The Gospel & Wealth – Luke 12:13-34

The Gospel & Wealth

The Gospel of Luke

Vol. 5 (Luke 10-12)

 Luke 12:13-34

The Text

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

Intro

It’s become popular for churches to advertise upcoming sermons through their social media platforms. And so, when a popular topic is coming up, churches fire up the graphics and video team, create reels and post images to advertise.

And, you know the kind of topics that get promoted: navigating conflict, finding your purpose, overcoming burnout. Those topics pack the house—precisely because they are topics we are convinced are a struggle for us. We want to know what God’s Word says.

But the sermons on greed don’t pack the house—and I’m convinced from this passage, that it’s not because we know we’re greedy and we don’t want to be challenged. It’s because greed is really hard to see in ourselves.  

In over twenty years of pastoral ministry, I’ve had people come to me to confess that they struggle with almost every kind of sin. I can only recall one person coming to me and saying, “I think I’m greedy I worry that the way I relate to my possessions is harming myself and those around me.”

People will admit to being lustful, angry, and unforgiving—but nobody thinks they are greedy.

And I believe this is because most of the sermons we’ve heard on money are rather shallow. “You have more than enough, so give more away. Thank you, and we’ll see you next week.”

Now maybe you do have enough, and you should be more generous, but sermons like that rarely help us address the root of our difficulties with possessions—they only scratch the surface.

In the passage we just read, Luke pairs two instructions on wealth and greed—first a man in the crowd wants his share of an inheritance. Then, disciples are anxious about their next meal. 

And it sounds like two different difficulties related to wealth. But then, Jesus digs down beneath the surface and shows that we all really face the same root difficulty. We all find it difficult to relate to wealth and possessions.

As we study this text we learn there are:

1. The Difficulty of Relating to Wealth

2. Why it’s Difficult

3. Where True Wealth is Located

1. The Difficulty of Relating to Wealth

This passage teaches that we all struggle with relating to wealth and possessions. It’s so easy to accuse others of greed, but the truth is that every one of us has to learn how to rightly relate to our possessions—and it’s difficult.

The passage begins with a crowd of thousands, and one of them makes a request in verse thirteen: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

Though sons received inheritance in the ancient world, the families normally kept all the wealth together. So, your inheritance was an earmarked portion of the estate. But here’s a man who has come into a sum of wealth and wants his portion liquidated and deposited into his account.

So, here’s someone with an abundance of wealth—and it’s troubling his life. Having a large inheritance has not made his anxiety about money disappear.

Then, down in verse 22, Jesus turns from the crowd to the disciples, but he speaks so the crowd can overhear. Not only do the disciples not have sums of wealth—they’re worried about survival—what they will eat and what they will wear. They lack basic necessities for survival. Their difficulty isn’t surplus, it’s scarcity.

So, here’s someone who has plenty of wealth next to disciples who have little—yet they’re both struggling.

And in verse 15, Jesus says, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness…” which means that here are two groups, the rich inheritor and the poor disciple, and both are blind to their own greed.

The man with the inheritance doesn’t see himself as greedy. He hears himself as “owed.” “I’m not greedy for more. I just want what’s mine handled rightly.” But Jesus’ says, “Be careful. Be on guard for greed.”

The disciples in verse 22 did not see themselves as covetous either. They hear themselves as realistic. Only rich people are greedy. They imagine Scrooge McDuck counting his money in his vault. But they have no vault! “I’m just being realistic about necessities like food and clothing.” Jesus says, “You’re not just trying to provide your basic needs, you’re anxious.”

The word he uses for anxiety is merimnaō, and means to expend careful thought, or to be absorbed in thought. 

So, whether you have a lot or a little, whether you’re constantly talking about money or never talking about it—you can be greedy.

Furthermore, both Christians and non-Christians are anxious over money. The guy who asks about his inheritance is an outsider to Christianity. He’s in the crowd. But the disciples are insiders—they’re following Jesus, yet following Jesus doesn’t make them immune to the anxiety of possessions.

And this is why many of the sermons you’ve heard on money don’t actually help—because they make two opposite errors.

The first is the Ascetic Error. Asceticism says material things are themselves spiritually contaminating, and the thing that pleases God is poverty. It treats creation, which God declared good, as the problem. And therefore, we have to choose the goods of creation or God.

The second is the Prosperity Error, which says that increased faith in God leads to increased prosperity. The problem with the prosperity error is that it elevates the value of created goods above God the giver. It treats money as a score and turns faith into a means for wealth creation.

But neither of these actually address the heart of the problem.

Look at what this passage shows us. You are not free from the anxious grip of money if you have abundance, neither are you immune if you have nothing. You can be greedy without even realizing it—you can be blind to your own greed. In fact, the people who most need the warning do not feel greedy at all. They just feel practical. 

