The Rich Fool Luke 12:13-21

The Gospel of Luke  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  46:42
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The Rich Fool Luke 12_13-21

Thu, Jan 09, 2025 8:35AM • 46:42

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Christ's sufficiency, Gospel of Luke, money issues, greed and covetousness, rich fool, fear of God, inheritance dispute, generosity lifestyle, American dream, material possessions, eternal value, rich towards God, Lord's Supper, Jesus' sacrifice

SPEAKERS

Josh Slater

Father, we are. We sing these songs to you, and I pray that they actually penetrate our minds and our hearts and our souls, that Christ is enough. Though the things of this world offer us much they will never satisfy Lord. I just pray that we would understand that your love and your mercy and your grace is enough to satisfy our deepest souls, our deepest longings, our deepest desires. I pray this morning that the words of my heart and the meditations of my mind would be acceptable to you, my rock and my Redeemer. It's in Jesus name, we pray amen. Alrighty. So we started the Gospel of Luke last year, right? Right, at about this time, right? I think on the seventh of last year. And I had it all mapped out, and I even gave out bookmarks, right? That had, this is what I want to preach on each Sunday. And by the second Sunday, they were wrong. And so I just stopped making them, because Cory is like, you just wasted a lot of paper and a lot of ink, and we knew that this was going to happen. She even told me that she's like, why are you doing this? Why did you spend all this time and this energy doing this and printing this and giving this out when you know that it's not going to stay on track? And I was like, You're right. So originally, when I first laid all this out today, we were going to be in Luke, chapter 14. Well, that is not where we are. We are actually in Luke chapter 12. So if you want to open up your Bibles, we'll be in Luke, chapter 12, verse 13 through 21 this morning, if you don't have a Bible, there are Bibles on the back table. And if you want to keep it, those Bibles are for you to keep. Okay, so those are available to anybody who doesn't have a Bible or needs a new Bible. Those are available. We've got more scattered throughout the the church as well, but those are available to you. Um, anyway, so I say all that to say this, this was not the originally scheduled sermon for this first Sunday in January of 2025 but in God's providence, in his kindness to us, He has given me the opportunity to talk about something that makes a lot of us anxious, and that is money. A lot of us have difficult issues talking about money. Or, you know, even when we get hired at new jobs and stuff, we're like, they're like, I remember when I got hired at the place I'm about to talk about one 800 pack, right? They're like, Don't discuss your salary or your your pay with the rest of the group, because we don't want to cause any tension or or any anything anyway. And so we get a little bit nervous when we talk about money, but money is important. Money is important to Jesus. It it reflects our heart. And so this morning, what we're going to talk about is not just money, but greed and covetousness. Those are the ideas, overwhelming ideas that we're going to talk about. And I want to talk about the place I worked at, one 800 pack rat. One 800 pack rat was a moving service, but it was also a storage service. I don't know. It's kind of like pods. If you know what pods are, they would take these big pod things and they would deliver them to your house, and you would load them up with your stuff, and they would either store them at a warehouse, or they ship them over to a new location, like if you're moving across the country, across the city. So instead of renting a U haul, you would rent one of these guys and have them delivered anyway, one of the things that I worked in, I worked in the billing department. And you know, when you work in the billing department. One of those billing issues is also people not paying their bills, right? So I made a lot of phone calls to a lot of people saying, Hey, your bills do if you don't pay it, then we're going to keep accumulating debt on this, and then eventually we'll get to the point where we'll we'll auction it off to try to recoup some of our losses. And people had a lot of stuff. I remember there's this one guy who had like three containers in the warehouse, and he his monthly bill to store this stuff was like $1,200 a month just to store this stuff that he wasn't using, that was just in this warehouse, just and it wasn't even an air conditioned warehouse, it was just a warehouse where they had this stuff. And so every month I would call him, or I'd call him once a week, usually, and then he would ignore my calls and reject my calls and not want to answer my calls. But we ended up auctioning his stuff off. And then I started thinking like, what about people that I may know who have a lot of stuff that maybe may not be stored in a warehouse, but just like stuff. So we have one family member who has a house that is this, just two of them living in there, and they have a lot of stuff in the house. And then they also have a three car garage that has a lot of stuff in the three car garage. And they also