Please open your Bibles this morning with me to Luke chapter 12. We're continuing our study of the parables, and that's brought us this morning after something of an introduction to the parable of the rich fool, last time we met, in Jesus' warning against covetousness, to consider that parable which follows. You cannot read the New Testament and the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and listen to him as he taught and preached and spoke to realize, you have to, that he was the master teacher. No incident ever caught him by surprise or ever derailed his instruction. In fact, he would capitalize on otherwise distracting interruptions. He would use them as teachable moments, as illustrations of spiritual and eternal truths. Luke records one such occasion when our Lord informed of the news of recent tragic deaths, that He used this report to impress upon His hearers their need to repent, lest they likewise perish. Luke also recorded an incident in which Jesus turned a rude interruption between two scrapping brothers over a family inheritance. He turned it into an opportunity to warn his hearers against the sin of covetousness. And Jesus, notice this warning in Luke chapter 12, beginning in verse 13. And someone in the crowd said to him, he's just been preaching, he's been warning them against many of the trials and troubles they're gonna face in the Christian life, warning them against the leaven of the scribes and the Pharisees, warning them against being hauled away for their faith, called on the carpet to give an account. All of these serious things Jesus is speaking about, going after the hearts of his hearers, seeking to command their attention. And we read in verse 13 that there was somebody completely out to lunch and he wasn't listening at all to what Jesus was preaching. And someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. But he said to him, man, who appointed me a judge or arbiter over you? And he said to them, beware and be on your guard against every form of greed, for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions. Last time we considered this. We noted the interruption and we considered Jesus' reproving question. And then we listened to Jesus' startling warning against covetousness. And then we pondered the solemn reason behind Jesus' warning. Now this morning, we come to consider the parable itself. Follow with me as I pick up in verse 16 and read through verse 21. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a certain rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? And he said, this is what I will do. 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 many goods laid out for many years to come. Take your ease. drink, and be merry. But God said to him, you fool, this very night your soul is required of you, and now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Well, this morning, we're going to look at this parable under two headings and then have some concluding application. We're going to look, first of all, at what the foolish rich man said to himself, and then we're going to look at what God said to the foolish rich man. Notice, first of all, what the foolish rich man said to himself. Indeed, the things that we say to ourselves are very telling where we are spiritually. All of us talk to ourselves. We don't always talk out loud to ourselves, but we're always engaged in an internal conversation with ourselves. In fact, some of the things that we say to ourselves, we're glad that nobody else hears them. Well, notice what this rich man said to himself in essence. Two things. First of all, he said, my success is all my doing. If we might paraphrase what he said. And notice Jesus, notice how he describes this man. He was rich. He enjoyed the pleasures of wealth. There's no hint that he gained his wealth by dishonest means, he was nobly employed as a farmer. He was apparently enterprising and hardworking. He would have been worthy of imitation in that regard. He rolled up his sleeves. He went to work every day, and apparently he worked hard. He appears to have been a very prudent businessman. He was successful. His land yielded bountiful harvests. He built barns in which to store his crops. He was also a thoughtful and forward-looking man. He pondered how he might store his bumper crop by building bigger barns. And notice that he was forward-looking. He looked beyond his final building project, and he looked toward a cushy retirement, enjoying the fruits of his labors with a long life of leisure and luxury. That, anyway, was his plan. In this parable, our Lord peels back the veil that separates the temporal and material from the spiritual and eternal. He shows us what this man failed to understand about himself, about his life, about death, about God, and about true and lasting treasure. Our Lord shows that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. He shows that the man who dies with the most toys really doesn't win. So the first thing really is conversation. He says, my success is all by doing. We'll come back to this. Secondly, my prospects are both long and bright. I'm going to live a long life in retirement, and the future is bright before me. You might suppose, as I said, that this rich man was the envy of his neighbors, and he was regarded as a picture of success. He believed that he had it made in the shade and that he would ride off into the sunset, comfortably reclining in his lazy boy and sipping upon a pina colada. But there is a fly in this man's ointment, a fly of which he is not aware until it is too late. Brothers and sisters, Jesus shows that our plans for the future may say much about the present condition of our soul. Indeed, as a man thinks within himself, so is he. The man in Jesus' parable reckoned his future prospects for a long life and happiness to be bright. There was no end in his sight. Well, you're going to find out here that he nursed a hollow hope You've heard, likely, the well-known maxim in stock trading, commercials on the