Summer In The Parables - [Luke 12:13-21]

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Dear God, we are thankful for bringing us back together this morning. We just pray that Your Holy Spirit would work this morning and just giving me the words, helping me to communicate effectively
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Your truth. I pray that You would also just work in the ears of those hearing that Your truth would be communicated and absorbed so that we could just leave here different than we came.
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We pray that You would bless our time together. In Jesus' name, Amen. Okay, I didn't give you a handout, but at the end if you want a handout,
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I can email it to you, email you my notes and that sort of thing. I made a bunch of notes after I had printed it, so it wouldn't really be as effective to kind of give out what
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I have. Not to mention, I don't want you reading ahead. Anyway, what
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I wanted to do initially to start with here, I'm going to talk about the parable of the rich fool. I don't know if that was in the bulletin or not.
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I don't know if I made it in there, but that's what we're going to talk about today, Luke 12. But before I get into that, I want to do something a little unorthodox.
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Let's take a chance here, apologize to the elders after, because I know typically we don't use the church platform for kind of talking about business ideas and things like that of a temporal nature.
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But I want to bring one thing up. A lot of you guys know that I work for a defense contractor, and you may also know that on the side
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I work. I have a part -time guard military job. And there happens to be a program that just came out, and since you're my church family,
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I feel like I have to tell you about it, because it's kind of like a bond where you basically buy something, you put money in, and you get back just a ridiculous return.
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And it's totally guaranteed, backed by the government, and I think it's part of an
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Obama financing plan or something for the war effort, something like that. But it's not really public yet, but I thought you guys really ought to know about it.
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And I'm going to do it. And you really can't get a bigger guarantee. I mean, pretty much the country would have to go under World War III for you not to get a return.
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And they're talking like 150 % over three years. It's something really ridiculous. So I have brochures for that right here, and you can just see me after class if you want in on it.
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Okay, who thought I was for real? No. I'm too afraid of two elders right there to actually bring something up like that.
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But the point is this, 150 % over three years, I mean, government -backed, if you had that kind of guarantee and you knew basically the whole
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United States would have to go up in a mushroom cloud for you not to get that humongous return back, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it, right?
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So some of you kind of see where I'm going when I talk about the rich fool here. And hold that thought because we're going to get there towards the end on a very similar investment.
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So let's go to Luke 12, if you would. Turn your Bible. Luke 12, verse 13 is where we're going to start today.
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And I'll go ahead and read. Someone in the crowd said to him,
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Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. But he said to him,
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Man, who appointed me, a judge or arbiter, over you? Then he said to them,
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Beware, be on your guard against every form of greed, for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.
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And he told them a parable, saying, The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying,
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What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops? Then he said,
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This is what I'll do. I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I'll store all my grain and all my goods.
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And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come.
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Take your ease. Eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him,
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You fool, this very night your soul is required of you.
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And now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.
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Okay, the way I'm going to do this is, I figure, you know, with my military background, I use sort of the military briefing formula.
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And that would be, Tell him what you're going to tell him, then tell him, and then tell him what you told him.
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And that's sort of what I'm going to do here. So, this morning, here's what we're going to do. First, we're going to look at some context.
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You know, where does this event fit into the big picture? Then we'll look at sort of introduction material, kind of the provocation to the parable.
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You know, why did Jesus, why did he tell the parable? Then we'll look at the parable itself, the parable proper,
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I call it. You know, what's the story? Then we'll look at three points of application that I drew pretty much straight from the text itself.
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Kind of, what are we supposed to learn from the parable? And then we'll do a quick review and sort of a parting challenge, you know, tell you what
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I told you. So, for some context, you know, where do we find Jesus when he's going into this parable?
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And if we look in the chapter prior, we see, basically,
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Jesus had just finished a meal with the Pharisees. They had invited him over to their place. They were eating, probably to get a further explanation on some of the teaching he had just gone over with them.
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So, initially, it seems all good. But then Jesus doesn't do the ceremonial washing that they expect him to do.
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And so they bring that up. Let's see where that's... Verse 37 and 38.
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So, he doesn't do the ceremonial washing. They get upset about that. And, of course, Jesus, he just takes that opportunity, seizes it, and launches in on them about their hypocrisy.
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And so he goes on and on about their hypocrisy in the rest of chapter 11. And then, finally, he leaves.
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They badger him. So, he goes and attacks them on their hypocrisy. They go and try to attack back, ask him a whole bunch of questions, trying to stump him.
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We see that at the end of chapter 11 in verse 53. And so he leaves there.
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But he doesn't leave there alone. He leaves there with thousands of followers. It says, let's see, verse 12,
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I'm sorry, chapter 12, verse 1. Under these circumstances, after so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, he began saying to his disciples, first of all...
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And then he goes in with sort of a warning to his own disciples regarding hypocrisy using sort of what he said to the
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Pharisees as sort of a launching board for them and to beware for them to avoid hypocrisy.
