The Rich Fool

You and I can live terribly foolish lives that look perfectly normal, reasonable, even wise to the world around us. Instead, we need to pursue lives that are rich toward God.

[00:00:00] Well, let’s begin this morning by talking about foolishness. Biblical foolishness. According to the Bible what is a fool? Does it mean to be unintelligent? Is that what being a fool is? Famous atheist curmudgeon Richard Dawkins took issue with the first line of Psalm 14 that reads, the fool says in his heart there is no God. He had trouble with that word fool being attached to atheism. And he argued that his hero, British philosopher Bertrand Russell, a public atheist himself, could never be called a fool because he was he was so smart and accomplished. But biblical foolishness has nothing to do with how much knowledge you have, or even how much you accomplish with it. The greatest philosophers in the world can be fools according to the Bible’s definition. The greatest minds in every field could be right at the top of every field of thought and be fools. Business people, really, really smart business people who make lots of money can be fools. Remember that one. The medical community, the people right at the very top. I realize where I am saying this. The people right at the top could be foolish. Every field. Law we’ve already seen it with with the scribes in Luke. Every field of human thought can have fools right at the top. Foolishness is not a lack of intelligence. Is a fool then someone who just makes bad decisions? Maybe it’s somebody who knows a lot, but has no common sense and so is constantly in trouble. This is how we generally use the word fool, you and I. This is how we use it in English, generally speaking, we see it as the opposite of making wise choices. This is also not the biblical definition of foolishness, although sometimes the results are similar. So if you use bad judgment, if you make poor decisions and end up in terrible predicaments, you’re experiencing the results of biblical foolishness. But that’s a little short of what the Bible calls a fool. Because here’s the thing you can make foolish decisions that seem to have great results in this world. They could seem to have really great results. You can do things that seem very wise from the perspective of a fallen world, and actually be doing something that, according to Scripture, is foolishness. We’re going to look at an example of this today. We’re going to look very closely at an example of that. You can also do things that seem very foolish to worldly values, that are very wise according to the values of the kingdom of God. This is why, for instance, Christians can love their Enemies or take the gospel to dangerous places. Places where where you may lose your life for sharing the gospel. You can give generously to other people until it hurts you. You can give your life to the service of other people. Someone might say, why would you do that? What a foolish way to waste your life. And to that very same thing God would say, well done, good job. A fool can’t then be identified simply by the outcome of what they do. So then what is a fool according to the Bible? If it’s not a lack of knowledge or a lack of common sense, what is it? Well, a fool, according to Scripture, is someone who thinks and acts without regard for God, God’s Word, or God’s glory. That’s a fool in the Bible. Foolishness is the attempt to live a life, a successful life, without learning and heeding God’s design for his creation and his promises, his salvation, and the eternal destinies that he has revealed to us. It’s to take what was meant to be a Christ centered life that you were given by God with every thought and every action that you have rotating around the central axis, which is Jesus himself, all of it oriented around Christ. To take that life and to make it into an idol centered life with all of your thoughts and all of your actions oriented around something else. That’s why Psalm 14 begins, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. A fool is one who removes the Lord from the controlling center of his life, and then tries to live successfully.

