The Gratitude Loop - Week 3 - 11/17/24

The Gratitude Loop - Week 3

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

We have discussed living in an attitude of thanksgiving and gratitude for what God has given us and how being thankful should propel us into work that is a form of worship and produces a return. Now we will dive into how we are to view that production and what we are to accomplish with it.
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Jesus in Luke 12 is in the middle of addressing his disciples about kingdom principles such as avoiding hypocrisy, not worrying about people who oppose you but remaining confident that God has all authority and knows you, as well as our public profession of faith and not to be concerned for what that might bring. In the middle of that, a man in the crowd, who is seemingly oblivious to the subject matter Jesus is teaching on, asks him to mediate an inheritance dispute. This question seemed completely out of context with what Jesus was teaching, but in a master stroke of storytelling he teaches everyone, including the man in question, what greed produces and the expectation of generosity toward others.
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The motivation behind your production will determine what you do with it.
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Luke 12:15 “15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.””
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Jesus immediately points to the unrevealed motivation for the question. The man who questioned Jesus was motivated by greed. Jesus would not entertain the idea of being mediator because the result would not be worship. Jesus will mediate between us and God for the forgiveness of sin because it produces generous worship.
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The rich fool did not start from a place of gratitude toward God and therefore bore no personal responsibility to be generous toward the things of God. He was already rich and taking credit for it.
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Luke 12:16 “16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully,”
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Is this the first time you have considered where it all came from? The difficulty in America is we will never self-identify as rich. We start out at the same place as the rich fool except we say that when we get more we will be more generous, but whatever amount more we get, it is never enough.
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The decision must be made ahead of time. Who am I? What have I been given? What have I produced with what I have been given? What have I been asked to do with what I have produced?
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No plan is a plan.
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If there is no plan to be thankful, no plan to be productive, no plan to be purposefully generous, then the plan is to do whatever makes us feel good in the moment. Generosity never starts out as a reflex.
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Ecclesiastes 5:10 “10 He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.”
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Proverbs 15:27 “27 Whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household, but he who hates bribes will live.”
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Proverbs 20:21 “21 An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.”
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James 4:3 “3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
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The scriptures are full of warnings not to covet or be greedy. We, apart from Christ, are bent toward our own desires.
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Luke 12:16–18 “16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.”
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The rich fool had no plan, so the plan stayed the same: everything was to be used to enrich himself. This parable comes after the parable of the Good Samaritan. We can hear the parable of the Good Samaritan and still need the parable of the rich fool.
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Live good and do good.
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There was no condemnation for the man already being rich. The problem was that he did not credit God for his success and took himself out of the loop: more gratitude, more production, more generosity, more gratitude. There is no kingdom moratorium on nice houses. There is a prohibition on nice houses at the expense of kingdom work. This man was storing it all up for the benefit of only himself.
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Haggai 1:1–6 “1 In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: 2 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.” 3 Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? 5 Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. 6 You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.”
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The people had postponed the building of the temple because they were so focused on building their personal wealth. The call is for us to do both at the same time.
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2 Corinthians 9:10–15 “10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. 13 By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”
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Paul promised that if the motivation was to honor God with the return we produced, he would ensure future returns. Those returns utilized for God’s purposes brought exponential thanksgiving to God.