“13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 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.””
Rudyard Kipling is most famous for writing The Jungle Book, a story of a boy raised by wolves. His most famous poem, though, was entitled If and it began, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.” The poem continues to pose dilemma after dilemma beginning with “if” and at the end comes the “then”; if you handle all these dilemmas with grace, then “you’ll be a man, my son!”
Kipling had a warm and wise understanding of what a man is to be. He also sued his best friend who was also his brother-in-law over a property dispute involving a hayfield and flower garden. Kipling wrote, “If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss… [then] you’ll be a man, my son!” He doubtlessly believed those words when he wrote them, and he still broke friendship and family and breathed words about it to everyone.
Kipling understood the dynamics involved with possessions well enough to write the poem If about how to be man about it, but not well enough to put it into practice with his best friend. That’s a wake-up call for me and you. Possessions must be more complicated than we tend to understand if Kipling, who was no slouch, failed so spectacularly at it.
Jesus, through his parables, has been teaching us that we don’t have as much understanding regarding as we imagine. We can be quite foolish so we would be wise to listen. Last week we saw that with repentance. This week we see it with security. Security does matter, but it’s found ultimately only in the Lord; that’s the claim of this sermon: security does matter, but it’s found ultimately only in the Lord.
We will study this in two points. First: disagreements. Second: a parable on security. We will see the disagreements in verses 13-15 and the parable in verses 16-21.
We begin to see the danger of false security in our first point: disagreements. A disagreement over property consumed Kipling’s life in Vermont. Such disputes were just as difficult in first century Israel and, in many ways, more difficult because there was only so much arable land to go around. If it was really the land Kipling wanted, he could have moved nearly anywhere in America. We have scads of it here. Every time I’m on an airplane, I stop worrying about overpopulation because there is more land than we know what to do with—not so for those with whom Jesus spoke today’s words. After living in that region for many years, Kenneth Bailey wrote, “the cry for justice over the division of land is the Middle East’s most sensitive problem.” So take the angst between Kipling and his brother-in-law and turn the dial up to ten for the question Jesus receives in verse 13, ‘Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”’
Rabbis would, at times, handle such disputes because the Old Testament gives guidance on these matters. A rabbi’s objective eye, however, is not what this brother wanted. He just tried to rope Jesus into his way of thinking. He tried to use Jesus. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” The goal of inheritance laws was for brothers to amicably handle the division of wealth and so care for their parents. This man wanted something else entirely and so Jesus would have nothing to do with it and asked back, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”
The irony of Jesus’ response, of course, is that Jesus is the judge of this man and his brother. He will judge everything. Jesus’ judgment, though, will run very different from what this brother desired. That’s a word of caution for us—do we really want Jesus to judge? That’s much of the third commandment—not to take the Lord’s name in vain. We try to leverage God in as the judge so that can justify our judgments. People try to use Jesus and the church for their own self-interests. We have that in us. As Calvin explained, “Many who profess the Gospel do not scruple to make use of it as a false pretense for advancing their private interests, and to plead the authority of Christ as an apology for their gains.”
This brother tried to use Jesus. Jesus used this brother’s attempt to use him as a sermon illustration; verse 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.”’ There are matters which matter more than money and inheritance. Jesus isn’t denying that they matter; he’s simply saying there are matters which matter more. This brother, like Kipling, had become convinced that property mattered more than family. According to Jesus it doesn’t—“man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
Possessions don’t matter more than children. Ask any parent who has spent large amounts hoping to retore their child’s health. One of my best friends has been a pastor for many decades now. He had an older man in a church whom he would visit years ago. At the end of every visit, that man would show my friend a picture of a little boy and say, “he wasn’t feeling well. I just thought it would blow over. I didn’t think we had the money to spare. Now he’s gone,” and then the man would cry and say, “I still have the money.” That man would have given one thousand times that amount of money to bring his boy back—“a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
I’m not that different from that boy’s dad. Neither are you. We aren’t that different from Kipling or Kipling’s brother-in-law. We aren’t that different from the brother trying to use Jesus. Pretending that we are different from people with faults is a spiritual shortcut to feeling good about ourselves. Such a shortcut doesn’t really get you anywhere. It just leaves you blind.
The brother trying to use Jesus was blind to himself when he opened his mouth that day to speak with Jesus. He, like Kipling suing his best-friend, just thought he was taking care of business. Jesus saw that and told the crowd and us, “Watch out!” We often don’t know what’s really going on in us when we, like that brother, open our mouths particularly in conflicts. Stories like this in Scripture should humble us knowing that we are like this man. Stories like this shouldn’t leave us arrogant at how different we are. Jesus now tells us a parable to help us see our situation and see ourselves. That’s our second point: a parable on security.
This parable starts with a great situation—a situation like, say, even having inheritance which you could divide up with your brother. ‘The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.”’ This was a bumper crop and, as with the inheritance, there were now questions as to what would be done with it.
This was a good problem to have. To this point we see nothing wrong and nothing wrong in this farmer. There are many today who take him being called “rich” as a stain as if having riches is an indication of greed. It’s not. It’s no vice to have made money and it’s no great virtue to be poor. There are plenty of greedy rich people. There’s plenty of greedy poor people. The Bible says much more about it than that but to this point Jesus in his parable has said nothing judgmental about this man.