[00:04:48] He can’t. You can’t. By design you can’t live successfully that way. You can still do things, but they will not be for the intended purpose. See, Paul says to Christians in first Corinthians 10, whether you eat or drink or whatever it is that you do, do it all for the glory of God. So God’s glory is the purpose that’s supposed to be behind everything that we do. So saying that there is no God tips over the first domino of foolishness. See, no God, no sin, no sin, no need for salvation, no salvation, no way to glorify God with what you do. That’s why Paul says in Romans 1 he explains that humanity rejected God, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. It’s important to understand this definition of foolishness, to grasp what Jesus says to us today in Luke chapter 12. Because he is going to paint a scenario that, by the standards of our culture, actually sounds pretty wise. It makes a lot of sense. What the hypothetical guy does in Jesus parable is going to sound reasonable to us. But it’s foolish. It’s a foolish way to live. And as we’ll see, the reason it’s foolish is that this man does not have a plan for his life that has the glory of God and eternity with the Lord as its central purpose. See you and I can live terribly foolish lives that look perfectly normal and reasonable, even wise to the world around us.  But instead of that, we need to pursue lives that are rich toward God. So we’re in Luke chapter 12. We’re going to begin in verse 13 today. This Jesus is teaching a crowd and someone is going to shout a request from the crowd. Okay, you’re going to request something from him, and Jesus is going to use that shout to get past the request itself, down to the heart of the matter, as he often does, and he’s going to expose a type of foolishness that’s pretty common today. Pretty common right here in our society. So here’s what happened. Someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? I like this little exchange with Jesus. It sort of warms my heart because here’s a guy trying to give Jesus a job, and Jesus just says, hey, that’s not really my area. It makes me feel better about saying no to things actually, I like that. But the request is not without precedent. Here’s what’s going on. The Mosaic Law does give instructions for how to divide up inheritances. And a Jewish man’s rabbi, his teacher, would be someone who could interpret the law. He could help arbitrate a solution. He could help this man with some direction. That’s not unheard of. However, that’s the Pharisees and lawyers take on God’s law, too. That’s what they’re doing with it. And I find it interesting that this request is asking Jesus to do what the scribes do, because Jesus has been very critical of those guys up to this point in his ministry, even though they’re focused on keeping the law. See, their hearts have not been changed by God’s word, by God’s law. Could that be why this man is shouting his request to Jesus? Could he be trying to turn Jesus into just another law keeper without addressing the heart issue. Does he just want Jesus to be his interpreter for God’s law so that he can get all the rules right? Well, based on what Jesus says next, I think that’s exactly what’s happening here. But before we look at that further teaching from Jesus, I think it’s worth considering how people do this with Jesus today.

Now, I going to be very brief here, because this is not the point that Jesus is making, but it is an implication of this passage. There are some who’s only interest in Jesus, right? The only interest they have in Jesus or Christianity or the Bible is how they can use it to win an argument they want to win or to get a thing that they want. Okay. That’s their interest. How can I use Christianity to get the thing that I want? How can I get Jesus to give me the thing I want? How can I use the Bible to win this argument that I want to win? I saw a dramatic example of this very recently.[00:09:48] Perhaps you did as well. Apparently President Trump attended some progressive religious service where there were critical comments made about him in the sermon about his policies. And then President Trump fired back, as he does. It was a very typical week for us, right? And that exchange took place. Now, I don’t know what was said. I’d rather be smacked in the head with a ball peen hammer than spend any time trying to sort out what was going on in that particular exchange. But what I did notice was when the president made his comments about the sermon, suddenly, every non-Christian in my life had a Bible verse or two ripped out of context to share with the world. Everybody seemingly everybody had something that they wanted to say. People with no interest in Christ in any other area of life suddenly became Bible scholars, or probably more likely just very good at googling. Right. And I thought, where was all this fervor before? Where was all this fervor for Scripture and the plain application of God’s Word before? And why is it only on these things in God’s Word that we’re going to focus? Why is it only that is what’s applicable? And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t let Scripture speak on that political issue, whatever it was or any other.

[00:11:15] But the Bible is not a tool to win an argument. It’s not what it is. And Jesus is not a political pawn to be used whenever he’s necessary to win that argument and discard it when he’s not. That’s not who Jesus is either. I’m pretty cautious when people come and they ask my help in finding an answer in the Bible, because there are two very different ways you can do that. Two very, very different ways you ways you can approach the scriptures. You can have a heart, love for the Lord that searches the scriptures to know how Jesus your King would have you live. How do I live under this, in this kingdom, under what Paul calls the law of Christ? How do I live that way? That’s one way you can approach him. Another way is you can go there trying to win God onto your side, to try to get God to back you up, using him as a means to your end. And if we’re only interested in Christ when we see a reason for him or something to be gained by appealing to him, then that’s an indication that there’s a problem in our hearts. There’s something wrong going on inside of us. And that’s exactly how Jesus responds to this request. [00:12:30] 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. I want you to notice how surgical that comment is. He just said to the man, I am not your arbitrator. I am not your judge. Don’t use me to sort through your problems. But let me ask you something. Doesn’t Jesus care about our problems? Isn’t that something that he cares about? These inheritance situations can be pretty difficult if you’ve ever been in one. If you’ve ever been in a situation like this, you know that these can be pretty sticky things. There’s no question that there is a way to handle matters like that from a Christ centered perspective. And I don’t know how you can get more Christ centered than asking Christ himself for help in the issue that you’ve got going on, which is what this man did. But Jesus responds, I’m not here to sort this out for you. That’s not my job. You know, that seems rather unloving first, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it strike you that way? But then he turns to the crowd and it becomes clear that he is going to address the problem. The problem just isn’t what the man in the crowd thought it was. Be on your guard against all covetousness. That’s the problem. There’s the problem. The problem is covetousness. This is not a a math problem for who gets how much of the inheritance.

