Wednesday, October 6, 2021 PM

See a lot of answers to prayer in this room. Thank the Lord for His healing mercies and hearing our prayers when we call out to Him. So it's good to be together tonight. We're going to be in Luke 12 verses 13 to 21 for our devotional tonight.

The Inheritance Dispute and Jesus’ Warning Against Covetousness

Luke 12 verses 13 through 21. Before we get there and read that, let's start with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us tonight. I pray that you would bless our reading of your Word and our discussion of its truths.

I pray that you would help us to believe the message that you have given to us here. That we would believe it and that we would apply it to our lives. That we would not just be doers, hearers of the Word, but also doers.

Lord, I thank you for you being a good Heavenly Father. He hears our prayers and answers them. Thank you for your mercies in our life. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, so Luke 12 beginning in verse 13.

Then one from the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you? And he said to them, Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.

Then he spoke a parable to them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops? So he said, I will do this.

I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul will be required of you. Then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. So what begins as a request to resolve a dispute?

Jesus takes that opportunity and begins to instruct his hearers. He's got more to say about our perspective on possessions, our perspective on resources. He's going to talk about worry and anxiety and prayer and stewardship of all that God has given to us, and he's going to hit on all those themes through the rest of chapter 12 here in Luke.

But it is interesting that the crowd, and remember that the size of the crowd, like one from the crowd, kind of steps forward and gets his attention and kind of stops everything so that he can have his requests made known.

But remember the nature of this crowd back at the beginning of chapter 12. This is the same crowd. Verse 1, it says, in the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together so that they trampled one another, he began to say to his disciples, first of all, he began to instruct his disciples in the midst of this chaos.

This is not a great opportune moment to have a heart-to-heart with his 12 disciples, but you see that pressed in by a great crowd of men, where it would seem that Jesus, if he's going to do the right thing, must give all his attention to this pressing, demanding, thronging, trampling crowd.

Jesus doesn't pay them any mind, and he begins to instruct his disciples on the topic of the fear of man versus the fear of God. So he takes this pressure that comes at him and he turns it into a teaching opportunity for his disciples.

You know, don't fear man. Don't be afraid of this crowd. Don't be caught up in the fury of the moment. Fear God. So again, something happens here. Someone from the crowd, an individual, steps forward and says, I want you to settle this dispute I have with my brother, and I want you to settle it in my favor.

Why would this man be entreating Jesus of Nazareth, who is a traveling teacher, a rabbi, and so on, to settle a legal dispute? I mean, Jesus himself asks that question. Who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?

Why is the man, do you think, why do you think the man is pressing for Jesus? Why does he think that Jesus can, or Jesus will, or why is he even going to Jesus at all to settle this family inheritance dispute?

Yes, certainly he has a great deal of authority, speaks with a great deal of authority, corrects the Pharisees and the scribes on their understanding of the Bible. So certainly he's in a position of being an authority on the Word of God, thus the law of God, and look at all the people that are thronging around him.

Surely if he says something and the whole crowd is therefore in agreement with him, that this would hold weight and settle this family dispute. So we don't know the, we don't know the situation. One can assume that the man is a younger brother, and the older brother who has control of the estate is slow in dividing it, or refusing altogether to divide it, or something's going on.

And so he's really pressing Jesus to settle this issue, and he wants him to settle it in his favor. Imagine, you know, what if his brother was there in the crowd? What if his brother was there? I mean, everyone's thronging together, and he takes this moment to try to force the issue, right?

But Jesus diffuses it, reminding him that he is, he's not taking a position in this region as a judge or an arbitrator. He's, of course, all authority belongs to Christ, and this is especially seen in his resurrection and his ascension, that all authority belongs to him.

But in a similar fashion to the rich ruler, who came to him and said, good teacher, what must I do to be saved? Jesus diffuses the man's assumptions. He says, why do you call me good? There's no one good but God.

But, of course, Jesus is God, and he is good, but there are some assumptions rolling in this man's mind that he needs to get rid of. And so also here, let's say this brother is willing to to go to this stranger, a traveling teacher, and kind of try to force the issue, and try to force his brother to give him the inheritance.

And is he really thinking about all that's going to take place if he succeeds in that? If this man succeeds in getting Jesus to say something positive towards his side of the case? And what's going to happen in that relationship between those brothers?

What's going to happen in the relationship of that community where those both those brothers obviously live? And Jesus simply says, he just diffuses this, and then he says something very significant in verse 15.

He said to them, meaning he says to this man, okay, I didn't get put as an arbitrator over your case. And then he says to them, to the whole crowd, something that must have rocked most of them. Take heed and beware of covetousness.

Take heed and beware, be wary, be on the alert, be concerned, and be on guard against covetousness. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. So, Jesus talks about covetousness.