have a a barn in the backyard that has a lot of stuff in the backyard, or in the barn in the backyard. And I'm just thinking, How much stuff do we need, right? How much stuff do we need? And and there are people with issues. Like, one of the shows that Cory and I like to watch is that hoarder show. And these hoarder peoples, they have medical issues, right, with their their brains, and they just hoard all this stuff, and then they have all this stuff. And, you know? And I just think, man, like, how drawn to stuff are we? Uh, the next thing, the big thing, whatever it is, and and I think that Jesus is concerned with that, because when, when possessions possess us, then we have a loss of sight on what is truly valuable. We have a loss of understanding of what truly matters. And that's kind of what happens this morning. See the story we're going to look at today in Luke chapter 12 is titled in most of our Bibles, the rich fool. And he's not a fool because he's rich. He's foolish in his life. So what makes him a fool is not his wealth, his foolishness comes from a disturb or a distorted view of who he is in light of who God is. That's the problem with this man, and it's just starts off like we start thinking about when we're called to Christ, when we're called to live a life of holiness. What is that all about? A lot of a big chunk of that's about us living wise lives. What does it mean to live a wise life? How do we not become foolish? And living a wise life means that we're chasing after the things of God, that we're concerned with the things of God. A foolish life is when we're concerned with the things of this world, when we're concerned with the things of self, and we ignore God. We see this in the Proverbs. Proverbs, chapter nine, verse 10, says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. And we also see in Psalms, it says that the fool says in his heart, there is no God. So when we think about the stuff that we have, and we think about how we're supposed to live in conjunction with that stuff, one of the things we have to understand is that we cannot use stuff to show us that we're valuable. We cannot use stuff to tell us that our lives have meaning. We cannot use stuff to say that this is the most important thing in my life. Because what's going to happen with that stuff? It's going to go away, it's going to be auctioned off because we have more than we can afford. It's going to pass away and pass on to somebody else, because we die, and that's what happens like we all only have a finite amount of time on this earth. So anyway, as we look at this, this, this pericopy, the story in Luke chapter 12. I want us to really think about our lives and what we are doing with our lives. Now, I already patted you on the back this morning talking about your generosity over the last month, which I am grateful for. But I want us to know that generosity is not just a a one time thing. Generosity is a lifestyle, and it's one of the wise things that the Lord has called us to. So let's open up in Luke chapter 12, verses 13 through 15. This is, this is what happens. Okay, Jesus is teaching a crowd, and we cannot forget the context of what he just taught. Now, I know this was five weeks ago when I first taught opened up chapter 12, but I think it's important to kind of just do a refresher real quick. Jesus is talking to the crowd, and he tells the crowd to beware of hypocrisy, which is the leaven of the Pharisees, right? Because hypocrisy comes into our lives and it and it makes us want to look better than we actually are. And then he says, in order to combat hypocrisy, we have to do what. We have to fear God, and then we have to acknowledge Christ. Now he he moves into this parable of the rich fool. So as Jesus is talking about fearing God, and as he's saying about, you know, accepting Christ and acknowledging Christ, this guy in the crowd yells at Jesus. He says this in verse 13, someone from the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Jesus says friend. He said to him, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you? He then told them, watch out and be on guard against all greed, because it's one, because one's life is not in the abundance of his possessions. Okay, so Jesus is teaching, and all of a sudden this guy doesn't really hear what Jesus is teaching, and instead he wants him to to focus on his individual problem. Hey. Teacher, that's a good start. He recognizes Jesus's authority. He recognizes who Jesus is. He says, teacher, I need your help. And what I need your help with is that my brother, presumably, the older brother, is not sharing his inheritance, that that is the stuff in the money that he got from his dad. Um, he's not sharing that with him. And he says, I need you to stop what you're doing, to not focus on the things that you're talking about right now, and I need you to focus on me, and my problem, and my problem is, is that I'm being treated unfairly. How arrogant of a position is that for this man in the crowd? Jesus, teacher, stop. Focus on me and my issue. And this is my issue. I don't have enough stuff. I need more stuff. My dad. Had left stuff to me and my brother and I don't have enough. Now, this isn't an unusual thing in the Jewish teachings. In fact, in Deuteronomy, you would you had the Jewish elders who would be