The Rich Fool

If you or anyone else wants to receive salvation, forgiveness, eternal life and heaven, there are two pervasive damning forces that must be avoided. Beware of hypocrisy and beware of greed. Welcome to Grace To You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. In the 1920s, an Italian-American businessman went from being broke to becoming a multi-millionaire in just a few months. With a track record like that, you might expect that man to have business schools named after him today, but instead, the name Charles Ponzi has become synonymous with fraud and deception, and his life serves as a lesson that the veneer of success is often deceptive. With that in mind, today John MacArthur looks at a spiritual Ponzi scheme, a story about a very successful man but one whose life was headed for disaster. Here is John now with the parable of the rich fool. Luke chapter 12, verses 13 through 21. Let me read this text to you. 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. 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 up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, 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. This text of Scripture has been called the rich fool. It could be called the doom of the materialist. As we have learned through our study of the gospel of Luke, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah and the Savior, came to give sinners the mercy and grace of forgiveness and eternal life. He came to bring the good news of salvation. And Jesus, of course, attracted people in huge crowds with His message and His miracles. But as the three years of His ministry progressed, it became apparent that the people were rejecting Him and His message. In fact, they were increasingly moving from being interested to being curious to being hostile. The crowds are still huge. Verse 1 says there were many thousands. It really means tens of thousands who were following Him. Huge crowds. The majority of those crowds had drunk deeply of the Pharisees and scribes propaganda. In spite of the miracle power, in spite of the clarity of His teaching, in spite of the winsomeness of His person, they had bought in to the spin that the Pharisees and scribes had put on Jesus that He was of Satan, not God. More and more people are now buying into that. He must be of Satan, they think, because He contradicts their Jewish religion. And their Jewish religion must be of God, for they're the people of God. And so the idea is to surface everywhere that Jesus disagrees with them and therefore point out that He must be satanic. They are, however, still curious. Jesus is still the best show in town, stunning, riveting, compelling. And they follow Him if only to trap Him in some opposition to their law. And inside this increasingly hostile crowd, inside these tens of thousands, inside this mass of curious rejecters, there are still some who haven't made up their mind and they are described in verse 1 as disciples. That's not a technical term for the twelve, that's a non-technical word in the Greek, mathe tase, that simply means learners. There are some still studying Jesus, still learning, still trying to come to a conclusion. And it is to them that He directs this sermon, this discourse that starts there in verse 1 and runs all the way to verse 9 of chapter 13. It's a long sermon and discourse, directed, heard by all, but directed at those still trying to decide concerning Jesus. That's why verse 1 says, He began saying to His disciples, first of all, everybody heard, but they were the target of His message. Our souls were still in the balance. They were not yet confirmed. And if they are to know the truth and believe the truth and receive the gospel and salvation and eternal life, there are two things at the very outset that they have to avoid, two things that characterize their culture. They are noted in the two uses of the word beware. We're back to verse 1, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Beware of false religion. Beware of hypocritical religion. Second beware, you heard me read a moment ago, down in verse 15, He said to them, Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed. If they or you or anyone else wants to receive salvation, forgiveness, eternal life and heaven, there are two pervasive damning forces that must be avoided. Beware of hypocrisy and beware of greed. Now you might look at those and say, well, those are two sort of randomly selected sins out of a long catalog of sins that perhaps Jesus is only using as illustrative of the greater all-encompassing list that He might have given. But that's not the case. These are not randomly selected sample sins among many. Rather, these are the two essential realms which exist. There are only two realms which exist. One is the material realm and the other is the immaterial. One is the spiritual, the other is the physical. One is the natural, the other is the supernatural. There are only those two realms. Hypocrisy relates to the spiritual realm and greed relates to the material world. Both the material and the immaterial world threaten to dam eternal souls. Beware of false religion, the love of error. Beware of material wealth, the love of money. Here's the real issue. You either lay up treasure for yourself or you're rich toward God. You see, wealth creates all kinds of choices. It creates all kinds of choices and that's what the parable indicates. A man