Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your  guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:13-21)

Introduction

Last week, I cleaned out my garage. It took me much of the day to do it. And for those of you who have also taken on this odious task, you know the dilemma that one faces, “Will I need this, does this have true sentimental value, or is this really nothing but garbage that I can’t help but hoard and clutter my garage with?” Thankfully, I was able to unload much more ‘precious junk’ than I thought I could. The reality is that Americans are hoarders of their abundance.

The Self-Storage Association, a non-profit trade organization for the self-storage industry, publishes these facts about storage: There are over 50,000 facilities now across the country with a total sales of $22 billion. The total storage space is 2.22 billion square feet which would represent 78 million square miles or 3 times the size of Manhattan, and this is a growth from 289.7 million square feet in 1984. In other words, there is 7 sq feet of storage for every man, woman, and child in the country!

And so what does one keep in storage? Ultimately, the abundance of one’s possessions. Our culture is a culture where abundance is worshipped as lord of all. We are continually bombarded with ads on TV, on the web, on the radio, on billboards, all proclaiming that we need the iPad instead of an old clunky laptop or we need a new pair of black pants because 30 are not enough (I know someone who told me this) or we need to have the best birthday party or wedding for my child that outdoes the next person. The allure of wanting more is always tied with false needs. And Jesus knows that this perspective is deadly to the soul according Luke 12:13-21.

The Predicament: Family Division (v. 13-14)

First, Luke lays out the predicament of family division in v. 13-14: “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?” The man who confronts Jesus has recently lost his father. And as is often the case regarding money and death, the two brothers are fighting over their inheritance. Notice, that when this man approaches Jesus for his share of the money, he’s really not asking Jesus to mediate the dispute. Rather, he demands (‘tell’) that Jesus side with him and validate what he deems to be true. But Jesus wanted no part of his self-absorption.

The Point: Covetousness (v. 15)

And so as Jesus often does, he uses this incident to make a more general point about greed and covetousness to his disciples in verse 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.” The man’s complete focus was on getting what was his. Maybe he believed that once he obtained his inheritance, his life would really be worth living. But Jesus calls him and us on our shortsightedness. And he gives us this warning that we must be on guard not just against a desire for money and possessions, but more broadly, against a desire for more, and a lack of contentment with God. You see, ever since Adam and Eve this has been humanity’s fundamental sin, a dissatisfaction with God’s provisions. Remember what Adam had said to God after he was confronted with his sin of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen 3:12). Adam’s desire to want to be like God made him dissatisfied with his own wife, even blaming her for all of her troubles when he was the one who joyfully was responsible for her. Hence, Adam had said with much excitement: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen 2:23). And so Adam’s discontentment with God’s provisions, downgraded even his contentment in his marriage with a woman he only recently delight in and praised.

The Israelites continued Adam’s folly by again rejecting God’s provision despite his grace. The Book of Exodus begins with this statement in Ex 2:23-25:

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

And so God rescues them from Egypt in miraculous ways, culminating the parting of the Red Sea. And despite God’s continued provision for water in the desert and food (manna and quail) when there was nothing but sand, this is how the Israelites responded in Numbers 14:2-4:

And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! 3 Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4 And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.

They had obviously forgotten what slavery was like and they had also forgotten how miraculously God had provided for them. Why? Because they were expecting life after salvation differently than what came. They weren’t thankful about being saved. They had an idea that life would be easy, that following God would actually take no trust at all, and that He would be nothing more than the divine genie, popping out whenever they prayed a particular prayer. And they had also failed to realize that as difficult life can be when a person trusts God, that difficulty is only a short time. But the difficulty and pain and suffering in a failure to trust God can lead to far terrible consequences sometimes in this world and certainly in the world to come. Are you more enamored by what this world offers you than what God has provided for you? Has God met your needs but you have forgotten Him and now that trial comes, you have a grumbling complaining heart towards Him? Then my friends, you are no different than Adam and Eve. You are no different than the Israelites rescued from slavery in Egypt but forgets God’s grace and simply want to go back to that same wretched place. Or as Peter says:

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” (2 Peter 2:20-22)

We need to guard against the seduction of our abundance or we will become entangled and we will be in a far worse place than we were after knowing ‘the way of righteousness.’

The reality of a life discontent with God and a life in pursuit of abundance is that ultimately there is no contentment or joy in possessions. It’s an empty pursuit. Kevin Harney illustrates this well in his book Seismic Shifts:

A little boy sat on the floor of the church nursery with a red rubber ball in each arm and three Nerf balls clenched on the floor between his pudgy little knees. He was trying to protect all five from the other children in the nursery. The problem was, he could not hold all five at once, and the ball nearest to his feet was particularly vulnerable to being stolen. So, whenever another child showed an interest in playing with one of the balls, he snarled to make it clear these toys were not for sharing.

