The Parable of the Rich Fool: On Money| Luke 12:13-34
Brian Hedges | February 13, 2022
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Luke 12. If you’re using one of the Bibles in the chairs in front of you it’s page 871. We’re going to be studying verses 13-34 this morning.
Today we’re going to talk about everyone’s favorite topic for church: money. Aren’t you glad you came to church?
I suppose that at the beginning of a message like this it is, perhaps, good to give some disclaimers. I’ve found, in talking with people who maybe don’t go to church or used to go to church and quit going to church, that one reason is that people tire of churches always asking for money. I think, of course, we all have a bad taste in our mouths because of televangelists who are always asking for money, and maybe that’s been your experience at church as well.
So I just want to say at the outset that the purpose of this message is not to get you to give more to Redeemer, it’s not to get you to give anything in particular today. We’re not doing a fundraiser or anything like that. In fact, we’re actually healthy financially, and I’m grateful for the faithful, regular, generous giving of so many people in the church. We’re ahead of our budget for the year. So that’s not the aim of this message at all.
Rather, it is that we want to take seriously the words and the teaching of Jesus, and Jesus has a lot to say about riches. We find this in Luke 12, and I think it’s important for us to wrestle with the teaching of Jesus, because frankly, we all have money issues. We all have to deal with money, we all have and spend money to some degree, and probably all of us at certain points in our lives feel anxious about money, and we’re all tempted at times to put a wrong kind of trust in money, rather than keeping our trust in God; deriving a sense of security from money instead of from God himself. Perhaps, if we’re honest, we would all say that we’ve misused money at some point or another in our lives.
If discipleship means anything, it means bringing these nitty-gritty details of our lives into the orbit of Christian thinking and under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and therefore we need to think about what Jesus teaches about money.
Jesus says a lot about it in Luke 12. We’re going to be looking at the parable of the rich fool. We’ve been looking at parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke through this series, and each week focusing on a particular practical aspect of Christian discipleship. So today the focus is on money or wealth and how we use it; the parable is the parable of the rich fool.
This is in a context in Luke 12 that really arises because of a question that is asked of Jesus, and then it’s followed by some of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples about money, much of which is also found in the Sermon on the Mount. So I want to look at this whole broad context, and it’s a long passage of Scripture, so instead of reading it all at the beginning we’re just going to read it as we work our way through.
I want you to notice that there are three things in this passage. There are warnings, [exhortations], and promises.
First of all, there are warnings to not trust in money, or in riches, to use the more biblical word. Then there are exhortations to not worry about riches, and then thirdly, there are promises of a better kind of riches. I think we need to see all three of these things.
1. Warnings to Not Trust in Riches
You see the context and the initial warning in verses 13-15; let’s read that, and then the parable follows. Here’s the context.
“Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’” Everything Jesus says here arises because of a family squabble about money. Anybody ever have one of those? They’re arguing about the inheritance. So someone comes to Jesus and asks this question.
Notice Jesus’ response, verse 14. “But he said to him, ‘Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?’ 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.’”
There’s the basic warning. Jesus is saying, “Beware of covetousness.”
What is covetousness? It’s not a word we use very often. It’s essentially greed. It’s been defined as “the excessive and immoderate desire of acquiring more and more wealth.” It’s an inordinate desire for wealth or for riches, or money or what money can buy.
It’s important for us to keep this in perspective with everything the Bible says about wealth and riches. You need to understand that the Bible does not condemn wealth. The Bible does not say that riches are wrong. In fact, there are many wealthy people who followed God in Scripture. Think of Abraham or of Job or of King David. All of these were men who had great wealth and they feared God, they loved God, they followed God. So the Scriptures don’t condemn wealth.
Sometimes the Bible is misquoted as saying that money is the root of all evil, and that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
The Scriptures, I think, give us wonderful principles for acquiring wealth, using wealth responsibly, stewardship of wealth. The Scriptures certainly envision a right to private property. I think you see that in the Ten Commandments with the commandment, “You shall not steal.” That means we are to respect the property that belongs to another.
So, the Scriptures are not condemning wealth, and Jesus here is not condemning wealth. He is condemning an inordinate desire for wealth. He is condemning greed, he’s condemning and warning us against covetousness.
The problem with covetousness is to place too much emphasis on wealth, to assume that life is made up of what you possess. Jesus says, “Be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” The problem is when we are so consumed with money and with material things that we are neglecting other, much more important matters—the welfare of our souls, harmony in our relationships, the glory and the kingdom of God. So it’s in that context that Jesus then gives this parable. Let’s read it in verses 16-21.
“And he told them a parable, saying, ‘The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, “What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?” And he said, “I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.’”
Jesus calls this man a fool, so the parable is both a warning against covetousness and is meant to expose the folly, the foolishness of trusting in riches. Now, why is this man a fool?
I think Dale Ralph Davis, in his commentary on Luke, helpfully observes that, first of all, he had a false estimate of blessing. Here’s a man who assumes that his primary purpose is to store up these new gifts. He has a false estimate, also, of time, for he assumes that he is fixed for many years. Right? “Relax! You’re set for years to come!” Whereas his life is going to end that very night.
He also has a false sense of purpose. He’s saying, “Take it easy,” right? Rather than being rich towards God, rather than using his riches to benefit others, he’s completely self-centered in his whole approach.
He has a false sense of control. Notice how he says, “You have ample goods laid up for many years,” in verse 19. God faces him with, “Whose will they be?” Control, security in his riches; that’s the illusion.
Then he also has a false sense of value. His focus is on his material wealth, with no apparent thought for his soul.
He’s a fool because he misunderstands blessing, time, purpose, control, and values.
This is a simple story, and I think the punchline, the point of the story is in verse 21, where Jesus says, “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
The problem, you see, is self-centered dependence upon and use of riches rather than being rich towards God. I think what means—being rich towards God—that will become clear as we get further into the passage.
Here’s the problem: it’s too easy for you and I to read this parable and think, Oh, that doesn’t apply to me, because I’m not rich. Let me give you some statistics on wealth and poverty in the world today. If you make 25,000 dollars a year, you are in the top ten per cent of the world’s most wealthy. If you own a house or a car, if you never have to worry where the next meal is coming from, if you have clean water, you’re in the top ten per cent. Did you know that there are over one billion people in the world who live on less than one dollar a day, and two billion who live on less than two dollars a day? Over 20,000 children die every day of starvation or preventable disease. If you’re not worried about your kids starving to death and you’re able to get them basic medical care, you are rich according to the standards of today.
So this does apply to us, and this is not an isolated saying of Jesus. Jesus actually says a lot about wealth, a lot about riches. This is found over and over again, especially in the Gospel of Luke. These aren’t going to be on the screen, but I just want you to hear the words of Jesus. I want you to hear that this isn’t an isolated saying, an isolated statement, but that over and over again in the Gospel of Luke you find these kinds of warnings or these kinds of statements. Most of these are words of Jesus.
Luke 1:53 says that God has “filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
Luke 6:24: “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
Luke 8:14, the parable of the soils. You remember one of the kinds of soil, one of the kinds of ground on which the seed of the world falls is the thorny ground. This is what Jesus says about that. “As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” Jesus is saying there that riches can be a hindrance to receiving the word and it bearing fruit.
Luke 16:13: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
In Luke 16:19-31 you have the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and these two men both die. Lazarus is called the poor man, twice he’s called a poor man. Lazarus is comforted after death, but the rich man wakes up in hell.
In Luke 18:22 Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions and give to the poor and follow him, and then in verse 25 he says, “For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
These are the words of Jesus. This is just what Jesus says. Jesus warns against trusting in riches; he warns us of that because it’s dangerous.
I remember when I was in high school I read a short story by Leo Tolstoy, who was a Russian novelist, author of War and Peace and these great, big, massive novels. I remember reading this story; this came back to mind yesterday. I haven’t read this in years, and I didn’t re-read it, but I looked up a synopsis to get the details. It’s a story that’s called “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” This has stuck with me for 30 years. “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”
It’s a story of a man who is covetous, he’s greedy, and he’s wanting to accumulate more and more land, and the story is about how he’s doing that. He comes across a deal where he, for a very reasonable amount of money, he can buy a large plot of land. The way it works is like this: he has a single day to walk off a plot of land and to mark it as he goes, and he can buy it for this very good price, but it’s on the condition that he comes back to the starting place and the land is all marked off by sunset of that day. He thinks this is a wonderful deal, so he goes off on this trek to mark out as much land as he can.