had more than he needed. Ah, okay. What am I going to do? You can be seduced right into hell from the immaterial or the material, from the spiritual or the physical, from the world above or the world below. And that's why Jesus gives this double warning of bewares. Let's turn to the text verse 13 and the story flows fairly quickly. Someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. He said to him, man, who appointed me a judge or arbiter over you? That is an unsympathetic response. Man, that is not an endearing expression. That is like saying, mister, that's a term of distance. That's a title used for a stranger. I don't know you and I don't know anything about you and I have no relationship to you. Who appointed me a judge or arbiter over you? Now you know from the Bible that God has appointed all judgment to Christ, but that's a spiritual judgment, right? John 5. And in the future, Jesus will be the judge of all the earth and He will judge every soul spiritually. But when it comes to economic matters, when it comes to family matters, when it comes to social matters, when it comes to the distribution of wealth, when it comes to economics, and it comes to earthly possessions, He renders no decisions. You could sum it up in this expression, my kingdom is not of this world. I will render no opinion on matters, social, legal or economic. But He didn't hesitate for one second to render a decision on that man's spiritual condition. And that's where Jesus always goes. The legal and the economic and the civil and the social all is a part of the world. Jesus says, that's not my kingdom. I'm going to speak to the spiritual. And so we see in verse 15 the admonition. Then we'll see the anecdote and the application. The admonition, He said to them, He nailed it. Beware, says to the whole crowd, be on your guard against every form of greed. He didn't have to point to the man and say like that guy. It was obvious, beware. And He had just said beware back in verse 1 about the Lebanon of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy. Here He says, beware beyond your guard against every form of greed. And this is the admonition that exposes the real issue, beware, orate. Look, present imperative, behold, mark, observe, and then guard. Colossus is a military term, provide protective vigilance against every form of greed, all covetousness, plainxious, strong word, all covetousness. And the word basically means an inordinate desire for riches. Grasping, extorting, scheming is included in this kind of thing. This is as damning as false religion. This is the thirst...plainxious is the thirst for more. It's like drinking salt water. The more you drink, the thirster you get. In Ecclesiastes it is wisdom. What Solomon says in chapter 5 verse 10, He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor He who loves abundance with its income. People who worship money and who love money and who love abundance and love possessions are never satisfied when they get it. It's just like drinking salt water. The sin is not in having more. The sin is being discontent. The sin is not in having wealth. The sin isn't what you do with it. It's not the amount, it's the attitude. Abraham was wealthy. Job was wealthy. Solomon was wealthy. Even in the New Testament, no doubt Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy. And there were wealthy people in the New Testament who had the church in their home because they had a large enough home to have a church. It's not about what you have, it's about how you feel about what you have. Even if you have more than enough, it still doesn't provide real life. By the way, the word life in Greek can be one of two words, bios, which is simply life as opposed to being dead, biological life. It might translate it existence. Then the word for life which is used here is zoe, encompasses all that makes life worth living, all that is real life, satisfaction, fulfillment, enjoyment, meaning, purpose. And he says, even when you have surplus and you have excess, that doesn't make really living. That doesn't take care of giving you real life. In fact, the life he's referring to here is eternal life because that's the only kind of life that is fulfilling, satisfying, meaningful, purposeful, producing peace and joy and hope and blessing. You're never going to get that real life from the material world, even if you have more than enough. So he's saying to this guy and everybody who thought that way, you're going down the wrong path, man. You're going down the wrong path. You're drinking salt water here. You're never going to have your thirst quenched because the life that you need, the life that satisfies, the life that fulfills, the life that is eternal and lasts forever is the life of God in your soul and it's not going to come through acquiring possessions. Greed is idolatry. It's worshiping the creature, not the Creator. So says Ephesians 5, 5 and Colossians 3, 5. You said in John 10, 10, I'm coming that they might have life, the real life and have it more abundantly. He wants to give you the life that truly is abundant and it's that eternal life. That's the admonition. Look at the anecdote. The story's simple. He told them a parable, parabola, the second part of that word, bolai, from balo to place, para alongside, to place alongside. That's what a parable is. Before he placed alongside a principle to illustrate the principle. So he said, the