Walk into my office and you’ll see a stack of commentaries on my desk—evidence that I did my homework for this sermon on Luke 12. If you joined us for Morning Prayer this week, you meditated with me on this same Gospel passage.
But as I was reflecting on the Genesis 15 reading—Abram gazing up at the stars—I was reminded of something far less scholarly: a children’s book. Waiting Is Not Easy, an Elephant and Piggie story I love reading to my kids. And to reference in helpful teaching moments.
In the book, Piggie tells Gerald the Elephant, “I have a surprise for you.” Gerald is excited but impatient. “Is it big? Is it pretty? Can we share it?” He keeps guessing, but Piggie won’t say. Gerald groans and fidgets. “I want it now!” But he doesn’t even know what IT is that he wants. And he’s ready to give up.
At the end of the day Piggie reveals the surprise: the night sky. “Wow,” we always say when we get to that page. Unimaginably beautiful. And worth the wait.
That moment—the surprise beyond expectation—is what Jesus is preparing his disciples for in Luke 12. They’re anxious about clothes and food—the bare necessities of life. Their expectations of what God can provide are too small. They’re clinging to trinkets, while God wants to give them the stars.
Like Abram, who longed for a child while God promised descendants more numerous than the sky, we hold tightly to our needs out of fear. We clutch our plans and provisions, afraid to let go and just hoping to scrape by. But Jesus is calling us to let go—to release our anxiety, our scarcity mindset, and to open our hands to receive the kingdom.
And here’s the heart of it all: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Hear the tenderness in Jesus’s voice.1 We are his little flock, helpless lambs in the arms of the Good Shepherd—the one Isaiah spoke of who gathers us close and gently leads us home.
Jesus gave everything to bring us into the Father’s care. He gave up the riches of heaven so we could inherit a treasure that never fades. Yet we keep asking for crumbs. We cling to what rusts and rots, when God delights to give us the kingdom—a rock-solid inheritance.
Today Jesus invites you to trust wholeheartedly in God’s kingdom generosity and be ready to join in God’s kingdom work. Trust and readiness form the posture we have as disciples, loved and cared for by God, and equipped and empowered to be on mission.
Trust wholeheartedly in God’s kingdom generosity. How do we do that?
This week a theme emerged in my ministry. It seemed about every conversation I had followed this pattern: “I had a plan for my life. . . then there was a detour or a disappointment or my life turned upside down. I couldn’t see the big picture when I was in the eye of the storm. But now looking back, God’s put me in a place I never could have imagined.”
Honestly, that’s why I’m here. If you would have told me a year ago today that we’d be in St. Augustine, Florida, Kaitlyn and I would have laughed like Sarah and Abraham.
But look at Jesus’s tenderness in verse 32 in our passage. “Fear not, little flock.” He’s reassuring his disciples, and us. Jesus is the long-awaited Shepherd King from Ezekiel 34 who feeds and clothes his flock.
But what kind of fear is Jesus addressing? Throughout the Gospels, Jesus comforts his disciples when they fear rejection and persecution. But here in this passage, Jesus is speaking to the internal fear of anxiety.
We’ve all been there. A moment of disappointment or disaster. Your future was foggy, your stability shaken. You longed for control. But God wanted to give you more. And if you’re here today it’s because he has a purpose for you. A desire and a delight to give you not just the bare minimum, but to give you the kingdom.
And here’s the beauty: even when you weren’t looking for him, Jesus was near. In your loss and fear, Jesus was gathering you up. Holding you in his nail-scarred hands. You can trust his comfort because he bears the marks of your salvation. He gave it all for you. And Jesus, the Good Shepherd, gathers you up in his arms. Our Risen Savior transforms agony into glory. Not because we earned it but because you are his little flock, the helpless lambs. Because of God’s great, unimaginable love for you.
So how do we respond to such overwhelming generosity, this abundance of grace?
We receive. We open our hands to the kingdom God delights in giving us.
We lift up our hearts to heaven, where our treasure is.
And our treasure is a Person. King Jesus, exalted and reigning at the right hand of the Father.
He is the anchor for our restless hearts.
I mentioned last week you’d hear more from St. Augustine. He wrote the famous words, “Lord, you have made us with yourself as our goal, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”2
Augustine’s view of our heart’s resting place shaped how he thought about earthly possessions. He said our hearts can’t rise to God if they’re tethered too tightly to things that fade.
In one sermon Augustine says, Jesus commanded you to give, but he didn’t want you to lose your property—he wanted you to transfer it. What’s your property? Your heart. What good is gaining the whole world if you lose your soul?
So Augustine says, “Hoist up from here what you love, in case by loving it here you stick here, and by sticking here lose both it and yourself.”3
Our earthly treasures fade away, and if our hearts are too firmly attached to them, then we lose both our treasures and ourselves. That’s both the danger and the hope Jesus names: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
There’s a heaviness to our material attachments. If you’ve had to clean out a hoarder’s house, like Kaitlyn and I have, that heaviness can literally be truck loads of stuff.