Of course, he tries to get too much, and he gets close to the end of the day and he’s still far away from the starting point. He can see that the sun is about to set, and so he’s running. He is at a dead run to try to get back in time to be able to claim the land, or else all is lost.
Right as the sun sets, he finally makes it, but he has run himself so hard, he is so exhausted, that he collapses and he dies right there on the spot. Then he is buried in six feet of ground, which answers the question posed by the title of the story, “How much land does a man need?” Six feet.
It’s much the same point that Jesus is making, a warning against greed, a warning against covetousness, a warning against putting our trust in riches.
2. Exhortations to Not Worry about Riches
Then the warning is followed by exhortations, and it’s interesting, because now the focus switches from those who are rich, trusting in riches, to those who are anxious about not having enough.
John Blanchard says that “wealth can be a stumbling block not only for the rich, but to the poor. One is tempted to gloat, and the other to fret. One sins because of the lot he has, the other because of the little he has. Yet Jesus taught that it was wrong to be anxious, even about necessities.” That’s what this is about. Jesus here is exhorting his disciples to not worry about riches.
I want you to see these exhortations. I think we could break this down into five reasons not to worry about riches. I’ll just give you the reason and then read the text that follows.
(1) Number one, don’t worry, because life is more than money. Look at verses 22-23. “And he said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.’”
Jesus here is reminding his disciples that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of things that he possesses, right? It’s the same basic lesson. He’s saying, “Don’t worry, because your life is about more than those basic necessities of life.” Your life is about God, your life is about eternity, your life is about relationships, it’s about sin and holiness. I mean, there are things that are much, much more important than should be your concern.
This rebukes those of us who spend more time fretting about money than we do thinking about our own holiness or thinking about the salvation of our souls or the salvation of our children. If we spend more time trying to secure the financial future of our kids or grandkids than we do thinking about their eternal destiny, we’re failing to heed Jesus’ teaching here. Don’t worry, because life is about more than money. You don’t measure someone’s life based on their material possessions.
(2) Reason number two: Don’t worry, because you are valued by God. He cares for you.
Look at verse 24. “Consider [think about] the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!”
Now, ravens were unclean animals in the Old Testament, and yet Jesus uses them as an example. God feeds the ravens, right? Sometimes these birds, I suppose, are even scavenger birds.
Last week, with all the snow, I don’t know if this happened to you guys, but our trash company decided not to pick up trash last week. So we had set out our trash on the curb, and we go through a lot of trash with four kids. So it was sitting out there for several days. One day I looked out and there are all these black—I don’t know if they were ravens or crows or whatever—all these black birds surrounding our trash. I didn’t think of it at the time, but really it was a message. “Great is thy faithfulness, O God our Father,” because he was feeding the birds.
If God feeds the birds, Jesus is saying, will he not much more feed you? Because he cares for you.
(3) There’s a third reason in verse 25: don’t worry, because worry is pointless. Here Jesus points out the futility of anxiety. Verse 25: “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?”
Worry never accomplishes anything. It’s pointless, it’s futile; in fact, we could even go so far as to say that worry is harmful. Certainly doctors and psychologists have recognized this, that worry has detrimental effects on our minds, our emotions, and on our physical bodies. We can worry ourselves into sickness, but we cannot worry ourselves into a longer life. It’s futile, it’s pointless; it’s wasted energy.
(4) More importantly (here’s the fourth reason), don’t worry, because you can trust the Father’s care. Here Jesus, I think, is getting right at the root of our anxiety, and the root is little faith. Look at verses 27-28.
“Consider the lilies—” again, it’s a call to consider, to be mindful. Think about the lilies of the field, these field flowers, right? “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!”
God cares for you, and you can trust him because of his care.
(5) One more reason, number five. Don’t worry, because worry doesn’t reflect the concerns of God’s people. Verses 29-31: “And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.”
Exhortations to not worry about riches, but instead to trust in the Father’s care. It’s a rebuke to the smallness of our faith.
