"We need Jesus’ Word and the work of His Spirit not Earthly Wealth" Trinity 1 2025

22. June 2025

Octave of Trinity

Luke 16:19-31

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” (Luke 16:14-15)

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Last week, on the culmination of the festival half of the church year, we were given to boldly confess the name of the only true God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We confessed the Holy Trinity in nature, essence, and work. God will be our God and we will be His people. He fulfills the First Word, that we will have no other gods before His face, as He tears down every idol from His throne, our hearts. He fulfills the first petition of the Prayer as He hallows His name among us, giving us to believe, teach, and confess His Word in faith.

As we, the Baptized, remain sinners according to the flesh and holy and righteous according to the Spirit, this work of idol destruction and name hallowing continues day after day. We daily die with Christ and are daily raised by Him. To the old man, it's afflicting and convicting. To the new Man, it's comforting and enlivening. This is the necessary work of God, worked by His Word and through His Spirit.

So, what idol must die today? What does the old Adam fear, love, and trust that is not God for you? The sinner is a lover of money, covetous. Greed is manifest in the original sin, as Eve and her husband Adam “saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.” (Gen 3:6) They desired what God had not given, coveting both the food and the godhead for their own. They wanted to be gods in God’s place.

What began with the eyes, moved to the heart, and results in thoughts, words, and actions. “Lovers of money” isn’t exactly right, but the good word coveting is better. No one loves currency itself, but they love what it can do for them. Wealth gives leisure, retirement, delicious food, spectacular homes, and fine clothing. Wealth commands power and influence. Wealth creates opportunity and luxury. Money makes the world go round, or so it is said. However, the desire for wealth is at its root unbelief and this idolatry.

We could spend hours discussing the perennial question, “What is money?” In the best sense, money is a store of value for the work we’re given to do. As the Scripture says, the worker deserves his wages. Don’t muzzle the ox while it's treading out the grain. We don’t just work for work’s sake, but we can provide for ourselves and for those whom God has given us to love, the neighbor. Having a store of value that can be used as a means of exchange, especially if it cannot be debased by counterfeiting, is useful. Of course, we could barter, contract, and hire with or without the use of currency.

Jesus will have more to say about inheritance, stewardship, Caesar’s coin, and banking later this summer. You might even come to think that the saying, “the Church only talks about money,” is true. As Jesus says, coveting is the root of all kinds of evil. Commandments nine and ten lead to violations of four through eight and ultimately a rejection of one through three. As Jesus said earlier in chapter sixteen of Luke, “You cannot serve God and mammon (wealth).” The coveting of wealth is always materialistic, anti-godly, and sinful. And Christians and congregations are no less prone to such sinful desire, as we covet what others have and God has not given us, be it members, money, property, enrollment, endowments, and the like. Contentment with what God has given and receiving as God chooses to provide is faithfulness. That’s the prayer of faith, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Anything more is like manna, breeding worms, and stinking the next day.

Before today’s parable, Luke records: Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” What does such self-justification coram hominibus, before men, look like? It’s the age-old desires we all know in our hearts—to be wealthy, powerful, influential, and respected. Coram mundo, before the earth, these are the things that matter. We’ll never elect a beggar. We’ll never trust someone with a failing business. We’d never let the sick one be the doctor.

“The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Sam 16:7). And what does He want to find in the heart? Not a lover of money, a covetous sinner with a hardened heart. No, God looks for faith. He looks for His Son’s Word. He looks for the Spirit’s work. He looks for what He gives by way of Moses and the Prophets, and especially the promised Messiah to Abraham. And the fear, love, and trust He gives in Christ Jesus for salvation, fulfilling the First Commandment, is the greatest and only wealth that matters in eternity. What matters is not how we appear to men, coram hominibus, or how we look to the world, coram mundo, but only what God sees, coram Deo.

God gets to be God. He gives and He takes away. He gives to some much, and to others He gives little. Some have a life of leisure and others a life of suffering. All this would seem arbitrary and capricious if it were not for Jesus Christ. Moses and the Prophets are the Spirit’s instruments to convince and convict us of sin. And within their Word is the promise of salvation in the offspring of Eve, the promise reiterated to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Wealth, health, and prosperity have nothing to do with salvation, not as a previous gift or as a reward for faithfulness. You can tell when we fear, love, or trust in wealth by how much we talk about it. We don’t need wealth to have a Christian congregation, to teach children the faith, or to preach the Gospel to the neighbor. As we confess, “God gives daily bread to everyone, even without their prayers.” We need Jesus’ Word and the work of His Spirit.

In the end, the only thing that distinguishes the rich man and poor Lazarus is faith. We don’t know if the rich man stole his wealth or earned it through hard work. We don’t know if poor Lazarus was the victim of fate or was a drunk or a gambler who squandered what God gave. Both are sinners before God, regardless of their status in the eyes of man and the world. Jesus exposes the rich man’s sin, as he feasted sumptuously while neglecting the poor at his gate (and likely the widow and orphan, too).  His unbelief is put on full display because He rejected the Word, and it led him to hell. That’s the warning of coveting.

But the poor man’s sins are omitted because they no longer matter. Maybe he lay there coveting the rich man, day after day? No doubt, He desired the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, the scraps belonging to the dogs. Again, it was not recorded because it is irrelevant in eternity. His sin is forgotten because it is covered in the blood of Abraham’s promise, forgiven in Jesus. And your sins, even coveting what God has not given, are covered, too, forgiven and washed off you in baptismal waters. Be content with heavenly food, Christ’s body and blood, which gives forgiveness, eternal life, and the surety of salvation.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin