A Rich Fool Luke 12:13-21 Week 1 August 25, 2013

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1 Hear the Word of God: A Rich Fool Luke 12:13-21 Week 1 August 25, Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. 14 But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? 15 And he said to them, Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. 16 And he told them a parable, saying, The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? 18 And he said, I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. 20 But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:13-21, ESV) This is the Word of the Lord. Praise be to God. Good morning. My name is Andrew. I m one of the pastors with Christ Community. Let me reiterate what Pastor John has already said, welcome and welcome back. To those of you who are new to Champaign-Urbana, whether you ve come as a student or beginning a new career or whatever might have brought you here, we re honored that you have joined us this morning. For those of you whom we are welcoming back, and I can see dozens of you. Let me just say it is so good to have you back. You were greatly missed over the summer and I am personally looking forward to catching up in the coming weeks and pressing forward in life together once more. This morning we re launching what I would call an impromptu series of talks. I say its impromptu because as recently as about 6 weeks ago we were set to launch a series through the Letter to the Ephesians this morning. But about 5 or 6 weeks ago we called an audible, meaning we changed the game plan on the spot and decided to do a short series called Money, a series of talks from the 12 th chapter of the Gospel According to Luke. 1

2 Now let me just be upfront because churches tend to catch a bunch of flak for the way they deal with and talk about money, and I m usually one of the guys giving it because there is a segment of the church who are turning this whole issue on its head. However, this series wasn t birthed out of a pressing and urgent need from within the church. Its not as though we were looking at the budget and thinking, Wow, we have a major deficit, we better tell people to give. Actually, that s not the case at all. By my estimation we re on pace to exceed our expected giving in Let me also say that we weren t sitting around talking about specific individuals or the community in general and feeling like there was a lack of generosity on the part of Christ Community. Again, this couldn t be further from reality. As pastors we are consistently floored by the way the grace of God produces generosity in this flock. In fact, as I interact with other pastors I often acknowledge the thanks I give to God because of your faithfulness in this area. No, what prompted this specific series more than anything else is the recognition that in spite of the appearance of health, we know that money is a great and powerful demigod or a false god. To put it another way, money is an idol. Often when we think of idols we think of primitives bowing down to statues and figurines and shrines, but this is a rather narrow way to think. Money is an idol, an idol so seductive that the Scriptures are replete with warnings against loving and trusting and serving at the altar of this demigod. Therefore, since the cry of the money god is at least as seductive as the sirens song in The Odyssey its seemed prudent to take time to attack this false god and expose it for what it really is. Like Odysseus we want to lash you to the ship, but this ship is Christ. Simultaneously, we want to sing a song, a better and truer song than the money sirens, that would awaken those of you who are worshipping and getting crushed by this demigod, and invite to join us on the Christ ship, and lash yourself to her hull. Therefore this week and the two that follow we will take a look at what Jesus has to say about money and life and death and grace and compare the world s wisdom with God s. The passage Pastor John read for us is found in the middle of an extended section of Jesus teaching which Luke has recorded in his gospel. And the scene is actually quite comical if you notice its context. This massive crowd has gathered around Jesus, verse 1 tells us that, so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were trampling one another. So if you think the coffee line was a mess today, just be thankful Jesus didn t show up. It could be worse you know. And what does Jesus do when he gets a megachurch worth of people together? What does he teach the Foellinger Auditorium sized crowd, nothing controversial or weighty or anything he just tells them not to fear death. And he tells them about hell. And about the persecution they will face because they follow him. You listen to Jesus teach and you think the guy is doing everything he can in the way of crowd control, but people won t leave. And right in the midst of this teaching, some guy, you can imagine this, presses to the front of the crowd and apparently he s not hearing any of this stuff 2