arbiters over this type of stuff. But this isn't the position that Jesus wants to be in or needs to be in at this moment, right? And we could tell this by his response, his response to the man is, Who am I who appointed me a judge or arbiter over you? Now we do know that Jesus is the judge over everything, but he it's, it's time that he take control of this guy's perspective, and he says, what you're asking about, what you're you're wanting from me is not important right now, you've ignored everything that I've said leading up to this moment. You don't know what you are missing out on if you don't acknowledge Christ, if you don't fear God, and if you aren't aware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees you were so focused on the here and the now and the things that maybe you're owed. Maybe he was being wrong. Maybe he was just selfish and he wanted more stuff. But the reality is is Jesus wants to refocus him, and sometimes this is good for us to understand is that Jesus wants to refocus us. He wants to take the time when we come to Jesus with our problems. Sometimes he says, I hear your problem, I understand your problem, but what is the main issue here? Where is your heart? What do you what is going on in your life and at this time where you need to be refocused? Sometimes the most gracious thing Jesus can say to you is, I don't care about your problem right now. Where is your heart? Because sometimes when our heart strays, our problems increase. And Jesus is saying, I want you to ref focus. I want you to re understand that what is happening here is not important. Jesus telling this segment, I'm not going to bow down to your whims. I'm going to continue to preach the gospel. I'm going to continue to tell you where your heart is there, your treasure will lie also. So Jesus. Then, after he addressed this, man says, I'm not going to I'm not going to discuss this. He looks at the rest of the crowd in verse 15, he says, Watch out, be on guard against all greed. That word can also be titled covetousness, be translated covetousness, because one's life is not in the abundance of one's possessions. I was listening to a pastor this week, and he was he was providing a thought exercise for his congregation on this passage, and he says, if you had the opportunity, let's say that all of the rule and the law of the land of the the state or the country that we live in, just disappeared overnight, and you were able to establish 10 Commandments, like, like the Lord did with Israel. Would covetousness be on one of those would do not covet be on one of those lists? Because for for many of us, covetousness is, I don't want to put this is an acceptable sin for many of us, the the desire. We see people and we go, you know, they may want stuff, but it's okay. It's the American dream to want to gain more. It's the American dream to want to have a lot. We We have propped up the American dream, saying that that if you have a bigger car, if you have a bigger house, if you have a bigger boat, if you have a bigger bank account, then you are more valuable than those who have a smaller house, you're more valuable than those who have a smaller boat, you're more valuable than those who have a smaller car, you're more valuable than those who have a smaller bank account. And the reality is, is that is a dangerous spot to be in, because what happens is it encourages us, in our hearts and in our minds to want to do what, enter into the rat race and continue to chase after more and more and more and more, and the more we feed that demon of greed, the less satisfied we will ever be. In fact, I got a quote from a guy. He wasn't a Christian, but this was a great quote, and he said this. He said, greed is a fat demon with a small mouth. And whatever you feed, it is never enough. Whatever you feed, it is never enough. You talk about those, those people who have an exorbitant amount of of money, and what do they say? They want to just get a little bit more. They just want a little bit more. How much is enough? I actually saw an interview with the guy. I don't remember who he was, but he he was very, very, fairly wealthy, and the interviewer asked him. He said, Hey, how much is enough? And he goes, there's never going to be enough. I always want more. It's because it's that greed in our heart is never satisfied by more stuff. That greed in our heart is never satisfied by more money, more things, more more anything. The only thing that will satisfy that is a fear of God, a love for our neighbor. You know it's. Money, because I don't know where he is, but Levi has been. We came across this post on a website, and it was about this house that's in where is it spring? I think it's in spring Texas. And it's not just a house, it's a compound, okay? It's like one house and it's got eight other houses on it, and Levi wants to have this place to live, and this place is, like, $13 million I'm like, we're never going to live there, bud. Like, it's never going to happen unless somebody is super generous and they say, Hey, you can have this spot, but, but you can see in him that this desire for this and I'm like, why can't we just be satisfied with what we have? And one of the things we do with our kids, we don't do it as often as we used to, but we we we did used to do it is whenever they get in that, that