But as the beautiful and ever-improving weather is showing us, summer is coming. And I'm sure we all have plans for things we want to do and projects that we have ever mounting for around the house and through our lives. And I'll encourage you to just take these next few moments and put those on the back burner as we consider the word of God. We are going to be addressing, as the title says in the bulletin, on foolish building. And we come to the parable of the rich fool. I'll begin in verse 13. Someone in the crowd said to him, being Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. 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." So this is the setup for our parable. Someone has come to Jesus and asked him to mediate in the division of inheritance. In this case, it's likely that it was a younger brother appealing, either in the means of the prodigal son seeking his inheritance before his time, or to find someone in a position of authority to circumvent the law and get more than he was legally allotted. We don't know what the case is there. Whichever case it is, he wants more than he's entitled. And if that's not the case, he wants it now. But Jesus is not J.G. Wentworth, so we have him leaving this in a place for the judges at the, at the gates of the city to deal with, because this is not what Christ has been appointed to do. Rather, he tells them, guard yourselves against all covetousness. And then we move into the parable that he shares. 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, and be merry. But God said to him, fool. This night your soul is required of you, and the things you've prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." There are a number of things to consider in here. There are three primary things to consider, attempts that foolish builders make in their undertakings. And we're going to look at those. The first is the attempt to elevate the self. To make oneself comfortable. To give oneself a better position for the sake of the better position. To have things for the sake of having things. And there are a number of traps in that. First is that we have a limited perspective. And very often, we end up with the consequences of flawed foresight. We are human, we can only go so far, and it's very likely that as Jesus was beginning to share this parable of a farmer who had a good year, some of the listeners would have been nudging, saying, oh wait, watch, this guy's gonna go down in flames, because they would know Pests come and they eat crops and destroy them. They know rain is not a given every year in Israel. One of the wonderful things about the land and how it is set up is that you had to rely on God to survive. You had to rely on God for your provision and for your own sake. This man, in one good year of prosperity, has thrown that out the window. I've, you know, I've landed the giant tuna, okay? I'm set. I need to build everything larger, tear down what I have now, and this is at great personal cost and effort for himself. On one moment of prosperity, he has forgotten the wisdom that would come into great use for a decade out, for 20 years out, because the great moments of of drought are recorded in the scriptures. This would not have been unfamiliar to a Jewish person. Drought comes. Hardship comes. The Romans are in the land. They can easily march by, and since there's not a McDonald's, they would easily stop by at a farmer's place and say, well, this food is our food now. We're going to feed our men. And as thanks, we're going to let you live and plant another season. And if we come back this way, we might eat that too. There was not any perspective on the things or hardships that could come in this. And it comes by the possession of the thing. He wasn't mindful of how we possess things. They are first and foremost given to us in stewardship by God. They are his first and foremost. But we, as the example in Isaiah told us in the reading of the Old Testament passage before, can take those things and elevate them to places that are rightfully God's, where our attention and our labor goes into it, and we look at the thing and attribute it a glory. And I love that question at the end of that. No one has sense to think, shall I bow down before a block of wood? as if that would save the thing that the man made with his own hands. Now, idolatry goes a little further than bowing down in worship. It is a robbery of time and attention and devotion and love from God and wrongfully given to something else that you have set on the throne of your heart and give glory We used to have a neighbor, a neighbor to my mother's house, named Bob. And he had a 55 T-Bird in mint condition, this beautiful red car. He poured this driveway in the middle of his yard. We call it the landing strip, and it's still there. But he had a sign out at the roadway saying, 55 T-Bird parking. All others will be towed. And he would talk at length. about this car, having knowledge of it, working in the factory for Ford for a number of years. And it took the total of his attention and it drove him in the amount of time and resources he took in caring for it. And that is where sin begins to work its danger and it's subtle. It is when the things you possess begin in turn to possess you. And we have the exhortation from Matthew 6, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. In the possession of things, we need to be mindful of wise alternatives to foolish building. And for this we need to orient ourselves and our things Godwards. What do you let in your house for your intellectual consumption after a good morning of meditation on the scripture? What are you seeing when you look around your house? We are bombarded with all forms of opinion and idea and advertisement. The average American encounters 26,000 different logos and advertisements in a single day. the inside page of the Bible, a logo on a shirt. All of these things are vying for our attention, which is only so much. We need to be careful in constructing how we organize our homes. How do we see this thing we might have on a shelf? And how does that, in turn, for us, how does that