3 about death and hell and persecution and he interrupts, Uh excuse, Jesus, hey man, over here, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. I would have you notice, verse 13, since we re getting back to the academic year, when the man says, Teacher, tell Tell is an imperative verb; it s a command. And you don t have to be a theologian to know that this whole interaction is not going to go well for the man who is bossing around the Son of God. Yet Jesus happens to be very kind and patient and he kindly relieves himself from any judicial duty. Jesus knows what he s called to do, and it isn t to settle arbitration cases. He s perfectly content with the laws of the land that exist for such disputes. But the other thing about Jesus is he s very intentional in these kinds of moments. Its one of the m.o. s of his ministry that have made him so well respected by even those who don t buy what he s teaching. Jesus doesn t give the man what he wanted; rather he gives him what he needed. He takes this out of context, crass conversation and turns it into a teaching moment. He addresses the issue of coveting. Verse 15, Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness. COVETOUSNESS VS. CONTENTMENT Tom Watson, the 17 th Century pastor, described covetousness as an insatiable desire for getting the world. In more modern times we simply call it advertising or marketing. The whole point of advertising is to make you discontent with what you have. An advertiser s job description could very neatly correspond with Watson s description of covetousness, Produce in a person an insatiable desire for having such and such a product. If you re content, advertising has no power over you. You re satisfied with what you have. If somebody else has the newer iphone, the bigger house, the better clothes, you re glad for them, but you don t have to have it. You re not jealous or obsessive over it. You re not going to buy things on credit to get what others have. You re not going to mortgage your future in order to move into the same neighborhood. You re not going to reprioritize your life in order to get what you don t have. If you re content you re okay with it. But if you re coveting, well, everything changes. An insatiable desire drives you to all kinds of folly. Now let me pause, this helps us see how Jesus warning, here in verse 15 and in the parable he told, is actually for all of us. Whether you are among the haves, or you re among the have-nots. Whether you are in the group of people with a car and a house and a load of debt, or you re among the group that packed everything they owned in the back of their parents miniature van this week and moved into a cramped, cinder block cell, Jesus warning is for you because we re all tempted to covet, to be discontent, to be consumed by the desire to have the things that God has chosen to give to others and not us. The have-nots are tempted to want the things they don t 3

4 have, while the haves are tempted to want even more of what they already have. The two brothers in the story, the one who asked for his share and the one who was refusing to relinquish his brother s portion, they are both discontent and coveting are they not? This is why Jesus warns against all covetousness. Jesus goes onto remind his audience that a person s life doesn t consist in the abundance of his possessions. Do you see what Jesus is saying? More possessions do not equal more life. Possessions do not add any life to us. The fact is well attested among most of the world s most renowned philosophers and thinkers have noted that possessions tend to have just the opposite effect. Instead of adding life possessions detract from life. One writer put it, The more acres a man has, the more cares. The more his money increases, the more his time is generally consumed and eaten up in thinking about it. This axiom was perhaps most memorably put to lyric by the late artist known as the Notorious B.I.G. when he rapped, Mo money, mo problems. PARABLE Jesus, at least as Luke presents it here, then delivered a parable. It s a fairly straightforward story. A man, who is presumably a farmer, has the harvest of a lifetime. His land produces so many crops that he doesn t have enough storage for it all. So he has a storage dilemma on his hands, right? And he thinks up what appears to me to be a reasonable solution, doesn t he? Tear down the inadequate storage facilities and replace them with larger facilities. Then he ll be able to store up the grain and all of his goods. Jesus imagines the man, imagining the future where he has a dialogue with his soul. The man tells himself, Soul you have ample goods for many years; relax, eat, drink and be merry. Now let me just pause right there before we get to the twist and the punch line. We tend to look at a man like the fictitious man in Jesus parable and instantly condemn him. We think, Yeah, rich people, they re the worst. Would you just hold off judgment for a moment? I m not saying you re wrong about this guy, but I want you to consider whom you re really thinking about as you imagine this man. Is this man not simply realizing the American Dream? Has he not simply made his money and now he is going to head into retirement, kick back and enjoy the finer things in life that he probably hasn t had much time to enjoy when he was working all the time? Friends, I would have you notice that the parable Jesus is telling is largely against the American Dream. There was no American Dream when he told it, but its almost as if 1800 years later the author s of the so called American Dream read this passage and said, you know, I think Jesus has it pretty well backwards, the rich man in his story, that s what we should be aiming for. Americans have been building bigger barns ever since. Consider the data compiled by the real estate folks at Trulia. According to their data the average size of an American 4

