The Rich Fool

- The Parable of the Rich Fool

13 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.”

He came to bring the good news of salvation.

And Jesus, of course, attracted people in huge crowds with His message and His miracles

The crowds are still huge. Verse 1 says there were many thousands.

But inside this crowd, inside these tens of thousands, inside this mass of curious rejecters there are still some who haven't made up their minds and they are described in verse 1 as disciples.

Everybody heard but they were the target of His message.

And if they are to know the truth and believe the truth and receive the gospel and salvation and eternal life, there are two things at the very outset that they have to avoid...two things that characterize their culture.

They are noted in the two uses of the word "beware."

· Go back to verse 1, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy." Beware of false religion. Beware of hypocritical religion. Remember Sunday we focused on this.

· Second beware you heard me read a moment ago, down in verse 15, "He said to them, 'Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed.'"

If you or anyone else wants to receive salvation, forgiveness, eternal life in heaven, there are two pervasive damning forces that must be avoided...Beware of hypocrisy and beware of greed.

Now you might look at those and say, "Well, those are two sort of randomly selected sins out of a long catalog of sins that perhaps Jesus is only using as illustrative of the greater all-encompassing list that He might have given.”

Rather, these are the two essential realms which exist.

There are only two realms which exist...

· One is the material realm and the other is the immaterial.

· One is the spiritual, the other is the physical.

· One is the natural, the other is the supernatural.

There are only those two realms. Hypocrisy relates to the spiritual realm and greed relates to the material world...both the material and the immaterial world threaten to damn eternal souls.

· You get into the wrong spiritual teaching and the wrong spiritual influence and your soul will be damned.

· If you get into the wrong physical influence, the wrong material influence, and your soul will be damned.

And Satan, is just as satisfied to seduce souls into hell by either religious deception or natural deception.

Hell would gladly welcome souls coming to them out of the religious world or out of the secular world.

You realize that we enjoy staggering material prosperity...staggering. Our lives are filled to overflowing with material things.

· We have so many possessions that they possess us.

· We are consumers being consumed by our consumption.

· We have stockpiles of possessions and the indebtedness incurred to acquire them...which some people will spend their lifetime attempting to pay off.

Just watch, the development of storage places by the almost infinite thousands. And I always wonder...what is in there that you don't need and can't get at easily? And how many people are still paying off the credit cards that bought the stuff that's in there?

The issue is not possessions; the issue is attitude toward them.

What you have in this life is only in this life.

If it is material, it belongs only to this life, therefore, folks, it has no real value. It has no enduring value.

In 1 Timothy chapter 6 Paul said something that I thought was interesting from this perspective. He says in verse 9, "Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction for the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a pang."

You want money, you want riches? You will lead yourself into temptation, traps, foolish, harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.

It produces all kinds of evil. It causes people to wander away from the faith

V. 13 "Someone in the crowd said to Him, 'Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.'"

He's talking about the greatest of all things, the most elevated truths of the Trinity. And some guy in the crowd blurts this out, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."

This guy's not hard to figure out.

He can't wait for the Lord to stop talking about heaven, salvation, God, forgiveness, revelation and get to the really good stuff. This guy wants to turn it into a financial seminar.

This is the materialist. No interest in the spiritual at all. He just can't wait for Jesus to get on his subject.

He doesn't care about the Son of Man confessing him before the angels of God.

He doesn't care about what he can't see. He doesn't care about heaven.

He's in to earth and he's not even embarrassed. And it's not a question, it's a command. "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."

Spiritual vs. Physical

You say, "Well whatever prompted this?"

He identifies Jesus as a rabbi and rabbis did this as a routine in their villages and their regions.

Rabbis were approached by people to bring the law to civil issues.

He probably pointed to his brother who had to be there. He feels like he's not getting what he deserves.

The man is a materialist. He's greedy. He's covetous.

He wants Jesus to tell his brother with some kind of authority because it was obvious Jesus had great power and authority to give him his money.

Verse 14, "He said to him, 'Man, who appointed Me a judge or arbitrator over you?'"

That is an unsympathetic response. "Man," that is not an endearing expression. That is like saying, "Mister." That's a term of distance.

That's a title used for a stranger. I don't know you, I don't know anything about you, and I have no relationship to you. Who appointed Me a judge or arbitrator over you?

The admonition... "He said to them...He nailed it, 'Beware,'" says to the whole crowd, "'Be on your guard against every form of greed.'"

He didn't have to point to the man and say, "Like that guy."

It was obvious. "Beware.”

And this is the caution that exposes the real issue, and the word (greed) basically means a desire for riches, grasping, extorting, scheming is included in this kind of thing.

This is as damning as false religion. This is the thirst for more, it's like drinking salt water, the more you drink, the thirstier you get.

, "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income."

People who worship money and who love money and who love abundance and love possessions are never satisfied when they get it.

· The sin is not in having more; the sin is being discontent.

· The sin is not in having wealth; the sin is in what you do with it.

· It's not the amount; it's the attitude.

And that's what the Scripture warns about. It warns about greed and covetousness and the lust for more so as to consume it on your own desires.

To define life as an acquisition of material possession is to commit the deadly sin of serving the creature rather than the Creator,

. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Rather than worship God you begin to worship the things that God has created.

That my friends is the root of our sin, we take the blessings of God and we turn them into a curse.

· Wealth

· Homes

· Jobs

· Relationships

· Sex

These things are not bad in and of themselves but we begin to worship them instead of God.

Beware of this, Jesus says. Back to verse 15, and here's why. “For one’s life does not consist in the abundance of one’s possessions.”

Not even when you have, and the word abundance means more than enough, more than sufficient. It could be excess. It could be surplus.

Even if you have more than enough, it still doesn't provide real life.

