Finding Our Abundance in G.R.A.C.E. :: Luke 12:13-21

By

We have probably all been told at one time or another: You can’t have your cake and eat it too. This is advice for people who are expecting to get more than they have coming. 

The parable that Jesus told us about the rich man who longed for the easy life could have concluded with the same phrase. The rich fool in the parable had his cake ... that is, an abundance of riches of the earth at God’s expense, but he never got to eat, drink, or celebrate any of it. That is the concluding lesson our Lord teaches. Jesus shows us how dangerous it is when covetousness and unthankfulness penetrates to the soul of man. Such a man who lays up the riches of God for himself may never get to enjoy the riches of this life. 

But to be rich toward God ... thankfully receiving and sharing the forgiveness of sins ... is to believe that God is the giver of all good things, most notably life and salvation. 

WE FIND OUR ABUNDANCE IN GOD’S RICHES AT CHRIST’S EXPENSE AND ARE CALLED TO SHARE THEM.

I.

God gives material gifts to everyone. Luther recognized this divine generosity in the Lord’s Prayer. Please now turn page 324 in your (Lutheran Service Book) and join me in confessing this faithful doctrine. As the Head of the Household should teach it to his family in a simple way: 

What is the Fourth Petition? Give us this day our daily bread. 

What does this mean? God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

II.

We can all see that it is our heavenly Father who richly and daily cares for all our needs of body and soul. He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45). ... He provides for us all food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, and all that we have. 

In Luke 12, Jesus begins a new catechetical discourse, teaching his disciples this very thing ... first by saying, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy. The pride that comes from this leaven leads us to hypocrisy ... the hypocrisy of being afraid to share the abundance of true faith. It is hypocritical to take pride in ourselves ... our work ... our hands ... our things ... thinking we are the ones who provided for ourselves. To reinforce this teaching, Jesus then tells the Parable of the Rich Fool at the end of our Gospel reading. 

Jesus says: The land of a certain rich man produced well, and the man thought to himself, ‘What will I do because I do not have [a place] to gather my fruits. And he said, I will do this: I will tear down my storehouses, and I will build greater ones, and there, I will gather all my grain and goods. And I will say to my very being, Soul, you have laid up much good for many years; Give yourself rest, eat, drink, and celebrate. But God said to him, O Foolish One, this night your soul is demanded from you, and that which you prepared, what will they be? In this way, the one storing up in himself is also not being rich for the purpose of God (vv 16-21).

III.

Jesus is teaching us about the proper stewardship of God’s gifts. Proper stewardship leads us to confess we have God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.

To be clear, Jesus is not saying that having an abundance is a bad thing. He is not saying that storing our harvest for another day is a bad thing. He is not condemning the rich man for being rich. Jesus is teaching us to be mindful of the source of God’s grace ... and what his grace actually gives you ... and then to be thankful for God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. 

God has made us his own. As the Psalmist declared: Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion ... We will be satisfied with the goodness of his house (Ps 65, ESV). This is to recognize that all we have is God’s gift to us. God makes all of his riches available to all of us. 

Therefore, let us be warned not to think of the length and quality of our lives only in material terms. Behind all possessions is a loving God who is dearly concerned about his creation, and who provides for it every day. God gives us gifts ... abundant gifts ... all this out of his Fatherly divine goodness and mercy without any merit or worthiness in us. As we heard in the epistle: He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever. 

IV.

For Jesus this is pretty simple: You can treasure the gifts and the giver, looking forward to the Last Day ... or you can play the rich fool, not knowing when that unexpected moment might come when your soul is demanded of you. 

Because we don’t know when our last hour is, we should use God’s riches for his purpose, which means ... first ... to believe that God is the giver of all good things, most notably the greatest gift of all ... that in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of the woman, born to die and to rise from the dead, showing us what kind of love the Father really gives to us. 

We have nothing of our own to offer God, so he gave his riches to us. We couldn’t make ourselves rich. So God did the unthinkable and came to us ... in the flesh ... to make us rich with the abundance of grace through faith, which is not of our own, so that no one can boast (Eph 2:8). This grace is the forgiveness of your sins. They came at the expense of Christ: His life, his death, which imparts salvation on account of Jesus ... the greatest gift of all. 

Our Lord Jesus burst into our greed-filled world for this very reason. While the world tries to hoard for itself, God in Christ gives himself completely and richly so that we will always and forever have fellowship with God. Jesus lived for you, suffered for you, and died on a cross for you. Your sin died with Jesus. Then he arose from the grave to announce the greatest gift of all ... eternal life for all who recognize their sin and their savior: Our Lord Jesus. 

Then he washed us, cleansed us, sanctified us in Baptism. He clothes us with his royal robes of righteousness, feeds us at his rich feast of forgiveness, and nourishes the faith he gave us to save us. ... He speaks his Gospel to us, announcing absolution on his account. ... And just as importantly, he continues to remember us ... delivering his Word and Sacraments that remind us that God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense ... the forgiveness of sins ... is our inheritance received by his means. 

This is why we have gathered tonight in thanks for his harvest observance. Here, God is sharing his riches with us: the fruit of his body and blood. We should always remember this and be thankful for his Divine Service to us. Then we can be eternally thankful that he loved us in this way, giving us the hope of eternal life on account of Christ. 

So ... you see ... we do have our cake and we get to eat it too. All of the riches of Christ have been shared with you at his expense ... in Jesus’ name.  

