Wednesday, October 13, 2021 PM

To gather together and have a meal. A blessing to have the kids gathering again for TAG. And Lord, I pray that she would bless those who can't be with us tonight, and that she would bring healing and strength and encouragement into their lives.

And I pray that tonight, as we read your word, that you would give us understanding, and that you would encourage us, and that you would help us to follow Christ. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.

The Rich Fool and Covetousness in Luke 12

Okay, we're gonna do Luke chapter 12, beginning in verse 13. Then one from the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?

And he said to them, Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. Then he spoke a parable to them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully.

And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops? So he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul will be required of you. Then whose will those things be which you have provided?

So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God? So last time we were looking at this passage, we considered the person from the crowd who addressed Jesus, this traveling rabbi who had been doing these wonderful miracles.

They were really warming up to him in all that he was doing. And remember the nature of this crowd at the beginning of chapter 12. There were so many people in this crowd. They were trampling one another, trying to get close to Jesus.

And him having all of this attention and having all of this popularity puts him into a light where this man thinks, if he speaks and everybody agrees, then he'll speak as an authority and he can solve my problem.

I want my brother to divide the inheritance. He's not doing what I want him to do. I think I can achieve what I want here and Jesus will be the key. Now when Jesus addresses this man, he does so in a way very similar to the rich ruler who came to him and said, Good teacher, what must I do to be saved?

And of course Jesus says, Why do you call me good? There was no one good but God. And Jesus is here not denying his divinity or his perfection, his goodness and so on, but he's getting at the heart matter, some presuppositions that this man has, some assumptions this man has made and trying to bring him up short so that he can show him the way forward.

And the same thing happens here in this text. Of course he says, Who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you? Well, isn't Jesus Christ the son of God? Isn't he the word? Isn't he the light of the world?

Certainly he does have the authority to make a decision here, but that's not what Jesus is going for. He wants to get at the heart matter. What's going on with this man? Why is he stopping everything in the middle of this massive crowd trampling one another and trying to get Jesus to make some kind of ruling in his favor when Jesus has been given no particular jurisdiction in this region?

And so he's getting, so he gets to the heart of the matter and he identifies it as covetousness. Covetousness. Which, when you go through the Ten Commandments, you come to the last one. It says, Thou shalt not covet.

And it gives you a list of all the things you could possibly covet. And there's a lot of different things. And we talked about how many of the Ten Commandments, in the Ten Commandments, if you break them, Old Testament law, Mosaic law, says you deserve the death penalty.

But there was nothing in the case law of the Old Testament that says, if you covet, thou shalt die. Except, of course, that's what happened in Genesis 3. Because the word for covet is the same word that is used to describe when Eve is looking upon the tree and the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and that it was desirable to make one wise.

And we have the same Hebrew word there as the word for covetousness or covet. So Jesus says, beware of covetousness. And we consider this very important truth. One's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.

And that is a truth that rings very loudly even down to today. Then he tells a story. He tells a parable. He spoke a parable to them saying, the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself saying, what shall I do since I have no room to store my crops?

And you've heard of this saying before. Of course, I talked to myself. I am in need of an expert opinion. He thinks within himself. Proverbs says that the man who separates himself, and the man who becomes an advisor to himself, the man who can only obey a serious himself, and must come to his conclusions on his own.

The one who separates himself quarrels against. He's isolated. He does not look for from the outside. He has all of this suddenly to his neighbor. He doesn't go to his brother. He does not go to the synagogue and consult with the rabbi.

He does not pray and consult the scriptures to see why in the world do I have all this abundance? And what is the meaning of it? And what am I supposed to do with it? No, he consults with himself. And he comes to a very satisfactory arrangement in consulting himself.

His self replies, well, let's be about the self. That's a very surprise outcome of that conversation. But he says, okay, then I'm going to make everything that I have all this abundance about myself. So he pulls down.

He says, here's my plan. I'm going to pull down my barns and build greater. And there I will store all my crops and my goods. So I'm going to increase the amount of stuff that I have, make sure that I can preserve it, make sure that it can be there for me.

And then I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. In other words, the American dream as it has become. The original American dream was something totally different.

Yes, it had to do with freedom. Yes, it had to do with self-reliance. Yes, it had to do with getting away from controlling tyrannies. But the whole point of it was, we want to be able to worship God and labor for God and raise our children and direct them in the way that we believe that the Lord wants them to go.

And we don't want to have the state getting in the way of that. And the separatists who fled England at the risk of their lives and went to the Netherlands and then fled again at the risk of their lives.

And again, many of them losing their lives to settle the new world. This was the dream. I think it was Cotton Mather who said that, what was it, that the mother was basically devotion and religion and worship.