5 home in the 1950 s was 953 square feet. According to the US Census Bureau that figure jumped to 1650 square feet by 1973 and it continued to increase year after year until it reached its peak just before the economic downturn at over 2500 square feet. And you d think with the larger houses we d have plenty of room for all of our stuff, but you d be wrong. One of the fastest growing industries in the US is the storage facility. We have Starbucks everywhere, right? But there are five times as many storage facilities as there are Starbucks. Now I m not saying there isn t a good and worthy reason for having a storage unit. And I m not saying there isn t a good and worthy reason for building or buying a big house. I m simply trying to help you see that even though Jesus told this story to a bunch of Middle Eastern, farmers 2000 years ago who couldn t have possibly even imagined indoor plumbing much less automobiles and airplanes and computers, his warning, nonetheless absolutely imports itself into the here and now. Its at this point in the story that Jesus delivers the twist, verse 20, But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? Jesus doesn t allow his character to answer, but whomever he might say, we know the answer is someone other than himself. And Jesus point is confirmed, possessions do not add to your life because life doesn t consist in the abundance of possessions. I want to peel back the layers on this man, whom we might aptly describe as the rich fool. THE RICH FOOL I want you to see how Jesus is on the one hand talking about money, but on the other hand he is talking about our spiritual condition and money is merely an indicator of something far more significant. Look at the way Jesus portrays this man in the story. Six descriptors come to mind. The man is thankless. Verse 16 makes it clear enough; the man s prosperity didn t come from his own hand. The verse says, The land produced plentifully. His wealth didn t come about because he worked harder than the rest; he wasn t savvier in business skills, rather the land simply produced. It should ve been obvious that his abundance was a gift from God who sends timely rains and much needed sunlight. Yet, the man is ungrateful. He doesn t give thanks to God. He doesn t praise God. He doesn t bring an offering to God. He was selfish. He doesn t once consider the needs of others. Augustine pointedly comments on this passage, the bellies of the poor were a much safer store room than his barns If he stowed it away in the bellies of the poor, it would of course been digested on earth, but in heaven it would be kept all the more safely. The man in the story imagined he had a storage dilemma, when in fact he had a distribution dilemma. 5

6 He should have planned for how to share, instead he gave himself to imagining how he could consume it all himself. The man in Jesus story was self-absorbed. I love this. Jesus was such a good storyteller. Of the 54 words recorded in the original language a full 18 of them are firstperson pronouns like I, me, and my. A clear indicator of his self-absorption is his inner monologue. Jesus depicts him as constantly asking questions to himself about himself. And he himself provides all of the answers. He was anxious. It doesn t take much of an imagination to see the man in our story wringing his hands in worry over what to do with his abundant share of crops. His repeated use of the possessive pronoun my my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods conveys a strong sense of personal ownership rather than stewardship. Rather than thinking of his stuff as belonging to God and therefore to be used in accordance with his will, he thought of it as belonging to himself to be used for his own pleasure. Which leads me to conclude that our man was self-indulgent. His plan for his massive wealth was to spend it all on idle pursuits to relax, eat, drink, and be merry. And finally, we might add that our man was presumptuous. He imagined that his wealth would buy him life. This is the standard fare for the money god, always overpromising and under delivering. Our man imagined that he would live on indefinitely. But money could never ultimately give our man or any person what we are really hoping for. In short this man loved, trusted, and became a servant of money. He was doing exactly what Jesus warned his beloved children they must not do: he was making his life money. Which is why Jesus sums up all six of these descriptions by calling the man a fool. Notice the language God uses when he tells the man his life is required. It s the same language a banker would use to call in a loan. God is telling the man that his loan is due the loan of his mortal existence. Though the man may have denied it, his life always belonged to God. From the moment of his birth he lived on borrowed time, and now God had come to claim what was rightfully his all along. When a person is described as a fool in the Bible it almost always means the person doesn t acknowledge the existence of God. The man in Jesus story may or may not have given lip service to God s existence, but his life betrayed what he truly believed. He didn t acknowledge God in everyday life. He didn t thank God. He didn t ask God what to do. He didn t offer God his time and talents for service. He didn t acknowledge God s sovereignty over his lifespan. He didn t prepare to meet God in death. He didn t give one thought to God at all. The man thought he had a storage problem, but what he really had was a spiritual problem: he was a practical atheist and a slave to the money demigod, a god who didn t love him back, and left him. 6