Popular posts from this blog

The Good Shepherd Comes to Rescue and Restore - Ezekiel 34:11-16

By
  For thus says the Lord Yahweh, “Behold, I myself will search diligently for my sheep and I will seek them. As a shepherd seeks out to care for His flock in the day he is among His scattered sheep, so I will seek out to care for my sheep, and I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on the day of cloud and thick darkness. 500 years ago today, Martin Luther answered the Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Emperor who questioned his teachings. If he were to recant and take it all back, the Diet of Worms would barely be a blip in history. If he did not recant, he would be putting his own life in absolute, mortal danger. Being held captive by the clear Word of God as found in Holy Scripture, Luther stood up before the authorities of the church and the of world and gave his famous “Here I Stand” confession. He rested his case on Jesus as his only Shepherd - not the leaders of the Church or the Government. He relied solely on the Good Shepherd who promised neve...
Read more

Don’t Be Discouraged: Salvation Is Yours :: Ephesians 3:13-21

By
Saint Paul writes: Therefore, I ask [you] not to be discouraged in my tribulation on behalf of you, which is your glory (v 13).  [Prayer] Lord, we know that everyone in heaven and earth will bow before you, and that those who confess your name will receive eternal life. Grant us courage to be faithful to you in the face of any opposition from a world hostile to the Gospel. Help us to remember those who have gone before us and who sacrificed much, even their very lives, rather than dishonoring your name by denying the faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.  [Introduction] It’s easy to become discouraged as a Christian ... Isn’t it? It’s easy to lose heart ... that is, to give up in the face of tribulation ... to say you want nothing more to do with the church and those YOU think are Christian in name only ... Isn’t it? It’s easy to feel persecuted for the faith that God gave you ... Isn’t it?  Whenever you feel this way, I think from now on, I will commend to you Saint Paul’s epist...
Read more

Faithful Stewardship of God's Gifts :: Luke 16:1-13

By
How much do you owe? What is your total debt? Or as you just sang, What is the world to me? If you’re an average guy or gal, it’s probably staggering. The national debt this week was $30.6 trillion and rising ... in other words, $92,002 per citizen or $243,797 per taxpayer. Our households aren’t much better. We have $23.5 trillion in personal debt ... or $70K per citizen ... and only $8,500 in family savings. We are terrible stewards. Can we ever repay that? Of course, that’s all a pittance in comparison with what we owe the Lord. We can’t even begin to count the debt we have with him. We can’t begin to give an account for all the ways we’ve squandered his gifts. Even if we could enumerate our debt to him, we’d quickly recognize that all we have is his and become ashamed. Our Lord is the one who gives us food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods ... and all that we have. We owe him everything. How can we ever repay him?  Fortunately for us, on account o...
Read more

God Is Always With Us :: Acts 6:8-7:2a, 51-60

By
If I were to ask you to describe the message of Christmas in just one word, what would you choose? Just one word. Jesus is a good one. But I don’t think you can find a better word than Immanuel. Immanuel is the name God ascribed through the prophet Isaiah to the infant who would be born of the virgin (Isa 7:14). This single Hebrew word means “God is with us” or quite literally, “With Us is God.”  Immanuel is the message of Christmas: In Christ, God is with us in the flesh. God manifested himself in this way so that we can be with God. The Word, who was with the Father in the beginning, became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Father, full of grace and truth. God in Christ is Jesus, he is Immanuel. God came to us to be with us because we couldn’t go to him. We couldn’t find him. We couldn’t hear him. We couldn’t see him. So God came to us. He came to do what we couldn’t do, living in righteousness, dying on a cross, rising from the dead, asce...
Read more

The Mind of Christ :: Philippians 2:5-11

By
The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming into Jerusalem, took the branches of palms and went out to meet him and began crying out: Hosanna! Blessed is the one coming in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel (Jn 12:12-13). No story has ever had a bigger buildup to a greater letdown than this one. The Jews were all of the same mind: They had been looking forward to this day for more than a millennia. And here he came! Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee (Mi 5:2)! The prophet like Moses (Dt 18:15)! The son of David (2 Sm 7:12)! Our Messiah (Is 61:1) ... Here he came, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey (Zec 9:9), fulfilling the scriptures. Zechariah, Micah, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, Samuel, the Psalms. This is the day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it (Ps 118:24). ... These things are written so that you will believe Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God and that by believing you will have life in his name (Jn 20:31...
Read more

Joy of a Living Hope :: 1 Peter 1:3-9

By
Can you imagine what life would be like without hope?  It’s good to have hope. We all need more hope.  Researchers have discovered that you are three times more likely to live LONGER THAN eight years after a heart attack if you consider yourself to be a HOPEFUL person. If you’re a pessimist ... I should warn you that 21 of 25 of the hopeless died within eight years of their first heart attack.  It’s good to have hope. We all need more hope. According to one psychologist, hope reduces feelings of helplessness, boosts happiness, reduces stress, and improves our quality of life. Students with high levels of hope are more likely to succeed at school, more likely to have high-quality friendships, and less likely to suffer anxiety and depression. Hope improves your immune system, reduces stress, reduces joint pain. Hope is the voice inside that says, “Yes, I can.”  It’s good to have hope. We all need more hope.  So ... what is hope?  Technically, hope is an optim...
Read more

The Eyes Have It :: Luke 10:23-24

By
What do you see? What do you hear? These are the questions of the day on this Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. What do you see? And what do you hear?  Before we get ahead of ourselves by jumping to conclusions and declaring you can see and hear just fine ... you need to know ... not everybody sees what you see or hears what you hear. Every week your pastor gives three sermons: the one I write, the one I preach, and the one you hear. And each of you might be hearing a different sermon than the person next to you. More than that, some of you may be seeing one thing and others may be seeing something completely different. And some of us will just fall asleep not seeing or hearing anything at all.  As Jesus tells the disciples ... For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to witness what y’all see and they didn’t witness it, and to hear what y’all hear and they didn’t hear it (v. 23-24). That is to say they longed to see Jesus, living, dying, rising, ascending. They long...
Read more