The Parable of the Rich Fool

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Luke chapter 12 this morning. Luke chapter 12. You know, several decades ago in China, Chairman Mao came up with a brilliant idea because he wanted to, I say brilliant sarcastically by the way, he wanted to increase the agricultural output of the Chinese people.

He wanted to make sure that they could produce more food, not only to feed themselves but to export the food. And so the Chinese leadership came up with what they called the Four Pests Campaign. They were going to get rid of four pests that they said were destroying agriculture or making agriculture a whole lot harder.

Those four pests were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. I’m totally on board with getting rid of rats and getting rid of flies and getting rid of mosquitoes. But apparently the sparrows would eat some of the kernels of grain as they would fall to the ground.

They’d eat some of the seed. We know that birds eat seeds. And so they would eat some of these, and the Chinese government thought these are a threat to our agricultural production.

They’re eating the seeds. We need to get rid of them. And so they encouraged and induced the people to get rid of the sparrows.

And people would go out to the countryside. They would shoot the sparrows with guns if they had them. They’d shoot them down out of the trees with slingshots.

I’ve seen video where villagers who didn’t have any weapons would go out with pots and pans, and they would bang them to scare the sparrows out of the trees. And I’ve heard some people interviewed say that they never actually killed the sparrows. They just made them too afraid to land where they would fall dead out of the sky out of exhaustion.

And you can go back and see in the videos and in the photos these massive piles of dead sparrows. They would just pile them up at the edge of every village. And before long, there were no sparrows.

they didn’t think it through because you know what sparrows eat they not only the seeds they also eat locusts and so when there are no more sparrows there’s nobody there to eat the locusts and keep them in check and you don’t have to be an expert in environmental science to know what happened next when you’ve got tons of locusts the next year there’s even less food output there are even fewer crops than they would have had if they just kept the sparrows. Somebody didn’t think that through. Somebody just had an idea and recklessly pushed it through, and millions of people starved in part because of this poor pest campaign.

A somewhat funnier and also more horrifying story is that years before that, when the British were in charge of India, the British officials around Delhi got concerned about the number of cobras that were in the area. Now, I can understand that. If there’s even one in your city, you’ve got too many cobras.

And so they wanted to get rid of the cobras, and they decided to put a bounty on each cobra. For every dead cobra you brought them, you’d get paid so much money. They thought, okay, this is a great idea.

It’ll get rid of all the cobras. They didn’t think it through. They were really reckless in pushing this plan through because they didn’t factor in human greed.

And people started breeding the cobras so that they would have more cobras to kill and turn into the government to make more money. Well, eventually, the British government got wise to this and said, okay, new plan, no more bounty for the cobras. Yeah, they didn’t think that through either because then people just released the cobras.

If they weren’t going to gain them any money, why take care of them until you’re ready to kill them? Just set them loose. And they ended up with more cobras.

I was going to say running loose in the dilly, but they don’t run, they slither, and they just are evil. Sometimes we make plans, and we don’t think it through very well, right? Anybody else guilty of that, or is it just me?

Okay, just me. That’s not true. We all do it.

We all make plans, and we don’t think through everything that we’re supposed to think through. Sometimes we can, no matter how hard we try to plan everything out, We can sometimes be reckless in our planning. And Jesus told the story of a man who was reckless.

The Bible uses the word fool. And that’s not a bad word to use. I just want you to understand that when the Bible uses the word fool, it’s not talking in the sense that we use the word like you’re an idiot.

The word fool, in their understanding, meant somebody who was reckless. It meant somebody who is not considering everything they’re supposed to do. They’re just jumping ahead.

And I’ve seen where Christians will use the word, where the book of Psalms says, the fool has said in his heart, there’s no God. And I’ve seen where some well-meaning Christians will say, well, see, the Bible says atheists are fools, as atheists are idiots. Now, there are some atheists out there who are smarter than I’ll ever think about being.

