Luke 12, 13, and one of the company said unto
him, Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance
with me. And he said unto him, Man, who
made me a judge or a divider over you? Now this is an interesting answer
that our Lord gives because clearly Christ was judge over this man.
He's judge over all. God hath made Christ judge of
all, the quick and the dead. The Lord Jesus Christ runs everything. He's going to decide who gets
what in that inheritance, as in all things. No question about
that. And this answer of our Lord's
reminds us of his answer to the man in Matthew 1916, where it says, behold, one came
unto him and said, good master, what good thing shall I do that
I may have eternal life? And the Lord said unto him, why
callest thou me good? There is none good, but one that
is God. But if thou would enter into
life, keep the commandments. So Christ did not answer that
man the way he did. Nobody's good but God. Why are
you calling me good? But he didn't say that because
he wasn't good and because he wasn't God. He's teaching this
man something. Christ is not only good, he's
the only man that is good. And he doesn't answer the way
he does, not because he's not good, but to teach the man that
if he, Christ, truly is good, it's because he's God. And that
was true. And also to teach that man that
if that man was not God, then he's not good. Because he thought
he was good. He said, I've kept these from
my youth. He thought he was good. So our Lord was teaching him
concerning himself and concerning himself with the answer that
he gave. And this answer in our text is
like that. He's not saying, who made me
judge over you? Because he wasn't judge over
him. He certainly was. And if you'll remember, that
man there in Matthew 19 went away sorrowful. He went away
not receiving what he came for. And the man in our text didn't
get what he came for either. And that's important here. That's
important. But like the rich man in Matthew
19, what this man in our text did get, what they both got,
was the truth. They got something way better
than what they came for. Way better. He got the gospel. He got wise instruction to follow
the Lord at the expense of everything else if necessary. Boy, that's
valuable. That's priceless. So our Lord answers this man
who And think about this, this man
wasn't interested in anything that the Lord had said. It says
one of the company, one of the company that was there around
the Lord as he was teaching, as he's teaching concerning himself
and the kingdom of God and eternal things. This man had no interest
in any of that. He's worried about being treated
fairly in the matter of his inheritance. So yes, the Lord Jesus Christ
is judge. He is divider. He distributes
every penny in all currencies in all of this world to everyone
that He is pleased to distribute them to. All of those pennies
are His. Everything is His to give
or to withhold as He pleases. He determines the outcome of
every matter in His earth, including this one. But this man had no
claim upon him, no reason to expect the Lord to act upon his
behalf in this matter when the man had no interest in Christ
himself or his gospel. Why are you coming to me with
this? This unimportant thing that you
have no desire to hear anything I say or come to me as sinners
ought to come. crying for mercy. This is our
Lord's answer. How many people are like this
man in that he heard the words of eternal life? Christ didn't
just go around just talking. Simon said, thou hast the words
of eternal life. That's what was coming out of
his mouth. And all that man could think about was getting cheated
out of his inheritance. How many hear the gospel and
walk away worried more about earthly, temporal, petty matters
than about the welfare of their very soul, or even more importantly,
about the honor of God, the glory of God. So our Lord teaches about this
very thing in the rest of this passage, about being worried
about vain things and not eternal things. That's what he teaches
about all the way through the rest of this passage of scripture
down to verse 21. And he begins with a solemn warning
in verse 15. Look at it with me. He said unto
them, because of what just happened, because the Lord orchestrated
all of this, he wasn't reacting to this man. He brought this
man with that question, that desire in his heart, that foolishness,
to set all this up. And he was probably, and how
many thousands of other things was he doing at the same time?
But here's a couple of them. He's teaching that man what's
important and that the Lord doesn't have, He doesn't exist for that. That's what people think. The
Lord, you know, He's going to straighten out all the problems in my life.
That's not what He came to do. We come to Him for forgiveness
of sin, for righteousness before God, for salvation. As wretched
sinners, or don't come. Come to Him with petty things.
But listen to what He said. Take heed and beware of covetousness. All this man could think about
was getting all that money, you know, he wanted to get his fair
share. Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man's life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. That's not what life is. Take
heed and beware. This is especially emphatic,
isn't it? Take heed and beware. Right away we see that this is
something vitally important that our Lord is about to teach concerning.