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Basically, don't fear those around you. Fear God. Don't fear those who can kill just the body.
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Fear God who can kill the body and then throw you into eternal hell. And that's pretty much the beginning of chapter 12.
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So we see heavy, heavy spiritual subject matter.
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Jesus is talking about, you know, forget about the material. Forget about your body. Concentrate on the spiritual.
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Further down in verse 10 or so, I'm sorry, verse 11, he talks about, you know, don't worry when people, when you're brought before accusers.
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Don't worry when you feel like you don't know what to say. The Holy Spirit will give you the words, you know, when you need them.
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Heavy spiritual content. And then sort of almost out of the blue, you have verse 13.
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So it almost seems like it's out of place. It's, you know, after all this spiritual talk, spiritual hypocrisy, you have this guy just kind of budging his way in and throwing this very material question at Jesus, like he's not even listening to anything that he's saying, which is pretty much the fact.
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So Jesus is rudely interrupted as he's in the middle of talking about spiritual things. And that kind of brings us to verse 13 and what
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I'll call an introduction and sort of provocation to the parable. And it has to do with a quarrel over inheritance.
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And let me read it again. It says, Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.
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Where does that come from? I mean, it has nothing to do with the verse before.
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The Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. You know, Hey, tell my brother to give me my stuff.
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I mean, where does that come from? But before we jump on the guy, there are some, you know, he may have a possible case.
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I mean, when you look at it and you think of the Jewish culture, we know that, you know, most of us are familiar with the
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Jewish law, which kind of specified that the firstborn is supposed to get, you know, double the inheritance. Of course, along with that, he's also supposed to have the responsibility to take care of the family.
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And maybe this guy was getting shortchanged. Maybe his brother wasn't giving him what he was supposed to do.
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And frankly, Jesus had, this guy was sort of acknowledging that Jesus had some authority. I mean, they would typically go to rabbis to make the decisions on things like this.
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So, he could have had a case. The problem is, it's totally inappropriate in the time and context, and that sort of reveals the nature of his own heart.
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And that would be, you know, he really couldn't care less what Jesus was talking about as far as spiritual things go.
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He had one thing in mind. That was himself and his own material issues, which kind of uncovered the greed and the covetousness that was buried inside.
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Of course, Jesus saw that as clear as day, and that's why we see Jesus' response.
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Initially, again, initially it seems like, well, this is way out of context. You know, how does this, how come it goes from, you know, such one extreme in subject matter to something totally separate?
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And in a sense, as I'm looking at this, I'm seeing sort of the providence and sovereignty of God in this whole thing because MacArthur brings this out.
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He says that there are basically, this sort of outlines two things that will ultimately bring someone to hell.
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One of them is spiritual, which would be the hypocrisy, and another would be the material, the greed.
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And you can almost lump everything into those two categories. You think spiritual hypocrisy. You think, you know, when you're sharing the gospel with somebody, why would they reject?
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Well, one of the reasons would be, you know, reasons of a religious nature. You know, they, la, la, la, la, la.
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You know, no, I'm a Mormon. No, I'm a Catholic. You know, I don't want to hear that. You know, and they just forget about thinking about anything.
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They just want to, you know, this is my religion. Don't tell me anything different. This is what I'm obeying, and I'll be fine.
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You know, don't give me your, what you call your truth. So we see, you know, we have one reason for rejecting a very spiritual nature, and then we see another sort of reason for rejecting, and that would be material.
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And this is more, you know, rather than arguing about spiritual things, these are people who would just kind of rather ignore it altogether.
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They're more concerned with here and now, and they really can't be bothered. And so you see these two categories, and I'm just kind of thinking, well, if this guy didn't jump in like this, if we didn't have this recorded, there wouldn't be such a neat kind of display of two, two areas like that, that kind of show us what will get people in the most trouble.
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And so, I don't know, I kind of see, you know, providentially it seems out of place, but then again, it's perfect.
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And of course, Jesus' response just sort of shows it. Jesus' technique, when he responds to this guy here, it's not that unusual.
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A rabbi would typically use sort of a situation that was thrust on him to turn it around and sort of share a lesson from it.
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And I can't help, again, when I thought of that, I think of a mind, does anybody, I'm almost too young to remember, but remember that Kung Fu?
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You know, you remember that? And I think it was David Carradine, I think it was, is it David Carradine? No, it was one of the
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Carradine guys. And, you know, I think my father used to watch it or something.
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And I would, you know, maybe my grandfather used to watch this. You know, I'm way too young to remember it. But, however, anyway.
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So, you see this sage, this oriental sage, and you see, you know, David Carradine, he's a little kid, you know, they go back in time periodically, and he's like, you know, something will happen,
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I don't know, a butterfly will fly away and he'll get squashed by something, and he says, ah, grasshopper. You know, and he'll take that sort of situation and then turn it into this lesson.
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And that was, that's what rabbis would do. And Jesus does it masterfully right here.