But that’s not what the Bible’s saying. The Bible’s not saying, oh, you don’t believe in God, you’re an idiot. The Bible in that verse is talking about you are living your life as though there’s no God.

It has nothing to do necessarily with atheists. it’s saying to the people who live as though there’s no God you’re not thinking this through you’re being reckless you’re being reckless in the way you live and Jesus deals with this story of what the Bible calls a rich fool and it starts out with two people in verse 13 of Luke chapter 12 who come to Jesus with a dispute and it says and one of the company said unto him master speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me somebody has just died so while they should be worried about their family. They should be thinking about their loved one who’s just passed.

It’s not really a time to be fighting over money. That’s exactly what they’re doing. So at a time where they should be thinking about life and mortality, they’re just thinking about the things that last here and now.

He said, convince my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Verse 14, and he said unto him, man, who made me a judge or a divider over you? So Jesus is saying, who put me in charge of you?

Now, let me answer that question for you just real briefly and clearly, if I may. Jesus put himself in charge over us, okay? He is in charge of us just by virtue of who he is.

So Jesus is not, by asking that question, saying, I’m not in charge of you. It’s a question to see if they’ll acknowledge who he is, if they’ll acknowledge where his authority comes from. Jesus is like a really good attorney in the New Testament, in the gospel accounts.

He’s like a really good attorney. He never asks a question that he doesn’t already know the answer to. And so he says, who put me in charge of you?

Jesus knows he’s in charge, but he wants to see what they’re going to say. He wants them to admit it. Apparently, they don’t say anything because he says to them, verse 15, Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

He said, you need to beware of being greedy and being so concerned about the inheritance. He said, because there is more to life than just what you possess. And we all know that.

We all know that there’s more to life than just our stuff. I hope that when I die, and hopefully many years from now, but who knows, I hope that when I die, there’s more that’s left behind to my children than just a pile of books and ties and stuff. That’s most of what they’ll get in their inheritance.

It’s going to be books and ties. That’s most of what I have. But I hope there’s more left to them than just stuff.

I hope that there’s more to show for my life than just a pile of stuff. And so he says there’s more than just your possessions. And then he begins to tell the story of the rich fool.

And my reason for talking about this story this morning is because of where we are in the calendar. Now, objectively, there’s no reason why this time of year is any different than any other time of year. It’s all arbitrary where they got together and decided the calendar for the year begins January 1st. We could easily have, is it the fall the Jewish calendar starts over?

Is it Rosh Hashanah? I forget the way the calendar works. We could have Chinese New Year.

Other countries, other cultures start the year at different places. This is just where we’ve started ours. But being here at the end of one year today, and tomorrow will be another one, is naturally a time where we start thinking about time.

We start thinking about life. We start thinking about what we’ve done in the previous year. We start thinking about what should we do differently or do better in the coming year.

And we start making plans. There’s nothing wrong with making plans. There’s nothing at all wrong with taking stock of our lives.

As a matter of fact, I think it’s something the Bible encourages for us to stop and slow down every once in a while and take stock of where we are. But what would be foolish is for us to stop and take stock of where we are and look at what we’ve done and look at what we could do and start making plans for what we’re going to do, what we’re going to do differently and what we’re going to do better without ever considering what God has to say. If we just charge right ahead in our plans, it’s pretty reckless.

Because I’ll tell you what, I get all sorts of ideas that sound good when they come to me. And if I just charged ahead with every idea that popped into my head, my family would be in disarray, my finances would be in disarray, this church would probably be in disarray. Because not every idea that pops into my head is something I need to charge forward with.

There are some things that God says, yeah, that’s good, but that’s not the best thing you could do. There are some things that God would say, you need to wait on that, that you do need to do that, but not now. There are other things that God says, I don’t think so.

And it would be foolish of us at any point in our lives, at any point in our lives, to make all of our plans and plan everything out and never consider what God says. And I think that’s especially important for us to remember as we are at this point where we naturally consider our time and our lives and what we’re going to do in 2018. And so he tells this story of the rich fool.