And he says, "Even when you have surplus and you have excess, that doesn't make really living, that doesn't take care of giving you real life."

I don’t have to quote statistics, or give you illustrations to make that come true to you all you have got to do is “pick-up” a Hollywood magazine.

Who in our culture has it all? Celebrities, Athletes, Musical Artists…

Who are some of the most messed up people you read about… Celebrities, Athletes, Musical Artists.

· Drugs

· Suicide

· Marital Affairs

In fact, the life He's referring to here is eternal life because that's the only kind of life that is fulfilling, satisfying, meaningful, purposeful, producing peace and joy and hope and blessing.

You're never going to get that real life from the material world...even if you have more than enough.

"You're going down the wrong path, man, you're going down the wrong path.

You're drinking salt water here. You're never going to have your thirst quenched because the life that you need, the life that satisfies, the life that fulfills, the life that is eternal and lasts forever is the life of God in your soul and it's not going to come through acquiring possessions."

Greed is idolatry. It's worshiping the creature, not the Creator...

Jesus said in , "I've come that they might have life...the real life...and have it more abundantly." He wants to give you the life that truly is abundant...and it's that eternal life. That's the warning.

Parable Look at the story. He told them a parable.

“The land of a rich man produced plentifully,

So He said the land of a certain rich man was very productive. Now that's good, no dishonesty here, no extortion, no crime, nothing. He just had a great crop.

He came to honest wealth.

And so verse 17, this man began reasoning to himself saying, "What shall I do since I have no place to store my crops?"

Well that's a good question, that's a reasonable one, isn't it?

He faces a dilemma about what to do with this massive harvest:

Oh he could build more storage, but if you build more storage he'd use more land and that would take up the land that he grows the crop on.

Maybe that's not the good way to go cause this is good productive land.

What am I going to do? Where am I going to put all this?

Now that begins to give you a little bit of a giveaway.

I could think of a lot of options at that point, but the one that he came up with in verse 18, he said, "This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods."

You know what strikes me about that? Two verses......I...I..I...I...my...my...my...my.

And here you get the insight into the materialist.

· Wouldn’t there be people who went out and pulled in the harvest and maybe you might say to those hard-working people, "I'll share some with them."

· And wouldn't there be an imaginary village with some widows and some orphans?

· And wouldn't there be an imaginary village with some poor people?

· And isn't there a temple and isn't there a synagogue?

· And isn't there the work of God and wouldn't He be up for consideration for some of this stuff?

I..I...I..I...I...my...my...my...my. What's wrong with this picture? No, he's a smart guy. He is crafty.

You say, "Well he could just sell it all and make some money." Nah, you don't want to do that, you flood the market with too much stuff and the price goes down. So what do you do?

You restrict Supply.

So you build bigger barns, higher ones so you don't take up any more of your fields and you store it all and then you let it out at whatever pace you want.

By the way, he didn't just store his grain there, he stored his goods there, "And my goods."

What's that? This is the only biblical storage unit I know of.

This guy's got a lot of other stuff he's storing up. He could have said:

"You know, God, You're the one who makes the rain fall, You're the one who makes the earth warm, You're the one that makes the seed to grow. I need to give back to You because I know I'm to love You with all my heart.

No, no, that here? And look at verse 19, "And I will say to my soul."

You want to know how much of a materialist this guy was? He lived alone and when he had a conversation it was with himself.

I mean, it would have been a little window into something good about this guy if he would have said, "I said to my wife...or I said to my family..."

"I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come, take your ease, eat drink and be merry,'"

You're set for life, man, you are set for life, leisure.

All you have to do is control the spout at the bottom of the silo and let out only as much as you want and control the price and you are fixed.

Take your ease. It means retire. Eat, drink and be merry, blatant Hedonism...eat, drink, party. That's it, just eat, drink and party.

The materialist motto, you only go around once, so grab all the you can get.

What's this guy in the crowd thinking?

My guess is he's salivating about the fact that he would like to be that man. That's why he asked the question. But he wasn't alone.

The problem with this man in the story is he forgot three things...God, others and his own mortality.

Whew...those are bad things to miss.

And then comes the surprise which is so common to Jesus' stories, verse 20, "But God said to him, 'You fool,'"

Aphron- you mindless, ignorant, destitute of knowledge and truth, you fool, "This very night your soul is required of you and now who will own what you have prepared?"

Oh the materialist's worst nightmare. Somebody else gets it all.

"This night your soul is required of you”

How foolish to make all your grandiose plans, forget God, forget others, forget your own mortality.

James says, "Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we'll go such and such a city and spend a year there, engage in business, make a profit. You don't know what your life will be like tomorrow, you're just a vapor that appears a little while then vanishes away like steam off coffee." Whew... You ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we'll live and do this or that."

You ought to say, "If the Lord wills." And then if you're going to say "if the Lord wills," you better be careful to know that you're right with the Lord. He says, Jesus in the story to the imaginary man,

"God said tonight this very night your soul is required of you and now who will own what you have prepared?" And the application of the story, the final point in verse 21, "So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.”

If you are more worried about the riches of this life then the riches of heaven then you are a fool!

If I am more worried about my riches on this earth then in heaven then I am a fool!

You never saw a hearse pulling a U-Haul. You can't take it with you, it doesn't go.

And if you haven't sent it on ahead somehow, you're a fool.

If you haven't used what God does give you for His glory and for the benefit of others, you're a fool.

Truth is there are lots of ‘foolish’ people, even inside of our church’s.

If you give it to God, it will be there to welcome you. If you've invested in His Kingdom, Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroys and thieves break in and still, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where you treasure is there your heart will be also.”

Where are you investing? No, this is not about money--- It’s your life!