Luke 12:15-21
15 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.”
16 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.’
18 “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. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “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?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
When John Wesley sent out his circuit preachers, he sent them out with a Bible in one hand and his sermons in the other hand. To us it may seem a bit egotistical for Wesley to send out preachers in order to preach Wesley’s sermons, but for most of those preachers that was the only theological training available to them. These sermons are known today as “Wesley’s 52 Standard Sermons,” one for each week of the year. These amazing sermons form part of the doctrine of our United Methodist Church.
One of the last sermons in this collection is entitled “The Use of Money.” Now remember, these sermons were written in the late 1700s, but this sermon in particular still speaks to us today. In this sermon Wesley says, “Having first gained all you can, and, secondly, saved all you can, then give all you can.” Wesley taught those first Methodists to earn, save, and give all they could.
Over the next three weeks at OKC First Church we are going to be examining these three aspects of our relationship with money. On the last Sunday of this short three-part series you will be asked to turn in a financial commitment card so we can estimate our church’s available budget for next year.
This week we will be examining Wesley’s instruction to “earn all you can.” It seems odd that we would need to talk about this in our upwardly-mobile, consumer-driven, over-worked culture, but there is a shadow side to this instruction to “earn all you can.” Wesley was aware of the danger of unbridled acquisitions. He warned, "We ought to gain all we can without paying too high a price for it." Jesus sounds a similar warning in this week’s text, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of one's possessions."
So I hope you will be blessed as you join us this Sunday as we examine these ancient, but still relevant, instructions to “Earn, Save, and Give … All You Can.”
Pastor Lesly