And she begot a daughter named Prosperity. Then the daughter ate the mother. Jesus says, beware of covetousness. Now, this man is obviously all about himself. Now, this is a very interesting thing. When you read the 10th Commandment, do not covet.

It lists all the stuff that your neighbor has. Right? That's all the stuff your neighbor has. His wife, his house, his donkey, his ox, his maid servant, his man servant, his fields. Do not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.

And we can see the disastrous impact of covetousness in many different stories in the Bible. Think of Ahab coveting Naboth's vineyard and all of the fallout that happened from that. But here, in Jesus' story, after he says, beware of covetousness, he tells a story about a man who's only thinking about himself.

And he's not even considering what his neighbor has. He's not looking across the fence at greener grass. He's not looking across the other fence and seeing a happier family situation and coveting that.

No. He's talking to himself. He's consulting with himself. So, how is this covetousness? Remember that the definition of covetousness is this controlling desire for that which is not yours. A controlling desire for that which is not yours to have.

You don't get to have that. So, in this case, what is this man coveting? Kind of what he deserves. Yeah. Okay. Countable blessing. What now? Whatever his heart desires. Yeah. Okay. So, try to, you know, try to connect this story, this parable, to the question that prompted it, right?

Here comes a man, just kind of steps out in front of the crowd and says, you know, teacher, make my brother divide the inheritance with me. What's he upset about? He's upset about who has the right, who has the right to control the property, right?

And he says, you know, the right, the controlling rights of this property, I don't like the way that this is turned out. Jesus, make my brother divide the inheritance with me. Jesus says, beware of covetousness.

And then he tells a story about a man who thinks he has absolute autonomous rights to his property without any regard to anyone else. And what's the problem with that? He doesn't know where it came from.

He doesn't have absolute controlling rights of that which he possesses. He is not truly an owner. He's a steward. He's a steward. God owns it. And he just gave you a bunch more to be responsible for. And it's not, it's not your right to control what doesn't belong to you.

Have you been put in, have you been in stewardship of something? Have you been made responsible for something? Oh, we all have. But ultimately, it belongs to God. And he has the controlling right to what it is for.

Exactly. Sharecroppers. Yeah. Now, think about this in the context where, of course, Jesus is preaching the good news of the kingdom. He's preaching the hope of the new covenant. But he's dealing with those who are still living under the old covenant.

So, this land of the rich man in the parable, this land, as Brother Red has pointed out, belongs to God. God has already said, the land belongs to me. And what are they supposed to be doing with the land?

They're supposed to be faithful. They're supposed to be taking the first fruits, the first tenth, the tithe, honoring him saying, hey, this is all really yours. And then taking the rest of it and using it in a way that will bring glory to God and show the benevolence of God and show the majesty of God and so on.

They weren't to harvest to the corners of their fields. That was for the poor. If they dropped some sheaves along the way, they didn't go back and pick that up. Why? Because they didn't have controlling rights on the dropped sheaves.

God did. And God said, that's for the poor to come labor and gather. They did not go back a second time and beat their fig trees and go back a second time and get the rest of those grapes off the vine.

They left those because God said, the poor will come and they'll labor and they'll gather there. So, they didn't have controlling rights and ultimate decision-making rights over what they had. That was God's.

And so, Jesus, when he says, beware of covetousness, it's not simply about what your neighbor has, because he's the one who has that and it's not legitimately yours. It's also covetousness about what is rightfully and only belonging to God, the controlling rights of the property.

Again, when Eve looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to look at that fruit, look at the potential of now being able to define right and wrong for herself. I will determine the knowledge of good and evil for myself.

She coveted and desired that which belonged only to God. It only belonged to God. And in this case, this is the same situation. So, he's got a plan. He's going to eat, drink, and be merry for many years and take his ease, but God said to him, fool.

Fool. Now, the ignorant or the naive just don't know yet. Right? They need knowledge. They need to be educated. Okay? The simple may be in possession of facts, but they need to be instructed and discipled about how to put them together into wisdom.

How to make good decisions and proceed. The fool, by definition, is one who knows better and then does it anyway. That's a fool. He knows better, but he does it anyway. So, God says to this person, fool.

Fool. So, he was suppressing the truth in unrighteousness by having a conversation with himself. He didn't go and ask somebody else because they might remind him, you're blessed. You're fortunate. Someone has been gracious to you.

God has given you all this. He didn't go consult anybody else because they may have told him something he didn't want to hear. He consulted with himself and suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. And so, God says, fool.

Fool. And why is he a fool? Because this night, your soul will be required of you. And then, whose will those things be which you have provided? This is, I guess, again, Jesus is being sarcastic over and over.

