Every Wednesday
It All Goes Back in the Box
By Pastor J.D. Greear
When I was a kid, my mom and I played a lot of Monopoly. I loved getting the whole side of the board that included Boardwalk and Park Place and Pacific and Pennsylvania Avenue and watching people wince when they rounded the corner to my monopoly, knowing there was no way they could get through without landing on one of my squares loaded up with hotels and paying dearly.
I remember my mom smiling with approval, telling me I was getting the point of the game. And after I’d taken all her money and trounced her, she taught me the biggest lesson of all: She scooped it all back into the box and said, “Son, you won. You made all that money, but it makes no difference. It all goes back in the box. Now, go clean your room.”
Jesus is getting at the same lesson in Luke 12, when he tells the parable of a rich man who builds bigger barns to store his abundant crops. After convincing himself he can relax and enjoy life because of all his wealth, the rich man’s security is brought down by one sentence from God, one sentence God will say to each of us at some point: “This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20 ESV)
The man goes to sleep, totally confident about tomorrow and enjoying the security he finds in his possessions. But that night, his heart unexpectedly stops.
If what the Bible says about eternity is true, then it is insanity to think the point of your possessions is to complexify and adorn your life here.
You can’t take any of your possessions with you after death. It all goes back in the box! Stop living as if this life lasts forever and eternity is not real.
Instead, if you are going to be rich somewhere, Jesus says to seek to be rich toward God: “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys” (Luke 12:33).
A wasted life focuses all of its effort on the 70 or 80 years on earth, lives rich here, and takes little to nothing into eternity.
The gospel life is one where you give yourself away and invest in people so that they can hear that God loves them and Jesus saves. It’s the only investment that will last for eternity.
Reflections
If someone looked at your life, your possessions, and how you spend your time, what would they say is most important to you?
Why do you think some people have more than enough possessions and others are not able to buy the things they need most?