mode of wanting more stuff, whenever they're like, hey, I need another toy, or I need another whatever we go, what we need to do is we need to take a time out, and we need to focus. And we need to, like Jesus said, we need to be on guard. And so how, what is one way that we can be on guard is we can start thinking about the stuff we're grateful for. You take and you list just five things that you are grateful for. Because once you get out of the mindset of wanting more and you start focusing on what you have and what others may lack, it helps to give you perspective on the beauty of the stuff that you already have. So we can be on guard now up against all types of greed. What does that mean? What does all types of covetousness mean? It doesn't have to be just money. Covetousness does not have to be just things. Some of us are very covetous with our time, with our energy, with our our love, we there are all these other things that covetousness encompasses us, not just material things. Now, generally, it is focused on material things, but really like, are you generous with your time? Are you spending time with other people? Are you spending time in God's word, or are you just one of those who are hustling and bustling and you've gotta get these things done, because we gotta be on guard about that. We have to make sure that we are staying ahead of our sin. I think that there is an old, old theologic theologian. He's dead, and as a lot of old theologians are, and one of the things he says is we have to be killing sin or it will be killing us. And I think that sometimes we don't see some sin as sin. We see it as just an advancement, like I need to. I need to make sure that I have enough money in my 401, K I can't be generous towards somebody who's hurting, because I can't. If I do that, then I cannot put in money to my 401, K, or to my retirement, or I can't make this astronomical house payment that I couldn't afford when I got in it. And so I think that one of the things that we have to do is we have to make sure that we are balancing. Our future with our present. I'm not saying don't set money aside for retirement. I'm not saying don't have a house or a car or a boat or whatever. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is, is that what you desire, is that what you're wholly focused on, are you so focused on retirement that you cannot see past and see the person who is hurting you or is hurting in front of you? Because if that's the case, then we need to do a heart check. So we have to be on guard. We have to take a stand. We have to be militant in this Ecclesiastes that I preached over a couple years ago says this, The one who loves silver is never satisfied with silver, and whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with income. This too is futile. Do you understand that covetousness, greediness, reveals our depth of depravity, because it's not just I want more, but covetousness can also be this. I want what you have, and I'm not going to rest until I get it. What does that mean? That means that covetousness is a gateway to other sins. Covetousness is a gateway to stealing, covetousness is a gateway to lying. Covetousness is a gateway to hiding things from our spouse. Covetousness is a gateway to a lot of different different sins. So I think this is one of the reasons that God includes this covetousness in the Big 10 like it's not just one that's tucked away in there. It's not just a rule or a law that God hides in there. It's one of the 10 Commandments, do not covet. And I think this is really speaking to us as 21st century Americans, what do we truly treasure? What do we truly covet? Or do we covet a love of God? Do we want more of that? Or do we covet the things of this world? World, Colossians, chapter three, verse five, it says this. It says, Therefore, put away or put to death, what belongs to your earthly nature. Now listen, he's going to list some sins here, and I want us to understand this. Says, Put to death. What belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immoral or morale. Immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire and greed, which is idolatry, in that list of impurity, sexual immorality, lust, evil desire, in that list is included, covetousness is included, greed, and he says that all of these things are idolatry, when we are greedy, when we want more than what we have, when we are covetousness or COVID just of other people's things, then we have lifted those things up to idolatry. We have lifted those things up above and beyond, who God, who our God is, right? And covetousness also leads to this. It leads to, I talked about other sins. What else does it lead to? It leads to bitterness and hatred you have what I want, and because I don't have what you have, I'm bitter towards you, and I hate you for it. I've seen this happen. I've had this happen in my own heart. Why do you get to have this and I don't. Why do you get to have all of these things that I desire and I don't? And then I start to taste that bitterness in my mouth. I start to taste that bitterness on my heart, and it sullies the way that I look at other people. It sullies the way that I view them. How do they get it? Why do they deserve it? It's not good for your soul. It's not good for your heart. So Jesus tells us to be on guard, and then, in true Jesus fashion, what he does is he tells us a story, a parable. Now this is one parable. Is is only found in Luke's gospel. It's not in the other gospels. So this is one of those Luke exclusives, if you will. And it says this in verse 16. Then he told him a parable. A rich man's land was very productive, he thought to himself, What should I do? Since I don't have anywhere to store my crops, I will do this. He said. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there. Then I'll say to myself, you have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy, eat, drink and enjoy yourself. So Jesus telling this parable, He begins off, and he tells us this, that there is a rich man, okay? The rich man has a bumper crop, right? That's what this would be considered a bump he has a banner year when it comes to farming so he's already wealthy, he's already rich, he already has what he needs, and then he has another bumper crop, and he is just ecstatic because of everything that is falling into place. He is so excited about this crop. Now I want us to notice this, the rich man, the rich man who has this healthy crop, didn't do anything wrong to get that money right, to have that blessing poured out on him. He was not evil. He was not wicked. He didn't distort the truth. He just had this blessing essentially fall in his lap, because the crops were good that year or so, would seem it fell in his lap, right? But if we remember who's in control of the weather, who's in control of the growth, if we remember who's in control of the world around us, we see that this is actually a blessing from God that this guy takes and he distorts into something selfish, right? But he has. He, he doesn't do anything nefarious. He doesn't do anything evil or wicked to have this crop, and so instead he, he just hasn't he. I want you to notice what he says in this verse, alone, in these, in these four verses, alone, there the the pronoun I, me or my is used some 12 times in just those four verses, I, me, my. What should I do? How should I treat this? I need bigger barns. I need a bigger place to store this. Then I'll say to my soul, I have many goods stored up for many years. What is this? This is selfishness. This is a selfishness of greed, the selfishness of covetousness. I heard this proverb earlier this one, and actually, I'll talk about that in just a second. What is he missing? What is this guy missing? Well, he's missing one that the reason why his crop was productive is because God allowed it to be productive. So he has no fear of God. He knows has no understanding that it is God's hand that has allowed him to have this blessing. And then he. That because of this blessing, his barns aren't big enough. Now, what could he have done instead of just build a bigger barn? What could he have done, give it away? He could have been generous. I'm sure there were people who were hurting. I'm sure there were people who were starving. I'm sure there were people who were who were down on their luck. And he could have been generous. He was already wealthy. He already had barns that were full, and he had more, and he's like, I can't give it away. I've got to hoard it. I've got to keep it for myself. That's another aspect of greed. Greed is not just going and wanting more, but greed is holding on to what you have and not being generous with it. So you can be greedy without actually seeking more, but just being so tight on, I think about Scrooge McDuck, right? Or, or Scrooge, I say McDuck, but yeah, Scrooge McDuck, or Ebenezer, Scrooge, or any of those guys, what is their thing? They just are so excited that they have money, right that I think I was watching that show back in the night, early 90s and 80s DuckTales. Right and DuckTales. This guy, Scrooge McDuck, has this big vault full of just coins and money. And what does he love to do? He loves to go swimming in this pool of money. Now, you can't swim money. You can't I've tried it. No, I'm just kidding. I haven't tried it. I've not ever had that much money. But it's coins, and I can imagine that it's not very fluid, right? But that's, that's the that's the thing here, is it's not he's got all this storage, he's got all this wealth. And yet, instead of being generous with it, instead of helping someone in need, he just keeps it to himself and he goes, You know what? I don't know when the next rainy day is going to come. I don't know when I'm going to hit a hardship. So I'm just going to, instead of trusting God, the God who blessed this produce the the God who provided for me. Instead of trusting him, I gotta trust in myself, and I gotta hold on to it. And so I'm going to build bigger barns, or, if you want to, you want to equate it to today, I gotta go get another storage facility. I gotta put more stuff away that I can't use, right? Because it's put away in those storage facilities that I was talking about earlier, it would be, it would astound me how much stuff they could stuff into that stuff, right into those little buildings, those portable buildings, and just the fact that they were so much that is so far removed, that you don't even know what you have. I just think that to me, it's a ludicrous thing. One of the things Corey and I do every time we move, every time that we have moved, when we move from North Texas to North