He spake a parable unto them saying, this is verse 16, the ground of a certain man brought forth plentifully. And he thought within himself saying, what shall I do? Because I have no room where to bestow my fruits.

So this word ground, it says the ground of a certain man brought forth plentifully. It’s not just talking about he had a little garden plot. That word could easily be translated country.

This man owned a whole lot of land. Is this a real person Jesus is talking about? I don’t know.

Is it a story that Jesus made up to illustrate a point? I don’t know. It could easily be one or the other.

But he says, the ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. This man that he’s talking about owned a whole lot of land, and it apparently was really good land because everything he planted, everything he grew, just came up a bumper crop. And some of you will have bumper crops of stuff if you grow things.

I have planted tomatoes and I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a tomato that I’ve grown. This year is the only time I’ve ever had any that I could actually harvest. I’m not good at growing tomatoes. I’m okay at growing squash.

Cucumbers, I’m convinced I could plant cucumbers in the middle of the Sahara Desert and come up with a bumper crop. I just seem to have the touch when it comes to, once we say this and next year I won’t have any. But in past experience, I just seem to have a magic touch when it comes to cucumbers.

And we had more than we could give away to people this year. This man had that experience with everything he touched. All of his land just brought forth in abundance.

He had so much overflow, he didn’t know what to do with it. And he said, what shall I do? Because I have no room where to bestow my fruits.

This is a first world problem if ever there was one. Oh no, what am I going to do? I have too much stuff, right?

And that seems to us to be such a problem. That’s why the storage industry is such a big deal. Oh no, I have too much stuff. What am I going to do with it?

There are people in lots of countries that don’t ever have to face that problem. Aren’t they lucky? Not really.

But he had this problem. He had too much stuff. What am I going to do with it?

He never stops to think about what would God have me to do with it? He never stops to think about what good could I do with this. He never stops to think about the people who don’t have enough stuff.

And I’m not suggesting socialism here. I’m suggesting charity that he looks at his abundance and says, wow, God has really blessed me. Who can I in turn bless who doesn’t have anything?

He never stops and thinks about that. He says, oh, no, what am I going to do? I have too much stuff and not enough places to put it.

And then he comes up with this brilliant idea in verse 18. And he said, this will I do. This is ridiculous.

This will I do. I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and goods. He said, I’ve got these barns, plural, where I’m already storing stuff, and they’re full.

So you know what I’ll do? I’ll tear them down, and I’ll build bigger barns. Okay.

That just doesn’t make economic sense to me, right? Does it to anybody else? Take your big barn that you’re going to build and build it behind the other ones or next to the other ones or across the street from the.

. . Why do you have to tear down the little ones first?

It didn’t matter. For whatever reason, he had it in his mind. I want the big one and I want it right there.

I’m going to tear these down. To me, that seems wasteful. I’m going to tear these barns down and I’m going to build a bigger one in their place.

And then I’ll put my fruits and goods there. I’ll build greater in there while I bestow all my fruits and goods. So again, still not thinking about what does God want me to do, still not thinking about what good can I do with what God has blessed me with.

He’s thinking about I could just tear this down. I could waste what I’ve already got. I can build something bigger and then I can fill that up.

And by the way, the way his land is producing, he’s going to be back in the same boat eventually, and he’s going to have this big barn that is full, and he’s going to have to tear that one down and build an even bigger one. He’s got plans. He’s got big plans when he gets finished with this big barn.

Verse 19, and I will say to my soul, soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years. Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. Now the first few times I’ve read this passage, it sounds to me like he’s saying, you’ve worked hard for a lot of years, when he says, thou hast goods, thou hast goods laid up for many years.

You’ve worked for many years to lay up these goods, eat, drink, and be merry. The more I get into this, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. And I don’t think the Bible teaches us that there’s something wrong with working hard and preparing for the future.