[00:14:04] This is a heart problem. See, to covet is to desire stuff that other people have. It’s sort of like you bring envy and greed together to produce covetousness. It’s a hunger for more and more stuff that is driven in part by the desire to rise above the people around you. And to that definition, Jesus adds another slightly nuanced layer to what he’s talking about, to the problem he’s addressing. See, he says, Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. So this coveting and greed that he’s describing is to gain riches that have become for this man, the goal of his life. He’s after these things because they are the most important thing to him. These possessions have become the center around which everything else in life for this man is ordered. Do you see how surgical that comment is? It cuts right to the real problem that’s behind the presented problem. This guy thought he had a money issue, but he’s actually got a coveting issue. This guy thinks the problem is that his brother won’t share the inheritance with him. But the real problem is that this guy is in love with riches. Wealth has become the defining center of his life. Now, you and I, we couldn’t do this if we heard this request we couldn’t know that that was what was driving him unless we asked a whole bunch more questions. [00:15:33] But Jesus knows the heart. Jesus gets right to his heart.

Have you ever noticed when you’re going through an issue, or when you’re having some kind of problem and you really seek out biblical counsel? Okay, you don’t just turn to some verses. You you’re really wanting to know what it is that the Lord has to say to the problem that you’re going through. Have you ever noticed that you find that there’s something going wrong in your own heart when you seek out biblical wisdom? This is what I’ve seen throughout the years. People come looking for a biblical solution to their problem, and they’re just so disoriented to find out that a lot of the problem is with their own sinful desires. You say, wait, wait wait, wait. The problem is me?  The problem is not with me. I came because I wanted Jesus to fix her. I wanted Jesus to fix him, I’m not the one that needs fixing. That’s what the guy in the crowd wanted. He wanted Jesus to fix his brother. Jesus help me out. Back me up. Come through for me and give me the help I deserve. Jesus does help this guy out though. Please don’t miss that. Jesus helps this guy out, but he does it by showing him that the real problem is that his desire for possessions has become a controlling factor in his life. [00:16:54] And if he continues down this path, he’s going to end up in utter foolishness. To bring this point home, Jesus tells a parable. He told them a parable, saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared. Whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Now I got to tell you, church, a lot of times when I read what Jesus has to say and what he teaches and read his parables, I come away from them feeling very uplifted and very confident. And I feel better and I feel more hopeful. This one haunts me. This one haunts me. When I think about American society at large and what it does with wealth, and then the effect that that has had on the American church, I get concerned when I compare what I see with what Jesus says here. And here’s the thing. I’m not just talking about what I see in others.

[00:18:23] I’m talking about what I see in me, what I see in my own heart, my own approach to approach to wealth and stuff and things and security and the future that I envision. So let’s walk through this parable. Let’s see what Jesus says here, but let’s not do it from some safe distance where we tell ourselves, Jesus isn’t talking about me. Jesus must be talking about other people who struggle with these things. He’s not talking about me. Remember, he was addressing a crowd of people who sat at his feet, who called him teacher, and they wanted to learn his ways. He says this to those people. He’s talking to people like us, like Calvary. The land of the rich man produced plentifully. Notice Jesus isn’t passing judgment on this guy being rich. He doesn’t say anything about him being rich. He’s a wealthy man to start the story. That’s where he begins. And then it says his land produces a huge crop that makes him even more rich than he was before. Now, how does a field produce plentifully? Well, every farmer will tell you that it is a combination of hard work that they can control and weather that they cannot control. It’s a combination of both. God’s providence is how this man has what he has. Now, can you get rich in evil ways? Absolutely you can. And God condemns it with the harshest words that we find in Scripture.

