Watch Out

In Luke 12:15 Jesus said, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions,” and then he tells them a parable that could easily be described as one achieving the American Dream and refusing to be generous. Instead he was full of greedy thoughts about me, my, and mine.

The different translations of the first few words give us an idea of the warning, the NIV, “Watch out! Be on your guard,” and the NLT, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed.”

I have never had someone come to me and say, “Pastor, my problem is greed!” I heard Tim Keller say, blindness to the condition of greed is an intrinsic part of the condition…it hides itself from you.

I was reading a poem by Rumi earlier in the week and there was a line at the beginning where he said,

“How could I have known a whale would rear its head, gulp down the sea, and leave a desert behind?”

That idea of whale swallowing the sea and leaving a desert made me think of greed and I wrote the following,

Greed is like an enormous whale living in the sea

It swallowed up all the water it could see,

And was left to die in the desert of his own making.

This all comes from my study of 2 Tim 3:1-9 where Paul is talking about the last days and the characteristics of those times. He seems to be saying…the last days will be hard and here is why…people will act like this…the opening description is, “For people will be loves of self, lovers of money” and he closes with this, “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”

So, my warning is this—beware of greed. It creeps up on you and allows a tool to become a god. Maybe I’ll write more about this next week. Thanks for reading.