The world feels out of control.
A filmmaker and his wife found dead in their own Los Angeles home, stabbed, and it makes a person check the kids’ doors without planning to, just to see them still sleeping, still untouched.
A mass shooting at Bondi Beach, people running over sand that should have held nothing heavier than towels and flip flops.
Earlier in the year, Charlie Kirk gunned down, and even the gatherings meant to mourn him turning tense and violent.
The phone keeps serving it up. A steady drip of blood and anger.
You reach the point where the screen sickens you, yet you keep staring. Facts buckle you into the day. Fear pretends it is prudence.
In the next room, a lunchbox waits on the counter. School will happen anyway. Work will happen anyway. A commute. A cashier. A gas pump. A parking lot. Ordinary life, stitched together with little routines that used to feel safe.
Today, the air feels different to me.
The average person in America has learned a new reflex. Scan exits. Keep the head on a swivel. Read the room. Do mental math about risks. Carry pepper spray. Check the locks twice. Tell the kids, Stay close, and try to say it like it is normal.
Why You Keep Checking Locks
Fear is a quiet preacher. It never raises its voice. It just stands beside the bed each morning and whispers, The world has teeth.
Luke 12 confronts that voice and replaces it with a higher fear and a steadier hope.
A man steps toward Jesus with a grievance that sounds small until you realize how often it fuels the world. “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” The man wants Jesus to be his referee. He wants a ruling. He wants the security of having things settled.
He Will Not Be Your Referee
Jesus refuses the role. He does not step into the man’s fight like a hired attorney. He steps above it like a Judge of hearts.
He warns about greed, about the craving to clutch and pile and secure the future with bigger stacks. Then He tells a story that sounds like a normal American dream until the last sentence breaks it.
A farmer hits a good year. Grain pours in. The bins cannot hold it. He plans expansion. He talks to himself like a man giving a pep talk in the mirror. He can taste his future. He can smell his comfort.
He believes he has finally outrun uncertainty.
That is the lie modern life sells a thousand ways. Save enough, and tomorrow will obey you. Build enough, and chaos will pass you by. Store enough, and death will wait its turn.
Tonight Might Be It
God calls him a fool, and the insult lands with surgical precision. The man is a fool because he planned for everything except the one appointment that cannot be rescheduled. His life is required of him that night. Not suggested. Not negotiated. Required.
The barns are full. The soul is bankrupt.
That parable is a mirror held up to a fearful age.
When the world feels unstable, people start building barns. Some barns are literal, accounts and investments and hidden cash. Some barns are digital, control through constant monitoring, endless updates, doomscrolling into the small hours like a man stacking sandbags against a flood that keeps rising.
Fear says, Fill the barn. Jesus says, Prepare the soul.
The chapter keeps walking. Jesus speaks about anxiety next, because He knows what the human heart does when it hears words like “required” and “this night.” He speaks into the places where the stomach tightens and the mind runs laps.
People worry about groceries, clothes, bills, insurance, the future their children will inherit. Worry sits at the table like another family member. It eats with you. It follows you to the car. It rides with you to church. It kneels beside you at night and keeps you awake.
Worry Eats Breakfast With You
Jesus talks like a Shepherd. He points to ravens, creatures that do not hoard, and still they eat. He points to lilies, petals that open without panic, and they are clothed better than kings.
God feeds. God clothes. God knows.
A fearful world trains people to believe that safety comes from control. Christ trains His people to believe that life comes from the Father’s hand. There is a difference between diligence and worship. A savings plan is not a savior. A firearm is not a fortress. A locked door is not a guarantee. A thousand precautions cannot outmuscle a single decree from heaven.
Jesus speaks of treasure next, because fear is often a money sermon wearing a different suit. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The heart follows what it loves. The heart obeys what it worships.
What You Love Controls You
A fearful year exposes idols quickly. The idol of comfort. The idol of predictable days. The idol of being left alone. The idol of having enough. Those idols crack when sirens start sounding and headlines start piling up and death starts visiting houses that were supposed to be safe.
Jesus does not leave the reader floating. He moves from the heart’s treasure to the heart’s readiness. He tells His listeners to be dressed for action, lamps burning, watching for the Master’s return. The image is sharp. It smells like oil and smoke. It feels like a doorway at midnight. It carries the tension of footsteps outside the house.
Live Ready
The servants who live awake are blessed. They are ready.