[00:20:03] Can you be poor but also be righteous and hard working? Of course you can. Of course you can. Much of the world is exactly that. Wealth and poverty do not have moral value assigned to them in Scripture. I know often we get this wrong. We think the Bible says rich people are evil. Poor people are good. No, not at all. We have no moral value assigned to riches or poverty. There are righteous and unrighteous ways to be both. The man in the parable is blessed by God with land that makes him rich. And then his thought process begins. What am I going to do here? I don’t have any place to store my crops. Where do I put all this wealth? Now again, that is not a bad question to ask yourself if you find yourself in a position like this. Not a bad question at all. Verse 17 is the type of critical thinking that every person needs to do when it comes to their finances. Now here’s where I have to use a word that only Christians ever use. The word is steward. Only Christians ever use the word steward. Steward is like fellowship. Everyone else gets together and hangs out, christians fellowship. You’re probably going to a Super Bowl fellowship tonight. Probably, right? We have entire halls dedicated to fellowship as Christians. Only Christians steward. It seems we’re the only ones that steward. [00:21:38] What does that mean? Well, to steward something means to take care of something that isn’t yours. And the reason we use this word in Christianity so much is that it’s very uniquely a biblical thing to consider everything that you have as property of God ultimately. That’s a very uniquely Christian way of thinking about stuff. And this is why stewardship is such an important concept within a correct Christian worldview. Everything that we have been given has been given to us by God to take care of and to use for his glory. That’s why he gave it to us, to take care of it and to use it for his glory. And that includes more than just your money, okay. I know we immediately think of money, but it includes more than money. It includes things like your family, your health, your job. It includes your time and your opportunities. It even includes things like suffering and difficult circumstances that God intends for us to use well to demonstrate his strength. And the key to all biblical stewardship is to recognize that anything that you have is not yours. It’s been given to you by God for a time to use to glorify him. So this man’s first thought in verse 17 is actually a fine thought. God has given him an abundance of wealth, and now he needs to figure out where it goes. That’s stewardship. But then things take a turn. And church, this is where I get concerned for us and for our brand of American Christianity.

[00:23:21] This man comes up with a two part plan. The first part of his plan is that he’s going to tear down his barns, and he’s going to build bigger ones so he can store all his wealth. Did you see, as we were reading through it, did you hear the repetition of the word my over and over again throughout it? My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods. See this guy does not in any sense see the abundance that he’s received from God as as anything other than his stuff. This is all mine. This is all my things. There’s no acknowledgement that it came from the Lord as a provision, or that it’s intended to be used in some other way other than personally. See, in his mind, his wealth is for him and to be used only for him. So it doesn’t even cross his mind that not having enough storage space might be an be an indication that God would have him do something else with this wealth. He just knows I need bigger barns. I have more things now and I got to store them. I got to take care of them for me. So he needs bigger barns. And the second part of his plan gives us even more insight into the way he sees the world. He speaks to his own soul. Do you see that? He talks to himself. [00:24:45] He talks to his own soul. Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax. Eat, drink. Be merry. The end goal for this man, the purpose of all of this stuff is contentment, comfort and luxury. It’s to get enough stuff that he doesn’t have to do anything else except enjoy everything he has so that he can stop working, kick back, and enjoy the many years of leisure that surely he has in front of him. Are you starting to see why this parable concerns me so greatly? You’re starting to feel that? I feel that tension every time, every time I read this parable. See, God says to this man, you are a fool. You are a fool. Remember my working definition of a fool? Someone who acts without regard for God, God’s Word or God’s glory.

Why is this man a fool? He’s a fool because he didn’t see the abundance as provision from God. He assumed it was all for himself. Spoke to his own soul as if luxurious retirement was the goal of life. Presumed he had many years left and gave no thought to eternity. He’s a fool. God’s kingdom and God’s mission were not the central value to him around which every decision of his life was made. Living the good life determined all of his decisions. How do I get the best, most luxurious, most contented life possible? Church, the reason that is deeply troubling to me is that what I just described sounds exactly to me like the life everyone in our culture is trying to live. [00:26:36] It sounds exactly like it. We want bigger and better everything. We want early retirement. We want passive income flowing in. Every time I pass one of those storage unit places that you see, every time I see one of those places, all I can think of is there’s our bigger barns. We have so much stuff, we can’t even fit it all into our house. We need another place to put all of our stuff. We’ve got an entire TV network designed to get you to be envious of other people’s houses. While you sit in your house, you’re envious of other people’s houses, and you wish that you had a kitchen that looked that beautiful. Your kitchen is fine, but what are you going to do without that subway tile backsplash? I mean, what are you going to do? Again, this warning from Jesus is not to unbelieving people out there, it’s to the people who follow him. It’s to the people who want to be near him. It’s to the people who, like us, want to live in line with the kingdom of God. And Jesus is saying to an affluent American church, watch out, watch out, church, because you can slip into a very foolish life that wastes what God has given you, because instead of using it for his glory, you used it for the idols of your heart.

