Guarding Against Greed: Becoming Rich Toward God

Feb 24, 2026

Devotional

Day 1: Guarding Against the Adversarial Nature of Greed

Greed is not a passive vice but an active adversary. It acts upon us, seeking to shape our desires and control our actions. We are called to be on guard, to be watchful, and to actively fight against its influence. This requires a posture of readiness, recognizing that the pursuit of more for oneself is a constant threat to the life God intends. We must be vigilant in this spiritual conflict. [38:46]

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15 ESV)

Reflection: Where in your daily life do you most clearly feel the pressure of "the machine" pushing you toward more, better, or newer? What is one practical way you can consciously choose to stand guard against that pressure this week?

Day 2: The Poverty of an Exclusive Focus on Self

The parable of the rich fool reveals that true poverty is not a lack of wealth but a poverty of imagination and relationship. This man was called a fool not for his abundant harvest, but for his inability to see beyond his own needs and security. His self-focused planning left him impoverished towards God and isolated from his community. His story is a warning against economic narcissism. [48:13]

But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:20-21 ESV)

Reflection: When you consider your own planning for the future—whether for retirement, savings, or security—where might you be tempted to ask "what shall I do for myself?" instead of "how can I be rich toward God and others?"

Day 3: The Tender Invitation to Trust Our Provider

In stark contrast to the anxiety of greed, Jesus offers a tender word to his disciples about the character of God. He directs our gaze away from our worries and toward the Father who clothes the lilies and feeds the ravens. This is an invitation to relinquish our scramble for security and to rest in the knowledge that our loving Father delights in giving us His kingdom. [50:57]

And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. (Luke 12:29-31 ESV)

Reflection: What is one specific worry about your practical needs (finances, provision, future) that you need to consciously hand over to your Father today? How might remembering His care for the ravens and lilies change your perspective?

Day 4: Resisting the Deified System of Mammon

Mammon is not merely money; it is a deified system that demands our obedience and promises salvation through growth and accumulation. It exerts pressure on us, shaping our desires and commands through ads, algorithms, and cultural expectations. To be on guard against greed is to recognize this false god for what it is and to consciously reject its claims on our lives. [52:52]

No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Luke 16:13 ESV)

Reflection: What is one "command" of mammon—a cultural expectation about success, status, or spending—that you have unconsciously accepted? How can you actively choose to disobey that command this week as an act of worship to God?

Day 5: Dreaming of Becoming Rich Toward God

The alternative to greed is not merely being less greedy; it is to dream of a different kind of wealth. We are invited to become tycoons of the kingdom, moguls of loving our neighbor. This involves exciting our imagination about how our resources can be used for generosity, justice, and building up others. It is about getting filthy rich in the things that matter to God. [55:30]

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 ESV)

Reflection: If you were to dream without limits, what is one exciting, generous act of love for your neighbor that you could accomplish with the resources God has entrusted to you? What is one small step you could take toward that dream?

Sermon Summary

A cultural catalogue of stories and critics frames a stern biblical warning about greed and the false god of mammon. Popular culture—children’s cartoons, novels, songs—and Paul Kingsnorth’s critique of the growth-driven machine illustrate how modern life normalizes endless accumulation. Scripture from Luke 12 reframes a petty inheritance dispute into a larger spiritual indictment: covetousness attacks the heart, and life does not consist in abundance of possessions. A parable about a landowner who builds ever-larger barns exposes the lie of security through storage; the man plans peace and leisure but meets sudden death, and God calls him a fool. The folly lies not in wealth itself but in orienting one’s life around self-preservation and hoarding rather than generosity and Godward richness.

Greed receives a clear definition: not the longing for good things but the craving for more for oneself, a posture of overreaching that narrows imagination and moral sight. The culture sustains that posture—storage industries, advertising, feeds, and algorithms cultivate desires and convert expansion into virtue. Jesus counters that posture with tender assurance: do not worry about life, consider lilies and ravens, and remember a Father who delights to give the kingdom. The true investment belongs to God; the kingdom calls people to relinquish control and to reimagine wealth as service.