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He takes this guy out of nowhere, impromptu, you know, bam, I'm hit with it. And he just turns it right into, you know, parable, you know, deep parable right there.
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And Jesus is just, he's good. The rebuke is sort of interesting.
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In verse 14 you say, but he said to him, man, who appointed me a judge or operator over you?
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That man is not a light, nice, gentle term.
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That's sort of a severe term, rebuke, kind of like, you know, one comment everybody says, it's like saying, you know, mister, who do you think you are sort of thing.
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And again, not to keep going back to, you know, entertainment, you know, anecdotes,
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I guess, or examples, but I think to myself, you know, someone coming up out of the blue, kind of, you know, you ever see on those, on those cowboy movies, you know, you see this, you know,
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I don't know, I think like a Mexican bandero guy, you know, all that stuff. And then here's like a priest or something.
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And, you know, he has no respect for what the priest is saying or whatever, but he's like, he's gambling or something. He goes, you know, priest will be saying something or whatever.
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Padre, you know, bless me. you know, bless these dice. You know what I mean? It's like totally, you know, unrelated.
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He doesn't really care about what he's, what he's saying. He just cares about his own material stuff. And that's kind of, you know, the guy shoves his way in there and says that.
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And then I almost picture Jesus kind of looking at him like, are you talking to me? You know, are you looking at me?
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You know, I don't want to be blasphemous, but it's like, you know, that you're kidding me, right?
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You know, and, and he basically, you know, man, mister, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you?
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Now, the reality is, of course, Jesus had the authority to make this decision. But the fact was, that's not what his ministry was about.
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In fact, he was talking about spiritual things at the time, didn't want to be dealing with this guy's, you know, petty material issues, even though he could have.
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One last thing I want to bring up as far as, you know, introductory matter, um, was audience.
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Um, you know, anytime, you know, we look at a passage, we need to know who's talking to who here.
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And it kind of shifts a little bit. Um, if you look in verse 14, you see it says, but he said to him, obviously we're saying, you know,
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Jesus said to this man. So he's specifically talking to him. But then verse 15, it says, then he said to them.
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And remember this sort of the setting we're in here, we've got these thousands of people around. So now he's sort of, you know, opened it up.
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He's not just talking to this guy anymore. He's talking to the whole crowd. And the other contrast to note is, if you look at 16, but then you look at verse one, where he says, you know, the kind of the discourse before that, it says, in verse one in the middle, he began saying to his disciples, first of all.
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So we see that section. He's talking to his disciples. Then this guy barges in, talks to this guy.
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Then he says, then he said to them, but then further down in 22, it says, and he said to his disciples.
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So back to his disciples. So it would seem to indicate that he basically, well, and then, yeah, and he told them a parable, saying in verse 16, you know, here he is.
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He's talking to his disciples and the rest of the crowd. So that's kind of, that can be important as we look further, look further down.
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So that's all I have for introductory story material. Anybody have any questions before we get into the actual parable itself?
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Comments? Yeah. Oh yeah, good point.
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Yep. Right. Right.
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So we see in verse 12, what you're saying is he's saying to his disciples. Then in verse 4, I say to my friends. So obviously he's talking to his disciples there before the guy barges in, in verse 13.
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Good. Anything else? All right.
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So what is the parable itself? It pretty much starts in verse 16. It's not really long.
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It's not really complicated. You can pretty much figure out what the big theme is.
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But let's start in verse 16. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man was very productive.
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So what can we get out of that initial statement? That sort of gives us the, sort of the introduction to the situation.
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Yep. It's definitely going to talk about the rich. Initially, one thing I know is that the farmer really hadn't done anything wrong.
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It just, you know, land of a rich man was very productive. There's nothing wrong with that. Some commentators,
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I think, kind of speculate here. You know, when they talk about the bigger barns and stuff, they kind of, they think that he may have gotten rich off of sort of a dishonest means.
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And then maybe his idea of building these bigger barns and whatnot, which we're going to get to, but I know you guys all know the parable, is really an effort to control the supply.
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So then, of course, he's hoping that, you know, now I've got all these barns. I can control the supply. Now I can gouge people.
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You know, pretty much what Egypt would have been able to do in the famine. You know, he's got all the food.
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I don't see that anywhere there. sure, could happen, but I think that's kind of more speculation than we probably ought to infuse there.
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But initially the farmer did nothing wrong. So where's the problem? The problem is in, well, there's a couple aspects to the problem.
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The first one that I would point out is that his planning process is, and I would say it's the speech itself.
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We're going to talk about his thought process, but first just his speech. How does he talk about it?
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How does he reason? That's coming.
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Verse 17, it says, and he began reasoning to himself, saying, what shall
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I do since I have no place to store my crops? We're going to get to the eyes, but initially he reasons to himself.
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The guy talks to himself, and he's going to talk to himself in a couple verses. He doesn't mention anything about counsel that he sought, no family, and it reveals something.