If you only think of greed as a corporate villain who laughs at laying people off while buying his third yacht, or a cartoon billionaire swimming in a vault of gold coins, you’ll remain blind. 

It’s too easy to caricature greed in terms we don’t identify with. We picture the miser or the televangelist, and because we don’t see ourselves in them, we conclude that the warning must be for someone else.

It’s easy to spot a bad relationship to wealth in someone else. It’s difficult—almost impossible to admit one in yourself. 

2. Why it’s Difficult

Jesus says we look to wealth for a security it cannot give. In verse 16, he tells a parable of a man who had an abundance of possessions—so much that he didn’t know where to put it all. So, what does he do? He says, “I’ll build bigger barns,” and this will secure me against the future. Then I can rest!”

But he’s a fool. Why? Because full barns can only secure you from next years’ famine. They cannot secure your soul against the day of death. When he dies, someone will divide his wealth and he will stand before his Maker who is not impressed with his net worth.

He warns the man asking for the inheritance: “Take care… for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

It’s at this point that most of us relax. We aren’t so wealthy that we don’t know how we’re going to store all our possessions.

But look at what Jesus says to the disciples in verse 22:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

This hits closer to home. Not only does life not consist in abundance—Jesus says it doesn’t even consist in basic needs of survival.

I want to thread a very small needle here: Jesus isn’t condemning emergency funds, or retirement plans. He doesn’t tell the disciples to stop eating or working.

He says stop relating to your savings and even your food and clothing as if they are your life. They aren’t your life. In verse 15, Jesus literally says, “You don’t exist in your possessions.”

And here’s the foundational truth of the passage: we all exist in something. We all look to something as our fundamental trust, our foundational security. The fool looked to his barns. The anxious disciples looked to their next meal. And Jesus says, “You’re existing in the wrong thing.”

You can look to mansions and sports cars (expensive things), or bread and clothing (ordinary things)—and your heart can be absorbed, bothered, and controlled by a lot or even a little.

He says you’re looking to money and possessions for a security it can’t give you. 

You want it to give you the security of worth. It’s the promise that the goods will tell you (and others) that you matter. The man with the barns feels savvy, competent, and able to say that he’s done well. The person without the goods feels small, behind, and exposed. For this person, money isn’t a shield against disaster. It’s a verdict. It answers the question, “Am I someone” with a number, a house, or connections. 

Or you want it to give you security of safety against loss. You look to money and possessions to put a buffer between you and illness, old age, a bad year, or death. This is why the disciples cannot stop calculating food and clothing.

And Jesus treats them both as the same mistake. Why?

You’re looking to wealth for what you can only receive from a Father. How does a child know their worth? By hearing the affirmation and love of their father. What makes a child feel safe? The strong protective love of their father.

When you’re anxious over your possessions—it’s because you’re asking them for what only a Father can supply. 

That’s why Jesus tells the disciples in verse 30: “The nations seek after these things.” Because they don’t know God as Father. But disciples do. 

Jesus says you have a Father who knows all your needs, and it’s his pleasure to give you the kingdom.

3. Where True Wealth is Located 

True wealth is located not in money or possessions, which can be taken from you, but in the eternal Father, who overflows in love and grace to you—and from whom you can never be parted.

What Jesus is describing here is what we call the doctrine of adoption. Christians understand that God’s salvation isn’t just the pardoning of our sins—it’s our adoption into his family. 

All who believe in Jesus become the children of God (John 1:12) Romans 8 says that through God’s Spirit, we receive adoption into an inheritance that is one day going to heal the world. All of creation has been groaning under the curse of abandonment and disease, but a day is coming in which the curse is fully and finally repealed. No more abandonment. No more death. The day of redemption.

And that is the only security in which you can place the full weight of your soul. The only worth that can set your weary heart at ease—is the worth of being a child of God. The only safety that is secured against stock market crashes and even death itself—is the safety of belonging to the Father.

This is why Paul can say, “If God is for us, who can be against us? I’m sure that neither death not life can separate me from God!”

He lives with a contentment that mocks his circumstances. He knows how to have plenty or how to have nothing. Why? Because he knows who his Father is. 

And Jesus says, “You have to nail this knowledge of God as your Father down tight into your heart. Your life doesn’t exist in what you possess—it exists in who possesses you!”

And how… how do you nail it down tight? How can you know that God is for you?

Because… “He who did not spare his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all… how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

This is the medicine you take every day. When you abound and have plenty, what calms your fear that it could all be taken away? He will graciously give me all things in Christ!

What releases you from the grip of anxiety when ends won’t meet? On the day of redemption—he’s going to give me a kingdom!

I know I’m his child, because he delivered up his Son for me.

If you know the Father delights to call you his child—what status could you get from money and possession to outweigh that?

If you know that you are inheriting a kingdom—what other safety do you really need?