Practical demands follow. Identifying mammon means naming the commands it whispers—choose the income that yields promotion at the cost of uprooting families, refuse sacrificial giving, let status govern decisions—and resisting those commands requires concrete practices: watch desire shapers, audit accounts with friends, plan generous giving, and dream about being rich toward neighbors. Imagining “filthy rich” devotion to the kingdom reframes ambition into acts of shared flourishing—canceling debt, feeding neighbors, building generosity infrastructures. The crisis proves costly but not meaningless: the way of God costs, because it cost God, and it promises actual life when people trade the machine’s eschatology for the gospel’s kingdom of love, forgiveness, and sacrificial abundance.

Key Takeaways

1. Guard against covetousness and its sway Greed operates like an active enemy that reshapes attention and appetite. The command to “be on guard against all covetousness” calls for constant vigilance, not occasional guilt. Cultivate posture and practices that intercept desires before they narrow the heart’s imagination toward self. [38:13]
2. Wealth does not equal spiritual richness Possessions and productivity can mask profound spiritual poverty when orientation stays inward. The rich fool proves that abundance can isolate a soul from God’s purposes and the needs of neighbors. Reorienting wealth requires asking not “How much do I need?” but “How can this serve the common good?” [46:54]
3. Mammon demands obedience and sacrifice The machine baptizes expansion into moral duty—follow the career ladder, optimize returns, and defer generosity. Those commands extract real costs: broken relationships, exploitative systems, and compromised ethics. Naming mammon exposes its rules so people can refuse them and choose a different economy shaped by grace. [52:27]
4. Get rich toward God instead Imagine ambition redirected to kingdom ends—building systems that relieve debt, feed the hungry, and empower neighbors. Such imagination turns resources into instruments of love and reshapes long-term planning around shared flourishing. Practically train desire toward sacrificial giving and collective imagination for persistent, creative generosity. [55:30]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[27:29] - Greed: cultural montage
[28:09] - VeggieTales and Madam Blueberry
[30:11] - Against the Machine: Kingsnorth
[31:27] - Greed as a praised virtue (Gekko)
[33:09] - Luke 12: dispute and pivot
[33:25] - The parable of the rich fool
[34:26] - “Fool” and the question of heirs
[43:07] - Storage, excess, and security
[46:54] - Rich toward God explained
[52:27] - Mammon: idol and demands
[55:30] - Practical: get rich in the kingdom
[58:22] - Closing prayer and song

Bible Study Guide

Bible reading: Luke 12:13-21 (ESV)
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Observation questions

What was the initial request made to Jesus, and how did he redirect the conversation?
What was the rich man’s plan for his abundant harvest, and what did he believe this would allow him to do?
How does God respond to the man’s internal monologue and plans?
According to the sermon, what is the simple but complex command Jesus gives to the crowd? [38:13]

Interpretation questions

Why is the man in the parable called a "fool"? What does this reveal about the true nature of poverty and wealth?
The machine, or mammon, is said to have commands that demand obedience. What are some of these commands and what kind of sacrifices do they require? [53:09]
Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about life immediately after this parable. How does the tenderness of God towards his children serve as the antidote to greed and worry?
What does it mean to be "rich toward God" as opposed to being "rich toward yourself"?

Application questions

Greed is described as an active enemy that we must be on guard against, not just an occasional feeling of guilt. What are the "desire shapers" in your life (e.g., Instagram, ads, algorithms) that you need to be more watchful of? [54:47]
The rich fool’s imagination was limited to his own contentment. What would it look like to daydream about getting "filthy rich" in the kingdom? What is one creative, exciting way you can imagine using resources to love a neighbor? [55:30]
Checking your bank account is a great indicator of where your loves are. Would you be willing to let a trusted friend audit your spending to help you see where your treasure truly is? What might that reveal?
Mammon whispers commands like, "take the job that offers more money even if it means uprooting your family." What is a recent decision you've made or are facing where you felt the pressure of mammon’s demands versus the call of God’s kingdom? [53:09]
The way of the kingdom is expensive; it cost God his life and will cost us as we give sacrificially. Where is God inviting you right now to make a costly but meaningful investment in his economy of love and generosity?
The parable exposes the lie that security is found in storage and scaling. In what area of your life (finances, career, retirement) are you most tempted to find your security in your own plans and abundance rather than in the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom?