Carolina, North Carolina to Georgia, and then Georgia back to here, is we were pretty good about purging stuff. What do we not need? What has been sitting in the closet or sitting in the, you know, whatever, whatever it is that we're not using. How can we make this move easier? That was kind of the way we were looking at it. But the reality is, it's like when you start accumulating stuff, sometimes you forget how much stuff you have. Sometimes you just go, oh, man, you know what? I need a bigger house, because I need have too much stuff. So what do you do? You buy a bigger house, and then you put all that stuff in there, and then what happens? You keep accumulating stuff, and then that house is too small for all the stuff that you've got, right? Anyway? So this guy here is he sees this problem, and this problem is that he has this he needs a storage facility to store all of his stuff, and he just goes, Man, I don't want to be generous with this. I don't want to bless people. Instead, I want to hoard it all for myself. And if we're honest with ourselves, I know I've built this guy to be a pretty bad guy so far. But if we're honest with ourselves, don't we kind of encourage this in our culture, get stuff, build stuff, have stuff. This is, like I said earlier, the American dream. Retirement is the American dream. You know, retirement is not talked about a lot in the scriptures. In fact, I think this is one of the only times it is and it does not. It's not going well for this guy. It won't go well for him because he's selfish, he's self absorbed. He may have stuff, but he doesn't have the things that he needs. And this is where greed and comfort and complacency can take us. It can take us from generosity to selfishness, and take us from love of one another to to an inward Love of self. So we have to be careful. We have to be super careful that we're not this one. Why is Why is greed so enticing? I think back to the days when we were a nomadic society and we were hunters and gatherers, and we wanted to gather enough to feed our families. And greed is enticing, because the more we have, the less work we have to do. You. And if we don't work, then we can do what this guy says. He can eat, drink, be happy. That's really enticing to us, because, as I've said before, it's so much easier to do nothing than it is to do something. And when we think about that, that's really that philosophy is what's called hedonism. And hedonism is this, is that we the the greatest good is pleasure. And so at every cost, we're going to chase after pleasure. It it's not pleasurable to go to work. It's not pleasurable to do this stuff. So what we want to do is we want to work real hard for a short amount of time, and then we want to stuff it all in and we want to relax and enjoy ourselves for the rest of our lives. Now, what happens when we do that? We lose sight of God, because we have everything we need. I think that's part of where the country is for us, is that we are a very wealthy country. We have a lot of stuff at our disposal, and because of that, we become very lazy in our thinking. I think about the conversation I've been having with with our kids, and, you know, they want to have a job that makes a lot of money, that takes up a little bit of time, so that they can have free time the rest of the time, right? That's kind of the American dream, too. In fact, when I was in college, I guess it was I read this book called The Four Hour Work Week, and this guy, his name's Tim Ferriss. I'm not I'm not promoting him. I'm just telling you what he said. He says what you need to do is you need to have a job where all you have to work is four hours and you get paid an astronomical amount of money to live life and just be on vacation the rest of the time. But what we're missing is that God created us to work. God created us to do work, like in the garden there was work. I mean, if you started your Bible reading plan this week, you you read about God putting Adam and Eve in the garden. And what is he tell Adam, he says, to cultivate the land, right to dominate the land and to to to to be one who multiplies, and that's something that we, we were created to do. Now, work got harder after Adam and Eve decided that they wanted to not listen to God. But work was always built into our lives, and this laziness that comes as a result of this guy's hoarding is going to draw him further away from God. And instead of being a blessing, what it's going to be is a curse for this man. And what I mean by that is this verses 20 and 21 of this parable. So after this man has gathered up everything. After he has he has all these storehouses. He has spent his time, energy and effort building bigger barns to stuff all his stuff in it. Verse 20, we read this, but God said to him, you fool this very night, your life is demanded of you and the things you have prepared, whose will those be. That's how it is with the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. This man, though he had all the treasures of the world, though he was able to sit pretty in retirement, though he was able to do all this stuff, God comes to him and says, the one thing you don't have control over is your life. I think that that's sobering for us. Our life is only a breath away right us crossing over from this world into the next is simply