Daily Devotional

While Jesus was speaking to a crowd, one of the crowd asked Him to command his brother to divide his brother’s inheritance with him. This is what Jesus is responding to in this verse but it also causes him to launch into a parable about how we should regard wealth and other earthly possessions. In this chapter are some of the most well known and quoted passages regarding wealth. The end of the parable, after describing the rich man storing all he has, Jesus says in Mark 12:20–21 “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” I’m reminded of Mark 8:36 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”

So let me ask you this, when you die, not if you die, but when you die, will you get to take anything with you? The answer is no, what you do in this life, the things you strive for will all pass away, only your soul will live on in eternity. Therefore we should be far more concerned with the condition of our soul and its eternal destination rather than the temporal things of this world. This is the reason that Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Our wealth and stuff distracts us from the Gospel of Jesus, and causes us to chase after the trappings of this world rather than Jesus.

Jesus goes on to say in Mark to not worry about our life, what we will eat or drink, or what clothing we will put on. He tells us to consider the ravens and the lilies. The ravens do not sow or reap and yet God feeds them and how much more valuable we are than birds. And the lilies, they grow and yet do not toil or spin, and yet Soloman in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. The message is that if God looked after these, of course He will look after you. He says to not seek after these things, and in Mark 12:31 says “But seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.”

As long as our focus is on our stuff, what we have and how we can get it, we will not be looking at or toward Jesus. This idea of covetousness is such a reality here in America where we have access to so much, and often don’t even have to pay for it immediately using loans or credit cards. Social media has fueled this fire as we now see what everyone else has, and what their lives are like, and the competition only intensifies. Therefore let us store up treasure in Heaven, where rust and moth do not destroy. Jesus says in Mark 12:34 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

New King James Version (NKJV)
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.