This week’s parable is found in Luke 12:15 – 21. Jesus is speaking to a large crowd of about one thousand people (Luke 12:1). Jesus just spoke about hypocrisy and how we need to fear God. In verses 13 and 14, after Jesus finished speaking, an anonymous person from the crowd interrupted Jesus. In Judaism, the oldest son receives a double portion on the inheritance and was responsible for dividing up the rest after his father’s death. This younger brother wanted his share of the estate. He set Jesus as a human judge to decide about inheritance rights. Jesus denied that he had and right to act in such a position. Jesus was not going to make a legal judgement, but he was going to make a moral one.
15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry!”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
In verse 15, Jesus begin with Watch out!, or as some translation has a Beware!. “Watch out” seems more like a caution. But “beware” is probably the best translation of the original Greek and it is an intensive term. Because it is inherently emphatic, it is rarely followed by an exclamation mark. We would not expect to see a sign, “Beware of wet paint,” or “Beware, new grass planted,” because the word is too strong for the occasion. But it is more likely to be used on a sign like, “Beware – Vicious Dog,” or “Beware – Bridge Out.” Thus, when Jesus used the word “beware,” he was indicating great danger. Jesus was telling this man how greedy he was, to lay aside his greed and to think about life. What is more important, money or a relationship with God?
Jesus then tells His parable in verses 16 – 19. A farmer over comes all agricultural odds and achieves great success. But this brought a new problem. What to do with his riches? How to store it until you can use it or sell it? How to keep it from rotting? The answer was obvious to this farmer; build bigger barns! This is a great short-term solution. The farer declared, for this crop is so good, it will support me for years to come. I will be on east street. I can eat, drink and party with my friends. I do not have to worry about money and work anymore.
On the surface this rich man had a perfectly prudent plan, but the constant focus was on himself. He never considered giving crops to the needy. He assumed that his riches would last and only wanted a place to store them, without bringing God into the equation at all.
It is not wrong or a bad thing to be rich. Abraham, Jacob, Solomon and Job were not simply rich; they were “very rich.” The rich man in this parable is not criticized or condemned because he was wealthy. Wealth itself does not damn. Conversely, poverty does not save. Wealth is not a vice and poverty is not a virtue. It may be hard to believe, but many people with no money will go to hell over the riches they so strongly desire. At least that what Paul writes to Timothy, “But people who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.” (1 Timothy 6:9). It is not riches but the “trust” in riches that dooms men (Mark 10:23 -35).
It is this trust, this belief in material substance, that condemned the rich man. Five times he used the personal pronoun “my.” He referred to “my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, myself.” That is not evil, either, for there is a sense in which things do belong to us; we “own” them (Acts 5:4; Matthew 20:15). However, in this case it was the absorbing, consuming thought of his life, and that is wrong. Even building the barns was not wrong, he actually acted wisely in building larger barns for his surplus lest it rot or be eaten by scavenger animals. But, he acted foolishly in allowing his goods to secure, as he thought they did, his soul.
The man imagined “many years” of ease and security, many years in which he could take it easy; eat, drink, and be merry. How does the rest of that phrase go? “For tomorrow we die,” but the rich man did not consider death. He stopped with “merry.” He forgot, “for tomorrow we die.” But in this case, even if he had said it, he would have been in error. It was not, “tomorrow,” but “this very night your life (or your soul) will be demanded of you.”
In Ecclesiastes 8:15, Solomon says, “So I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will stand by him in his toils throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun.”
Neither the devil nor this world can give you one single item that will not be snatched and taken from you the moment you die. We all go into bankruptcy at death. We leave it all. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon then wondered whether his riches might not go to a fool who would throw it all away (Eccl. 2:18-19). Even earlier, David said this same thing in Psalm 39:6 – “Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.” And then again in Psalm 49:10, “…even wise men die; the stupid and the senseless alike perish and leave their wealth to others.”
But the rich man did not foresee this eventuality. He was oblivious to eternity. David said it in Psalm 49:6-9 and Jesus said it here. Your wealth will not do you one jot of good when you die—the only thing that counts is being “rich toward God.” The big difference between this parable and what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 8:15 “…eat, drink, and be merry…” is that Solomon is saying it gratefully in thanks that “God has given him wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them” (Eccl 5:19).
Does this mean that we do not need to plan for our future? Absolutely not! Saving money and planning ahead are good things. The Bible in many places stresses using our money and gifts wisely. Other parables actually advise us to increase our wealth, to be good caretakers of what God has entrusted to us, to help the poor and those less fortunate (often spoken of as widows and orphans). This is how we show we are “rich toward God.”
It is the man who has his priorities in order who sees to the wealth and prosperity of his soul. Paul says it again to Timothy, “Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.” (1 Tim. 6:17).
During this week take the time to think about why it is difficult for use to accept the fact that our life and the stuff we collect are just temporary things. What steps can we take to become less dependent upon our possessions? How can we become more dependent on God alone?