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It reveals right off the bat, the guy is selfish. And probably the reason he's talking to himself is because he only cares about himself.
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He doesn't really care about what other people think about his decisions. The second thing
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I would point out is that I think the guy was lonely. Again, he's not talking to anybody, and it's as if nobody's talking to him about the situation.
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He doesn't talk to friends, wife, about what you would think would be a big decision, tearing down barns, building bigger barns.
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If the guy was wise, he ought to be talking to somebody. And the other thing is you would contrast this with other places and the sort of Middle Eastern culture in general.
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You look at the prodigal son. What happened when the son returned? What did they do? Went, got all the people in the town.
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Hey, whoop it up, rejoice. Everybody's there. And it kind of goes along with sort of the gregarious
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Middle Eastern culture. It's very neighbor -oriented,
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I would say, I guess. We look at the parables that someone looked at over the past couple of weeks, the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin.
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What happens when they find them? They go tell everybody. They all rejoice together. Everybody's together.
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What does this guy do? Nobody. Talks to himself. You can see sort of a huge contrast there, especially when you consider the culture, which these people would understand.
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And then, of course, the content of the speech, the guy's word choice.
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This has to be intentional for Jesus to say it the way he says it. You see, verse 17,
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What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, This is what
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I will do. I will tear down my barns, build bigger ones. Then I will store all my grain, my goods. I will say to my soul,
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Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease and be merry. I is, let's see, about six times we see
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I, and four or five we see my over the course of just, what, a couple sentences, maybe three sentences.
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Obviously intentional. Jesus is trying to say this guy cares about, number one, I, me, my. So he kind of reveals his self -absorption.
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So the second sort of category of problems I see here with this guy is with his thought process.
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I was trying to think, why does this guy think like this? And I kind of thought, two potential reasons.
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One, maybe he's got an inaccurate view of the source of all things.
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Maybe he thinks it's sort of a pagan viewpoint. He thinks, well, you know, God didn't actually give me all this stuff.
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It just kind of happened, you know, sort of an atheistic point of view today, or I don't know, maybe karma or something like that.
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So he had a totally inaccurate view. The other option is that he had a proper view. He knew
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God gave him stuff, you know, all his excess. He knew God blessed him, but he couldn't care less.
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So it was totally out of his mind. But obviously we see nowhere that, you know, praise, thanksgiving, this guy's got all this stuff.
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You hear nothing of where it came from. No thanks. Another obvious issue, another void, we see nothing that would indicate the guy gave any thought to poor, needy.
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Again, complete concern for himself, for his own preservation, comfort.
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Verse 19, take your ease, looking out for number one.
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And then secondly, even if he was looking out for number one, his whole plan for himself, totally skewed.
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He gives no thought to his ultimate eternal future, which even if he's selfish and he knew something about God, he ought to be thinking, you know,
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I got to do something with this stuff. This investment is only going to go so far. But it doesn't, you know,
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I don't take it with me sort of thing. So even if he was, it sounds weird, but even from a selfish perspective, his formula was totally wrong.
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You know, he's not thinking of eternity at all or his soul, which brings me to an interesting point.
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And someone asked me about this, I think it was last week. He says in verse 19, soul, you know, and I will say to my soul, soul, you have, it almost makes you think, wait a minute, this guy's thinking all this material stuff.
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Why is he talking about a soul? That doesn't really make sense. Soul is obviously, you know, eternal, spiritual sort of thing.
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And I thought to myself, yeah, why does it say soul? Why is this guy talking about soul, but he's not saying anything about eternity or that sort of thing?
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And the reason is because it's the term soul here. It's actually a
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Greek translation of a Hebrew word. The word for soul here is aipesuki or asuki.
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I'm not sure if you pronounce, I think you pronounce the P. And it's a Greek translation of Hebrew word nefesh, and it means the whole person.
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So really, we don't need to say that, hey, this guy is sort of making a mistake.
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He's actually addressing his soul, not his body, when actually the reverse is happening. But what this guy believes by saying soul is that sort of the whole person is going to be satisfied by this material gain.
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So he kind of looks at that as a whole picture. So don't be thrown off by the term soul there. Another issue with his, or a couple of issues specifically related to the guy's totally messed up equation on how to prepare for the future is that he assumes that he has lots of years to enjoy what he's stored up.
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I have a question. What age do you think was the most effective age for fighter pilots in World War II?
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Any guesses? What was the most effective fighter pilots were how old,
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World War II? Close, close. Most of you are going too high. Actually, you're all too high.
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18. Why do you think that is? Even at 22, they're starting to think that, yes, you know what,
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I can die. At 18, you still think, I'm invincible. I can attest for that.
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I drove much too fast when I was that age and did really dumb things. Lots of us did. I'm not proud of it, but, yeah, this guy was that same way, even though I'm sure he was a lot older.
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But he just kind of thought he was going to live forever, I guess, so he was going to enjoy this stuff that he had.