This, again, reminds us of Ecclesiastes, right? Where Solomon considers the lasting value of laboring to gather in gold and silver. Of laboring to build structures and a kingdom and to make all these investments.

And yet, when you're gone, who knows who will take it over? And who knows what it will turn into? Our planet is covered with ruins. It's just covered with ruins. And people go and tour the ruins. They say, oh, this used to be there.

Wait, this used to be here. It's kind of a funny thing to do, right? Go look at something that used to be there. But it's interesting and it reminds us about these kinds of truths. Then, whose will those things be which you have provided?

And so, Jesus says, after saying, beware of covetousness, gives this story. Everybody can relate to that. They get it. And then he says, so is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

So, recall what we talked about last time. What were the cultural assumptions about the rich? Yeah, God blessed them because they were better. Exactly. The more wealth that somebody had, obviously, the more blessed of God they were.

And thus, they were closer to God. And then when Jesus says about the rich ruler, how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

Easier for the largest moving thing you've ever seen to go through the smallest opening you've ever seen. Then for a rich man to go to heaven, to enter the kingdom of heaven, the disciples say, well, then who can be saved?

I mean, if the rich who God likes the best aren't going to make it in, then all of us are pretty much doomed. And you can see how those assumptions could have been built out of the blessings and curses of the old covenant.

God had said, if you live according to the covenant and you're faithful, then you're going to be really, really blessed. And if you don't, then you're going to be cursed and so on. The only problem with that is that people were also very often sometimes getting rich on the backs of the poor, like the Pharisees were.

And there was a lot of injustice going on. And they were still trying to maintain the framework. So Jesus says, so is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. It's important to see that Jesus is not against treasure and wealth.

And in fact, one of the praises of Christ that we see in Revelation is that all the wealth belongs to him. Jesus is not anti-Abraham, who was one of the wealthiest men in all of history. The point is, laying up treasure for yourself is covetousness.

That's covetousness. Being a steward of a lot, now that's not sinful. That's not evil. That's not wrong. You just have a lot more to be responsible for before God. Now, how are we going to use it? Are we going to use it for ourselves?

Are we going to consider how is it that God wants us to steward this for him? How am I to be a blessing? So Jesus says that taking up wealth and treasure only for ourselves is foolish, but rather we ought to be rich toward God.

This is how he answers the man from the crowd who wants Jesus to divide the inheritance. Any questions or observations about verses 13 to 21? Okay, so we are reminded in this text of the fragility of human life.

This night, you could be gone. We're also reminded of the brevity of riches and wealth and estates and so on. It can all just be dispersed and go away. And then, with that in mind, you could die tonight.

All your stuff could be taken away from you in an instant. Then Jesus says, okay, now pondering on these thoughts, don't worry. The very next thing he does in verse 22, then he said to his disciples, therefore I say to you, do not worry.

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, nor about the body, what you will put on. Life is more than food and the body is more than clothing. After showing the evanescence of possessions, showing the brevity of life, he then says, do not worry.

Do not be consumed about these things. Consider the ravens, verse 24, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn. And God feeds them of how much more value are you than the birds.

And by this, Jesus is not countering the wisdom of Proverbs, go to the ant, oh slugger, go to the ant and be wise. I mean, that's not, Jesus is not countering that at all. But he's reminding these people who, most of them are daily concerned about whether they're going to have enough to feed their family for the next day.

They are concerned about whether their clothes are going to last another year. I mean, they are concerned about these things. We are concerned about things. We are worried and anxious about a great many things in our lives.

Well, life is more than food. The body is more than clothing. Life is more than your bank account and your body is more than health. Very often, in worry and anxiety, we begin to take up these themes and these realities that God has made and we begin to reduce them to lesser than what God has intended.

And we are to consider the way that God has made everything and then how God provides and keeps everything going. The richest people in the world today are all thinking about how they can use their money and their inventions and their innovations and their initiatives to keep the world spinning.

We're going to seed the sky, so we're going to try to shield us from the sun because the sun is bad. We're going to make lots of rockets so we can go blow up asteroids and keep ourselves alive. And we're going to do all these different things because the richest men in the world, their only hope of salvation.

The hubris of man. And it's actually God who keeps the world spinning. Make sure the birds get fed in the morning. And sometimes we don't like certain birds in our trees. Mr. B, you know, brackles. We don't like them in our trees.

But there they are, well fed. Thank you, Lord. And God is the one who's keeping it going. Now, we're going to look more at that passage next time and at some of the jokes that Jesus tells about worry and anxiety.

But we surely do need some help to kind of laugh at ourselves and remember we don't have to worry. We don't have to be anxious. Not with a good God like we have. All right. Well, Brother Dwight is going to come up and organize us for our time of prayer.