TIMOTHY
BERREY
BY
Caspar, my great grandfather, was a successful
farmer in southwestern Missouri. When he died in
1941, officials closed school the day he was buried.
People owed him money. In addition, he had given
a farm to each of his boys, money to each of his
girls, and still had enough for his widow to buy a
house in town. Yet now, when we drive through that
area, very little still belongs to him or his relatives.
Caspar laid up treasure on earth. We are not sure
how much he laid up in heaven.
In Luke 12:13–34, Jesus identifies two enemies of
laying up treasure in heaven, one in the story of
the rich fool and the second in the warning against
worry that follows. A careful reading of these two
paragraphs shows they belong together: repeated
references to life/soul (vv. 15, 20, 22–23), possessions
(vv. 14, 33), being rich toward God/treasure (vv. 21,
33–34), and the therefore that connects the two
(v. 22). Jesus’ point? Don’t let these two enemies keep
you from laying up treasure in your Father’s kingdom.
OBSTACLES
WORRY
TO LAYING UP TREASURE IN HEAVEN
Jesus identified the second enemy as worry.
We tend to think of worry as the opposite of
covetousness. Jesus asserts that they both have
the same disastrous effect: they keep us from
investing in His Father’s kingdom. I have often
thought that Luke 12:31 (also Matthew 6:33) is
the best deal on the planet: Make God’s kingdom
your worry, and He will make your needs His. Can
you think of a better deal anywhere? Now, that’s
financial peace! Like the covetous fool above,
those who worry have a distorted view of life:
they have failed to realize that life is more than
the pursuit of what one needs (v. 23).
So, how does Jesus suggest that we avoid
these two enemies and lay up treasure in our
Father’s kingdom? He tells us in verse 33: sell
your possessions (what the rich man thought
life consisted of) and give them away charitably.
We shy away immediately from a command like
that: Jesus does not say sell all! And isn’t it wise
to save up for the future? And we would be
right. But at the same time, we need to make
sure that our rationalizations are not cover-ups
for covetousness and worry. Do we not have
possessions that we could sell or give away? Are
there not people with physical needs around us?
These needs range from a homeless person who
haunts your intersection to a missionary who is
trying to get to the field where God has called
him or her.
Take your riches and put them where no thief
can reach them and where no moth can destroy
them. Put them somewhere where you will find
them again. As Jesus said, you will then find your
heart increasingly drawn toward your Father’s
kingdom.
Roll those words around in your mind like you
would a peppermint in your mouth: Your Father’s
kingdom. Jesus calls God “your Father” in verse
30 and refers to “His kingdom” in verse 31. This
kingdom is your Father’s. Jesus is offering you
and me the opportunity to lay up treasure in it!
In a place where nothing can take it away: no
Second Law of Thermodynamics, no entropy, no
thieves, and no moths!
Your Father’s kingdom is a worthy recipient of
your heart’s affections. Incline your heart to it by
laying up treasure in it. Do what meditation on
this passage prompted me to do: think through
what I own to see what I could sell or give away!
COVETOUSNESS
The rich fool (God’s term for him), whose prosperity
has led him to think of his own earthly enjoyment
and pleasure for years to come, pictures the enemy
of covetousness. He has forgotten a fundamental
reality about life. His life does not consist in posses-
sions, even though he has an abundance of them
(v. 15), and his
life (“your soul,”
v. 20) will some-
day be required
of him by God.
Then Jesus asks,
whose will be
the things he has
prepared?
Rather than being rich for him-
self, he should have used his
wealth to lay up riches toward
God, the One who would ask
back the life He had given him.
When I think of the rich fool, I
think of the explosion of storage
units across America. By one estimate, the number
of self-storage unit buildings grew from 6,600 to
50,000 during the years 1984–2022. An estimated
90% of these are at capacity, but some 155,000
abandoned units are auctioned off every year. Do we
really need all the stuff we own—the stuff that does
not fit in our houses and the stuff we even forget
that we own? What if we were to use our wealth to
lay up unfailing treasure in our Father’s kingdom?