When I saw it for the first time, I knew. People are going to remember this speech for
a long time. I certainly remembered it.
Or at least I remembered its three key words.
No great figure of history made this speech. In fact, the person who made it doesn’t even
exist. Gordon Gekko is a character in a
movie called Wall Street. Does anyone
remember that movie, that speech?
Gekko’s famous words were: Greed is good!
Is Gekko right?
The Bible says no. The Bible
tells us. Greed is a cancer that eats
away at you from the inside out. Greed
blinds you to what really matters in life.
But why does the Bible think this?
Why does greed have to be so bad?
Couldn’t greed motivate you?
Couldn’t it lead you to success?
Why does the Bible see it as deadly?
And if it is so deadly, how can we make sure we don’t
get it? How can we avoid coming down
with a deadly case of greed. In these
words, Jesus shows us the way. Let’s
hear what Jesus has to say.
Why is greed so deadly? First, greed is a silent killer, and second,
we don’t have to have a lot of money for it to kill us. Greed, money-sickness, has nothing to do with
how much money we have. But it has
everything to do with how we view it. It’s when we look to money to give us
only what God can. So how do we view money rightly? How do we avoid the
sickness? We let what God has already
given us hold us more and more. As we
do, the hold of money-sickness on our lives will become less and less.
When I was a teenager, I competed as a distance
runner. One of my running heroes was a guy named Jim Fixx. Jim had written a huge bestseller called The
Complete Book of Running. It had made
him America’s running guru. Yet only
seven years after writing the book, at age 52, Fixx died of a massive heartattack. How could that happen to
someone so physically fit? For the same
reason, folks call heart disease the silent killer. It can take you down before you even know
it’s there.
Greed works the same way. That’s why Jesus tells the crowd. Be on watch against all kinds of greed. Why do you have to be on watch? Because greed can capture you without you
even realizing it. A lot of things that
get us in trouble, we know when we’re caught up in them. If you’re stealing something, you know you’re
doing it. The same with lying or
adultery. But with greed, you can be
caught up in it, and not even realize it.
It’s sneaky like that.
The Harvard economist Juliet Shor discovered that only
one third of American households making over a hundred thousand dollars a year
thought they could afford everything they needed. Do you realize what that means? It means 2/3s of the wealthiest people in the
wealthiest nation on the planet don’t think they can afford everything they need. Do you see how sick that is? Can you imagine what folks from Latin America
or Africa would say to that, heck even folks from Europe or folks right here in
the U.S.? Yet, I bet that very few of
those folks would see themselves as greedy, as money-sick. That’s what greed does. It blinds us to our own money-sickness, to
our own materialism.
Let me make it clear.
Greed and wealth don’t always go together. In the Bible, Abraham was wealthy, but he
wasn’t greedy. On the other hand, even
with a little money, greed can capture your life. Greed has little to do with how much money
you have. It has everything to do with
how you view it. So what are the warning signs that we might
have money-sickness? How can we catch
this sickness sneaking into our lives before it does great harm? In what we just heard, Jesus shares six
warning signs that we have to watch out for.
First Jesus asks.
Does your money make you gloat?
That’s what the prosperous farmer does.
He says. Look at me! I am rich!
I can build bigger barns! That
will impress my neighbors. So when our
wealth leads us to gloat, to feel superior because of our nice car or the
bigness of our house, it’s a warning sign.
Now that one seems obvious, but Jesus doesn’t stop there.
Jesus gives us another warning sign. Jesus cautions us against worry. Now why does Jesus start talking about worry
after the story of the rich fool?
Because Jesus is warning us against all kinds of greed, and if you are
worrying about your money, about your lifestyle, about your stuff, then you
have set your heart on money just as much as the gloating farmer. After all, when do we worry? We don’t worry if we have all the stuff we
desire. We might gloat, but we won’t
worry. We worry only when we don’t have
it. Do you see what Jesus is telling
us? You can have a lot of money and not
have money sickness. And you can have
only a little money and be eaten up with it.
That’s why Jesus says, don’t worry about that stuff. Doing that will make you just as money-sick,
just as blind to spiritual reality as that rich fool of a farmer. You see, we can look at one type of greed,
and come against that, but not realize how another kind of greed, of
money-sickness is infecting us.
That’s why Jesus talks about ravens and lilies. Jesus isn’t pulling these examples randomly. He is pointing out two other kinds of greed,
two other types of money sickness. With the ravens, Jesus shares how the ravens
have neither storehouses nor barns, yet God makes them secure. And with the lilies, Jesus talks about how
God arrays them in beauty. What is Jesus
trying to tell us? He is pointing out
two other types of greed. In one, we
look to money for our security, to make us safe. And in the other, we look to money to make
us attractive.
When it comes to the security sickness, Jesus gives a
powerful example in the rich farmer.
What does the farmer say? He
says, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat drink and
be merry.” He is telling himself. “Aaaah, now I am safe. In an uncontrollable world, I have control.” But how secure is he really? Not at all.
Why? Because money can’t give you
security. It can’t even make you
safe.
It’s been almost twenty years, but I haven’t forgotten
that call. Gerry, one of my classmates
from school called me one morning and asked.