[00:28:01] We can find ourselves striving for a finish line that looks like comfortable retirement. Completely missed the purpose that God has given us any time on earth at all. We can be rich with stuff and not rich toward God, and that would be a profoundly wasted life. Now, let me offer just a little bit of a release to this tension that we’re feeling this morning in this parable. A full biblical theology of wealth and possessions is not limited to this one parable. Okay? Scripture speaks a lot on money and issues of stuff, right? Scripture speaks to the wisdom, for instance, of saving. Proverbs 13:22 says, A good man, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. So to his grandchildren he’s thinking about generational wealth when he’s thinking about saving. That’s godly wisdom. Taking care of your family with a retirement plan when you’re too old to work is a good thing. It’s a wise thing. I don’t want you performing surgery on me down there at Mayo if your eyesight is going. You know there’s going to be a point at which you’ve got to put down the scalpel. You know what I’m saying?

There are only three things that you can do with money. There are only three things that you can do with money. You can you can spend it. You can save it and you can give it away. And the Bible has guidance for all three, and it’s far too big a topic for us to cover this morning.[00:29:36] But suffice it to say, God provides what we need and to be good stewards of that provision, we need to glorify him in all three ways, in the ways we spend, the ways we save, and the ways we give. The phrase that Jesus uses as the contrast to foolishness is right there at the end of the parable. He says, rich toward God. That’s a very interesting preposition right there. He doesn’t say, rich with God, as if God is our riches, or our wealth or our treasure. He is. We’re taught that in other places in Scripture. But that’s not his point here. This preposition has movement to it. Okay. It’s into, unto, toward this contrast with the man putting his grain into his new barns. Okay. Instead, Jesus says, put your riches into God. Meaning put them into God’s purposes and his values. Find the ways that God would have you invest his wealth and put it there. Friends, the key to avoiding the trap of foolish greed and wasting your life chasing some ill fated, extravagant lifestyle is not taking a vow of poverty. It’s to take what God has given you and invest it back into those things that glorify him and that build up his kingdom. It’s to take the the wealth and to lift it before the Lord and say, what do you want me to do with this? You’ve given this to me to put where I’m supposed to put it. [00:31:22] Where would you have me put it? Some of it is going to go to the grocery store so that you can take care of your family today. Some of it will go into your retirement plan so that you can take care of your family in the future. Some of it will go into ministry as an investment in Christ’s mission on earth, and some of it will go to help people who are in need. There are all sorts of places that God will have you put the resources that he has given to you, that he has entrusted you to steward. The question is only this is, your heart so full of the glory of God that you will faithfully put them there, that you will make sure those things go where they’re supposed to go. As the old saying goes, and it certainly applies to applies to us to whom much is given, much is expected. For some, this parable this morning it may be hitting you hard, maybe hitting you square in your heart actually. You may be beginning to realize that you’re far more focused on the resources themselves, on the things themselves, the riches themselves, than on what the Lord would have you to do with them and where they should be going. You may see yourself like the man in the parable, daydreaming about a life of relaxation and wealth, and not thinking too much about God’s purposes and what he would have you do.

[00:32:45] He’s given you this money and all these things and all this family, all this time to invest on his behalf. And you haven’t given enough thought to where God would have you place that. If that’s you this morning, let me encourage you with two comforting facts. One. Your salvation isn’t contingent on your perfect handling of God’s resources. That is not how we are saved. We are not saved because we get it right. We’re not saved because we figured out how best to use everything that God has given to us. Salvation is God’s grace given to you. He has been rich toward you in Christ. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is that you’re here this morning. You’re here and you’re breathing. So there is time to turn this thing around. You can begin today to steward God’s resources well. This might be a conversation you need to have with your spouse or with your family. This may take some time in prayer to think through. What am I hanging on to? What am I misusing that should be used for God’s glory? And you can take the time to figure out where they go, putting them where he wants them, so that you can be rich toward the God who’s been rich toward you. Would you pray with me?