Remember the language of 1st Timothy 6.6. Let me read it to
you. But godliness with contentment is great gain. Our Lord is speaking
of contentment, of beware of covetousness. Your life doesn't
consist in the things you possess. And listen, godliness with contentment
is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world, and
it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment,
let us be there with content. But they that will be rich fall
into temptation and a snare. and into many foolish and hurtful
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of
money is the root of all evil." That's how important it is. That's
why our Lord says, take heed and beware. There is no evil
that doesn't have something to do with this. Is that what that
said? Or am I overstating it? The love
of money is the root of all covetousness. Which while some coveted after,
they have erred from the faith. It will cost you your soul. What
will a man give in exchange for his soul? What will it profit
a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul? And pierce themselves through
with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee
these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith,
love, patience, meekness. Follow after what matters, not
stuff, not money, not any of the things that the flesh covets. It's more than just money now.
Take heed and beware of covetousness. The word there, covetousness,
in our text means the greedy desire to have more. Boy, that clarifies it, doesn't
it? The greedy desire to have more. It's not money that's evil. It's
important to always remember to point that out. People say
money is the root of all evil. That's contrary to the scriptures. It is the greedy desire to have
more. This is what motivated the man
that came to the Lord that day about his inheritance. And so
our Lord, rather than involving himself in the petty, sinful
disputes of men, teaches them, teaches him and all around, he
gives that man and everybody that stood there something much
more than an earthly inheritance. The truth, the precious truth
of God. It's able to save your soul now,
Paul said. The gospel, it's able to save
your soul. That's what God uses to save
men's souls. The truth concerning himself
and what matters. Take heed and beware. Listen,
take heed, listen. Give careful attention to And,
beware, guard yourself against. Shun, avoid, flee from, seek
to escape the greedy desire to have more. Seek to escape it. Why? Because a man's life consisteth
not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. A man's
life It's a matter of life and death. Your life has nothing to do with
what or how much you possess. Now our Lord puts his finger
on this particularly because we are particularly prone as
sinners to think and feel that this is what life is all about.
You'll be caught up in it before this day is over if you don't
take heed and beware. It'll be what motivates you to
get up in the morning. It'll be what you think about
when you lay your head down at night. Unless we take heed and
beware by the grace of God. The man who came was so caught
up in it that the words of Christ didn't mean anything. Are we
so caught up in it this morning? In the rat race? In the getting
all we can and canning all we get? In the working to make money
to buy beans so we can eat, to get the strength to work, to
make money to buy beans so we can... Is that what it is? For this whole world that's what
it is now. Are we so caught up in it that
the words of Christ just kind of bounce off? Like it did with this man. He
didn't come to the Lord asking for forgiveness of sin. Now,
do you think about that? This man comes to the Lord. As
far as we know, he gets one opportunity to ask the Lord. I mean, there's
the Lord standing there. What are you going to ask Him?
What are you going to say? What are you going to talk about?
Money. I need some money. I need what's
coming to me. Isn't that tragic? Isn't that
tragic? He didn't come asking for forgiveness
of sin or asking the Lord to tell who you are. We want to know you. We want
to know who you are. We want to know. Teach us matters
of eternal life and death. He came with a greedy desire
to have more. And our Lord turned to the rest
of them and said, beware, take heed and run from this as fast
as you can. Run from this horrible thing
that brings this man before the Son of God with one question
and it has nothing to do with anything that matters. Run from
that as fast as you can. He represents all of mankind
in this. The root of all of our evil is
this. We tend to think of covetousness
as always wanting better stuff. I'm not happy with this old car,
this old broke down car. I need a better car. Always complaining
about that. Our house, it's not good enough. It's not big enough. It's not
nice enough. These clothes, I need better clothes. That's not what
covetous is. It can be a symptom of it. It
can be. If you are covetousness, if you have a greedy desire for
more, that may manifest itself in being extravagant in your
purchases and always wanting better things and all that, being
dissatisfied with what you have. It probably will manifest itself
that way. But wanting better than you have is not necessarily
covetousness. You may just want a better car
because your car is a piece of junk. You know? There ain't nothing wrong with
that. Covetousness now though is in the heart. It's not about
your car, it's about you. Covetousness is revealed in the
garden. If the root of all evil is this
thing, don't you think we'd see it in the garden? Look what happened
in the garden. Only one thing out of so much
abundance, only one thing was prohibited. How can you have
everything but one thing and still want more? More. Oh, we wanted more. Isn't that
what it was? We wanted more, even though we had everything. We wanted more. And it wasn't
just about, boy, that fruit looks better than all this fruit that
we have. We wanted to be God. We're not happy with being blessed
by God, and highly favored of God, and having perfect communion
with God, and being loved by God, and taken care of in every
way imaginable by God. We wanted to be God. We had to
have more. We still do. We are dissatisfied. You see,
when you covet, it's because there's something you don't have.