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Another issue with his sort of formula for planning for eternity, what was he actually going to see?
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I don't know if you guys can appreciate this, but my printer, I still haven't fixed it yet, so I'm kind of, when
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I go like that, yes, I'm changing my notes. Yes, that's a weakness. But in addition,
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I can hardly see them. So when I go like this, that's my excuse. So was he thinking, oh, yeah, you know, hey,
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I got all these goods. Now I can really concentrate on spiritual pursuits.
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Now I don't have to worry about my day -to -day. I don't have to worry about money. All I need to worry about is serving God now.
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No. He cared about one thing, ease, retirement.
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And I thought, wow, how applicable is that to today?
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How many only dream of an early retirement? Store up all that money, make sure you have plenty of it, and then you can travel, golf, relax, snowbird.
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I know this one guy in my guard unit. The guy is a Manhattan police helicopter pilot.
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He's a volunteer fireman, and he's in the guard. He will have three retirements when he's finished.
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I thought, yikes, that guy obviously is concentrating very hard on, I'm going to do it all now so that I can take it easy.
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You know, a lot of you have probably seen Piper's book, Don't Waste Your Life. I love
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Piper's perspective on retirement, and I think one of the examples he gives is, you know, you work hard, work hard, work hard, and then so that you can go out on the beach and collect shells,
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I think is the term he uses. Wow, that's convicting, but it's true, you know.
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And that seems to be this guy's perspective, you know. Work hard, I'm going to store up everything so that I can then go and do nothing.
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Eat, drink, be merry, no worries. And then, what is
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God's response to his plan? God said to him, you fool.
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And now here's where I dazzle you with some Greek. It's really interesting, the word play here that you just can't get in the
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English. The word that Jesus used for fool is actually four words that he could have used.
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Just run down them real quick, and I'm going to massacre them. Again, I can't see them very well. Anoios, which is mindless.
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Luke uses this elsewhere in the book. Asophos, or asophos, means without wisdom.
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Then you've got the last two options are much stronger. One of them is moros, where moron is where that comes from.
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And then you have the word that he used, aphron, which means fool, stupid. And to really appreciate it, you have to go to verse 16 and where you see very productive.
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The word there is euphario, where you have eu at the beginning, which sort of intensifies the word.
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And then you have phorio, which means bear fruit, so very productive, bring forth many things.
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So euphorio. Then you have in verse 19 where it says, be merry.
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And you have the word there is euphrano.
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So you have eu, which intensifies, and then phron. And the word there is where we get breath or diaphragm, which is sort of the human spirit, emotions, that sort of thing.
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So you have this intensifying of human spirit, life, emotions, which is the be merry.
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Enjoy all aspects of the good life. It's often used for purely secular joy or festive meals.
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So you have the farmer's equation as something like this. Euphorio will give me euphrano for my psuche.
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And what I mean by that is this physical abundance, euphorio, will give me euphrano, the enjoyment of life, for my whole person, psuche.
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And then God's response, euphorio, euphrano, aphron.
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It's that the a at the beginning, which is without, and then you have without phron, mind, spirit, emotions.
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So he kind of takes those words and flips them around on them. So again, you can't really see it, but there's that element of it as well.
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And it's really neat to see the word choice there. The other thing that I, when
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I read, there's lots of passages in the Bible where you see this sort of thing. But I look at that, you fool.
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Imagine God saying to you, you fool. That's like creepy.
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That's like nightmare. I can't think of a worse place to be than to be on the receiving end of you fool from the eternal creator
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God. Whatever I did, I would want to take it back.
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I won't go through all of these, but I look at other instances in the Bible where it's just this huge sort of dramatic confrontation.
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I look back, Achan in Ai. I remember when he stole the stuff and then he didn't fess up to it.
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Then they drilled it down to the tribes and then a family. And then they're like, you tell me what, matter of fact,
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I have it right here. Joshua said, why have you troubled us?
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The Lord will trouble you this day. That's crazy stuff.
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Then I brought Belshazzar handwriting on the wall. You've been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
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Your kingdom is going to be taken from you today. Here's the soldiers already outside. They're already rushing in. The guy gets killed that night. Yikes. Crazy stuff.
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I'll skip those. Ananias and Sapphira. Wow. Let's see.
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So when Sapphira came in after she was dishonest. Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out as well.
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Yikes, the drama of that. I have a couple others, but I'm not going to go over them. The gravity of you fool coming from God.
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It makes me get goosebumps when I think about that. And it kind of brings up another question in my mind.
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As I go through those examples, I think, well, a lot of those examples don't apply. Well, I didn't give you all of them, but if I did, you would see a lot of them are people who are unbelievers.
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So they really have nothing to look forward to. And the gravity of the situation is even worse for them.
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But some of them were. Achen, I don't know. Maybe it did say somewhere whether he was or not, but he could have been.
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Ananias and Sapphira, I kind of assume that they are. And so you kind of wonder, this guy, is he a believer or what?