cultivate a mindfulness to the things of Scripture that we meditate on? How does it facilitate us working to the commissional duties Christ has called us to? Marie Kondo is an organizational guru, and she has a great book, if you're a little disorganized, called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. And I see a few people giggling, and they'll giggle a little further, because the main premise behind that is looking at something and saying, does this spark joy? And that being the determinant for whether you keep it, or whether you put it in a place further back in your home, or simply throw it away. But I would encourage a one-word alternative to that, and it is, does this spark Jesus? Does this spark a mindfulness of him? Does it spark Just a continuation of meditating on the Word. Does it help you fellowship with others? Does it help you in the work you are called to? And if a possession does not do that for you, it might be worthwhile to take a little time to assess it. The second thing that foolish building does is that it attempts to determine its own security. So this man built himself—or was planning to, rather—built himself greater barns, tearing down his own and having the bigger, better barns to store more grain that he was sure was going to be coming, the greater harvest that would secure him in the moment of prosperity he had now. And that was the sum total of his plan. And he took security to the point where he was comfortable in his soul because of his possessions. And I love how John Piper deals with this in Let the Nations Be Glad. He addresses it in the chapter on prayer and on needful prayer, praying out of a need in line with God's plan rather than your own. He likens prayer in that instance to your radio, to radio back to command. You're going to be calling in for reinforcements. You're going to be calling in for movements of the enemy and how you in turn are going to be moving and you're going to be receiving your instructions. You are not going to be in your tent asking for the lazy boy recliner. It points us to our security being outside of ourselves. This man had a limited perspective, as we saw in the first point, and it limited him to the point that he didn't see God's authority that was there. So we're called to hold fast to the security that comes from God. and God alone, the one who can hold us in our hand, the one who can deliver us from the severity of our sin that we do not know in total. And we will not know until we see Him and stand in the judgment and see every count and the level of true offense we have committed against a great and holy God. It should inspire terror to think of the judgment that comes rightfully so in that. But along with that is the wonder at the act of salvation that we get to freely experience. That is the place of security we need to hold to, because the trust in our own things gives us a blindness in going forward. If we are not secure on Christ and are comfortable in our things, designing them so that we lift ourselves up, we may profess Christ, but we will have feet that do not go forward. We will have mouths that will be silent in light of the need to proclaim the gospel. We will have eyes that do not read and know the scriptures. And finally, foolish building attempts to reject sovereignty outside of itself. This man was his own authority for a time. and he had one good season that he was getting ready to enjoy. But that was the left hook that he did not see coming, and I'm sure the hearers didn't see coming as well. They would have been expecting an earthly form of ruin to bring this man down into a humble place, but no, it wasn't an earthly source of drought or pestilence or or invasion or theft it was God demanding what was rightfully his to begin with and the world has many devices that it encourages people to follow through to that that we have there is a Particularly down south, I saw it more well promulgated. I've thrown a pen. They've crafted a large industry for people going into retirement, and the sentiment is, yes, you've worked your years, and now you get to relax and enjoy all that life has to offer you. There are actually cruise cultures where older people, rather than being content in going into the care of family or an assisted living facility will simply liquidate their assets and live on cruise ships until they pass. And that sentiment is enjoy it to the fullest while you have it. But we're called to work. Retirement doesn't end the work for us. It certainly changes it. because we have limits on what we can and cannot do. We have those at any age. I'm beginning to feel that as I begin to get older. I've had a few mornings where I've gone to get out of bed and I've heard something click kind of funny in my back and I've given a little prayer before I continue to get the rest of the way out of bed. I know sometime from now it's coming for me too. But the work changes. We are called, as we get older, to disciple those who are coming up who are younger. And the Bible gives that number as being 60. So I apologize if you're over 60 or older. Discipleship is a wonderful thing to begin doing. Share those experiences with the younger people coming in. Read the Bible with them. Love them and shepherd them. And it will be done to a good work to God. Along with that, is that acknowledging the sovereignty of God allows us to do the work of God. There needs, first and foremost, to be what is there at salvation. I and everyone else stand in the judgment of a rightful God and there is nothing I can do and nothing I have and nothing about who I am that changes that. It is Christ alone who lived a perfect, sinless life, died the death that I deserved legally in the sight of God, and rose again having defeated death so that I and any who believe in Him saved forevermore. And that is something we need to acknowledge through our walk with just as much diligence. When the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was released, one of the main intents of it was to combat something called open theism. It's a fancy term for a movement that was coming through in the church, and