I think the Bible encourages us to think ahead, to plan for the future, to be good stewards of what God has given us. What he’s saying here, remember, he’s in plan-making mode. And what he’s saying here is that you have goods laid up for many years.

He’s saying you have enough stuff to last you for years. I have enough stuff to last me for years. I’m just going to, after I get these barns built, I’m just going to lay back and kick my feet up and have a little drink with an umbrella in it.

I’m just going to enjoy my time. Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. It says it’s just smooth sailing from here.

He’s got everything all planned out. And again, don’t mistake my point here or the Bible’s point. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with planning.

It’s reckless planning that leaves God out of the equation where there’s a problem. So he says, I’m going to eat, drink, and be merry. I’m going to take my ease.

And verse 20 says, but God said unto him, thou fool. You fool. Remember, God’s not calling him an idiot.

God’s calling him a reckless person. He says, thou fool. This night thy soul shall be required of thee.

In other words, tonight you’re going to die. Now, is this a punishment for him being rich? Or is this a punishment for the barns?

Is this a punishment for any of his behavior? I don’t think so. I think the Bible would have said that more clearly.

What we do know is that the Bible says it’s appointed unto man once to die. there’s an expiration date on each of us and we don’t know when it is it just so happened that while this man is thinking to himself I’m going to plan for all these years to come and I’ve got all this great time god knows his expiration date that is planned long ago is coming up and god says you’ve made all these plans and you haven’t thought at all about eternity you haven’t thought at all about what I wanted or what I would do he said and you and he’s saying you don’t you didn’t even think that the end might come. So it says, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, then who shall those things be which thou has provided?

So this man had spent his entire life focused on his plans and his stuff. This is not just a message this morning about stuff, okay? This man had spent his life focused on what he was doing and what he was building, and not considering that eventually there was going to come a time that his life would end and he would stand before God with nothing in hand to show God for his life on earth and all that he had built, all that he had worked so hard for was going to belong to somebody else anyway.

And verse 21 says, so is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. He’s saying it was foolish for this man to make all of his plans in pursuit of what he wanted and spent his whole life in the pursuit of stuff and what he could build and never give a second thought to God. And now he’s come to the end of his life and everything that he’s done amounts to nothing.

It’s just stuff that’s going to line somebody else’s pocket. Now again, this is not a message or a Bible passage condemning the making of plans. Jesus also said that nobody sets out to build a tower without first making plans.

Nobody sets out to do something without counting the cost. Okay, the Bible very clearly teaches us to plan ahead, to be good stewards of the time that God’s given us, to be good stewards of the wealth that God has given us. It’s also not saying that he was evil because he was rich. The Bible doesn’t teach that money is the root of all evil.

It teaches that the love of money is the root of all evil. What we’re looking at here is somebody who was so wrapped up in his plans that he didn’t even consider God’s. And it made him reckless.

It made him plan for things that weren’t ever going to happen. It made him squander his time and his resources on things that didn’t really matter. And I want us to think about that as we go into a new year.

Not necessarily, this is, by the way, this is not a, this is not also, this is also not a message about you need to do with less money, give us your money. Okay, that’s not what this is about. God has taken care of us this year, and last I heard, we are on track to exceed our missions, goals this year, and God has just taken care of us.

So this is not about, hey, give the church your money, you need less. This is about what God blesses us with in the new year, whether it’s our money, but especially our time, our talents, any resource that God gives us. Am I going to use what God has blessed me with for my own reckless plans that I just rush ahead, or am I going to consider what He wants?

Am I going to consider eternity? and the first thing that we need to know this morning from this fool is that he made his plans without considering God. I’ve already said that, but it bears repeating.

The fool made his plans without considering God. When he realized there was the problem of all this surplus that he had, it wasn’t, again, what would God have me to do? Or what can I do to bless God’s people?