It's a dissatisfaction. I'm not satisfied with what I
have. You know what we're dissatisfied with? We're dissatisfied with
God. We're dissatisfied with what
God gives. We're dissatisfied with what
God says. That's why many leave the gospel
now. The message is just not enough. It's just not enough. We're dissatisfied with what
God does. We're dissatisfied with God. We don't just covet physical
things, we covet everything. We want more stuff but we also
want more power. We want more influence. We want
more authority. We want everybody to do things
our way because we said so. We want more freedom to do what
we want whenever we're restricted in and what we can do. Boy, that makes us mad. Fulfillment
of our lusts and fleshly desires. More of the favor of this world.
We want more attention. We want more of everything. Our Lord said that's not what
life is. Though that's life for most people, that's not what
it is. This world says it is. What do you say? What do you
say? And I'm not asking about what
your mouth says about this. What do your actions say? What does your life consist of?
Our Lord said a man's life doesn't consist in the abundance of the
things he possesses. What does your life consist of? So we see what the problem is.
It's a problem with God. So what's the solution to the
problem? Well, God is the solution. And the way that God solves our
problem is by making it so that He is everything we need and
everything we want. I guarantee you, if you don't
have something that you want, you're going to covet it. Do you have everything you want? If you have Him, you do. He gives us a new heart now,
a new nature that, you know if we were put in that garden, and
this is hypothetical, but our Lord, He said He gave us some
hypotheticals in His word, didn't He? This gospel, if all of the advantages
that you have were given to Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have
repented. So I think we can use a hypothetical a little bit,
based on the scriptures, based upon the truth of God. If you
and I were in the garden today, back in the Garden of Eden, would you eat that fruit? Not if you know Him, you wouldn't.
His faith don't fail. Yours will, but his don't. If
he gave it to you, it's not gonna fail. The gifts and calling of
God are without repentance. He's not gonna let you fall if
you know him, if you truly believe on him. If you love him this
morning, it's because he loved you, and his love don't fail. We would not, by his grace, eat. We would not. We wouldn't want
more. We have everything. We have something
that Adam didn't have. Adam had perfect righteousness,
but it was fallible. He was fallible. The gift of
faith from God, though, if God gives you faith, He's not taking
it back. You can't fall now. If you could,
you would. But you can't by His grace. You
just can't. Faith can't fail because Christ
is the author of it and the finisher of it. So God gives us faith and now
Christ is enough, is he not? You who believe on him, is he
not enough? I know the flesh will rise up. I know the flesh
will tell you that you're getting the bad end of the deal every
once in a while. But the Spirit's not going to let that go. You
reckon? Not going to let that go unanswered. If he's all we have, we have
enough. Godliness with contentment is great gain. Now think about
something with me for a second. Godliness with contentment, we
just read that, is great gain. The word godliness there is reverence
for God. It's not that you're like God.
It's reverence for God. Look it up. He gives that. Does he not? Reverence for God. with contentment. You know what
that word means? A perfect condition of life where
nothing is needed. Look it up. You think I made
that up, don't you? A perfect condition of life where
nothing is needed. That's that word. Godliness with
contentment is great gain. What do you need? Hebrews 13, 5, let your conversation,
your manner, your way be without covetousness, the greedy desire
for more. Be without that and be content. Be in a perfect condition of
life where nothing is needed. With such things as you have,
for he hath said, you'll always have me, no matter what. Is that
what he said? I will never leave you. Be content,
be in a perfect condition of life where nothing is needed
because I will never, not because he's going to give you everything
you want, everything your flesh tells you you need, because you're
going to always have him. What do you need? I will never leave thee nor forsake
thee. This is how Job can say, the
Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of
the Lord. I don't have anything else anymore
but I have him. Blessed be his name. Remember
when Jacob and Esau met on the road in Genesis chapter 33? Oh
my. And Jacob had just come from
Pineal, the place where he said, I've seen God face to face and
my life is preserved. Now think with me. Jacob just
came from the place where he said, I've seen God face to face
and he didn't kill me. He had mercy on me instead. My
life is preserved. The place where he laid hold
of Christ and would not let him go until Christ blessed him. And Jacob had sent before him
wagons of gifts for Esau. You remember that? He knew he
was going to meet Esau. He just thought Esau was going
to hate me. He's going to be mad at me. He's going to want
to kill me because I cheated him out of the birthright. Sure
enough, he had. So Jacob sent before him wagons
of gifts for Esau to find favor in his side. And let's read the
narrative there again. Turn to Genesis 33 with me. So here they are. They're going
to meet on the road. Jacob has just left a face-to-face meeting
with Christ himself and said, I won't let you go unless you
bless me. And the Lord blessed him now. And he sends this drove
ahead, these gifts ahead to Esau, because Esau has every right
to be mad. And Esau, when they met, he said,
what meanest thou by all this drove which I met? All these
wagons of goods and gifts. And Jacob said, these are to
find grace in the sight of my Lord. And Esau said, I have enough,
my brother. Keep that thou hast unto thyself. And if you look up that word
up enough, and you know this, we've looked at this before,
it means much, many, great. I've got a lot of stuff, and
it's good stuff. Keep your gifts. Keep that thou
hast unto thyself. And Jacob said, nay, I pray thee,
if now I have found grace in thy sight, then receive my present
at my hand. For therefore, I have seen thy
face as though I had seen the face of God, and we talked about
that. He's not deifying Esau. He's saying, I see God in this
whole thing. He's worked this out. I was afraid
of it for nothing. And thou was pleased with me.