radio and on TV, and they say, as kind of a footnote, past performance is no guarantee of future results. You see, what is true in financial investments is often true in life. This man regarded his cushy future as certain. The Bible says otherwise. Come now you who say today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit. This is found in James chapter four. yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. This man was to learn that his present success did not forecast his future happiness. Many are the plans in a man's heart, Solomon says, but the counsel of the Lord, it will stand. How often we make plans without a thought of God, as if our thoughts and our desires are going to make it happen just as we want. So Jesus gives us a peek into this man's heart, allowing us to overhear his thoughts. What does he say to himself? What does he say here in this text? What are the words that Jesus puts in his mouth? And as we listen to him, let us ponder what we say to ourselves or we'll miss the message. First, this man didn't speak to God, but to himself. He was ungrateful. You see, if he ever gave any thought to God as the author of his blessings, he lived as an atheist. Because the Lord was not in his thoughts, he had no place in his future plans. We generally prove to be tomorrow what we are today, and usually only more so. He would live the rest of his life as he had done before, with no thought of God. Second, the rich man congratulated himself that he was a successful, self-made man, enriched by hard work and wise investment. Now, he was no beggar. He was no crooked tax collector. You see, this man regarded himself as the center of his universe, the author of his blessings, and the determiner of his destiny. His thoughts were all filled with himself. Notice the personal pronouns. There's a plethora of them here. Listen to his self-talk. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? And he said, this is what I will do. 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 many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. Does this resonate with anyone here as it does with me? You know, I have more years behind me than I have ahead of me. And I have plans and I have desires for the future. But you know, I don't know where my tombstone is going to be laid. Nor do you. You see, accumulating wealth has been this man's great ambition in life. But he finds that wealth, even great wealth, comes at a cost. He discovers that increasing riches only increase his worries. I've got this bumper crop, what am I gonna do with it? Maybe he's lost sleep and wondering how to solve his storage problem. after building bigger barns, then he could enjoy the spoils of his labors. Or so he tells himself. This man believed himself in debt to no man and that he owed God nothing. He gave no thought to how he might employ his riches to relieve the needs of those less fortunate in his life. Helping others to the glory of God never enters his thinking at all. Oh, he may have witnessed such needs all around him, but he paid them no mind. He hadn't in the past, he wasn't now, and he didn't plan to in the future, it would seem. You see, this man's life consisted, in his mind, in the abundance of his possessions. Brethren, we see that covetousness blinds the eye and hardens the heart. The absence of material possessions, you see, tends to make us self-sufficient and not God dependent. That's why Jesus could say, blessed are the poor, not poverty itself, but it showed them that they depended upon the hand of another. hopefully opening their eyes to see that they live from hand to mouth, from God's hand to their mouth. Indeed, that's the way all of us live. We just don't often see it that way. Wealth often makes men greedy rather than generous. Jesus teaches that the sins of selfishness and self-sufficiency also unfit us for a happy death. Such we learn from this man's self-talk. He convinced himself that all was well with his soul, that his future on earth was as bright as his days would be long, but he would soon find out that his future would not unfold as he had planned. God would soon, in a few hours, speak in an unexpected and unwanted providence, and he would find that God has the last word. So that briefly is what the foolish rich man said to himself. My success is all my doing, and my prospects are both long and bright. Notice secondly what God said to the foolish rich men in verses 20 and 21. You know what God thinks of us may be very different than what we think about ourselves. The God who is not in this man's thoughts now speaks. when we would do well to listen to God as if he was speaking to each one of us, for in fact he is. May we listen. Now God's voice unexpectedly breaks into this rich man's life and it calls him to account. As God speaks, he demolishes this man's thin spider web of dreams. Little did he know that the God he had denied all of his life now had his number and that his number is up. Notice the telling name that God gives this man. He doesn't call him by his given name. He calls him fool. You see, God addresses him not according to his given name, but according to his character. He is foolish. He lacks sense. You see, in the Bible, to be foolish is to be regarded as evil. This man's name is Telling. In the Septuagint or the Greek translation of the Old Testament, this word translates the name Nabal, which means foolish. Now, you may remember Nabal. He was a very rich man who is described by his own wife as harsh and evil in his doings. He was self-centered and selfish, refusing to provide food for David and his men who were acting as a shield to Nabal's shepherds out in the fields. Nabal's wife was forced to confess her husband to be a worthless man, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. She says, Nabal is his name and folly is with him. What a terrible thing for a wife to have to honestly say about her husband. May there be no Nabals in this room. Well, such is the foolish rich man in