"For Richer or For Poorer"

In Luke 12:13, a man calls out to Jesus, asking Him to force his brother to share their family inheritance with him. Jesus responds by telling the man to not be greedy for what he doesn’t have.

In this case, the person shouting, must be the younger son in a family where his brother is the oldest son who inherited their father’s estate. Tradition, at that time, would probably have dictated that the oldest son would inherit the majority of the assets of the estate and much of the responsibility of paying outstanding debts and the future management of the estate assets.

The point of recording this exchange was obviously not to rehash inheritance customs in biblical times but instead an opportunity to record (one more time) the personal view of Jesus regarding money and possessions.

Of all the messages that we have received from Jesus in the new testament, this simple message of how we should not want for things that we do not have, is universally ignored.

In Luke 12:16 Jesus gives an example of where we are now in regards to greed and accumulation. He speaks of a rich man who had barns that were full of his crops to the point of overflowing. When the man sat back and looked at his good fortune he surmised that the thing to do at that point was to build bigger barns and to sit back, reflect on his good fortune and eat, drink and be merry.

At this point, God asked the man if he were to die that very night, who would get his riches? Jesus then went on to say that a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth and not have a rich relationship with God.

I have heard people use these words to tell me that Jesus has a problem with His followers accumulating money in their life. In fact, what He does say is, it’s fine to have those possessions, just don’t let them be the focus of your life. How happy we are is gauged by our family relationships between us and our spouse, children etc... A person who has a lot of material wealth and is generous in helping others with that wealth, stands a pretty good chance at being a happy person.

If we study the lives of people like JC Penney, Henry Heinz and other extremely wealthy people who loved God and their fellow man, you will find that they were very prosperous and happy people who left legacies that have promoted the word of God to this day.

Penney named his first business as “The Golden Rule”, meaning that all he did in business was going to be done according to God’s rules. He was an excellent employer who inspired multiple business owners in the art of Godly employee management. Heinz left a legacy of dedicated missionary work in Japan and other parts of Asia as he founded bible based Sunday schools for children in the early 1900's.

If God works through us (and He does) then He needs to put assets in the hands of believers so that we can act as the body of Christ and help bring God’s word to a lost and dying world. God tells us in His word, that before He can trust us with a lot, He will trust us with a little.

When my clock radio went off this morning, I was greeted with the news that maybe 1,000 banks were going to fail soon. In addition to that news, the announcer went on to say that the stock market was set to lose 5% of it’s value in one day and that 10,000 people were set to lose their jobs in the city of New York alone.

The fact of the matter is that He was God yesterday, when things were good and He is God today when things are bad. God does not love poor people more than rich people or the other way around. On this subject, I would like to share two sayings that I heard long ago and each of them apply to this situation. They are:

“ It is the same sun that melts wax and hardens clay” and “If the sun shined everyday, we would all live in a desert”