What can I do to be a blessing to others the way God has blessed me? It was, he thought, within himself. He just consulted himself.

Some of my worst ideas are when I just consult myself. That’s why when I have a really good idea, it sounds really good to me, I run it by charlotte. And if she doesn’t tell me, yeah, you’re an idiot, I’ll usually move forward a little bit with it.

But she’ll tell me when it, maybe you want to back off on that one. He didn’t do that. He just thought within himself.

And all my ideas sound brilliant to me. Anybody else in the same boat? It always sounds brilliant until you talk to somebody else about it.

He just consulted himself. It says he thought within himself, and he thought, what shall I do? What do I want to do?

And when he came up with a solution in verse 18, this will I do. It’s all about asking himself the question and answering his own question. He never once stopped to consider, what would God have me do?

He only was concerned about what he wanted, not realizing that God was going to tell him, you know, tonight your party’s over. And folks, moving into the new year, as we start to think about 2018 and we start to think about what we might do differently this year, the worst thing we can do, the worst thing I can do in my life, is make my plans without considering God’s plans. The worst thing you can do in your life is to make your plans without considering God’s plans.

The worst thing we can do as a community, as a church, as a nation, is to make our plans without considering God. although that’s often what we do. Second of all, another problem with the fool is that he wasted what God had entrusted to him.

He wasted what God had entrusted to him. He said, this will I do, I’ll pull down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and all my goods. God had blessed him abundantly, okay, where everything was just prospering for him.

And yet he was going to take those barns that weren’t free. They required labor. They required materials.

They required upkeep. And yet God had blessed him with those to keep the other stuff that God had blessed him with. And he was going to take those and he was just going to waste them.

And it’s tragic when we take what God has blessed us with and we waste it. I know of a particular person, nobody in this church and nobody y’all know, so. But I know of a particular person in their 70s in perfect health, in perfect health, on fewer prescriptions than I am, which all mine are for allergies, but on exactly zero prescriptions in their 70s.

No health problems, no anything, but who has just reached the point of just laying around waiting to die. And granted, there are some reasons for this. I mean, there are some circumstances that have kind of knocked them around a little bit.

and I look at this person and I think I wish and I hope that at their age I am in half as good a condition as they are and and and what could be what this person could accomplish if they just wouldn’t give up and then I I see people around us some in our congregation some in our community some in our families who are in their 70s or 80s or even younger and have all sorts of health problems and only wish that they could accomplish things if only they could Whether that’s accomplished things in the Lord’s service, whether that’s just get out and go places on their own. Wish that they could do things, but can’t. And I think of the days that are being squandered.

The health that God has blessed this friend with that’s being squandered. And I think what a tragedy that is. Folks, we all have things that God has blessed us with.

Maybe you’re blessed with excellent health. Maybe you’re blessed with free time. Maybe you’re blessed with resources.

Maybe you’re blessed with some ability that God has given you to make a difference for the kingdom. Don’t waste what he’s given you while you have a limited time to make use of it. Don’t tear down the barns just because there are bigger barns out there.

It’s reckless and it’s foolish to waste what God has already entrusted to us. And third of all this morning, the fool attached himself to things that would not last. He attached himself to things that would not last. There’s never a question in here of eternity. There’s never a question of the kingdom.

There’s never a question of bearing fruit in the Lord’s service. It’s all about the stuff. And we can attach ourselves to things that don’t last. That may be stuff.

That may be circumstances. It can be any number of things. When you get right down to it, there’s not that much in the world that lasts.

And I think I’ve given the example before of my truck. I love my truck. I should love my truck.

It got me home from New Mexico. And it cost me enough. I love my truck.

But it’s already almost 20 years old. Yeah, it’s a 2000, well, I guess it’s 18 years old. Yeah, it’s already 18 years old.