Jesus' parable. God, as it were, dubs him Nabal since folly was with him. How different was God's estimation of this man and his future plans than the man himself. He is the fool who has said in his heart, there is no God. And while this covetous man congratulated himself, God decided his doom. The fool says in his heart life, but God says death. The fool says heaven, and God says hell. The fool says in his heart unending riches, but God says eternal misery. Because you say, I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing. And you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. That's what God said to the Laodiceans. And he says the same thing to this man. He thought he had it all. He had the world by the tail. His barns were busting with crops and goods. This rich man received a fearful summons from the Almighty, but he was unprepared to die. And like Nabal and Belshazzar before him who trembled at their feast, that very night God spoke, this future, man's future came crashing down around his ankles. Notice what God says to the man he named Fool. God says essentially two things. First of all, your folly leaves you unprepared for death. You fool. This very night, your soul is required of you. And now who will own what you have prepared? This man was a fool for several reasons. He was a fool because he forgot God as the giver of all of his things. He says, my barns, my crops, my goods, my soul. Further, he was foolish because he greedily reserved all for himself. His bounty never spilled over for the benefit of others. He had more than he could use. Furthermore, he made material things his God, giving no thanks or honor to the one true and living God. Finally, he forgot that death stalked his steps every moment and that he could die at any time. Don't we all think that we're just going to live forever? You know, we drive by cemeteries and we don't visualize our name on any tombstone. It's always other people's obituaries that we read in the newspaper. No, we think we're going to ride high, wide, and handsome into an endless sunset. But our days are numbered, our times are in His hands. We carry on as if we're never going to die. Brethren, this man, this one that God calls fool, he was not in possession of the right mind. He thought himself possessor of his soul, but the God who gave it would shortly recall it. And God would recall him not with a gracious summons like Lazarus in the parable of the rich man, but by a forced arrest. He would be removed from his life, not like a ship weighing its anchor and sailing away, but rather like a vessel ripped from her mooring by a hurricane. Proverbs 20 or 10 in verse 25 reads, When the whirlwind passes, the wicked is no more, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation. He couldn't go down in any storm shelter to rescue him from the hand of God. God would reach right down into that tornado shelter, as it were, and smash him right out. How different is the death of the righteous? The departure of a righteous man is like the rising of the sun. Those whom God calls in grace, He gently calls to glory. In fact, the Bible speaks of Christians as when they die that they fall asleep in Jesus. But the rich fool we see here, he is a great loser. He loses his name only to be dubbed fool. He loses his soul that he reckoned to be his own. He loses his goods to who knows whom. Ripped unexpectedly from this world, he cannot prepare for the disbursement of his property or goods. And now who will own what you have prepared? And finally, he loses everlasting happiness in heaven or eternal misery in hell. Your folly leaves you unprepared for death. Secondly, God says, your folly leaves you spiritually and eternally impoverished. So is the man who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. He was rich toward himself. God took his riches away. If he'd been rich toward God, All opportunity for doing good in this world for his soul, for the souls of his family, for the spiritual and material benefit of others is forever past and irretrievably lost. Our Lord reminds us of what each one of us knows instinctively, that where our treasure is there you will find our heart. A covetous man's heart is bound up in his possessions, and when his possessions are gone, everything is gone, everything worth living for. And he finds it's not worth dying for. This man's treasure was in temporal things, and because he was poor toward God, he possessed no true and lasting treasures, only spiritual poverty and eternal misery. But to possess God, brethren, no matter what we possess or how little we possess, is to possess all. Nothing can be taken away from such a man, woman or child. To possess the living God is to possess true riches, infinite riches, unfailing riches, eternal riches. You see, if one could possess all things without God, it would ultimately be to possess nothing and to lose everything. You see, when we die, we go to be with our God, whether he is the God of heaven or the God of this world. To borrow again from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, this man who was rich here was impoverished hereafter. He drank his fill of life's pleasures here, and then in hell, he forever pleaded for a drop of water to cool his seared tongue. This is the full man's inheritance. Would he have lived like this if he knew he was going to die like that? We may have known it abstractly, but he was a practical atheist at least. He lived for things that would be taken away from him and then go forever to eternal punishment. You see, when we die, we leave everything behind. If we are rich toward God here, he will enrich us in himself forever. Now, you and I may never become wealthy like this man. And yet we may covet the possessions that he has. Covetousness is not just the sin of the rich. It's the sin of men, rich or poor. wanting more than what they have and not being happy until they get it and never getting it, never really being truly happy. You may not live like him, but you may well die like