that far away. And as much as we want to accumulate and we want to have and we want to chase after, the reality is, is that the author and the perfecter of all things holds not just our stuff in his hands, he holds our life in his hands. This man was a fool not because he was wealthy. This man was a fool because he did not fear God. He did not respect God. He was so caught up in the trappings of his own worldly possessions that he forgot who God was, as I said earlier, like it's not just possessions, the possessions really captivate our heart, but we can be greedy with more things than just possessions. We can be greedy with our talents. We can be greedy with our money, our knowledge. We can be greedy with our time. And so I want to encourage you, as we embark on this new year, as we embark on this the step forward towards this new New Year. I know there's nothing magical or mystical about New Years. We we tend to over hype it, but as we. Think about it. I just want us to sit back and reflect like, how am I living my life? Am I living my life like this foolish man who doesn't fear God? Yeah, maybe I come to church on Sunday, yeah? Maybe I read my Bible a little bit, yeah. Maybe I give a little bit of money and time and energy to the church. But am I living my life in a way that truly honors God? Am I? Am I living my life in a way that is rich towards God? Or am I playing a game with God, hoping that I can slip by and make make it into heaven without him knowing? Or am I really just like chasing after the things of this world, like, what? What captivates your heart, what captivates your soul? Is it your bank account? Is it the the money that you have? Is it the the next new thing, or is it God? Does God have your heart? How do we be wealthy towards God? How do we we be rich towards God and ignore the world? Now, one of the things I want to say real quick before I get there, is I want you to know that money is not evil, okay? Money is not wicked. Money is not evil. Can we just put that on the table? The heart makes it evil when we love money, right? So the the Scripture does not say that money is evil. It says, For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. So if you love money, if you love wealth, if you love riches, if you love things, that's the problem. Riches and things are not the issue. Okay, so I just want to lay that out on the table. So if you, if you have a lot of money, and you are not greedy with it, praise the Lord. I think about some of the people that I've known in my life, I've I've known some fairly wealthy people in my life, and I've known people on both sides of the coin, those who live for themselves and those who live for God. And let me tell you, the ones who live for God, who have an abundance of wealth, are generous, loving and more joyous people than the people who don't. So examine our hearts. Examine our souls, like, how are we incorporating this into our lives? How are we incorporating this into our daily habits? Because we never know when the Lord might demand of us our lives. That word demand is an interesting word, because what it means is, it means that what is required of you. It's like a loan, like God has loaned you your life, and he has come back to take it, take it. And so I just want us to think that everything that we have is a gift from God, whether we have much or whether we have little, everything we have is a gift from God. Our life is a gift from God. The very breath that we breathe is a gift from God, the eyesight that we have, the air conditioning, the homes, the the the cars, everything that we have is a gift from God, and we can either be wise with it, or we can be foolish with it. Are we using everything that God has given us to glorify Him, or are we using that stuff to glorify ourselves? So to answer the question, what does it mean to be rich toward God? What is this? We recognize that his glory is our highest goal and it is the greatest good. So everything that we do make sure that we are pushing forward towards glorifying God with our lives, with our work, with our homes, with our travel to and from sporting events, whatever it may be, whatever your life is, your highest goal is to make much of Jesus. We also recognize that our worship is our deepest joy, and it's not just a a singing of songs, but our life is an act of worship. Our our lives, how we live either shows that we worship God or it shows that we do not. We also know that fellowshipping with Jesus is our greatest satisfaction. Those songs that we sang earlier were were deliberately chosen. Is Christ enough for you? Is his grace enough for you? Or are you searching after other things? Because I will tell you that if you are, if Christ is not enough for you, then you do not understand the gospel of Jesus, Christ, you do not understand the depth of your sin. You do not understand the depth of your depravity and the graciousness that we have received from our Lord and Savior. Are you satisfied in Christ? Not only that, another way that we can be rich toward God is this by doing good works I know as as good Protestant Baptist, we don't like to talk about doing good works, but I will tell you that good works is a fruit of the Spirit, like in Ephesians, chapter two, verse 10, it tells us that we were called and we were saved to do good works. So