Sermon Clips

44s

#GrowthMachine

“The machine, according to Kings North, is an entire industrial, what he calls, growth system, whether it's capitalism or global markets or bureaucracy, mass media, techno technological acceleration, or extractive economics. It prioritizes efficiency, scale, growth, and control, overrootedness, and limits. He calls it the machine. Jesus has another word for it, mammon. The machine, he says, runs on the myth of perpetual growth. Progress is a story we tell ourselves of why about why more is always better.”

47s

#GuardAgainstGreed

“He says, be on guard. He's not just he is, but he's not just commenting about individual vice and the individual heart. He's absolutely doing that, but he is talking and confronting an entire worldview, confronting a god. Greed becomes baptized as progress. Expansion becomes virtue. Restraint becomes folly. He's saying that is active in your world. That's why we have to kinda put up our duke sometimes to be ready for the deadly attacks of a deadly sin. And that's why Jesus doesn't just say that to us in, like,”

58s

#AmericanDreamExposed

“This is the story of the American dream. This man can only imagine that he has made it to security and space when he has peace when he has such an overwhelming abundance and then a plan to protect it. If I could just protect this, I will be satisfied. And that's when Jesus does something utterly shocking in the parable. In the parable, God says to him, fool. This night your soul is required of you. And the things you've prepared, whose will they be? You're supposed to experience the jolt. He has been a success and and probably some circles a status of success.”

56s

#TreasureVsGod

“He has been a success and and probably some circles a status of success. Now he's called a fool by God. He thought he hit easy street, but what he hit was a cul de sac of lies. He thought he had everything and ends with nothing. He was living for this day, and now he's dead. And that's the end of the parable. Jesus is, like, really into the dramatic ends of conversations here, which leads to Jesus to a summary statement and that tension is supposed to hit still. And he says, so is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.”

55s

#EconomicNarcissism

“This guy's not a fool because he has a lot of land or because it yielded amazing an amazing harvest. He he's a fool because he doesn't know how broke he is. The poverty that he's in because he's rich towards himself and not toward god. He's a fool because he's exclusively focused on himself. He speaks 60 words. 15 of them are me or my or mine. That's foolishness. That's economic narcissism. He's a fool because he's rich in self concern, yet he's in abject poverty with respect to the things of God. He's a fool because his deepest longings, his highest end, his well trained instincts are about himself, and those are fleeting.”

54s

#ToppleMammon

“Alright. Let's do some particular application before we close. We wanna topple the false god of mammon. Mammon is not just money. It's money deified. It's not an idol of wood and stone. It's an idol of granite countertops and plastic credit cards. Remember what Kings North said, we believe in growth as previous ages believed in God. We really believe that our wealth or wealth is both omnipresent, unquestioned, and salvific. It will save us. Status, safety, significance. Expansion brings righteousness. I have a friend who once wrote, Mammon demands obedience.”

51s

#MammonDemands

“Mammon demands obedience. It has commands. Thou shall go to the right schools to get the right job. Thou shall take the job that offers you more money even if that means uprooting your family every couple of years. Thou shall not give money away sacrificially, only celebratorially. And this obedience leads to sacrifice, long hours, laid off factory workers, and not sacrificial just to us, but destructive to others. This god exerts exerts pressure on us so that we do things like start sweatshops, pillage the environment, withholding just lasers. And this idol offers salvation, wholeness to those who bow to it, and it offers us an eschatology.”

54s

#KingdomRiches

“That's not neutral territory, y'all. It's just not. I love beauty and I think it matters. My wife's a interior designer and a very good one. We're not talking about that. But don't pretend they do not have an effect on you. They adjust our longings. Ads, feeds, and algorithms are working on you, so you have to watch your desire shapers. And check your checking account and let somebody else do it too. That's a great indicator of where your loves are. Then plan to give a lot of away, that's good. But what I want you to do, maybe most of all, is dream of getting rich, filthy rich in the kingdom. Daydream about what you can do to help one another. Have a Pinterest board about love of another.”

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Redeemer Winston Salem This sermon · AI assistant

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