I suppose I should have stepped in and made the little guy give up one or two of the balls, but I was too wrapped up in the drama of it all. For about five minutes, this little guy growled, postured, and kept the other children away from the balls. Like a hyena hunched over the last scraps of a carcass, this snarling little canine was not in the mood for sharing. The other kids circled like vultures around the kill, looking for a way to jump in and snatch a ball without being attacked and bitten. I honestly did not know whether to laugh or cry as I watched.

Then it struck me: This little boy was not having any fun at all. There was no cheer within ten yards of this kid. Not only was he unhappy, but all the other kids seemed sad as well. His selfishness created a black hole that sucked all of the joy out of that nursery…. When church was over and his parents came to pick him up, he left the balls behind.

So much misery over something that does not last…Covetousness sucks us in believing that by gaining abundance we will be happy, but it leaves us sorely lacking. And it belies the fundamental sin against God, worshipping created things rather than the Creator as Romans 1:24 testifies.

The Parable: The Rich Fool (v. 16-21)

And to illustrate His point of covetousness, Jesus tells us the parable of the rich fool in verses 16-21: “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.” The man was an incredibly wealthy man due to the ‘production of his land.’ He essentially had everything he could ever ask for or need.

But there wasn’t even a thought in the consideration of blessing others or worshipping God with his wealth. And if there was ever a type of work or business that was dependent on God, it would be agriculture. When our team went to the village of Dimen, they were undergoing a drought. And so all of the rice plants were wilted and even though they ordinarily would have been planted by this point, they hadn’t been planted. Their lives and their very existence were contingent on the rains that came. But for this man, everything worked out perfectly for him. The rains obviously came. The crops were free from pests and the soils were great for planting. And God allowed him to succeed financially.

So what was his problem? The man had so much produce that he had no place to store them in his current barns. And his response to his problem? Well, as he begins to think aloud, we begin to see the depth of his self-centeredness and greed. In fact, his self-centeredness can be measured by the number of times he uses a first person pronoun. Out of the 59 words of dialogue he speaks, just under 19% are 1st person pronouns (I, my). In other words 1 out of 5 words! That is how full of himself he is. He didn’t once consider possibly donating the food to the poor, giving an offering of thanksgiving before the Lord, or even sharing it with his family. What God had providentially given to him had morphed into what he had done for himself. His abundance had led to his self-absorption.

So how does he solve his problem of too much abundance? He decides to tear down his current barns to build larger ones creating a megaplex of barns to store his ever growing produce of ALL MY grain and MY goods without even a thought of God and others. And that is often the case when one grows wealthy. We begin to believe that our resources are wholly ours from MY hard work and we can easily become even more tightfisted towards God. D. James Kennedy tells a story of a man who came to Peter Marshall, former chaplain of the Unites States Senate, with a concern about tithing. He said: “I have a problem. I have been tithing for some time. It wasn’t too bad when I was making $20,000 a year. I could afford to give the $2,000. But you see, now I am making $500,000, and there is just no way I can afford to give away $50,000 a year.” Dr. Marshall reflected on this wealthy man’s dilemma but gave no advice. He simply said: “Yes, sir. I see that you do have a problem. I think we ought to pray about it. Is that alright?” The man agreed, so Dr. Marshall bowed his head and prayed with boldness and authority. “Dear Lord, this man has a problem, and I pray that you will help him. Lord, reduce his salary back to the place where he can afford to tithe.” (Kevin G. Harney, Seismic Shifts (Zondervan, 2005), p. 200) I would have loved to see the man’s face. You can see the man’s logic had betrayed his heart. Wealth and resources are not evil. But how one views such resources before God is where shows the evil of one’s heart. That’s why Jesus said in Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And the rich farmer was no different than the man in the story. As biblical commentator Darrell Bock comments: “He has morally mismanaged his wealth, giving no thought to the needs of others or thanking God.” (Darrell Bock, Luke Vol 2, 1152-1153) Having money and resources is not bad. But a moral mismanagement of such resources reveals whether God is truly in your life or whether you are your own god.

