Greed: The Heart Revealed Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Most of us have too much stuff. In our greed, we look at our neighbors, note their stuff, and say, I need the stuff they have. Greed is insidious.

Unless it is put to death, it will choke the life out of a Christian. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, isn't learning how to give a great way to break the stranglehold of greed? David sure is, and I am convinced that we will not deal with greed in our hearts until God shows us that it is there.

The simple fact is you and I justify everything that we do, and it's so easy to do that, isn't it? Today is September the 11th, an important date in American history, as all of you know. But let me tell you that in addition to that tragedy, we have another tragedy on our hands that all of us will remember, and that is the COVID crisis. And the COVID crisis has caused an economic shockwave, if I can use that terminology. It shows us the power of technology, how the issues regarding our health are going to be connected with technology.

It also does reveal that we as Christians are in the middle of a situation that we could have never anticipated. I've given a lecture entitled COVID-19, the Economy and Our Future. The subtitle is Five Economic Effects of Our Economic Crisis. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. It can be as a DVD or a CD. Here's what you do.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now let us take an honest look into our hearts through God's word as we talk about a sin that is difficult to detect, but very obvious to God. This is what I'm going to do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to myself, you have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, you fool. You fool. This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? And then Jesus adds, this is how it will be for anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God. This man made some major, major mistakes.

Let me give you three of them. First of all, he mistook his body for his soul. He mistook his body for his soul. The New American Standard translates suke, which means from which we get psyche, which is the word that is used here. I will say to my soul, I will say to my psyche or to myself, as this translation says, I have much good stored up for many years.

Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. He acted as if only his body mattered. His body was well fed.

He was eating all of the health foods. He was into all the things that make one very, what shall we say, pleasurable in this life. But his soul was being starved. He was paying more attention to his body than to his soul.

No attention to his soul. Come with me to Wall Street or LaSalle Street and see all the bankers, see all the people making the money. Go to the stock market where you have all these people shouting around in ways that only God can understand and he's not telling.

You go there and you see the greed, you see the money, you see the market going up, and you see the anxiety, and then you see the horror if somebody loses something. You see it all and you say, oh, wait a moment, time out. How is it with your soul and your relationship with God?

You'd be laughed out. God doesn't fit in this scheme. The soul is not important. You go to those health fad places and you see people working out, pumping this and riding this. I look at that, you know, have you ever noticed none of those people are smiling?

I mean none of them. And they're doing all these things. It's as if only their body matters. You go up to somebody and say, now, are you paying as much attention to your soul as you are your body? And then you think of all the people who are into nutrition and here I'm going to tread very carefully because I live with a nutritionist.

So I hope this is going to come out okay. Help me, Lord. It's fine, of course, to look after your body, to do exercise.

I play tennis and nutrition is good and right. But what a terrible thing to emphasize the body and to ignore the soul. This man said, I've got enough to feed me and I'm going to look good and I'm going to be able to act good because I have all that I need.

And he was not rich toward God, only rich toward himself. What a major mistake. Let me give you a third mistake or second, actually. We do get to number two before we get to number three.

It's that logic again. Secondly, he mistook himself for God. He mistook his body for his soul. He mistook himself for God. Now we have to look at the text again because something will jump out at you. Six times he uses that little word I and if you add the times when he uses the pronoun my or myself, I think you get 11.

I counted it at one time that it was 11, another time it was 12. This is a man who is narcissistic. I mean, he's got it all revolving around him. Let me read it to you emphasizing that. Verse 17, he thought to himself, what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build greater ones. There I will store all my grain, my goods.

And I will say to myself, you, you, I'm talking about me here, you have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Oh my, take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry. He mistook himself for God.

Listen to me. What's all this business of my crops? Was he the one who created those little kernels of grain and then programmed them so that if they were put into soil they would grow? Is he honestly the one who gave the sunshine? Is he the one who gave himself life and whose heart? Is it he who kept his heart going so that he could harvest it?

What about this business of me, my, I? Didn't he understand that this was only loan to him? Didn't he understand that it was God who gave the rain?

Didn't he understand that God programmed these little seeds to grow in ways that we cannot even today understand? What's this business of me? He's God, he thinks. And so I say to you, what's this business of saying my retirement account, my mutual funds, my bonds, my stocks?

Wait a moment. Who gave you life? Who gave you a mind so that you could even understand anything? Who is it that blessed you and abundantly and mercifully gave you more than you deserve?

Who is that? That's God. That's God. So here he is. He's taken the place of God and he and he does what God really hates.

Now we're getting to it. What God really hates is he takes and he transfers his affection to the money, to the grain, and to the barns, and he transfers his dependence too because, you see, he thinks he's got a long future. I have many years stored up, he says. So he in effect becomes his own God.

