Sermon 3 August – Luke 12:13-21
The Rich Fool
“Living a Good Life” – Part 1
The parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) is told in response to a man in the crowd who says to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Rather than doing merely what the man asks, he gives an important principle: “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” To illustrate that principle, he tells a parable.
In this parable, a man who is already wealthy has a very good year, so good that his barns cannot hold all of his harvest. He makes a plan, then, to tear down those barns and build bigger ones. And then he can sit back and relax, eat, drink, and be merry. But God says to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the thing you have prepared, whose will they be?” Jesus concludes with this warning for us all: “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
There are two problems outlined in this passage. First, the man is a “fool” – in the biblical sense of the word – because he is living his life only thinking about himself, and not taking God and his future into consideration. And second, he is counting on his riches to satisfy him, but wealth and possessions cannot truly do that, for several reasons:
- Wealth and possessions are temporary, and only for this lifetime – which is very limited when compared to eternity!
- If we set our hearts on wealth, then we will never have enough, we will always want a little more!
- Even when we get what we desire, it does not satisfy us for long, or as much as we though that it would.
- We were made for much more than this, for greater things than the world can give to us! (See the book of Ecclesiastes)
The true solution is to aim to be rich toward God, rather than rich in material possessions. We will look more at this next week! But we can look at clues from this chapter, too:
- Rather than being hypocrites, we should live at all times to try to please God.
- Rather than being fearful of other opinions of us because of our faith, we should live in confidence of God’s truth, His care, and His power and His Spirit in us.
- Rather than living in a selfish way, we should live and use our resources to help others and to serve God’s mission in this world.
- Finally, we should see that our identity does not depend on our wealth, but on the fact that we are beloved children of the King, and look forward to the coming of His kingdom.
Questions to Consider:
- How much does the media influence us and our thoughts of what a good life is? How does it do this?
- How much is our perspective on life focused on a goal to “relax, eat, drink, and be merry?”
- What does it mean to be “rich toward God”?