him. Let me ask you, are you rich toward God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? In him are abundant and unending and fabulous riches. the beginning of which we first enjoy here, where we taste and see that the Lord is good. And then we drink the full drop forever in heaven. But here, if you're living for the building up of possessions, you're hewing out for yourself empty cisterns that can hold no water. You need to come to Jesus, who promises to give you by faith in Him a belly out of which will flow abundant rivers of living water. We need to come to Him and drink. Men will never be satisfied with the polluted wells of this world. For where your treasure is there will your heart be also. Let me ask you, as I've asked myself in the preparation of this message, where is your heart? Where is my heart? This brings us to some practical exhortations. and how we may guard ourselves, remember against the original warning, against covetousness of which this man's life is a very unhappy illustration. First of all, if you would guard yourself against covetousness, learn to be content with and thankful for God's provision. Happiness with God's provision and contentment with what he provides is a foretaste of heaven. Because you're kissing the generous hand that's provided, be it little or much. It's his hand. A covetous spirit feeds on discontentment and displays itself in gratitude. We will never be content as long as we nurse the notion that we deserve more than what we have. The advertising industry plays upon that. You deserve a break today, this and that. You deserve what we have to give, and you really won't be happy until you get it. The covetous person says in his heart, if I only had you fill in the blank, then I'll be content. And until I have it, I'm just not gonna be happy. I dare say if you did have it, you're not gonna be happy either. Few people are more unhappy than those who think that life, put God in parentheses, has given them a raw deal, dealt them a bad hand. How can I play this? I'm just unlucky. So you go around kicking stones, cursing God under your breath. Such folks, and I hope none here are that kind of person, live under a perpetual cloud of dissatisfaction about life. That cloud just follows them around. They're nursing a grudge against God because they think that they deserve more than what they have. We learn contentment when we become convinced that God knows best what we need and we're thankful for what He provides. When we truly believe this, we will rest satisfied and not be continually itching for something that we don't have. Let's heed the Apostle Paul's warning. He cautions us against imitating the covetous man's desires that we might not experience his destiny. 1 Timothy 6 verses 9 and 10, those who want to be rich or get rich, fall into temptation. It's not just those who are rich, but those who want to get. There's the problem. It's the wanting. It's not the having so much. It's the wanting. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money, Paul says, it's not money, the love of money. It's often misquoted. The love of money is a root of all sorts of evil. And some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith. And pierced themselves with many a pain. They've stuck the dagger of disappointment and bitterness into their own hearts, you see. Covetousness puts professing Christians' notice on the high road to apostasy. By wanting it, by longing for it, they've wandered away from the faith. Pierce themselves through with a knee of pain. One day, maybe sooner than we think, God will call us out of this world. His sudden and unexpected summons will catch the covetous man or woman unprepared to meet him. But God will break their grip on the things of this world and call The parting of such people from this world will be as permanent as it is painful. Let us learn to pray with Agur, who asked God for neither pinching poverty nor abundant prosperity. Proverbs 30, verses 7 through 9. Two things I have asked of thee. Do not refuse me before I die. Keep deception and lies far from me. I don't want to be involved in them. I don't want to be deluded. I don't want to live a lie. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is my portion, lest I be full and deny thee and say, who is the Lord? or lest I be in want and steal and profane the name of my God. Lord, you know what I need. You know what I can't handle. Give me what I need. Don't ever lead me into temptation, but deliver me from the evil of covetousness. Brethren, we are learning contentment when we see God's wisdom and goodness in custom tailoring our provision according to our need and character. We should pray, God, don't give me anything that will lead my feet away from you. Don't give me anything that will cause my heart to depart from you. Give me what I need. My father knows best and make me contentment with your wisdom and love and provision. Those are happy people. Brethren, how often I have been shamed when the Lord opens my eyes to my covetousness by showing me people who are far more content, apparently, with what they have, which is very little compared to what I have. That's very humbling. We need our eyes opened to those kind of illustrations, often, don't we? They're grasping at something. You look at their hand, it's empty. So if you'd guard yourself against covetousness, learn to be content with and thankful for God's provision. Secondly, if you would guard yourself against covetousness, beware of the folly of worldly mindedness. The Bible teaches that we are not to be conformed to this world. We're to be rather transformed by the renewing of our minds. We're not to be pressed into its mold, into its way of thinking, its aspirations, its values. You see, covetousness is not regarded as a great evil by the people of the world. Some regard it as normal. Others maybe even as beneficial. If you want to get what you want, you've got to grasp for it. A little greed never hurt anybody. It motivated him to get