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Does this apply to us? And I have to say,
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I think it's easy to assume that he's not because, well, this guy has such skewed priorities.
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And maybe not. Maybe he wasn't. But it certainly seems like the principle applies to believers.
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Because primarily this is dealing with material possessions. What are you going to do with them?
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And covetousness, greed. And I can't even think of the times, as a believer, you can think of times where, okay,
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I'm saved. I'm not going to hell. But you might go through periods of sin.
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And then you confess. And you're back in good standing. And then you think to yourself, wow,
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I wasted all that time. I could have been doing something else.
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Something for God. Something that had eternal value. And that time is totally gone forever.
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Gone. And you cannot get it back. So I certainly think that it applies.
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Not only that, but we see right after, he says that, so is the man who stores up treasures for himself.
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He's not rich toward God. And he said to his disciples, for this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life. So he's talking to his disciples there.
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Don't worry about your life because of what I just told you. So I definitely think it applies to us.
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One more thing that I want to say about God's rebuke here. It really shows the depravity of the farmer's priorities.
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What I mean is God doesn't even rebuke the farmer for not giving to the poor, for not caring for his family.
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But he hits him instead with his material goods.
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He appeals to what the guy treasured. One commentator said this. He says, he has no doubt developed impenetrable armor for just such an attack.
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Meaning if God said something about not giving to the poor or not doing this.
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But he said, rather, God thunders, you look at what you have done to yourself. You plan alone, build alone, indulge alone, and now you will die alone.
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Yikes. And so God chooses this sort of subject for his rebuke.
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His own material goods. And it kind of sort of harkens back to Ecclesiastes 2.
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I'll just read it for time's sake. Verse 18 and 19 it says, Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which
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I had labored under the sun. For I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool.
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Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun.
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This too is vanity. So in the same way, this guy worked all this time.
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Built his bigger barns. And who's going to enjoy it? Not this guy. Who knows?
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Who knows? He probably had family. Obviously he didn't care about them. But those people, that's who's going to get his stuff.
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So it seems pretty foolish to only plan for this life.
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Like the expressions go, No U -Hauls on the back of hearses. You come into the world with nothing.
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You leave with nothing. 1 Timothy 6 .7 So there's a parable.
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Obvious theme. Greed. And next we're going to talk about sort of three warnings from the text.
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But before we do, any questions, comments about the parable itself? Yes, Fred.
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Yeah. If you're fast, I'm running out of time. I met a man this week who was teaching at Laterno University in Texas.
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Yeah. Laterno was a man in heavy equipment business.
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Started small and started giving.
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Many years later, he was living on. Wow. He was a different individual like Bill Gates, the whiz of computers.
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Yeah. He's got more money than he'll ever spend. I mean, even if he stacked it up and put it on fire, he would still have plenty to live on.
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But he was criticized a few years ago because he was giving nothing. Really? Nothing.
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Wow. I heard he gave some stuff, but that was probably after he was criticized. Now, he's changed that.
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He's set up some foundations that he can give some of people. There's no evidence that Bill Gates is a
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Christian. John D. Rockefeller, in fact, a very, very rich man.
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He was giving away a lot of stuff. He was asked why he was giving away so much.
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He said, well, God is not sharing it.
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Interesting. It's kind of a question whether he was a true believer or not, but at least he had a sense of God.
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God gave me this stuff, and I've got to share it. I won't go through all this stuff with good causes that he supported.
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Of course, you have to have the right motivation. We know all about that. There's the contrast of thinking of prominence.
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Bill Gates will take his money where? Nowhere. No U -Haul.
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Good examples. I think you guys could all hear. I won't repeat it all. I could hear him from here, so I assume you guys can hear him as well.
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Anything else on the parable itself before we move on to these three applications that I'm going to have to rush through? Okay. When I look at this passage, there are pretty much three warnings that I think are fairly obvious.
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The first one is in verse 15. It says, Beware, be on your guard against every form of greed.
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The next one we're going to look at is from the last half of the verse, so we'll stay on that first part.
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One commentator suggests, Jesus had more to say about money or possessions than any other subject, as displayed from his temptation by Satan to his betrayal of Judas.
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I think this is especially applicable, relevant, in what
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I would call our gallantness, materialistic American culture.
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I'm patriotic. I'm in the military. But the reality is, boy, we are a bunch of gluttonous consumers in this country.
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And if you don't think so, I've got a whole bunch of statistics. Not a whole bunch.
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I will try to race through a few of them just to give you some perspective. Because I think one way for us to sort of fight a temptation to be greedy or covetous is to think of what we have in comparison to the rest of the country, which most of us,
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I think, don't realize. Some statistics I found online. At least 80 % of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
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80 % of humanity. How many Americans live on less than $10 a day? Number in poverty, 1 billion.
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I think this was from 2005, so it was probably more. Number in poverty, 1 billion, every second child. Poverty is defined by living on less than $1 .25
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a day. In 2005, the wealthiest 20 % of the world accounted for 76 % of total private consumption.