are you doing good works? Are you living in light of the talents and the passions and the gifts that God has given you to do good in the world around you. Are you serving people in need? The biggest thing I want us to understand is the story began with this man yelling at Jesus, hey. Me, I need you to be to tell my brother to give me what's owed to me, to give me my inheritance. That's how it started. And then, as we work through this passage, and we think biblically and theologically, we understand that we have been given an inheritance because of Jesus, right, that the inheritance that we what we inherited through our sin was death, but what we have been given through the inheritance of the son is life. I just think that it's important for us to understand that that Christ's death and burial and and resurrection is good for us to continue to run back to so I pray this this year, as we think about our Christian life as we live our life following after Jesus, we will never forget the sacrifice of Jesus that provided for us an inheritance that isn't worldly, but that is eternal, that we look at the inheritance of Christ as one who we receive the goodness and the grace and the mercy of God, and we never forget about it, because if we do that, if we continue to run back to the gospel that we were sinners, that we were enemies of God, and through His grace and His mercy and His goodness, he saved us from the depth of our own sin and condemnation, and we realize that is by grace alone, through faith, alone, in Christ alone, that we have been saved, then it will be impossible, near impossible, for us to live a foolish life, because we will be living a life of gratefulness and gratitude for what Christ has done. So we continue to preach to ourselves the good news of the gospel of Jesus, Christ, never forgetting that he and him alone is the only way that we can have salvation. Him IN HIM ALONE is the only way that we can actually know no satisfaction. Him IN HIM ALONE is the only way that we can know that our lives are valuable in the eyes of God is through His sacrifice. So I just pray guys that as we think about the inheritance that we have received in Christ, that we do not lose focus of the eternal things and instead dwell on the the temporal things, have a cosmic view of this life. It's not just what's here in front of us. There's so much more to our life. There's so much more to our worth. There's so much more to our existence than just pennies and paychecks. Also want us to let us know, and this is the last thing that when we think about greed and when we think about covetousness, this is not just for the rich. I have been doting or I've been hitting hard on this wealthy man, but let me tell you, covetousness can touch the the poor as much as it can the rich. In fact, that proverb I was going to quote earlier, this is what it says. It says even a penny can blot out the sun if it's close enough to your eyes, even a penny so it doesn't matter how much money you have, if it's what you're focused on, then you'll lose sight of what's truly valuable. Now, speaking of the inheritance, I want to invite Lawrence and chuck to come up here. We're going to have the Lord's Supper this morning. Lord's Supper is a time for us to focus on and think about the beauty of Christ, His sacrifice on the cross, His death, His burial, his resurrection. And I think that this time will also just help us to refocus on what this year is about. You know, we talked, we talked about this last, this last month or so, that Jesus is the reason for the season, right when we talk about Christmas, and that's important to know. But I also want us to know that Jesus is the reason for every season, right? Jesus is the reason for every season, the reason that we have hope, the reason that we have life, the reason we have breath in our lungs is because of Jesus Christ. And so I'm going to pray, and then they're going to pass this out, and we'll we'll take it. If you've not taken the Lord's supper with us before, make sure you grab both cups. There are two cups stacked on top of each other, one for the juice and one for the bread. Let's pray, Father, we're so grateful for your love. We're grateful for your grace and Your mercy in our lives. Lord, we just pray that you would continue to work on our hearts, Lord, that You would continue to draw us closer to you, that we can see the own sinfulness and and selfishness in our lives, and that we can have that purified out of us, so that we can glorify You in everything that we Do. We pray all this in Jesus name, amen. You. Alright, I'm going to be reading out of Matthew chapter 16, or chapter 26 verse 26 through 30. And this is what it says. As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, Take and eat it. This is my body, the body of Christ, broken for you. Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink from it, all of you. For this is the blood of my covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. But I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now until the day I drink it new with you in My Father's Kingdom, the blood of Christ poured out for you. Then verse 30 says, and after singing a hymn, they went to the Mount of Olives. But we're just going to stand up and say.

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