We often want things that are already on their way to being junk.
So don’t weigh yourself down chasing what passes away.
If you must long for something, long for God—who delights to give you more than you could ever ask for.4
Lift your heart. Don’t leave it stuck on the ground.
This kind of trust in God’s kingdom generosity changes how we live. It forms in us a posture of sharing with others.
In verse 33, Jesus describes a moneybag that won’t wear out. Think of it as a moneybag always ready to open—generosity that doesn't wear thin, held together with heavenly strings.
When our treasure is in heaven, firmly secured in Jesus, we can share freely. There’s a reason Luke wrote the Book of Acts, so he could show you a picture of the church in Jerusalem in Acts chapters 2 and 4. With glad and sincere hearts, anchored in heavenly treasure, they shared so that no one among them had any need.
This is what happens when we trust in the Good Shepherd’s provision. Our hands loosen, our hearts lift, and our resources flow freely to others.5
What’s next? After you trust in God’s kingdom generosity and open your hands to share with others? Jesus invites you into a posture of readiness to join in God’s kingdom work.
In verse 35, Jesus shares a short parable about servants waiting on their master to return from his wedding feast. He wants the disciples to stay alert because they won’t know when the master is coming. Be ready at any hour, even in the deep hours of the night.
As Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, the parable points ahead to his crucifixion, his Passover deliverance. The image on readiness echoes God’s instructions to Israel in Exodus 12: be dressed and ready for the journey. Be prepared.
For us today, there’s a readiness and watchfulness as we await Christ’s return and the full arrival of his kingdom on earth.
Are we ready? Waiting doesn’t mean being passive, it means being on mission. Do we see opportunities for kingdom work?
Hear the voice of Jesus saying to you that he is this dark world’s light. And wherever you are, Jesus has placed you there as a bearer of his light. You are on mission wherever you go, carrying the light and sowing the seeds of the kingdom.
In a moment, we will have a special commissioning prayer for our students, parents, and teachers for the start of the new school year.
Students: You are image-bearers of God. You can speak life into others by sharing with them that they are made in God’s image too. With your joy, love for learning, and kindness, you reflect Jesus to others.
Teachers: Your school is your mission field. You are entrusted with the care and formation of precious children, made in God’s image. Be ready and watchful for how you can bring the peace and provision of God’s kingdom to your students and fellow teachers.
Now, this isn’t just for students and teachers. That readiness to participate in the kingdom work of God is the posture for all who follow Jesus. If you belong to his little flock, you are on mission in the community. Yes, that means being ready to share the good news of Jesus with someone.
But readiness also means following Jesus wholeheartedly wherever he has placed you. In your workplace, in your neighborhood:
Do you live as a light in the darkness?
Do you work with integrity and joy, serving others as Christ has served you?
Do your neighbors see that Jesus is your greatest treasure?
Do they know you love them—and do you know what keeps them up at night?
You are Jesus’s little flock, and that readiness applies to our congregation too. Are we ready when God presents an opportunity?
There are things we’re still clinging to in this building—artifacts of the past, plans that didn’t go the way we envisioned. We need to declutter.
We need to make room—for people, for children, for growth.
We say we’re praying for young families and children to come. But this month, we have Sundays where we don’t have enough volunteers for childcare. Are we ready to serve?
If you have ideas for ministry in our community, reach out. There’s no room for a “that’s not how we do things around here” attitude. Look for ways to take part in what God is doing already. Because God wants to grow the kingdom right here.
One of the ways we respond to God’s overwhelming kingdom generosity is by offering ourselves—our lives, our service, our resources—as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for what he’s done.
Because it gets better: the Master we are waiting for? He’s the one who serves.
Look at verse 37: “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them.”
This grace is astonishing, shocking. Our passage begins with a wonderful promise of God’s overwhelming generosity, a gift that produces in us a life of service. But then Jesus gives us yet another twist: the Master serves his servants.
He stoops down to feed us.
We are not worthy to receive the crumbs from underneath our King’s Table, but he gives us the best seat and the bread of life.
Today let us lift our hearts to the heavenly places, where our Risen Christ is. Let him be your treasure. The Good Shepherd invites you to the Table today and feeds you, his little flock.
We sang the hymn “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say,” so I alluded to it several times.
Augustine, Confessions, 1.1. I highly recommend the Sarah Ruden translation.
Augustine, “Sermon 390: On Almsgiving,”
See Augustine, “Sermon 177,” para. 9. Augustine said: “If we must be avaricious, let us love him. If we desire wealth, let us desire him. He alone will be able to satisfy us, about whom it says, Who satisfies your desire with good things (Ps 103:5). . . . So lift your heart up, don't leave it down on the ground, nor in those beggarly treasures, nor in a place to rot. In Adam too the root of all evils was avarice. You see, he wanted more than he had received, because God had not been enough for him.”
Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 1166-67.
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