land of a certain rich man was very productive. Now that's good. No dishonesty here, no extortion, no crime, nothing. He just had a great crop. By the way, I love that verb where it says very productive. That is the verb euforreo. And it means to yield a good crop. And we get an English word out of it euphoria. Now for us, euphoria has nothing to do with a crop. Euphoria is elation, being filled with joy, kind of over the top satisfaction, fulfillment, feelings of happiness, feelings of well-being. But how interesting that that came in an agrarian culture from having a good crop, being successful. And he had this crop. It was just absolutely huge. No dishonesty, no ill-gotten gain, no extortion, no evil, no immorality, no illegality. He came to honest wealth. That's fine. And you know what? If you're a farmer of all things that human beings do, that one is most dependent upon circumstances and factors that are outside your control, right? If ever you should thank God, you should thank God for a good crop. Since providentially He controls all the elements and the factors. And so verse 17, this man began reasoning to himself, saying, What shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? That's a good question. That's a reasonable one, isn't it? He faces a dilemma about what to do with this massive harvest. Oh, he could build more storage, but if he'd build more storage, he'd use more land and that would take up the land that he grows the crop on. Maybe that's not the good way to go because this is good productive land. What am I going to do? Where am I going to put all this? Now that begins to give you a little bit of a giveaway. I can think of a lot of options at that point. But the one that he came up with in verse 18, 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. You know what strikes me about that? Two verses, eight eyes and four mys. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, my, my, my, my. And here you get the insight into the materialist. You mean there, this is an imaginary story, but I mean, wouldn't there be in the minds of the people standing there listening to this an imaginary group of people who went out and pulled in the harvest? And maybe you might say to those hard-working people, I'll share some with them. And wouldn't there be an imaginary village with some widows and some orphans? And wouldn't there be an imaginary village with some poor people? And isn't there a temple? And isn't there a synagogue? And isn't there the work of God? And wouldn't He be up for consideration for some of this stuff? Ay, ay, ay, ay, my, my, my, my, my. What's wrong with this picture? Oh, he's a smart guy. He is crafty. You say, well, he could just sell it all and make some money. No, no, no, you don't want to do that. You flood the market with too much stuff and the price goes down. So what do you do? You restrict what? You buy. So you build bigger barns on the same pad, higher ones so you don't take up any more of your fields and you store it all and then you let it out at whatever pace you want and then you become the fat cat, you become the Middle Eastern local guru. You're going to control the prices? By the way, he didn't just store his grain there, he stored his goods there and my goods. What's that? This is the only biblical storage unit I know of. This guy's got a lot of other stuff he's storing up. I would have thought he would have said, you know, God, you're the one that makes the rainfall. You're the one that makes the earth warm. You're the one that makes the seed to grow. I need to take some of this that You've given to me and give it back to You because I know I'm to love You with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and I cannot be restrained in my giving to You because my love commenced me to be generous with You. Love gives, it cannot give. And then I know the second law is to love your neighbor as yourself and because Your love abides in me, I love these people and I want to share this with others. None of that here. And look at verse 19, and I will say to my soul, you want to know how much of a materialist this guy was? He lived alone. And when he had a conversation, it was with himself. I mean, it would have been a little window into something good about this guy if he'd said, I said to my wife, or I said to my family, this is the miser, I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your easy drink and be merry. You're set for life, man. You are set for life leisure. All you have to do is control the spout at the bottom of the silo and let out only as much as you want and control the price and you are fixed. Soul is in the singular. The man lived in the singular, thought in the singular, had a conversation only with himself. He has it all. Take your ease. Means retire. Eat, drink and be merry. Blatant hedonism. Eat, drink, party. That's it. Just eat, drink and party. The materialist motto, you only go around once, so grab all the gusto you can get. Jesus telling the story, I'm trying to think about, what's this guy in the crowd thinking? My guess is he's salivating about the fact that he would like to be that man. That's why he asked the question, but he wasn't alone. The problem with this man in the story is he forgot three things, God, others and his own mortality. Ooh, those are bad things to miss. He forgot God. He forgot others and he forgot his own mortality. And then comes the surprise