Now, that is the 10th commandment. Do not covet. Thou shalt not covet. And there's a great list of things that you could possibly covet. Your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's land, house, any kind of form of his wealth, his donkey, his ox, his manservant, his maidservant, so on and so forth.

Do not covet. Now, the term for covet is not just desire, and certainly not just appreciation, like appreciation for someone's well-endowed estate, that they've taken good care of it, you know, like, oh man, this is nice.

That's not covetousness, okay? We can rejoice with those who rejoice. That's not covetousness. Covetousness is a desire for something that you are not allowed to have. It's an illicit desire, and in fact, it can even show up before anything happens in your will.

The old the old word is concupiscence, which is obviously why we don't use that word anymore. Bless you. Concupiscence is the old word of a desire for that which doesn't belong to you, and it can show up before your will is ever engaged.

Has to do with the depraved heart. But the Hebrew word for covet, do not covet, do not beware of covetousness in the Hebrew, is the exact same word of the desire that Eve had for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Exact same word. She was desirable to make one wise. She coveted that which she was not allowed to have, and when we think about the commandment, the 10th commandment, do not covet, and it has that list of all the different things that you can covet and desire, that commandment lies behind many of the other commandments.

Can we locate do not covet in connection to what other commandments do we think? If you covet, let's say you break the 10th commandment, and something happens within the heart, and of course the other commandments do too, but this is something that happens within the heart, and maybe you don't even ever say anything, and nobody ever really knows, but if you break the 10th commandment, what might that lead to in breaking the other commandments?

How would that look like? What would that, how would that work? Hmm? Stealing. Right. If I covet my neighbor's possessions, and that takes hold of me, I nurture that, rather than rebuke that and repent from that, then you end up stealing, right?

What other commandments? Idolatry. Desiring that which is not yours, and perhaps trying to attain it by any means possible, worshiping the fertility gods or whatever, you're going to turn to, when the one true God says, that's not yours, you don't get to have that, it's like, yeah, but Baal may give it to me.

Adultery, exactly. If you covet your neighbor's wife, and that goes unchecked, what then may happen? Right? And in this, is that not the tying together of the first and the tenth commandments? Right? To worship God alone, and not covet.

So Jesus is, as we see, getting to the very heart of the matter. Very often, this is interesting, that people would approach Jesus, and they have some issue they want to talk about, or some question that they have, and Jesus handles it very neatly, but then he'll go for the heart issue.

It's like, yeah, I know you came to talk about this, but we're going to deal with what's really going on in your heart. And here, it was covetousness. This man was breaking the tenth commandment. He was coveting.

He was consumed with this issue of, I want my portion of the inheritance. And perhaps his father didn't have very much, and left very barely anything at all, and it all went to the eldest son, who was to take care of his mother, and so on.

He wasn't going to split away anything for her care to his younger brother, or something. We don't know what the situation is, but this younger brother was consumed with getting his portion of the inheritance.

Yeah, exactly, to take care of the mother, and make sure that to keep with whatever lands they possessed, that it wouldn't fall into disrepair. Oh yes, Romans 7, exactly. Perhaps this man really couldn't put a name on the issue in his heart that was causing so much turmoil and problems within him.

Paul put it this way. He said, you know, that he was sinning long before the law came along to tell him what it was. But the law, when it said, do not covet, then he understood what coveting was according to the law of God, and that made sin exceedingly sinful in his life, when he finally had the label for it.

And this is where God's Word, God's Law is so important to tell us exactly what it is that is ruining our lives, our minds, our hearts, our communities, and so on. What is it? It's not, we kind of say, oh, there's a problem.

It's kind of an amorphous problem. There's some issue we have here. But when the Bible, when God through the Bible identifies it, then we see it for its exceeding sinfulness, and then we are helped in identifying it, and then repenting from it.

And this, Jesus just identifies it. Hey, that's covetousness. That's covetousness. You, your life does not consist in the abundance of the things that you possess. In other words, your identity, the significance of who you are, is not bound up, tied to, defined by what you possess, and how much of it.

Now, how does that, how does that, how does that challenge the culture, the audience, right there in front of Jesus? Well, these folks didn't have very much. By and large, they just didn't have very much.

The, the demographics that Jesus would see on a regular basis, he saw a lot of beggars, right? Lame, blind, leprous, so on. And if you were, if you were lame, or you were blind, or you were deaf, or you were mute, at least you could sit somewhere inside the city and beg, and get some food.

If you were leprous, you are so out of luck. You are outside the community, and people had to bring stuff to you if they cared about you. Otherwise, you're sunk. Ten percent of the population was basically that.

About seventy percent of the population made enough for that day to get the food for the next day. Like, remember the day's wage? People lived by the day's wage. It was very difficult. And when you get back, when you get down to the following passage, and Jesus is cautioning them against living by anxiety and fear, what are we going to eat?

What are we going to wear? Those were genuine anxieties that they had. And then you had about fifteen percent of the population that were artisans. They had their own, they could, they worked kind of for themselves, and were able to make more than just a day's wage.

Sometimes the popular stories about the disciples envisioned them as the poorest of the poor, but that was not true. The fishermen, working for their father, they were artisans. They had a business. They were able to, sometimes they could make a pretty good amount of money, and even hire people to work for them.

I mean, they were in a better off position. You could think of, well, Matthew was a tax collector, so he was a civil servant. He was able to bring in perhaps more than he should have, as many tax collectors were accused of, for good reason.

But even those would be worried about, am I going to be able to fish? Am I going to be able to repair my boat, and repair my nets, and so on and so forth, those kinds of things. Jesus' own father was an artisan.

He was a carpenter, which means he worked with stone and with wood, and would build things. And then, of course, about five percent of the population had a lot of wealth, and could afford a lot. The Pharisees were incredibly wealthy.

They had a lot of money, and very well respected, and they had a lot of income, a lot of money, a lot of possessions. Remember the story of the Pharisees putting money in the donation box in the temple, and they gave out of their abundance, and it really didn't hurt them at all.

But boy, was it impressive when every single coin was heard clinking in. But then the widow with the two mites gave all she had, because she had been told that, well, you know, here, plant your seed of faith, and then God will make you prosper, version of TBN back then.

And so, although she gave all she had, it was because of the ways in which the Pharisees were oppressing the poor. So, when Jesus says, beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.

This is also important because, okay, yes, some of them, a few of them were rich, some of them were kind of okay, most of them were poor, and there was a running thought in the minds of the people that the more wealthy you were, the more God loved you.

Why did you, why do you have all this wealth? Well, it's because, obviously, because God loves you. You're closer to God. That's why you have more wealth. Remember the confrontation that Jesus has when he says, after the rich ruler goes away, is how difficult it is for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven. Easier for the largest moving thing you've ever seen to go through the smallest opening you've ever seen than for a rich man to get into heaven.

And the disciples then said something very interesting. Well, then who can be saved? You see their assumption? If the rich, who are supposedly the closest to God, can't get in, then we're all gonna miss out.

Right? Jesus says, well, it's impossible with man. It is possible with God. You know, salvation is by grace, not by your status and your works and so on. So here, when he says, your life does not consist in the abundance of the things that he possesses, this is striking at their... most of them, the life that they live full of anxiety and fear.

Am I gonna have enough for the next day? And striking at the ideas that people had that if you were really wealthy, that means that God really loved you and you were closer to him. So he's striking hard at some wrong assumptions and some wrong mindsets here.

But how does this verse hit us today? How does this verse hit us in our culture today? Listen to it again. One's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. How does it hit us today?

Similarly, the more wealth you have, the more important you are, the more authority you have to tell people how to live. That's kind of like where, you know, this guy is incredibly wealthy, so we're gonna pay him $50 ,000 a lecture on the lecture circuit to tell everybody else how important he is.

Right. We haven't... we haven't really changed a whole lot. How else does this statement hit us? Exactly. Exactly. And Jesus is going to get to that with his parable, with his story, of course, about the certain rich, foolish man who liked to talk to himself when he wanted to consult an expert.

He's going to get at that. But we live in a world today, a culture today, that says, you know, it's important that you tally up the amount of the things that you possess. And if that amount is lower than most other people, then that's immoral and wrong and unjust.

Or if you total up the abundance of the things you possess, and it's greater than a bunch of other people, most other people, that's wrong and immoral and unjust. That if there is inequality in the things that you possess, then the entire system is unjust and has to be reset.

Right? That's what... that's the culture in which we live today. What are they saying? They're saying your life consists in the abundance or the lack of abundance of the things that you possess. That's what they're saying.

That the most important thing about you is your physical appearance combined with how much stuff you have. I mean, how shallow is that? They make it sound really deep, but what it comes down to is like, you know, what matters most is how much stuff you have and then what you look like.

Yeah, well, that's the way it goes. Now, that's covetousness. See, Jesus says, beware of covetousness. It is a poison pill that ruins everything. Now, so he's going to talk about the folly of this certain rich man, and we'll talk about that next time, but beware that the Word of Christ is this, take heed, that means you got to pay attention, because it could sneak up on you.

Okay, so take heed and beware, meaning, so pay attention and be on guard about covetousness. That's the Word of Christ. He doesn't want us to be ensnared by covetousness. All right, I'm gonna have Dwight come up here and lead the prayer time, give my voice a rest.