Let me give you a third mistake. He mistook his body for his soul, he mistook himself for God, and he mistook time for eternity. He said I have much goods laid up for many years. Who is he to say that? You see, he's acting as if his future is in his hands and it isn't.

He thought that if he got his retirement program all worked out and that the barn was very plentiful, he thought that he would be in control, but he wasn't because that very night. You know what the text says? God says your soul is demanded from you. Excellent translation.

You know what the Greek word is? It's actually like when you demand a note or a loan and it has matured and so you demand it. God says I gave all of this to you. It was supposed to be used to bless me so that you would give to others and so that you would be generous and here you hoarded it for yourself and I'm demanding now it all back and I am demanding that you pay up and give me an account for the way in which you spent it.

Tonight is the night that it's demanded. Wow. Could you imagine the funeral? Can't you just imagine how they gathered together and they said, oh, he was such a wise farmer. He figured out all of these new ways that might be necessary to grow a good crop and he was such a wonder. He never harmed anybody, never did any harm. Where was he? He was in Hades. That's where Jesus said the other rich man went whose name was Lazarus. You remember not to be confused with the Lazarus who was raised from the dead. He went into Hades, the rich man, and there he is and he's in torment and everybody gathering at the funeral saying all of these nice platitudes and everybody talking about this wonderful rich farmer who thought that greed was good. As Boesky said many years ago when preaching to a graduation service, you can be greedy and still feel good about yourself, he said. Now folks, where is Wall Street ending anyway? Let me give you a description. Your hope is in money.

Listen to this. The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargos anymore. Cargos of gold and silver and precious stones and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet cloth, every sort of cordian wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble.

Cargos of cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, of all fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, houses, carriages, and bodies, and souls of men. And they will say the fruit of you longed for is gone from you. All your riches and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered. The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand afar off, terrified at her torment, and they will weep and mourn and cry and say, whoa, whoa, to the great city dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold and precious stones and pearls. In one hour, such great wealth has been brought to ruin. And this night, your soul is demanded from you, and you stand before God.

It's awesome. What do we do with the greed that lives within our hearts, within my heart, within your heart, within all of our hearts? First of all, we have to admit it's there, okay? Would you just admit it? Would you just say, yeah, I'm greedy? Willing to say that, yeah, I'm greedy?

Not many takers. You see, we don't think we are because we've rationalized it so much. We say, well, you know, those stories of the miser. I remember as a young preacher, I loved a story like that. You know, the guy who dies of starvation, though he's surrounded by hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and it's a lovely story, and everybody, and it made me feel so good because I knew I wasn't like that. And so what we do is we say, well, it's the truly wealthy, you see, they're greedy.

It's the boskies of this world. Where we read the verse that says the love of money is the root of all evil, or a root of all evil, and we say, well, you know, it's only the love of it. I don't love it. I date it. I cuddle it.

We smooch a little bit, but I don't love it. I really do believe, folks, I cannot make you see the greed in your heart. I can't. Only God can. I can't. Only God can.

Only God can do that for me, because it is so deeply entwined with who we are, our basic love of money and things and the security that we derive from it. But that's number one. That's number one. We have to admit that it is there. Secondly, and by the way, in Mark 4, Jesus said an interesting thing. He said, you know, the grain that was sown, he says some of it fell among the thorns, and then he says the thorns grew up and choked it, and in interpreting the parable, he says the thorns that choke it, he says, are the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches. Why the deceitfulness of riches? Because you need money in order to live, you see. So there's a legitimate use of money, and so, but it's deceitful because we think that everything we do is legitimate, and the love of other things, he says, chokes the word and it becomes unfruitful.

And we don't understand that when we think of the stock market more often than we think of the scriptures. We are indeed greedy, greedy. All right, number one, we have to admit it.

Number two, we have to exchange gods. You know why God is so upset about covetousness? You know what bothers him so much about greed? You know why it is that Jesus said, watch out?

I'll tell you why. Because both greed and God promised the same thing. You see, greed says, look, if you get enough money, you're going to be happy. God says, you follow me and you're going to have life more abundantly.

Same promise. Money says, I'm going to be with you until you die. If you get enough of it, it'll always be there. No matter how many health problems you have, no matter what happens to the economy, you can be absolutely certain that I will be with you to the end. That's exactly what God promises, but he's with us through the hard times. But money makes the very same promise. So you see, what happens is we begin to transfer our trust from God to money, and therefore, in that transfer of trust, we are really, figuratively slapping God across the face. And you see, greed then becomes a part of all that we are.

Of course, there's a legitimate use for money. There's purchasing houses and there's places to live and there's groceries and all of those things, but oh, how all of that attaches so easily to our hearts. We have to come back and simply say, God, I want to be satisfied with you. You know, in my short life, and it is getting longer, but I still call it short, in my short life, I've met some people with great poverty, but they are content. And you remember what Paul says, godliness with contentment is great gain, great gain.

