Some wag has described preaching as "the fine art of talking in someone else's sleep." I'm not sure that's true, but I do know that one of the occupational hazards of being a preacher is lost attention. I've taken some consolation, however, from the fact that even when our Lord was here on earth, there were those who were part of his congregation who listened to him preach but did not really hear what he had to say.

Obsessions with worldly priorities keep us from hearing what Jesus has to say.

One such incident is recorded in the twelfth chapter of the gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus is preaching to a huge multitude. He is talking to them about life and death, about hypocrisy and hell. He is telling them about the love and fear of God. He is saying that if you fear God, you don't have to fear anything else. But as Jesus was moving through the middle of his message, a man elbowed his way to the edge of the crowd and interrupted Jesus in the middle of his sermon. He said to him, "Teacher, divide the inheritance between my brother and me."

I don't know this man's problem. Evidently his father had died, and now he and his brother were squabbling over the estate that his father had left. There's probably no bitterness any greater than bitterness. One thing is certain: this young man had this at the center of his life. The birds would never sing again for him, the flowers would never bloom again, the sun would never shine again as brightly until somehow he got what he thought was his fair share of the inheritance.

It was this obsession that kept him from hearing what Jesus had to say. There he was, standing in the presence of the God of heaven, and his mind was fixed on gold. Jesus turned to him and said, "Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?" What Jesus was saying is, "You have stood here and missed it. You somehow think that I have come to settle the disputes between two warring brothers."

It's interesting that back in Exodus 2:14, Moses presented himself to the Jewish people as their leader. And they said to Moses, "Who made you a judge and the divider over us?" In that passage, Moses wanted to judge and divide, and the people refused. Here the people want Jesus to judge and divide, and he refuses. He would not be reduced to the place of a Moses, the place of the county judge. Jesus is not saying that judging and dividing are wrong. He was realistic enough to know there are disputes that have to be settled. He was simply saying that that wasn't the reason he came.

Again and again, men and women damn Jesus Christ with faint praise, trying to make him less than he is. For example, there are many people who like to refer to Jesus as a teacher. If only we would follow his principles, they say, we could settle the disputes among nations and among men and women. If Jesus Christ came merely to be a teacher, however, he was a pathetic failure. The world had better teaching when he came than it was able to live up to.

There are others who tell us that Jesus came to be an example. If in the situations of life we could only figure out what Jesus would have done and then do it, we would find that disputes and animosities would be settled. But I say to you that if Jesus came simply to be a model and an example, all he does is mock me. I can no more live the kind of life God calls me to live by trying to imitate Jesus than I could become a concert pianist by trying to imitate Van Cliburn. Jesus Christ came to bring God to man and man to God. He did not come to make bad men good or good men better. Jesus Christ came to make men and women who are spiritually dead alive. And anything short of that is to miss the reason for his coming.

Jesus said, "Beware of covetousness, for a man's life does not consist of the things he possesses.

Then Jesus turned to the crowd and said, "Beware of covetousness, for a man's life does not consist of the things he possesses." I would like to see that word from the lips of Jesus plastered across the twentieth century. Covetousness is one of those overstuffed religious words that has lost its cutting edge. We don't take covetousness very seriously. We somehow think God had nine good, solid commandments, but he wanted to round out the list and make it ten, so he threw covetousness in at the end. We don't really think it's a sin. Covetousness is simply craving more of what you have enough of already. Jesus is saying that's not life. Life does not consist of the things you possess.

Yet if there is one message that comes to us in 10,000 seductive voices, it's the message of our country and our century that life does consist of things. You can see it on a hundred billboards as you drive down the highway. It is the message from the sponsor on television. It is sung to you in jingles on radio. It is blared at you in ads in the newspapers. We're like the donkey that has the carrot extended before it on a stick. The donkey sees the carrot and wants it, so the donkey moves toward it, but the carrot moves, too. The carrot is always there, promising to fill the appetite. But what it promises, it does not deliver.