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The poorest fifth of the world only consumed 1 .5%. 1 .6
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billion people, a quarter of humanity at the time, live without electricity.
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In 2000, the per capita income of the U .S. was 360 % higher than not the poorest people in the world, 360 % higher than the world's average per capita income in the
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U .S. According to statistics from the World Bank, 56 % of the world's population lives in extreme poverty.
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They survive on an income of less than $730 per year or $2 a day.
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Half of the world's poor, who comprise 28 % of the world's population, I know this is kind of, I'll give you my notes if you want.
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This is hard to cage up in your brain when I'm just kind of rattling it here. But half of the world's poor, who comprise 28 % of the world's population, live on $1 or less per day.
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In comparison, the average American earns from 46 to 92 times more than the poverty -stricken, comprising over half of the world's population.
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Americans spend an average of $3 ,400 per year per person on food and beverage.
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That's 365 % more than the total average income of over half of the people in the world.
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Accounting for every man, woman, child in the U .S., Americans spend an average of $0 .20 per day on cosmetics, perfume and skin and hair care products, over $0 .50
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a day on jewelry, nearly $3 on furniture and other household goods, over $3 per day on clothing.
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Gambling totals almost $6 per day, the average American. Over $7 a day is spent on automobiles and trucks and over $9 on food.
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Americans simply live a lifestyle that's beyond imagination for most of the poor in the world.
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The only point of my giving you all those is that we live in wealth and prosperity.
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And what that does to me is that just sort of magnifies the problem of greed. How can we possibly covet and be greedy when we have so much?
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One commentator, he quotes Mark Twain, he says, Mark Twain once defined civilization as a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
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And he was right. In fact, many Christians are infected with covetousness and do not know it. They think
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Paul's admonition in 1 Timothy 6 applies only to the rich and famous. Measured by the living standards of the rest of the world, most believers in America are indeed wealthy people.
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Here's some quick biting questions. Let me run through them. Sort of to examine yourself.
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What do you spend your time on or thinking about coveting? Cars? Buying, washing them, whatever, taking care of them.
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Clothes? Ladies? Shopping? Men too. How about this one? This is me.
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House? Constant improvement projects? How much time do you spend on that? How much do you think about that?
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How about work? Promotions? Portfolio? Retirement?
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For the younger ones here, how do you determine where you're going to go to school?
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What career are you going to choose? Does eternity, does service to God even come into your radar screen?
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Another question. What do you pour into your mind? Media outlets, the media that you sort of sponge up.
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Fox Business Report, that sort of thing. HGTV? Think about that for a minute.
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HGTV, what are we doing when we watch that? I was going to say MTV Cribs.
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I hope not, but I happen to know that that show exists. Food network?
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Some of us have issues. Entertainment shows, me included. How about even just entertainment shows with characters that their primary concern is material things, like they don't rub off on us at all?
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And here's one that I also share the pain here. Conservative talk radio.
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Oh, yeah, you know, hey, we have certain things in common with these guys. Yeah, so we jump on the bandwagon. I tell you, the more
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I listen to them, the more I realize those guys, they are not biblical conservatives by any stretch.
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They're conservative in this way. They care about their wallet. You pull money out of my pocket and I'll be all over you like an attack dog, but that's really what it's about.
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All right, let's just move on to the next one here. I can't really allow questions because I'm out of time.
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Warning two, don't be fooled by thinking one's worth is determined or defined by how much one has. And that's, you see, in the second part of verse 15, not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.
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The wealth itself isn't necessarily a problem, but, I mean, we see many wealthy people, Abraham, Isaac, Job, David, Joseph of Arimathea in the
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New Testament, but the wealth doesn't define them. Another question for application, how do you treat those with less?
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Do you look down on them? Most of you would say, no, no, no, no, I don't look down on people. But how about this one?
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Someone makes less than you, maybe they dress different, maybe they drive different, maybe they have less of a house, and you think to yourself, well,
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I don't have as much in common with them, so maybe I'm going to invite someone over to my house who
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I have more in common with. What are you really saying? Some biblical examples, you know, who's the better person, the widow who gave her mite, or the other people who have given all that money, how about rich men,
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Lazarus? Think of the rich young ruler. In God's economy, riches are typically a hindrance more than an asset.
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And I'm not going to read, but 1 Timothy 6, 8 through 11, love of money, a root of all kinds of evil, it's a snare, they snare many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.
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So some cultural examples, you know, the middle class, keeping up with the
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Joneses, who has the most toys wins, you know, what kind of house, cars, vacations you have, how often do we trek to the malls, to Walmart, Sam's, Costco, massive consumerism in an effort to keep up.
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And then you have just the basis form of, I would say, our culture. I'm not trying to point the finger here, but,
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I mean, I think we all know, you know, you look at sort of that gangster rap sort of culture, just raw, when it comes down to just raw, raw, you know, lust and desire.