Did you know there’s a character in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress named Little Faith? Little Faith was from the town of Sincere, and on his journey to the Celestial City he took a nap in a place called Dead Man’s Lane, which was the haunt of thieves and murderers. While napping there he was robbed by three thieves whose names were Faintheart, Mistrust, and Guilt. It was only through a man named Great Grace that Little Faith was rescued. Great Grace came and he chased the thieves away, the robbers who had stolen Little Faith’s spending money. They’d taken his money, but they didn’t get his most valuable jewels or his certificate for entering through the Celestial gate. But Little Faith was so discouraged by his losses that he failed to draw comfort from his most valuable assets.
Are you like Little Faith? Are you more anxious about financial needs than you are grateful for spiritual blessings? Do losses of temporal wealth so distress you that you’re unable to draw comfort from the Scriptures’ assurances of God’s love and care and faithfulness? Have faintheartedness and mistrust or unbelief or guilt robbed you of peace of mind? If so, then Jesus’ exhortations for you, little faith. He’s saying, don’t fret. Don’t be anxious. Your Father knows what you need; he cares for you; he will take care of you.
I love the words of Francis Ridley Havergal in that old hymn:
Day by day, and with each passing moment,
Strength I find to meet my trials here;
Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,
I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.
He whose heart is kind beyond all measure
Gives unto each day what he deems best—
Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest.
Little Faith, you can trust the Father’s wise bestowment. You have no cause for worry or fear. Don’t worry about riches, but trust your Father.
3. Promises of a Better Kind of Riches
There are warnings, there are exhortations, and then thirdly and finally, there are promises of a better kind of riches.
In verse 31 Jesus says to seek the kingdom and these things will be added to you, and the notice this promise in verse 32. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Verse 32 is the only verse in this section that has no parallel in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. It’s such a rich verse. I’m so glad we have this verse, because Jesus here adds to the truth that God is our Father, he adds another rich metaphor that God is also our shepherd. He says, “Fear not, little flock.” God is our shepherd.
Of course, it recalls to our minds Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures.” What does a shepherd do? He takes care of the sheep, he guides the sheep, he feeds the sheep, he cares for the sheep. Jesus is saying, “God is your Father, and you are his flock, you are his sheep, the sheep of his pasture. God is your shepherd.”
Notice what our shepherd Father gives. He gives the kingdom. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Notice it’s a gift. He gives the kingdom. You don’t earn it; he gives you the kingdom.
What is the kingdom? The kingdom of God is God’s reign, it’s God’s rule over all things through Jesus Christ. I think what Jesus means here when he says, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” is that God, first of all, reigns over all things for you, for your benefit, for your good; and someday, when Jesus returns in the consummation of the kingdom of God, we will inherit all things with Jesus Christ. Therefore we should fear not.
Then notice also how it is that our shepherd Father gives. Jesus says, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He doesn’t do it begrudgingly, he does it with delight. God delights to take care of his children, of his sheep. It is his good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
This is a beautiful promise, a promise of a better kind of riches, a promise of the kingdom of God, a promise of the Father’s shepherding care for us. I think the problem with both covetousness on one hand and anxiety on the other hand, the problem is that the promises of God do not rest with appropriate weight on our hearts. So our hearts start to default to these wrong attitudes, where we’re grasping at security in material things, or we’re worrying that those things are not going to be there when we need them. We’re not trust in the promises of God; we’re Little Faith.
I think the exhortation of C.S. Lewis is good here. Lewis said, “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition [and we might add with riches or money] when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.”
Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise;
Thou mine inheritance, now and always.
Thou and thou only, first in my heart;
High King of heaven, my treasure thou art.
We have the promise of the kingdom of God and our Father’s care.
Then, verses 33-34 show us what life in this kingdom should then look like. Notice what Jesus says.
“Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
This is really challenging. This is the challenging application that if we are citizens of the kingdom of God and if we are being cared for by our Father, here is a radical way to live. Sell your possessions, give to the needy.
What does Jesus mean by that? Does he mean that we are to sell all of our possessions and give it all away? He did tell the rich young ruler to do that. He only the rich young ruler to do that; as far as we know, he didn’t tell anybody else to do that. So I don’t think that’s the right application. If we sold everything and gave it all away and then were no longer able to provide for our families, we would be disobeying other passages of Scripture. So I don’t think that’s what Jesus means.