America, because it is after that carrot made up of things, gives itself to the largest junk business the centuries have ever known. Yesterday's new car becomes today's and is on tomorrow's junk heap. Yesterday's mansion becomes today's boarding house and tomorrow's slum. When we acquire things believing they will satisfy, we discover we're still empty. But on we go, worried about things.

Jesus says, "Beware of covetousness. Beware of craving more and more of what you have enough of already." And then to drive home that basic lesson, Jesus tells a story about a man who has made his money in agriculture. He's a wealthy farmer. We don't even know his name. But in that community in the long ago, as well as in our community today, folks would feel he had succeeded. We are constantly measuring people by what they have rather than by what they are.

Now, don't misunderstand. Riches in and of themselves are not evil. Some of God's great men and women were people of means. Abraham, measured by the standards of his day, was a very wealthy man. Job came through his suffering, and as a result God rewarded him with great wealth. David and Solomon were wealthy kings. We are indebted to a man of wealth, Joseph of Arimathea, for providing the tomb in which they put the body of our Lord. In the early church, in many communities it was wealthy people who opened their homes to the bands of Christians and provided a place to worship. So wealth in and of itself is not evil.

But for every verse in the Bible that tells us the benefits of wealth, there are ten that tell us the danger of wealth, for money has a way of binding us to what is physical and temporal, and blinding us to what is spiritual and eternal. It's a bit like the fly and the flypaper. The fly lands on the flypaper and says, "My flypaper." When the flypaper says, "My fly," the fly is dead. It is one thing to have money, another for money to have you. When it does, it will kill you.

The Bible commends industry, but it's not progress to move rapidly down the wrong road.

Something else we know about this wealthy farmer is that he was industrious. I'm sure he did not make his money by selling his lands for houses of prostitution and was not running a casino on the side. Having grown up in the concrete jungles of New York, I'm really out of my element here; I know very little about farming. But one thing I do know is that if people make their money in agriculture and they do it out on the land, they usually do it with the sweat of their brow. Lands do not plant themselves, and harvests do not gather themselves.

Certainly the Bible commends industry. If you decide you're going to take life easy and be a sluggard, the Bible will not give you much consolation. But there is a danger in industry: you can work hard and never ask what you're working for. You could spend your strength and your life and never take time off to ask what the purpose of it is. It's possible to be industrious about the wrong things.

Not only was this farmer rich and industrious, but he was also progressive. When he had made his killing on the market, he decided he would invest in capital improvements. His problem was no longer growth and production, but storage. He was going to pull down the old barns and put up new ones. We admire progress in our society. One of our national corporations tells us that progress is its most important product. The only trouble is that most of our progress is not made in people; it's made in things. It's not really progress to move rapidly down the wrong road. That can be an illusion.

Illustration : Years ago there was a missionary in Africa by the name of Dan Crawford. He was returning from Africa to the United States one time, and to do so he was leaving the inner part of the country, where he worked, to go out to the coast to catch his ship. So he would not have to make the trip alone, four of the men to whom he had ministered walked with him. As they walked, Crawford told his friends about the glories of the coast. He told them about the light that did not have flame, about wagons that did not have animals, and about storing their food so that it would not spoil.

As he walked and talked, three of the men entered into the conversation. The fourth man, however, seemed strangely unimpressed. And after a few days, as they were sitting one evening, Crawford found it irritating that this one man did not seem at all excited about getting to the city. He said to him, "Aren't you eager to get there? I mean, don't you want to see all these things?" That black brother responded with a word that I wish could be put into the schoolbooks of our nation. He said, "Mr. Crawford, to be better off is not to be better."

If you live to collect riches and as though God does not exist, he says you are a fool.

