12:22
The theme of material possessions continues, with Jesus giving more teaching to His disciples. So these instructions are for us, His disciples, to take heed of. We are not to fear the powerful, even when they seem to threaten us, for God is even more powerful, and He will work with us and through us (12:1-12). We are not seek to accumulate wealth, but be generous towards God (13-21). Now we come to not worrying about our practical needs. Worry is something that afflicts most people at some time to some degree, and some people to an utterly debilitating level. The “therefore” in this verse would imply that the rich man of the previous parable was focused entirely on his material possessions. This can happen in two ways, the rich man sought to accumulate more and more, the other way is for us to worry about our needs. Life is more than our possessions (12:15), and we were not created to spend all our lives completely consumed by the need to get the basic necessities of life.
12:23
“Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes”. Any philosophies or worldviews that abandon God always end up devaluing humanity, Atheism says we are just the outcome of random processes, there is no ultimate purpose to us or our lives. God says He created us in His image, and we have a wonderful purpose. Indeed we are fearfully and wonderfully created. There are those who say we are no different than any other animal. God says we are the pinnacle of His creation. If we make possessions are goal then we devalue ourselves. This is why prosperity teaching is so so wrong. It sees God and faith as a means to accumulating wealth, and so has no idea what life or the gospel is actually about.
No comments:
Post a Comment