Nevertheless, he is telling us to loosen our grip on material things. “Sell your possessions.” Why did he say that? Why sell your possessions? Why not just give away cash? I think it’s because we need to remember that our wealth is bound up in our possessions, not just in our liquid assets. Frankly, most of the time our deep attachment isn’t really to the money in the bank, it’s what money can buy. It’s the stuff, right? Jesus wants us to loosen our grip. So he tells us, “Sell your possessions and give to the needy.”
I think giving to the needy encompasses both those who are in physical need (the poor) and giving to those who are in spiritual need, the lost, those who are without Christ. We have to think about this both locally and globally. Here are a couple more statistics for you. Did you know that Christians in North America give an average of just 2.5 per cent of their income? Out of all that income that is given by Christians in North America, churches give an average of only two per cent of that money to needs around the world. That means that only about five cents out of every one hundred dollars a North American Christian makes goes to meet needs in other places of the world—starving children and the billions of people who have never heard the name of Jesus.
I think that’s because we don’t take Jesus’ words seriously enough.
Paul said much the same thing in 1 Timothy 6:17-19. “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty [arrogant or proud], nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works [which I think is similar to being rich towards God], to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”
The idea here is laying up treasures in heaven. Jesus says, “Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old.” Make an investment that nothing can diminish the return. If you invest money in the stock market, you can lose it. But Jesus is saying, “Here’s an investment you can make that will always bring a return.” Every red cent you give in the name of Jesus to feed someone that’s hungry or to send the gospel where it has not been heard, to support the work of Christ in the world—for every cent you give, there is an eternal return. That’s what Jesus is saying, and I think this is how we are rich towards God.
What does that mean for lifestyle choices and for use of money? I think we can’t really set hard and fast rules, and I have no desire to do that, but we do need good examples.
I’ll tell you one example that is really challenging to me is C.S. Lewis. I quoted him a minute ago. You probably know that C.S. Lewis during his lifetime was very, very popular. He was a professor of English and medieval renaissance literature in Oxford and in Cambridge, but he was very popular as a Christian author. He wrote The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity and all these books for popular Christian audiences, and they were selling by the thousands. A lot of money was coming in.
Lewis was so serious about his discipleship that the biographers tell us that he used very little of those royalties for himself, and in fact gave most of it away, so much that he lived most of his life right on the brink of poverty.
During World War II in particular he was regularly bringing people into his home to live with him, to take care of them, to get them out of the bombings in London. Eventually he set up a charity called the Agape Fund, which was entrusted with distributing proceeds from his books.
Lewis said regarding money, “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I’m afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, et cetera, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.”
Lewis himself certainly lived that way.
That’s the challenge, to live as citizens of the kingdom where money doesn’t grip us, we hold it loosely, and we’re able to give.
How does the gospel figure into this as a motivation, as something that helps us to live this way? I think the answer is found in 2 Corinthians 8:9. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”
You know what that is? That is a statement of the gospel expressed in economic terminology. It’s describing for us how Jesus gave up everything for us in this great exchange—his riches for our poverty, his glory for our shame, his power for our weakness, his eternal fellowship with the Father for the estrangement of the cross, his life for our death—this great exchange. Paul elsewhere describes it as the one who knew no sin being made sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. This is even more amazing when we think that he did it for sinners, he did it when we were his enemies! He gave up everything, he gave up his riches so that we through his poverty might become rich.
Brothers and sisters, I think this is how it works. It’s when the glory of that good news, of that gospel, the glory of what Jesus Christ did for us; it’s when that rests with enough weight on our hearts and we begin to believe deep in our hearts and our souls that God, our Father, he really loves us, he really cares for us, he has promised to take care of us, he loved us so much that he sent Jesus to give everything for us, and he is good, he is so good; and we are so persuaded of that that it begins to loosen our grip on material things, and it sets us free to use them as stewards, use them for the good of others and for the kingdom of God.
Where are you this morning? I want us this morning to heed the warnings of Jesus. Don’t trust in riches; trust in God. Heed the exhortations of Jesus. Don’t worry about riches. God loves you, he cares for you; he will take care of you. Believe the promises of Jesus. There’s a better kind of riches, the riches of the kingdom of God. Invest in those riches as you reflect on what Christ has done for you.
Brian G. Hedges