But moral mismanagement is utterly foolish according to this story Jesus tells because the man is banking on something that is as fleeting as the morning dew. James reminds us: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). And so when God says, “Fool!” in verse 20, He’s repeating a general theme of Scripture, that the person who lives as though there is no God will face eternal consequences at the end revealing his foolishness (Ps 14:1). Also this person is a fool because he doesn’t realize that all of his work is for naught after one dies as verse 19 describes, “…and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” This is the same sentiment of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes: “I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.” (Eccl 2:18-19). In other words, we work so hard so that others will enjoy our labor. And each generation continually pursues the same goal, to work hard so that others enjoy our labor. And although this might seem noble, if God is not in the picture, this is utter foolishness in the end. If there is no God, and your whole life is consumed by ‘providing’ for someone else, and then you die and are gone from forever existence, will you really find joy in the moment when someone else might enjoy, squander, disrupt, and perhaps even destroy all of your labor and sacrifice? I feel this way when I buy my a souvenir at an amusement park which is nothing but a ten cent toy made in China that I know will be in some corner of the closet. It costs about $100 for something that will be nothing but junk. Oh to work for the enjoyment of others only to find it to be for naught. I’m sure the amusement park industry sits back and watches fools like me and laughs.

The common denominator of the biblical fool is that there is no God. And then implications of such a life is tragic. And my friends, even if you have gone to church your whole life, you can do things that seem religious but be atheistic ultimately in your heart. Maybe there is that one thing in your life that you say to God, “God, I will serve you in everything, give up everything, but if you take away that one thing, then I’m not trusting anymore.” And that my friends, is your idol, or to put it another way, the abundance of your possession. A pastor told me of a missionary and his wife he knows who was in the mission field his whole life, over 30 years of ministry in difficult places where they scarified all of their comforts. Well, his son was killed in a car crash and he and his wife renounced their faith and became avowed atheists. For this couple, their abundance of their possessions was not money, or a successful career, or in a comfortable retirement, but in their children. And God knew this to be true and took that which revealed their hearts, just as he does to the rich fool. We must be so careful because our hearts are prone to the seduction of abundance. But like the little boy with his red balls, you’re never happy with what you’ve hoarded for yourself, and it come be wonderful blessings like a child. And so if you life, your thoughts, your anxieties are consumed by something or someone where God really does not have any influence, be forewarned, that thing or person is your abundance, your idol, your god.

John Piper tells this story to illustrate this point:

Or picture 269 people entering eternity in a plane crash in the Sea of Japan. Before the crash there is a noted politician, a millionaire corporate executive, a playboy and his playmate, a missionary kid on the way back from visiting grandparents.

After the crash they stand before God utterly stripped of Mastercards, checkbooks, credit lines, image clothes, how-to-succeed books, and Hilton reservations. Here are the politician, the executive, the playboy, and the missionary kid, all on level ground with nothing, absolutely nothing in their hands, possessing only what they brought in their hearts. How absurd and tragic the lover of money will seem on that day-like a man who spends his whole life collecting train tickets and in the end is so weighed down by the collection he misses the last train. Don’t spend your precious life trying to get rich, Paul says, “for we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of the world.”

We need not be fools. If you believe God’s Word and know that we live for much more than what this world offers, then we are certainly not fools. And if you recognize just how great salvation is, what He has saved you for, what the cost was to save you, and how wondrous fellowship with Him will be, you will find that everything else will pale in comparison to what joy He brings to you, both in this life and in the life to come. I remember caring for my kids when they were really young, like many of you are doing today, and I remember feeling so haggard and worn. I wanted life to move on, to move faster so I can REALLY and FINALLY start living life. But many older men that I had spoken to continued to warn me not to have such a heart because when I get to that point, I will have seen what joys I had missed. And its true, as I am now forty and as I see my children grow, I realize that no longer do I want time to speed up. Now I see more wrinkles, grey hair, stretching before playing sports, having to watch my diet, having to wear a heart-rate monitor as I work out. These are all things I thought were for old people. But these things remind me that my God can call me home at any moment. And I don’t want to be a fool in living as though he were non-existent.

So don’t waste your life by being the rich fool. And you don’t have to be rich to be the rich fool. Are you busy building bigger barns in your retirement portfolios, in your grand birthdays and eventually weddings for your kids, in your bigger and better homes, in your bedroom closets, in your position at work without even a thought about God and His glory and Kingdom? Do you come to church as a religious person fulfilling his moral obligations or as a person who believes that eternity is real and that God will call you perhaps even as you leave this room? Do you think you have so much time in your life that when you’re done working, then you’ll care for your families? Or when you have time and your kids are all grown, then you’ll serve God? Or when you have a certain amount of disposable income, then you will help others in need financially? Or only when you are ready, then you’ll forgive? Oh the Lord can call you any moment and hold you to account, don’t you see? Only ‘rich fools’ put off what God calls them to do. Will you be ready to see His as a fool or as a child of God? You assessment of the first question will help you to see what you truly believe? Do you surrender everything because you know He has already done that for you, or are you like the missionary couple who will give God almost everything except? Oh please, don’t take that chance. Turn from your self-absorption and come to trust in Him!