Take, I pray thee, my blessing. that is brought to thee because
God hath dealt graciously with me and because I have enough. Esau didn't mention anything
about the grace of God. Esau hadn't just come from Peniel
where God met face to face and didn't kill Jacob but blessed
him. I have enough, and that word
that's rendered enough there means all, the whole, totality,
everything. That's the definition word for
word from Strong's Concordance. I reckon it's pretty accurate.
All, the whole, totality, everything. And you think about Jacob using
that word. His brother had just said rob, or rabob, which is the root of the word.
And so Jacob deliberately does not use that word. Esau had just
said, I've got plenty, I've got a lot, I've got plenty of stuff,
keep your stuff. But Jacob deliberately doesn't
use that word. But what he does do is say, God
has been gracious to me, and he uses this word kol, K-O-L,
which means what we just said. And it comes from a root word,
kalal, which means to complete, to make perfect. God has been
gracious unto me, and I'm complete. I have everything. In Colossians 2.8, Paul said,
beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy. and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ." What does he mean by vain deceit,
the rudiments of the world, the tradition of men? What do you
mean by all that, Paul? Anything but Christ. Don't let him deceive you. It's
all about him. You think I'm making that? Listen
to what he said. For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
in a body, and you are complete in Him." Anything that's not Christ is
not worth talking about. It's just killing time until
we get to see Him. You may talk about some other
things other than Christ tomorrow. That's fine. We just kill in
time until we get to see Him. Until the next time we get to
come and talk about Him. You are complete in Him, which
is the head of all principality and power. What does a man's
life consist of? 1st John 5 12 he that hath the
Son hath life does that just mean you're alive we don't even know what it means
really we can't possibly comprehend it fully but you're not really
alive unless you have him in any sense of the word You're
dead while you live. And you're going to be even deader
someday. You're going to really be dead. But he that hath the
Son hath life in every sense of the word and more than we
can possibly comprehend. Life. And he that hath not the
Son of God hath not life. If you have Christ, what do you
have? What is life? holiness before God, without
spot, without wrinkle, or any such thing, without blemish,
perfect righteousness before God, complete forgiveness of
sin by His precious blood. The wages of sin is death, so
what is life? No sin. Forgiveness, holiness,
spotlessness, Peace. If you don't have peace with
God, how can you call it life? You're misusing the word. Protection. Rest. Rest for your
soul. Love. The fruit of His Spirit is love.
So what's passing for love in this world? I don't know. Something else. You reckon? Love. Every spiritual blessing. Every spiritual blessing in heavenly
places in Christ. That's life. Plus all that he
gives us in this life. Temporal things. Where did your
family come from? What do you value in this life? Where did
it come from? Life. A man's life. It consists of Christ. He that
hath a son hath life. Where did your church family
come from? Everything you have. Let me just quote what he says
a little later in the same chapter as our text, and I'll be through.
Luke 12, 29. Seek not what you shall eat,
or what you shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations
of the world seek after. That's what they're about. It's
covetousness, isn't it? It's the root of all evil. They
want more. They want more. He said, don't, don't, don't
worry about that. Your father knoweth that you
have need of these things. How much did you worry about
that when you were five? About whether you were going
to be able to eat that night or not? How much thought did you give
to that? Let's try to match it today, shall we? How much did you worry about
what you were going to wear, how you were going to be doing,
how you were going to make ends meet? But rather seek ye the kingdom
of God, and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear,
and listen to this, now that's earthly things. It gets better. Next verse, fear not, little
flock. For it is your Father's good
pleasure to give you the kingdom." Being joint heirs with Christ,
we inherit everything. Everything. That's what our life
consists of. It's Christ and every blessing
is in Him. Let's pray.