Here was this man in Jesus' story: rich, industrious, progressive, had everything going for him — until one night everything changed. You can imagine the rich man sitting at this desk one evening, and across the desk is the town architect. They have sprawled out in front of them the blueprints, and the rich man says to the architect, "Now listen. There's a time when I had the best farm in this whole community. Then I had the best farm in the entire Jordan Valley. And I want to have a model farm that they'll know throughout all of Israel." The two men work and plan into the night, and eventually the rich man's wife comes in. She urges him to come to bed and then kisses him good night, but the two men go on until the clock strikes eleven. Finally the architect says, "I've been out almost every night this week, and I've just got to get home. I'll take these plans and work them over." He rolls them up and goes to the door, and the rich man sees him out.

He bolts the door, but the adrenaline is flowing and he can't sleep, so he goes back to his desk, takes out his pen, and continues his plans. He's still making his plans when he's startled by a knock at the door. He's about to open it, but he discovers to his astonishment that there's a presence already in the room. The rich man says, "Who are you?" The presence says, "I'm Death." The rich man says, "Death? What do you want?" Death says, "I've come for you." The rich man says, "No! I mean, there's been some mistake. You did not tell me you were coming." Death says, "Oh, yes, I've told you. I just don't think you were listening. I told you when I took that young man down the street a few months ago. I told you when I took your partner a year ago. I told you every time you opened the newspaper and saw an obituary column. I told you every time you saw a cemetery. Hah! I've told you. But whether you heard or not — ten, nine, eight, seven, . . ."

The rich man says, "Wait! Look, we can make a bargain. You can have half of everything I have collected. You can have half of my barns, half of my money, half of my farm. Just let me live." Death says, "What do I have to do with that? Six, five, four,. . ." The rich man says, "Wait! You can have it all. It's yours, take it. Let me start again at my beginnings. I'm just not ready for you." Death with a grin waves his hand, and the rich man is counted out of the picture.

That man prepared for all contingencies but ignored life's only inevitability. Next morning his wife comes down and finds her husband slumped across the desk. She tries to waken him and discovers he's dead. A day later all the people in the community gather, and they have the eulogy and talk about him as a model to the community. They talk about his success and his contributions — after all, he has built the biggest barns in the community. Then they take him out to the cemetery. Over his grave they put a large stone. On that stone is a word from the Bible, something from the poets, and a statement that he was noble, successful, visionary, and progressive. Then the crowd goes home.

That night the angel of God walked through that cemetery, and over all they had engraved in the stone, he wrote one solitary word: FOOL . Too late he discovered the obvious: there are no boxes in a casket. He had built barns and fed donkeys and not given much thought to God. Now, don't misunderstand. I'm sure he was a religious man. However, you may believe that God exists, but if you live as though he does not exist, God says you are a fool. That is simply practical atheism. Then the haunting question: "Whose shall these things be which you have provided?" The picture is of two brothers quarreling over the inheritance, laughing heirs, taking what is theirs. But all this man collected is left behind. He's lived his life like a fool.

There are many different pieces in the game of chess. They have different power, different maneuverability. But when the game is over, all those pieces are put into the box. That's true with life as well. You can play the game and play against the system. The system may beat you, or you may beat the system. You may jump some and be jumped by others, but the reality is that the game is eventually over. We all come to a grave.

What Jesus is saying is this: When you measure what you'll give your life to, don't measure it in the flesh of youth, the anticipation of your teens or twenties. Stand by the side of a grave, and then look back and ask, "Is it worth your life to get what you are after? You amass things and you leave them all behind. Is that worth living for?"

Jesus says you ought to be concerned about living your life for the kingdom of God, not how you will pay the bills.

Jesus says, "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself and is not rich toward God." How then are you rich toward God? The answer is that some place in your life, you decide that God will have all of you; that whatever else you do, your life will be centered in him. Jesus drives that home. He says in verses 2223, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear, for life is more than food, and the body more than clothes." Don't make that the focus of your life.

Illustration : Then he gives us two illustrations. He says, "Consider the ravens. They don't sow or reap, they don't have storerooms or barns, yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable are you than birds? Who by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you can't do the very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? If God takes care of his creatures, don't you think he'd take care of his children?"