7 Earlier I said, Jesus is on the one hand talking about money, but on the other hand he is talking about our spiritual condition. Why do I say that? Look at verse 21. This is the punch line of Jesus parable. Every good preacher is driving to a point. And this is the point Jesus drives to, So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. If you ll look closely you ll see that Jesus doesn t say a thing about what we have or don t have. He doesn t set a limit on income nor savings accounts or anything like that. Having or not having wealth is not the issue in the forefront of Jesus mind. Instead, he s teaching us how we become rich toward God. RICH TOWARD GOD What impoverished the fool toward God? The man lived by the wisdom of the world. Pursuing wealth had made him utterly poor. In fact, I would say Jesus sets him up as the paradigm of our whole plausible, reasonable, right-handed, that is to say direct power, but wrongheaded struggle to be masters of an operation called life, that is in fact radically outside of our control. The rich fool, like all of us, sought to be the captain of a ship that, all our lives, has been taking on water faster than we can bail it. Our rich fool was doing the very thing the world insists we must do, cling to life. Clutch it while we have it. And in a surprising twist in the punch line Jesus says that such clinging and clutching will leave you empty handed. But that s not really a surprise is it? Though we tend to deny it and do what we can to ignore it, the only thing we can be certain of in life is death. The brutality and beauty of this truth led one missionary to pen in his journal 60 years ago, He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep, to gain that which he can never lose. There are few things in life that allow us to deny our frail mortality like wealth. Our investments make us feel powerful. Our savings accounts give us the feeling of security. Our possessions bestow status upon us. And our so-called earning potential entices us to take out loan after loan convinced that we are untouchable. All of this is a façade. The reality is that the only thing we have for certain is death. Yet paradoxically, death is the only thing God requires. You see, as Luke has laid out his gospel, Jesus, in chapter 12, is on the road to Jerusalem. He is headed to his own death. Jesus upon whom the Father looks and declares, You are my beloved Son in Luke 3:22, making him the only truly rich man in the world. But the Scriptures tell us that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that we through his poverty you might be made rich. The poverty spoken of is his death. And the treasure for those who join themselves to Christ by faith is to become a beloved son or daughter of God. In this passage Jesus is only urging his disciples and us to do what he himself did in his own trial and passion: to lay down his life and to let God raise it up in his own good time. As long as we clutch at our lives rather than embracing our poverty the real life that only comes by resurrection remains permanently out of reach. But if we would come to Jesus utterly poor we will be rich towards God with life, resurrection life. Here s what I mean. You need to relinquish your financial salvation 7

8 project. Money is a bad savior. The security that you think you ve purchased with your money, or the insecurity you fear from not having enough money must die. However, your desire for security is a very good thing, a God-given thing. But no amount of money, as we see in the rich fool, is enough to buy the security and status you were made for. However, if you come to God through Jesus with nothing, completely emptyhanded; he will give you the security that money could never afford. He will bestow a status upon you that money could not buy. If you come to God through Jesus in utter poverty of Spirit knowing that you have nothing add to God s gift of salvation, then you will find yourself utterly rich, securely in the loving hands of the Almighty God. Poverty, not wealth death, not life is the only material God uses to save us. What do your money and your attitude toward money say about your spiritual condition? Are you coveting or coveting or content? Are you rich toward yourself or toward God? The choice is ours: will we spend our lives pursuing wealth, only to end at the poverty of death? Or will we embrace Christ s death and join ourselves to it by faith, so that we no longer live, but Christ lives through us and the life we live would be lived with a new and better status than money could ever buy. We would become sons and daughters of God Almighty? 8

9 FOR FURTHER READING The Treasure Principle By Randy Alcorn An excellent introduction to biblical stewardship that you can read in one or two sittings. Alcorn is a pastor and a best-selling author who walks the walk. Neither Poverty nor Riches By Craig Blomberg A tour through the whole Bible in sequential order to discuss what each book, genre, and Testament teaches us about money and stewardship. The Parables of Christ: Kingdom, Grace, and Judgment By Robert Capon These studies offer a fresh, adventurous look at all of Jesus' parables, treated according to their major themes. The Parable of the Rich Fool Luke s Gospel: Investigating the Man Who is God By Mark Driscoll Jesus and Anxiety Luke s Gospel: Investigating the Man Who is God By Mark Driscoll Waiting Ready: Between the Times Luke s Gospel: Investigating the Man Who is God By Mark Driscoll Money: God or Gift By Jamie Munson A book to point your heart, your treasure, and your life to the source of all joy, goodness, and love: Jesus. Don t Waste Your Life By John Piper How stewardship plays out in our lifestyle, our priorities, and what we treasure. Luke Volume I: Chapters 1-12 Reformed Expositors Commentary By Phillip Graham Ryken The purpose of this commentary is to make Luke s message clear for a contemporary audience by explaining, illustrating, and applying its truth to everyday life. 9