12:11,12
Again we see the eternal and spiritual nature of what we do. There will be times when worldly authorities haul Christians up in front of themselves, thinking they have some real power and authority. This happened to most of the apostles, and to many other early disciples. It has happened repeatedly throughout history, and continues to happen today in various parts of the world, and may happen in our own country. If it does, we are assured that we are there on Jesus’ behalf, and that the Holy Spirit will strengthen us and give us the words to say. This is true spiritual warfare.
12:13,14
While speaking to His disciples, someone in the crowd called out to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me”. There is a nice juxtaposition with what has just gone before. Jesus has just been speaking about eternal things, and how these impact the present. Now this fellow in the crowd is only concerned with the present, and he wants what he thinks is his share of an inheritance. Jesus declines to give any judgement on the matter, or at least not in the terms the man was looking for. The man was looking for the wrong things from Jesus, this is phenomenon still occurs today.
12:15
Just as Jesus had used the interaction with Pharisees as a launch pad for more general teaching to His disciples, Jesus used this interjection to provide the crowd with more useful teaching. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed (or covetousness)” Greed is something that all of us are susceptible to. We believe that life consists of the abundance of our possessions, indeed that is so often the ethos that the world encourages. Sadly, it is also the ethos that the so-called prosperity gospel teaching encourages. We need to follow Jesus’ teaching and be very careful about our attitudes in this area. That is the consistent teaching of the Bible.
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