Michael Douglas was wrong. Let me say also, then what we need to do is we just need to give. We just need to give. You give it away every time you write out a check every Sunday, like all of you do, right? You give greed away. You simply say that God has given me the privilege of giving, and you give and you give and you give, because that's the only way that you can really add to it. The only way that you can really extract this from your heart is to give. We did a survey recently and discovered that actually the giving at Moody Church per member is not that high at all.

And you know what the tragedy is? It's not just that we could have more money to do things and support our missionaries and we may be on the verge of a large capital fund campaign so that we can expand. That's a possibility that's being talked about. And the real goal, though, is not to get more money. That would be a mistake to say what we need is more money and therefore we want people to give. No, no, no, what we want is more character. What we want is more generosity. What we want is more Christ-likeness, more giving of ourselves away, you see, because that's really where it's at. One day, Jesus was talking to a young ruler who came to him and he said, how may I inherit eternal life? It's an awesome question. If he ran into some of our evangelism explosion people, they would say, well, I want you to sit down because I want to explain some good news to you.

And that would be the proper thing to do. But Jesus handled it differently. He said, first of all, the young man said, you know, good master, what shall I do? And Jesus said, why are you calling me good?

Only God is good. There is a lot of irony there because what he was trying to do is to test this guy to see whether or not that he realized that Jesus was, in fact, God. But Jesus said, you know, you do have the commandments, don't you?

How do you read them? And he says, well, he says, you know, don't commit adultery, you don't steal, you don't lie, you honor your father and mother. And I've been doing all these since my youth. And Jesus turned to him and said, oh, well, that's wonderful. That's wonderful.

That's wonderful. You know, what you need to do really is to sell everything then and follow me. If you're following the commandments, the Bible says, thou shall not covet, so just give it all the way and follow me. And then the guy began to realize, that's not the answer that I wanted.

It's not where it's at. He felt a little bit like the teenager who thinks he's got a ton of money until he has to buy car insurance. He's not nearly as rich as he thought he was. And he realized that he had broken the law, but the Bible says he turned around and he went away because he had many possessions. Don't misunderstand. Jesus wasn't saying the way to heaven is to give your way to heaven.

We can't do that. Salvation is a gift of God's grace. But what Jesus wanted to do is to show this young man that he had a serious problem with sin, this little self-righteous man who entrapes him around saying, I've kept all the commandments.

Look at how good I am. Jesus was proving to him, I want you to know today, you've got a sin problem that's really, really deep. And today God is saying two things to us. First of all, for those of you who do not know Christ as savior, what he's saying is, look, Jesus died that you might be forgiven and his death was a substitute for us. That's what he's saying to those of you who don't know Christ. But to those of us who know him, Christ is saying, look, how deep a commitment does greed have in your life? Are you willing to be generous?

Are you willing to follow me? Are you willing to give it away like the missionaries do and how we thank God for them? Are you willing to simply say, God, here it is?

Because the scripture says very clearly that that which is admired and loved among men, as I read earlier, is detestable to God. It's in all of our hearts, folks. It's there, it's in my heart, it's in your heart. The question is, how do we deal with it that we might honor God with what he's given? Let's pray. Our Father, we do want to thank you today for your word. And Father, we humbly acknowledge our own sinfulness, our own love of things, our love of money which worms its way into our hearts. Father, today we ask that you will help us not to substitute that for our love for God. And we pray that those who really do need deliverance might experience the deliverance of Christ from that which captivates and binds and demeans.

Set your people free today, we ask. And now before I close this prayer, I want you to pray and you tell God whatever you have to tell him. Father, today with a hymn writer we say, take the world but give me Jesus. All its joys are but a name.

But his love abideth ever through eternal years the same. Lord, we can't do it. You do it in us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer.

My friend, let me ask you a very upfront and honest question. How are you doing spiritually? How are you doing in terms of generosity? Yes, but how are you handling the COVID crisis? Is it filling your heart with fear? What do we do with our fears and what do our fears tell us about our belief in God's sovereignty? These are the kinds of questions I answer in a lecture I've given entitled COVID-19, the Economy and Our Future.

It can be yours either on a DVD or CD. I talk about five economic effects that I believe will continue for the foreseeable future. How do we respond as Christians? Is it true that if we just trust God it's all going to get better? Well, I don't think so.

Trusting God is critical, but we need to be ready for some hard times. For a gift of any amount it can be yours, here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Ask for COVID-19, the Economy and Our Future. 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. From bingo to casinos, gambling spells big trouble, taking money from those who can least afford it, those hoping for a big break. Most states flaunt their lotteries as government sanctioned get-rich-quick schemes. You say, I'd never gamble. Yet the lure of fast cash leads all too many Christians into serious trouble. On our next Running to Win, gambling, don't bet on it. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.