it was because of a lack of biblical literacy that was beginning to develop. People were not reading their Bibles, and they were beginning to promulgate in the church statements that were more opinion- or sentiment-driven than in the fact of the person and character and work of God. Oh, surely God can't want something like church discipline as harshly as you're saying it, they might say. You're saved the same as I'm saved. So who are we to judge one over another? That was a big sentiment that came out at this time. And if you've heard Daniel preach, he has preached wisely in acknowledging the keys to the kingdom and the authority given to the church so that we can discern one to another. to administer discipline where we can for the edification of believers, and to send away those who were never of the faith to begin with, and build for the glory of God. Open theism came around because of this lack of literacy and education, and I appreciate that this church has that, but it is something that we cannot catch ourselves sitting on our haunches with. We must continue to be diligent in pursuing that. And it does come to getting ourselves turned to God and away from ourselves. Now, many of you know, and it's been in the prayer list, that my mother deals with COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. And it is a hard thing to watch. And she will often sit with us and be able to speak and greet. But she has very rough and hard days. And it's, excuse me. I'm not going to cry over this. It'll be an ugly cry if I do. But she could turn to alcohol. She could turn to other things to self-medicate. She could just say, I'm done. It's over. This is happening to me. What's the point? But you know what she's doing? She's getting out there and going to physical therapy three times a week with long tissue that is nearly dead. But what's more than that, and what is such a great example of faith to me, is that she's sharing the gospel while she's doing so with people in the same boat. who need to hear that because death for them is more imminent than it is in our limited perspectives. That is more of a reality for my mother than many right now. And she's turned to Christ. She has that security. And I don't have a fear if the Lord takes her because I know where she'll be. And that is something that I love from Hebrews 13, the call to remember those who come before us, those who modeled Christ for us, that we are in turn to imitate and pass those examples forward to others. There is so much that we need to turn away from in our understanding. This man had an excess he could not fit into his buildings. There wasn't a lack of poverty in Israel. He could very easily have thought to himself, in service to God, I can give my excess. Because it says starting out, he was a rich man. Not he became a rich man. He already had much and aspired to more for himself. We are in a period of building. Actual physical building. We are getting a new roof. And that was something, you know, two weeks ago, I realized that this was coming up in light of that and said, oh boy. We do need to be careful, even in how we approach that. We can look at this old church, full of its history, and we can lift it up as a glory and say, we get to worship in this, the church, an awesome building that has seen many great things, and I enjoy worshiping there. Or we can turn it to God. we can be praying and asking a question. And if you have a pen and the back of a bulletin, I would encourage you to write this question down. Because I think this one question sums up the parable well. And this question will serve you well in discernment and in going forward in considering things in a godly mindfulness. And it is this, Lord, How do I, with what I possess and the circumstances I'm in, glorify you best? Because for you, believer, that is the chief end. That is the goal and the prize and the reward, is the glory of God forever and ever. Out of volume three of John Calvin's Institutes, there is a wonderful passage that he has in a section titled Denying Self the Key to Christian Living. and it speaks to us turning to God and it reads, if then we are not our own, but belong instead to the Lord, it is clear what we must do to avoid going astray and what our goal must be in every department of life. We are not our own. Let us therefore look beyond what the flesh suggests is good for us. We are not our own. Let us therefore forget ourselves as much as we can, ourselves and everything around us. Again, we read that we are the Lord's. Let us then live and die for him. We are the Lord's. Let his will and wisdom govern all we do. We are the Lord's. Let every part of our lives be directed to him as their soul and How privileged is the man who, knowing that he is not his own, denies his own reason as his lordship and dominion over him, and surrenders it instead to God? For just as there is no greater curse than self-satisfaction, which leads only to ruin and destruction, so also the only haven of salvation is to cease to be wise in oneself and to want nothing on one's own account but simply to follow the Lord. I live with my parents, but I do have a house in the definition of scripture. I have a wife. I have a few possessions of my own. I am seven weeks away from having a beautiful child. And the wisdom of the scriptures, the teaching of Christ here, tells me to soak the entirety of that in obedience to God and knowledge of the scriptures. That my house needs to be one that encourages me in my meditations, that it points me to scriptures, that it calls me to the requirements of the judgment Actually, let's turn to Matthew 6 very quickly. Did I write that down correctly? Yes, I did. 19 through 21. No, I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong place. Outlines are wonderful when you put the pages in order. Here we are, 1 John 3, 17 is where I meant to go. And it reads, but if anyone has the world's good and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Alongside cultivating a mindfulness of the disciplines and encouraging us to do them and equipping us in our knowledge and in quiet places to have