Greed

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

GREED

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." 14 Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?"  15 Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."  16 And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17 He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' 18 "Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." '  20 "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' 21 "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God." 

NIV

What else can we say about this truth that we have not already written chapters about? Greed, it is a horrible way to die a slow agonizing death while still being alive. Greed robs us of all joy, it steals our heart from God. We have been told by God that we cannot serve two masters, we will either hate the one and love the other, or we will be devoted to one and despise the other, that we cannot serve both God and money. Greed’s most common subject is money, but it is not exclusive to just money. Yet all things in this world which pose a temptation to possess require the greed for money in order to obtain them. Most lusts are provided by greed. Jesus is specific about the greed for money in this parable and thus we need to ensure we have not been entrapped by its evil lure. Although we do need money to buy goods and pay our own way in this social setting, not being dependent on other people, we should not make the accumulation of wealth our main focus. It is not that we should not have wealth, as Jesus was merely saying that if we focus on the accumulation of wealth and are not rich toward God, that is give of our wealth instead of be selfish with it, we are in grave danger, pun intended. Greed is rooted in the love of money and that is the root of all that is evil. So how do we deal with our needs? The answer to that is seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and God will add all the stuff, the needs in our life. We have to depend on God, we cannot even depend on our own self. Either we trust him or we don’t, it is that simply. We might think we have all the solutions to all our money issues, but in reality all we have is the feeble thoughts of man when there is the divine thoughts of God. We need to seek God and God alone. He will take care of the rest. That is in fact truly being rich toward him. We have to be on guard against all forms of greed.