what he wanted. Never to be satisfied with what he has. This is why we are forbidden to love the world and the things of the world. Brethren, this world is passing away. We are warned that friendship with the world is hostility toward God. And if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. We have room for our love in only one place. It's in the world or with God. We cannot love God and the things of the world. We cannot be friends with the world and friends of God. Abraham, now he was rich in What is he called in the Bible? He's not a friend of the world, he's a friend of God. He didn't pitch his tent towards Sodom. Nephew Lot, he wanted the biggest slice of the pie. Abraham says, I'll give you what you want, Now remember the man who interrupted Christ. His heart and happiness was bound up in the things of this world. These things filled his vision and blinded him to God's kingdom and to the world to come. He lived for today and what he could gain and grasp. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. Brethren, love of this perishing world will chain you to a sinking ship. This world is passing away, and it's lust. And furthermore, don't think you can conquer covetousness trying to remove yourself in some sense from the world. The cure of covetousness is not avoiding contact with the world, it's spending time with the Lord and His Word and in prayer and in confessing our sins. Church history teaches that asceticism, becoming a monk or a nun, is powerless to conquer greed. In fact, it just inflames covetousness. You see, consciousness is not cured with our hands, it's cured in our hearts. Nor must we despise God's good gifts, but instead to live in constant gratitude to Him for them. Paul writes, For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer. It's set apart for His use. Lord, I thank You for it. You gave it to me. Now I dedicate it to Your glory and my good and the good of other people. You see, we conquer covetousness with the grace of gratitude, and therefore let us continually pray for a thankful heart that tastes God's good gifts with joy. Further, let us be generous with others, even as God has been generous with us. Let us hold God's provisions with a loose hand and happily share them with others. Freely we have received, let us what? Freely give. John Wesley's dictum is a good model. He says, let us seek to earn all that we can, well the world would say that, but he goes further, and save all that we can, and the prudent ones in the world would say that, so that we may give all that we can. That's grace. Finally, if you would guard yourself against covetousness Seek to be rich towards God. This is the sure cure for covetousness. Jesus says that where your heart is, there your treasure will be. You see, what we value is our God. What we value most, that's God to us. When we regard God as our treasure, we will desire more and more of Him. That's a holy covetousness, if I could put it that way. Lord, I have of you, I want more of you. I don't ever want to be satisfied with what I have. I want more and more of you. More love to Christ, more love of Christ to thee, more love to thee. When we view God as our good, we will be grateful for what we have received from his hand. And happy are those who treasure God's good gifts. So we sing, pardon for sin and a peace that endureth. Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide. Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. Blessings all mine with 10,000 beside. In Psalm 73, Asaph learned what it means to be rich toward God. You may remember that his vexation of his soul over the prosperity of the wicked nearly drove him to apostasy from God. They have all these things. They've got more than they can handle and more than they can use. They got their feet up and the profits are rolling in. Look at my life in comparison to them. They give no thought to God. I'm down on my knees before God. They're rich. I'm poor. Why the disparity? But it was not until he came into the sanctuary that God opened his eyes to see his true riches, that he repented of his covetousness. It was then that he beheld the true and lasting blessings that he possessed in the Lord to enrich him both here and then fully for all eternity. He confessed. The God had provided and was all that he ever needed. Psalm 73 verses 25 through 27 with this I'll close whom have I in heaven but thee and besides thee I desire nothing on earth my flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever For behold, those who are far from thee will perish. Thou hast destroyed all those who are unfaithful to thee. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell all his words. We will have the pleasure of knowing God and we will seek others to have that pleasure too. We'll tell them all of his words. Let me tell you what God has done for my soul. You see a person who can echo Asaph's confession possesses riches that this world can never provide or ever take away. May this be your confession and may it be my confession. Jesus said, I came that they might have life and may have life abundantly. And we experience that life through faith in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our Father, it's out of the heart that these sins like covetousness and greed come. So we pray that you would show us our heart, that we might not rest content. with this kind of desire for more and more and more and suspend our happiness in the reception of things rather than reveling in the grace of God. Lord, we pray that you would help us take to heart these things that we consider this day. Help us to run on the feet of faith and repentance to Jesus Christ, who is our true treasure. Oh Lord, might we be found in him and he in us. and by our eyes we fixed upon him who is the author and finisher of our faith. Running toward him we pray with the grace that will enable us to turn from the things that we've loved in the past to love him who is a lover of our soul. We pray these things in Jesus' name.