The man’s problem is revealed when he makes his plans. He thinks to himself, ‘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. 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.”’ The man is self-obsessed; “this is what I’ll do… I will… I will… my barns, my grain, my goods.” There isn’t a hint, in his mind, that he has received any of this bumper crop as there wasn’t a hint in the brother’s words that he was receiving his father’s lands. It is often this way with us all. It’s amazing how many of the parables deal with God gracing us everything and us simply learning to be good receivers. We must not be good at it because Jesus keeps talking about.
The farmer’s deeper vice, though, is his attempts to secure his own security; the key here is verse 19, ‘I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years.”’ The idea here is, “I can take care of myself,” and to take it back a step, “I don’t need any help,” and to take it back once more step, “I won’t need God.” That’s what we saw with Galatians with the flesh hating the need for faith. This is what the apocryphal text in Sirach was after saying, ‘Do not rely on your wealth or say, “I have enough,” … for the Lord will surely punish you.’
This radical self-sufficiency was part of the sin of Babylon. Babylon thought she had arranged history so that nothing could ever go wrong for her again. The Lord responded saying, ‘Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure, lounging in your security and saying to yourself, “I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children.” Both of these will overtake you in a moment, on a single day.’
Babylon wanted to be beyond even God’s power to bless or curse. That’s what we want when we try to secure our own security. There is something dangerous in each of us that wants to no longer need God. We want to be self-sufficient because then we can be self-determinative we can then call the shots. That’s not how life in God’s world works, though. You can’t, like Babylon secure that by armies. You can’t, like this farmer, secure that by a bumper crop and wealth. You can’t secure that by whatever means you think would make you ultimately self-sufficient. It will never really happen for you any more than it happened for this farmer.
What happened to Babylon happens to this farmer; verse 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?” This is the only parable of Jesus in which God plays Himself. God is the forgiving Father of the two sons. He is the one to whom the Pharisee and the tax collector pray. He is the one who makes the seed grow, but this is the only parable in which He is plays Himself as, the character called “God.” That doesn’t make this one any more meaningful. It’s just worth pointing out that Jesus was endlessly creative in his presentations.
God makes clear that this farmer will not enjoy this bumper crop. Someone else will. “Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” as verse 20 asks. We don’t know who will get it, but we do know the farmer won’t. He won’t because he, like the brother who tried to manipulate Jesus, thought his security rested in what he could control.
Jesus wanted that brother to ask himself if this inheritance he’s after means as much to him as that bumper crop meant to that farmer. Is your desire for self-sufficiency worth your soul? “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” It’s a warning that, that very night God might say to that brother, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get the inheritance you came here to talk with me about?” He could do the same with me and you regarding our attempts at security.
We humans are easily deluded. The use of the word “soul” reveals that. It’s smoothed out in the NIV but woodenly verse 19 reads, ‘And I’ll say to my soul, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry,”’ and verse 20 reads, ‘But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your soul will be demanded from you.”’ The farmer was busy telling his soul about all the security this bumper crop would supply and that night God took that soul; that bumper crop bought security did nothing to help that farmer then. That farmer could have had all the grain in the world and it wouldn’t have helped. That brother could have had all the arable land in the Middle East as his inheritance and his brother have received nothing it wouldn’t have helped. “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” as Jesus asked.
We mortals don’t have a great read on what’s really important. We are out of our depth and will remain so until the kingdom comes and so the king of the kingdom tells us these stories; that’s verse 21, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
Being rich toward God here isn’t merely tithes and caring for the poor. Being rich toward God is living as if He, not wealth, is your treasure. It’s about finding your security in him and in nothing else. That is the genius behind Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1, “what is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” That’s about sin, yes. It’s also about possessions. It’s also about health. It’s also about loved ones. It’s also about jobs. It’s about everything. Belonging to God is the only security that will deliver. Anything else God could take tonight and say, “You fool! This very night your soul will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
This whole section in Luke deals with security. Jesus taught on prayer, taught that security was not to be found in what the Pharisees trusted, taught this parable, then taught us not to worry. He’s teaching us that only God can deliver.
Possessions, property, wealth, and inheritance are brought up here because they are the sorts of objects in which we quickly put our trust. There is nothing evil in them in and of themselves just as there is nothing evil in the bare facts of, “Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” The problem comes when we ask from them that which we can receive only from God. We can and do expect from spouses, hobbies, work, and so much more what we can only receive from God. We need to beware of asking of anything what we can only receive from God. We will only crush it and wind up with nothing.
You want meaning. You want security. You want purpose. You want hope. You want welcome. You want blessing. Good. You were created for those. Only God can give them. If you try to get ultimate security from money, in the end you won’t have security, you won’t have money, and you won’t have God. If you try to get ultimate meaning from a hobby, in the end you won’t have the meaning, you won’t have the hobby, and you won’t have God. If you try to get ultimate welcome from another human, in the end you won’t have that welcome, you won’t have that human, and you won’t have God.
That’s the beginning of Jeremiah’s prophecy against the people of God in his day—‘“Be appalled at this, you heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the Lord. “My people have committed two sins,”’ which is another way of saying that is the sinfulness of sin. ‘“They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”’ That’s what this farmer did. That’s what Jesus was warning the brother and the crowd not to do.
The important “if” in life is not what Kipling thought. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…” It’s the “if” of this parable. If you make anything other than God your security, you will live and die a fool. If you trust God, then you won’t be a man as Kipling would say; you will be God’s child and you will get Him and everything He gives. Amen.