¹³  Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” ¹⁴  But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵  And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” ¹⁶  And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ¹⁸  And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹  And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ ²⁰  But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹  So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Jesus had no qualms talking about materialism. There are 196 verses in the Gospels on money. Jesus actually talked about materialism more than anything else. Our greatest temptation and sin is materialism. The word  materialism  makes us feel uncomfortable. We all have one huge problem handling materialism. It also reveals that Jesus confronted life out on the streets-not down at the seminary. Jesus confronts us in daily living.

USED. A man attempted to “use” Jesus. This aspect in preaching is seldom taught in “preacher schools.”

Aristides (1^st century):“They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They despise not the widow, and grieve not the orphan.  He  that  hath, distributeth liberally to him that hath not. If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof, and rejoice over him, as it were their own brother: for they call themselves brethren, not after the flesh, but after the spirit and in God; but when one of their poor passes away from the world, and any of them see him, then he provides for his burial according to his ability; and if they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs, and if it is possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food.”

In this context came Jesus’ advice on materialism: “beware of covetousness.” This is the real issue. Covetous members can put preachers in “hot water.” Covetous preachers keep themselves in “hot water.”

ABUSED. Materialism is deceitful (Matthew 12:22). In the foundation parable Jesus said the deceitfulness of riches kept people from faithfulness. It literally “chokes out” spirituality. If Satan cannot get you with adversity he will use prosperity. Prosperity is the acid test. In my experience I have cried watching good brethren lose their faith over riches. “I  liked them better when poor.”

In the Parable of the Rich Fool Jesus said therich man mistook his soul for his body. You do not feed your soul with stuff stored in barns. Barns do not give security to the soul. A bigger barn usually makes a shriveled soul. The rich man also mistook himself for God. He thought he was in charge of life. Life is a vapor, a cloud, a cut flower. He also mistook time for eternity. He never saw beyond himself.

Men always think they can control money. I, personally, am scared of money. Money, in time, controls us. The tyranny of possessions! You have more to worry about and fret over. Barns really do not make men happy.

Material possessions are destroyed by moths, rust, and thieves (Matthew 6:19-21). Riches deteriorate in the form of inflation and the declining worth of the dollar. They ultimately fail. The rich fool had “eye trouble.” “I” was used six times in three verses. Paradoxically, the rich fool was a shining example of our success syndrome! He was  hard-working,  shrewd,  successful—yet empty. The rich fool expended all his wealth upon himself. Then, the Bible says, “He died.” The congregation that does the same “dies.”

1 Timothy 6:6–10 (ESV) But godliness with contentment is great gain, ⁷ for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. ⁸ But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. ⁹ But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Colossians 3:5 (ESV) Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

1 Timothy 6:6-10 and Colossians 3:5 contain some frightening language. Brethren pierce themselves with many sorrows. You could go insane if you really knew the materialism in any given congregation. Beware of covetousness!

The Deceitfulness of Wealth

Friedrich Nietzsche had a theory. He wrote that, with the absence of God growing in Western culture, we would replace God with money.

What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalized fraud . . . what gives rise to all this? It is not real want—for their existence is by no means precarious . . . but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. . . .

What once was done “for the love of God” is now done for the love of money, i.e., for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience.

In short, Nietzsche foretold that money in Western culture would become perhaps its main counterfeit god. Innumerable writers and thinkers have been pointing out “the culture of greed” that has been eating away at no one thinks that change is around the corner. Why? It’s because greed and avarice are especially hard to see in ourselves.

Greed hides itself from the victim. The money god’s modus operandi includes blindness to your own heart. Why can’t anyone in the grip of greed see it? The counterfeit god of money uses powerful sociological and psychological dynamics.

Everyone tends to live in a particular socioeconomic bracket. Once you are able to afford to live in a particular neighborhood, send your children to its schools, and participate in its social life, you will find yourself surrounded by quite a number of people who have more money than you. You don’t compare yourself to the rest of the world, you compare yourself to those in your bracket.

The human heart always wants to justify itself and this is one of the easiest ways. You say, “I don’t live as well as him or her or them. My means are modest compared to theirs.” You can reason and think like that no matter how lavishly you are living. As a result, most Americans think of themselves as middle class, and only 2 percent call themselves “upper class.”

But the rest of the world is not fooled. When people visit here from other parts of the globe, they are staggered to see the level of materialistic comfort that the majority of Americans have come to view as a necessity. Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it.

Therefore we should all begin with a working hypothesis that “this could easily be a problem for me.” If greed hides itself so deeply, no one should be confident that it is not a problem for them. How can we recognize and become free from the power of money to blind us?