Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” – Luke 12:13-21
If you are living in North America, you are probably feeling the worlds economy grinding to a hault. In the past two weeks, we see that those people who have put their trust in their money are in fear because it is disappearing right before their eyes. Some people who have put their trust in their jobs and as a result of social distancing and people not being able to go out and buy anything, businesses are laying off their employees. We see in this verse that the word of God calls these people fools for placing their trust in anything other than God. Let this be a wake up call for all of us that our trust should be in Him alone and not in any of the worlds systems because at any moment Jesus can come back for his church and all the things that you trusted in would not be able to help you at that time.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father[d] is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. – 1 John 2:15-17
For years, society has put an emphasis on acquiring things. Greed has been the focus and people have grown to love money and the world more than God. This applies to Christians as well. As this virus caused people to self-isolate themselves, and for economies to slow all the way down, let’s make sure to reprioritize our motives. Do not be focused only on the things of the world out of greed because we are seeing those things pass away now. Let’s focus on doing the will of God which last forever.
See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” – Hebrews 12:25-29
God has been trying to get the attention of many people for a long time. If you know of anyone who’s live is not right with Jesus, please do what you need to do so that they can receive salvation. What is happening now is that God is shaking this world… the kingdoms of this world that are not on solid foundations will crumble and fall. Again this is a wake-up call for those who need to come to know Jesus as their saviour.
And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. – Matthew 24:14
Most churches this Sunday had to make a change in their worship services to comply with the Governments regulations on social distancing. As a result they had to take their worship services to an online platform. But we can see what this actually does. Though most churches have an online component to their ministry, now all members of that churches are forced to watch and can interact with the church service online. What this actually does is help spread the gospel to more people and places in two ways. 1. Simply more people would share the message as they are watching it so more people will be exposed to the message of the Gospel from that Sunday. And secondly, the algorithms of most social media platforms promote content that has high engagement and viewership. So this will cause more people to see what those platforms consider as “popular” at that moment in time and also be exposed to the message of the Gospel.
No more than now do I believe that Jesus is coming back for his Church. I don’t know the day or the hour… but I can see signs and the bible says that when we see these signs that we need to look up. We need to make sure we reach out to our unsaved family and friends and try our best to be there to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them. Let’s pray that this happens now.