those secret devotions, How do they help us help others? In the criteria for the final judgment, where Jesus assesses those and welcomes them in saying, I was naked and you clothed me. I was hungry and you fed me. You gave shelter. You visited the sick and the imprisoned. There are individuals assessed there. We have parachurch ministries, and they are wonderful things and great blessings to communities and opportunities to share the gospel. But I don't think that these things that we are called to do in ways that open up gospel opportunity are limited to those groups. How is your house equipped to clothe those who need it, to feed those who are hungry, to assist those who are sick, How does it help you minister to the imprisoned? We need a house that's ready because the day is coming when the Lord will come back, when the Lord will be a judge in the world among the quick and the dead. We don't have time to be distracted by our things. We need to live using them for godly purposes, not finding ourselves used by them. We need to be praying for this roof and asking God to submit us to his will and find ways to fill the seats underneath it with new brothers and sisters confessing Christ. And we cannot do that building ourselves as individuals. We can do that edifying ourselves for God, building our knowledge in him, building our love one to another. I'm going to read a bit from our church covenant and hope that this continues to call to mind the intentionality we should have one to another in how we build the church. we also engage to maintain as far as possible family and secret devotions, to teach our children the Christian truths, to seek the salvation of our kindred and acquaintances, to walk circumspectly in the world, to be just in our dealings, faithful in our engagements, exemplary in our deportment, and to be zealous in our efforts to advance the kingdom of our Savior. we further engage to watch over one another in brotherly love, to remember each other in prayer, to aid each other in sickness and distress, to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech, to be slow to take offense but always ready for reconciliation and mindful of the rules of our Savior to secure without delay. If nothing else, keep that question in mind. Write it on your heart. Bring it out when you look to your left and your right. And you might look a little less favorably, oh, oh, Ms. So-and-so was talking about me last week. That's frustrating. Jesus is coming one day. We don't know when. We have a commission, a call to follow him urgently and with care. And a house that is ordered wisely is not something we should look at as something to wait for another day when we finally have the basement cleared of those 400 totes that aren't all the same thing and don't stack right and fall over time and again and drive you to no end of frustration. Live simply. Live in good stewardship. This isn't to say you can't have something nice. This isn't to say that this applies to someone who maybe lives in more of a shotgun house than a McMansion somewhere. in a nice development. Regardless of your state, consider it for God. Use it well for His sake and His purpose, whatever you find yourself with, because there is no guarantee or security in that. That can change. Your health can change, your possessions, your relationships with people can change. God, His call for us, does not change. But neither does His security. We can go forward in that in any circumstance. Build your house well. If you have any questions on looking towards orienting yourself in life beyond the walls of the church and practical living, Pastor Dan, I'm sure, would be happy to speak with you on that. I'm happy to speak with you. We have deacons in the back who will answer questions. For those here, if there are any who are not believers, I would implore you, there is a day coming when God will call you to stand before him. And you might be in the middle of a plan to build yourself up. But I tell you, every one of us stands in a position worthy of his judgment, because he is righteous and holy, and we have turned from him. We have smashed the law at his feet and are deserving of death and hell. But one came, the Son of God, who was God, who says, believe on me and you will be saved, you and your house. Be mindful of him in everything. Soak your life and your house in the word of God and obedience to it. Let's bow together in a moment of prayer. Father God, we sit here now in comfortable chairs, underneath a new roof, perhaps thinking about a barbecue that's going on later on with good food and good company, in yards that are freshly and well taken care of, and those things are good, Lord. But it is in the first look that we take at them, the look where we assess things and put them in their place. Guard us from the danger of a second look, Lord, where we look at something and have a desire in our hearts to elevate it to a position that it is not worthy of. All things are yours, Lord. You are not just their possessor, you are their author, you are their master, and you are lord over them from eternity past to the end of forevermore. Let us be mindful of what you have given us charge over. Consider you in every decision we make, every circumstance that changes, every person we encounter, let all that we have be yours first. Give us the desperation of the Macedonian church that Paul used to compel the Corinthians, who counted the cost of what they could give in service to the ministry, and they went well above and beyond and gave out of poverty in incredible ways, Lord. Move us to astound people with how we use the things you've given us. Whether we have it in plenty or we have it in very little, let us not cease to be extraordinary because our God is extraordinary. We have great opportunities in this Memorial Day weekend, and we remember those who've made sacrifices for this nation. as we honor the men who have served and sacrificed for this country, Lord. Let us also be not ashamed, but glad to share the gospel in every opportunity it gives us. We pray all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.