Illustration : For a second illustration: "Consider how the lilies grow. They're just flowers of the field. They don't labor, they don't spin, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. That's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire. How much more will he clothe you, ye of little faith? Don't set your heart on what you'll eat or drink. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows you need them."

But God's a realist. God can be as real to you as your tuition. God knows you've got to pay the rent. God knows you have to buy groceries. He is not saying, "Don't think about those things." He's saying, "Don't worry about them. Don't make them the aim of your life. If you're going to worry, worry about something important." Then he says, "But seek first his kingdom, and all these things will be given to you as well."

Jesus is saying that what you ought to be concerned about is living your life for the kingdom of God. Look, it just makes good sense to live your life for that which is eternal, that which outlasts you. Put that first. When he talks about making his kingdom first, he doesn't mean it's at the top of a list and there are other things second, third, and fourth. He means first in the sense that you make it central. There's a way in which life is like a wheel. At the center of the wheel is a hub, and out from that hub come spokes. What you put at the hub of the wheel determines its strength.

I know many men in our country who live for possessions. All the spokes of their lives grow out of this desire to acquire things. Their family life is governed by that. The church they attend is a church that will enable them to get an advantage in the marketplace. Their business is devoted to getting things. Then one day there's a turn in the market or a recession. Their possessions are wiped out, and their lives crumble.

I know folks who live for passion. That fire that burns is at the center of their lives like a fire on an altar, and everything else is sacrificed to that. Their families, their homes, their communities, their businesses — everything revolves around the feeding of the fire. Then they discover it can be a fire that is never satisfied and has a way of destroying life.

I know men who live for power. They live to get power, and all of life, every spoke, is directed to that. Then they lose the election. They fail to get the promotion. And suddenly life crumbles, and the thing to which they gave their lives mocks them. Or even worse, they get the office that they seek. Perhaps one thing worse than not getting what you desire is getting what you desire and discovering you didn't want it after all.

Jesus is saying, "Is God the center?" For God's sake, guard the center. What you put at the center of your life determines the spokes of your life. The rest of life will take care of itself. To put Jesus Christ at the center of your life is to link your life with that which is eternal and to give yourself to that which will never fade.

Illustration: There's a legend of a man who had a rather stupid servant. The master often got exasperated with his servant, and one day in a fit of frustration he said to the servant, "You've got to be the stupidest man I've ever met. Look, I want you to take this staff and carry it with you. And if you ever meet a man stupider than you are, give him the staff." So the servant carried the staff, and often out in the marketplace he'd meet some pretty stupid people. But he was never sure they were worse off than he. Years passed with the servant carrying his staff, and then one day, he came back to the castle and was ushered into the bedroom of his master. Master was quite sick.

In the course of their conversation, the master said, "I'm going on a long journey." The servant said, "When do you plan to be back?" The master said, "This is a journey from which I'll not return." The servant said, "Sir, have you made all the necessary preparations?" The master said, "No, I've not." The servant said, "Could you have made preparations?" The master said, "Yes, I guess I've had my life to make them, but I've been busy about other things." The servant said, "Master, you're going on a journey from which you'll never return, you could have prepared for it, and you just didn't?" The master said, "Yes, I guess that's right." The servant took the staff he'd carried so long and said, "Master, take this with you. At last I've met a man more stupid than myself."

Beware of covetousness. A man's life does not consist of the things he possesses. It consists of seeking, at the center of your life, God's kingdom, God's rule. And when you do that, all these other things, unnecessary as they are, will be added unto you. Do you believe that? Then why don't you do it?

Haddon Robinson holds the Harold J. Ockenga chair of preaching at GConwell Theological Seminary. He is senior editor of Preaching Today, author of Biblical Preaching and coauthor of Mastering Contemporary Preaching and A Voice in the Wilderness.

Haddon Robinson

Preaching Today Tape # 56

www.PreachingTodaySermons.com

A resource of Christianity Today International

Haddon Robinson was a preacher and teacher of preachers all over the world. His last teaching position was as the Harold John Ockenga Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.