“Did you hear the news? Giovanni died.”
I was shocked. Giovanni? How could that be? He was only thirty-three years old. I asked.
How did you find out? He said,
“I saw it in the Wall Street Journal.”
So I looked up the story. Our
classmate had come down with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and even while he had gone
to the best doctors in the world, it had still claimed his life. As tragic as all that was, what shook me
wasn’t just his death, but that it was Giovanni who had died. Giovanni’s last name was Agnelli. His family owned Fiat. They were one of the richest families in the
world, and Giovanni was their anointed heir.
But all that money had not saved his life. You see.
When it comes to life, we are tenants, and tenants with a limited lease
and subject to immediate eviction.
That’s what that rich farmer tragically found out.
Think about it.
The truly difficult things in life are accidents, death, sickness,
broken relationships. Money can’t save
you from that. In fact, money might even
contribute to broken relationships.
Money can’t make you safe, and if you hold on to it because you think it
can, then we’re infected. Ultimately,
only in God are we truly safe, even from death.
On the other hand, you can look to money as your
beauty. You can look to money to make you
beautiful, worthy, attractive to others.
That’s why Jesus talks about the lilies.
Jesus is saying only God can truly give you worth. But folks who have this sickness look to
money for that. The ones who look to
money for safety may not spend much at all, but these folks spend a lot. The researcher Thomas Stanley has even given
these folks a name. He calls them the
Aspirationals. They often make a lot of
money, but they spend it all. Why? They want to look like the glittering
rich. So they buy houses in rich
neighborhoods, drive high end cars, drink expensive liquors, all to show
themselves and others they’ve made it.
But in reality, they’re in debt to their eyeballs. They do this because money is their way of
making themselves attractive and desirable.
But the irony is they’ll never know.
Do people like me for me or because of the car I drive and the money I
spend? And secondly, when you look to
money like that, it’ll probably turn you into the sort of arrogant person that
nobody really likes.
But here’s the funny thing. Those with saving sickness, look at these
folks and go, “Spend-thrifts!” And the
spenders look at those with saving sickness, and go, “Misers!” But both are sick. They are both looking to money for something
only God can do.
Jesus then shares two final warming signs. Jesus says:
“Do not keep striving for what you are to eat and to drink….it is the
nations of the world that strive after all these things” If you find yourself, running after money,
striving to make more of it, working yourself to death for it, then you’re
infected. But it’s not only running
after money that makes us sick. It’s
storing it up. All through this passage,
Jesus warns again and again about it.
That’s why Jesus tells people to sell their
possessions and give to the poor. We can
misread this because we don’t grasp how possessions worked in Jesus’ day. Banks didn’t exist nor did the stock
market. So how did people save
wealth? They bought stuff, houses,
furnishings, land, etc. Jesus is asking
folks. Don’t just give out of your
income. Give from your wealth, from your
savings. Put your treasure in heaven
and not on earth. And if you have
difficulty lowering your net worth to give to God, then you’re infected.
Do you get what Jesus is telling us? Do you worry about money? Do you resent people who have it? Do you spend too much of it? Are you working yourself to the bone to get
it? Do you have trouble giving it away, including
from your savings? Then Jesus says. You’re infected. You have money-sickness. You are looking to money to give you what
only God can. Do you see how pervasive
greed can be, how it can get us before we realize it? And if you see one of these warning signs,
you’re probably minimizing its effect.
You’re not seeing how bad it is.
It’s like when we have a weight issue.
We often don’t see how bad it is.
Why? We’re looking at the other
guy. I’m not as heavy as he is. That guy has a problem not me. We do the same with money sickness. So how do we get free?
We grasp what God has already given. We lay hold of the grace that is already
ours. Does Jesus say to us? If you sell your possessions and give to the
poor, then God will give you the kingdom.
No. Jesus says. God has already given it to you. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you
the kingdom. Only when you see, you have
already been given the kingdom, will you become free of money-sickness. That’s what Jesus means when he talks about
being rich towards God. When you
realize the inner wealth you already have, then the outer wealth will lose its
power.
What is this inner wealth? It is what Paul told the Christians in
Corinth. “For you know the generous act
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became
poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Do you see what God in Jesus has done for
you? God bankrupted himself for you. He not only gave up the riches of heaven, he
even gave up his own life, to make you rich in grace, rich in mercy, rich in love. He paid everything for you. If you knew, really knew how much God
treasures you, your money wouldn’t be your security or your beauty or whatever. It would just be money.
Every one of us has something at our center that we
are tempted to make our ultimate treasure, what we look too to give us value
and meaning. But every treasure except
Jesus will demand that you die to purchase it.
It will drive you. It will say.
You have to run after me. You have to
do anything to get me. Every treasure
except Jesus will demand that you die to purchase it. Only Jesus is the treasure that has died to
purchase you. (Tim Keller). Jesus is the only one who could. Only when you see Jesus as the only
treasure that matters will your money-sickness be cured. This is the treasure of God given at
infinite cost for you. Let it free you
from the false treasures that can never deliver what they promise so you can
fully receive the only treasure that can.
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