of sheep. We are not little individual, singular sheep. Maybe one really important aspect of this way of living generously within the church is this. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, If in Christ, Christ, we have hope in this life only. We are of all people most to be pitied. That means if there's no resurrection, we've wasted our lives. The rapper Lecrae commented on this passage. He says, here he is, he says, Paul said, if Christ hadn't resurrected, we've wasted our lives, but that implies that our lives are built around Jesus being alive. First off, excellent job by Lecrae putting an entire sermon in one line of a rap song. That is not easy to do. Lecrae is right.

33:31Our life has to be built around Jesus being alive. So I'm constantly worried: like, if our life looks exactly like the rest of the world's, then, like, what is it in our life that's built around Jesus being alive? Generosity, having a different attitude toward money, is one of the ways that we can live a life that is built around Jesus' resurrection. We have to have something in our life, something in our life that looks crazy to the outside world unless Jesus is resurrected. And having a different attitude toward money, being quick to share needs, quick to share resources, is one of those things the outside world says, that's crazy. What are you doing? Oh, wait, it's not crazy if Jesus is actually alive. Some of you may be thinking, like, are there any, so we've gone through this passage with the rich fool. Are there any examples of a rich man who is wise in the Gospel of Luke? And there actually is. There is a rich man who is wise in the Gospel of Luke. Toward the end of the Gospel of Luke, There's a rich man. He's not a fool. He believes in Jesus. His name was Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea. Luke 23, 50 describes him as a good and righteous man who is looking for the kingdom of God. Just like the rich fool earlier, he was also trying to use his money to plan for the future, but not just a life of retirement and comfort. He was planning for his death. He was living life knowing, someday I am going to die, something our rich fool neglected to do. And Joseph bought a tomb for himself. He bought a tomb for himself. But then when Jesus died, Joseph went to the Pharisees and said, please give me the body. And he took Jesus' body, and he buried Jesus' body in his own tomb. He said, I'm going to honor Jesus with my possessions. When he did that, Joseph probably didn't quite realize it. But that may have been one of the greatest uses of wealth in the history of the universe. Because Joseph bought a tomb. Joseph gave a tomb. And now that tomb stands as a testimony to the fact that Jesus is risen. The tomb says, empty. He is not here. He is risen. Imagine if you could spend your money in a way that proclaims he is not here. He is risen. I admire Joseph. Joseph spent his money in a way that glorified Jesus. And now the money that he spent will glorify Jesus for all of eternity. Lord, willing, we will all have that kind of opportunity. Pray with me.

36:07Dear Lord, I thank you that we don't have to be afraid. I thank you that you are gracious. I pray that you would heal our covetous hearts. Lord, I thank you that you don't just leave it to us to get ourselves out of our sinful habits, but that through your Holy Spirit you change our hearts. I pray that in this room there would be needs that are met. I pray that our church center app would be a place where you are glorified because we are generous and kind to each other.

36:50I pray for this upcoming year. A lot of people have a lot of trepidation about this year, but I pray that this will be a year where covetousness is left behind, where we value the things that you value, that we have a generous heart that mirrors your generous heart. Lord, my heart struggles with these hard passages, with these frightening warnings toward rich people, because I know that we in the room are richer than so many people who've ever lived. I thank you that you don't leave us in fear, but that you tell us to fear not. I pray that you would give us opportunities to glorify you with. Our money, just like Joseph of Arimathea did. We thank you for all the ways you care for us. I thank you for our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. I pray that we can care for them like we do for ourselves. In your name, I pray. Amen.

37:46Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.