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Of course you have the sensual issues, which is fairly obvious, and then what do you have? It's all about materialism.
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Bling, it's got the bling, it's the, you know, rolling around. I remember I told my wife
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I was going to say this, and she kind of questioned it, but it was a quote,
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I remember, it was a song that Snoop Dogg sang, it was something about, you know,
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I got my mind on my money and my money on my mind, and that pretty much defines that genre.
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And you see the pictures and whatnot, it's all about the gold, it's all about I'm showing what I have because that makes me bigger, better.
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Not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions. Proper Perspective, Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24, one of my favorite verses.
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I have it on my wall, my cubicle at work, it's on my e -mail signature line. Thus says the
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Lord, let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the
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Lord who, exercising love and kindness, justice, righteousness on earth, for I delight in these things, declares the
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Lord. Last one, probably the most important and the one I'm able to spend the least amount of time on.
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It says in verse 21, So is the man who stores up for himself a treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
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Real quick, what is rich towards God? We know what treasure for yourself is, that's obvious. What does rich toward God mean?
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I'll give you some quick verses. Verse 33 talks about sell your possessions and give to charity, make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, and unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes nor moth destroys.
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So what is that? Giving to the poor. There's one way to get rich in heaven. Matthew 19, 21 talks about if you wish to complete, go and sell your possessions, you'll have treasure in heaven.
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Once again, same thing. 1 Timothy 6, 17 to 19, good works, generosity, ready to share.
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That is how you create a foundation for your future.
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And then I would point out Matthew 6, 17 to 21, which true worship is talking about fasting and whatnot.
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Don't fast in front of people but fast in secret because then that's how you're going to get your treasure in heaven.
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And the funny thing is, really, we're talking about an exchange here. We're giving these things but we're going to get them back.
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It's like, it's a perfect, how good a deal is that? It's just really an exchange.
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I have to quote this. One commentator, he quoted Ambrose, Bishop of Malaya, says, Thou hast barns, talking about this man, you have barns, it's the bosom of the needy, the house of widows, the mouse of orphans and infants.
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These are the true storehouses for surplus wealth with the promise of immense interest.
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And I would add that wealth might be relative, but judging by the statistics that we talked about, we're all living in a situation of extreme surplus.
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And I won't talk about our own necessities. Someone would say, well, I can't give all this stuff.
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I've got to take care of, I have to invest and I've got to plan properly and all this. I have to take care of my own things.
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We see right here in this chapter, God compares His care for the ravens, the lilies, the grass, like He's not going to take care of us and our necessities.
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What do we actually need? 1 Timothy 6, 6 and 8. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.
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So we ought not to worry about our physical needs. Seek the kingdom, says in verse 29 and 31, and these things will be provided.
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And then in verse 32, God has already given us the kingdom. God has already given us the kingdom.
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Why would we go on being greedy about temporal things? If we truly believe that, it would make no logical sense.
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I can't take questions. I've just got to do this quick conclusion. And I won't even tell you what
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I told you. You'll have to listen to the tape. But let me give you this sort of concluding, some concluding thoughts to wrap it up.
01:00:07
I wish I had time for more questions. I'm sorry. It took longer than I thought. Back to Piper, I think he said,
01:00:15
I think it was in his Don't Waste Your Life, but he talked about a plaque that hung in his kitchen or something growing up.
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And you guys know the saying, only one life will soon be passed.
01:00:28
Only what's done for Christ will last. And then you know this fairly common expression,
01:00:37
Jim Elliott. He who is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
01:00:48
So we know these things. We read this stuff all the time. Why do we pay so much attention to temporal things?
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Entertainment, politics, useless hobbies. Why do we spend so much time on material things?
01:01:04
House, clothes, cars. While we know that so many around us are dying in sin, and they really have nothing but, not to be graphic, but we know this is true, they have nothing but burning to look forward to.
01:01:23
Do we really believe this? Why do we worry and care so much about planning our retirement, but we spend no time caring or planning for our eternal future?
01:01:37
Or why do we spend so much time reading and studying biblical truths, but we control our finances as if they're ours and not
01:01:47
God's? Do we really believe this? Why do we care so little about the lost and poor around us, as though their well -being had no bearing on our eternal future, or as if they're not really going to burn for eternity?
01:02:05
Do we really believe this? How can we sit in Sunday school and nod our heads in agreement, but then live, or at least in the context of financial planning, as practical atheists?
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Do you believe this? Here's the alternative for the guilty of us.
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You fool. So my exhortation would be, don't be that fool.
01:02:37
Live like you really believe this. All right, let's pray. Dear God, we thank you again for this time.
01:02:48
We thank you for the parables. We thank you that you have given us these truths that are easy to understand. We pray that you would help us to internalize these things, help us to allow these things to change our lives, our way of thinking.
01:03:03
And we pray that you just bless our time going from here. Bless the service. I pray that you would be in it.