Text: Luke 12:1634

Topic: What is important in life

Obsessions with worldly priorities keep us from hearing what Jesus has to say.

In Luke 12, a man interrupts Jesus' sermon on life and death, asking him to divide the inheritance between him and his brother.

Jesus asks him, "Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" meaning the man has missed the reason Jesus came to earth.

Jesus said, "Beware of covetousness, for a man's life does not consist of the things he possesses."

Our culture and the media spread a message that life is made up of things.

Riches themselves are not evil, but money can bind us to the physical and temporal and blind us to the spiritual and eternal.

Illustration: Jesus begins to tell the story of a wealthy farmer who would have been esteemed in his community because of his success.

The Bible commends industry, but it's not progress to move rapidly down the wrong road.

Illustration: The farmer in Jesus' story is progressive, investing his wealth in capital improvements; however the progress he makes is in things, not people.

Illustration: Robinson tells a story of an American missionary in Africa who tells natives about modern conveniences but notices one of the natives is unimpressed; the native tells him that being better off is not to be better.

If you live to collect riches and as though God does not exist, you are a fool.

Illustration: Robinson imagines in detail when death visits the farmer unexpectedly and takes all his wealth from him, despite the man's efforts to bargain for his life. The angel of God walks through the cemetery and writes the word fool on his gravestone, for all that the man had collected was left behind.

Jesus is asking, "Is it worth your life to get what you are after?"

Jesus says you ought to make the kingdom of God, not money, the central concern of your life.

Illustration: Jesus illustrates his point with ravens: if they do not worry, and God feeds them, why should we worry that God will not do the same for us?

Illustration: Again Jesus uses a metaphor: as lilies in the field grow carefree, so are we to trust that God will provide for us.

Illustration: Robinson describes people who make money, passion, or power the center of their lives and the inevitable ruin of not focusing on what is eternal.

Illustration: Robinson tells the legend of a master who calls his servant stupid and gives the servant a staff, instructing him if he ever meets anyone more stupid than himself, to give it to that individual. One day the master tells his servant he is going on a long journey from which he will not return and for which he did not he could have. Upon hearing this, the servant gives his master the staff.