Then Jesus speaks a line that should make every Bible reader tremble. The servant who knew his master’s will and ignored it receives heavier judgment than the one who sinned in ignorance. Light is a gift, and light is a responsibility. Truth heard becomes truth owed.
A chaotic year can make people look for explanations, and explanations can become a hiding place. The deeper question is older and heavier. How can a man, a woman, a teenager, a child be right with God?
The God who stands behind Luke 12 is offended by sin. His holiness is not a mood. His justice is not negotiable.
Jesus spoke about hell because Jesus loves sinners. A man who sees a child running toward a highway does not whisper. He shouts. He runs. He grabs. Love becomes urgent when danger is real.
A soft gospel fits a soft world. A hard year makes room again for hard truths.
Jesus Warned You
This month, Kirk Cameron told the public he no longer accepts eternal conscious torment, leaning toward a view where the wicked are ultimately destroyed.
Hell is real, Kirk Cameron.
Jesus taught it plainly. He described fire that does not die down and darkness that does not lift. He spoke of weeping and teeth clenched in rage and regret. He spoke of a final separation that cannot be crossed. His words were not rhetorical flourishes. They were warnings.
Death does not bring a spiritual reset.
Jesus told of a rich man who died and woke up in torment, conscious, remembering, wanting relief, still refusing repentance. The gulf stood fixed. The moment of death sealed his direction. Where a person is when they die is where they remain.
That truth is brutal in a year where death keeps showing up without warning. A beach gathering turns into a massacre. A “safe” home becomes a homicide scene. The point is not celebrity. The point is fragility. The point is that the next breath is never a possession. It is a loan.
Scripture also insists that death is not the end of the story for anyone. Resurrection is coming. Judgment is coming. Bodies will rise. Accounts will be opened. Those outside the book of life face a final state the Bible describes with terrifying clarity.
People protest the justice of it. How can a few decades deserve eternity?
The answer begins with God.
The problem is usually not first with hell. The problem is a small view of the One sinned against. God is infinite. His worth cannot be measured in human units. Sin against Him is not a small scratch on a cosmic wall. It is treason against the greatest Good, committed by creatures who have received breath, food, beauty, friendship, laughter, sunrise, and mercy from the very One they defy.
Sin also continues beyond the grave. Hell is not a rehabilitation ward. There is no repentance there. The rich man asked for water, not forgiveness. He wanted relief, not reconciliation. The heart that refuses God here does not suddenly adore Him there.
People also ask about love. How can a loving God judge?
The cross answers that question with blood.
God’s love is not sentimental softness. God gave His Son. The Son lived perfectly. The Son carried sin like a burden strapped to His shoulders. Nails were driven. Breath was crushed. Judgment fell. Wrath was satisfied. Mercy opened like a door.
People go to hell because they insist on keeping their sin and rejecting the Savior God has provided. That rejection is not a misunderstanding. It is rebellion maintained year after year, sermon after sermon, warning after warning.
Heaven itself would not be heaven if evil walked in unjudged. The center of heaven is Christ. The song of heaven is worship. The joy of heaven is holiness. A heart that hates Christ would find heaven unbearable. God’s judgment is not only justice. It is also the final separation that protects glory from corruption.
Luke 12 presses the issue right up against this morning.
A fearful person wants the world to become safer. Jesus wants the soul to become ready.
A fearful person wants guarantees. Jesus offers a kingdom that cannot be taken by thieves and cannot be burned down by chaos.
A fearful person clutches possessions and control. Jesus calls for repentance, faith, watchfulness, obedience, a heart that can meet God without hiding.
So the average person sets the phone down. The screen goes dark. The house is still quiet. The children still sleep. The future is still unknown.
Yet one thing becomes clear as daylight creeps across the window glass.
The greatest danger is not what the world can do to the body. The greatest danger is standing before God with unforgiven sin, having heard the truth and ignored it.
This year has been loud. This morning feels heavy. The Word of God does not blink. It says the same thing it has always said.
Life runs fast. Death comes sure. Judgment follows. Christ stands ready to save.
Do Not Wait
Today remains a real day. A person can repent today. A person can call on the name of the Lord today. A person can leave the barn-building life and become rich toward God today.
Lamps can be lit again. Hearts can wake up. Fear can be put in its rightful place.
The Master will come. The door will open. Blessed are the servants He finds awake.
For more devotions click here.
Sign up for my email list here.
For a list of other essential Christian reads click here.
Enjoying this content? If you’d like to support my work and help me create more Bible-centered resources like this devotion, consider buying me a coffee! Your support means the world and helps keep this ministry going.