In 40 years, if it’s still around, it might be a collector’s item. In 100 years, if the world’s still here, it’s probably going to be in a junk pile somewhere. And that truck that I love, and that I paid so much money for, And then I practically kissed its tires when we hit the road out of Amarillo trying to get home.

That truck that I love so much is going to be in somebody’s junk pile. It’s not going to last. What we treasure today, if it’s not made for eternity, isn’t going to last. And yet we spend, I do this too, we spend most of our time chasing after things that aren’t going to last anyway. That’s what he did.

He could have been making a difference in people’s lives. He could have been serving the Lord. Instead, he was storing up produce that was going to rot in barns that eventually were going to fall apart.

And he was looking forward to experiences that might be fun in the moment, but eventually they’re going to be gone. And the amount of time that he spent in leisure wasn’t going to matter in eternity. Folks, we’ve got to be careful not to do the same thing.

We’ve got to be careful to attach ourselves to things that are going to last. And when I say attach, I mean to grow an attachment to things that are going to last. to concern ourselves with things that are going to last, to care more than anything about things that are going to last, things that matter in eternity. And the fool, just like in this story that Jesus told, didn’t think about everything. He didn’t consider all the aspects of his plans.

He didn’t consider what God wanted. He just forged right ahead recklessly. And he considered only the things of the here and now, only the things that he could see and taste and touch and never considered their implications for eternity.

Folks, that’s a great tragedy. It’s a great tragedy when we try to make our plans without considering God. It’s a great tragedy when we try to build our lives on things that aren’t going to last and we waste what he’s given us in the first place.

That’s why the Bible tells us in Psalm chapter 90, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. When we start out realizing that our time is finite, it changes our perspective on everything. And if we can remember every day that what God has given us, whether it’s time, whether it’s material blessings, whatever it is, that God has blessed us with these things and that they’re finite and that life is finite and eventually comes eternity, and that’s what really matters, it will change our perspective and give us more wisdom in how we order things that we do here and now in his service.

And the opposite is just reckless and foolish and wasteful. And that’s why the Bible says the fool had said in his heart, there’s no God. They’re corrupt.

They’ve done abominable works. There’s none that doeth good. Again, that’s talking about those who would live like there’s no God.

It’s not necessarily talking about atheists as we know the term today, but people who just don’t care, people who never consider eternity. The Bible says that’s reckless. Folks, the worst thing that we could do, I feel like I’ve said that several times this morning, the worst thing we could do, apparently there are several worst things that we can do, but this really is it, is to go into eternity never having considered eternity.

And yes, that means that we should consider our service to God and we should work toward things that really matter. But the best thing, the only thing that really matters to prepare ourselves for eternity is where we stand with God in the first place. See, we can try to serve God.

We can try to do things that make God happy. But if we’re not in a relationship with God, we go off into eternity apart from him and none of it matters anyway. See, we’ve all sinned against a holy God, and we all deserve death and separation from him because of that.

And so the Bible is very clear that when we die, when we die separated from God, we spend eternity apart from him in hell. And God could have looked at us and said, you know what, enjoy it. You lived your life that way, enjoy.

But he doesn’t do that. God loves us, not because we’re lovable, but because he’s loving. That’s his nature.

And so he loves us and he loved us enough to send Jesus Christ to take our punishment. See, I could not ever work off the debt of sin. You couldn’t either.

We couldn’t pay for the sin that we committed. We couldn’t do enough good to earn our forgiveness. And so God in his infinite love sent Jesus Christ to stand in our place and to take our punishment, shedding his blood and dying on the cross.

And this morning, because of what Jesus Christ did, God offers forgiveness and eternal life. It will simply believe that Jesus Christ died in our place as the one and only, all-sufficient sacrifice for sin. He was able to pay for it all, and that he’s the only way.

Believe that he died as that sacrifice. Believe that God raised him from the dead and asked God’s forgiveness because of what Jesus Christ did. And many people throughout our world will hear that message and say, No, not today.

I don’t have time for that. Folks, we’re moving re