which is so common to Jesus' stories, verse 20, but God said to him, You fool! You a-froan from friend, the mind, ah, negative. You mindless, thoughtless, ignorant destitute of knowledge and truth. You fool! This very night your soul is required of you and now who will own what you have prepared? Oh, the materialist worst nightmare. Somebody else gets it all. This night your soul is required of you and the actual Greek says, This night they demand your soul. That's an old rabbinic expression, a common plural construction used by the rabbis to refer to an act of God because God is plural, Elohim. They, God, the Trinity, the very Trinity He had been referring to a few minutes before this are going to require your soul. How foolish to make all your grandiose plans. Forget God, forget others, forget your own mortality. James says, Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we'll go such and such a city and spend a year there, engage in business, make a profit. You don't know what your life will be like tomorrow. You're just a vapor that appears for a little while and vanishes away like steam off coffee. You ought to say if the Lord wills, we'll live and do this or that. You ought to say if the Lord wills. And then if you're going to say the Lord wills, you better be careful to know that you're right with the Lord. He says, Jesus in the story, to the imaginary man, God said, Tonight this very night your soul is required of you and now who will own what you have prepared? And Jesus there shows probably his memory of Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 2, 18 and 19 says this, Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored unto the Son, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he'll be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely unto the Son. This too is vanity. And so he says, I despaired of all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored unto the Son. I had a materialist worst nightmare. And that was Solomon saying, I've got all this wealth and you know what's going to happen? I'm going to leave it to some fool. You better take into account your mortality. And the application of the story, the final point in verse 21, so is the man who lays up treasure for himself. He's a fool. He's mindless because he hasn't given consideration to God and he's going to face God and he hasn't done anything to help others and he could have purchased souls for eternity, as chapter 16 will point out, and spent all eternity enjoying the fruit of that generosity. And he has no thought for his mortality and here he's dead. For he could ever realize any of his greedy plans. He was gone. You never saw a hearse pulling a U-Haul. You can't take it with you. It doesn't go. And if you haven't sent it on ahead somehow, you're a fool. If you haven't used what God does give you for His glory and for the benefit of others, and if you haven't dealt with your own mortality and prepared for eternity, you're a fool. If you give it to God, it will be there to welcome you. If you've invested in His Kingdom, Jesus said, lay not up treasure for yourselves. On earth. But lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt and where thieves don't break through and steal for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. You can reverse that. If your heart's there, that's where your treasure will go. It'll go. It'll invest in your family. It'll invest in the Kingdom work. It'll invest in the needs of others because that's where your heart is. How foolish to be a materialist, be greedy, covetous, self-indulgent, to hoard what you have and leave it all behind. So is the man who lays up treasure for himself. It's not about how much you have. It's what you do with it. Pursue contentment and lay up treasure in heaven. Important lessons from John MacArthur on today's broadcast. The title of today's message here on Grace To You is the Rich Fool. Well, friend, today John identified two of the greatest temptations we face as believers, and those are religious hypocrisy and greed. The question is, how can you arm yourself against those sins? Well, as with any sin, it starts with a steady intake of God's Word. To help you get all you can from your time in the Word, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. That's our flagship resource. It has introductions to each book of the Bible, dozens of maps and charts, and the standout feature, 25,000 study notes that help make the meaning of the Bible clear, page by page. To order a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible, get in touch today. Call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. The MacArthur Study Bible is available in the English Standard, New King James, New American Standard, and Legacy Standard versions, as well as several non-English translations. Again to place an order, call 800-55-GRACE or you can shop online at gty.org. Now if John's verse by verse teaching is encouraging you, if you've seen your family strengthened or if someone you know has repented of his sin and turned to Christ in faith through our Bible teaching, we'd love to hear your story. It's more important than you may think. You can reach us by email at letters at gty.org, or you can mail a note to GraceToYou PO Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for the entire GraceToYou staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch GraceToYou television this Sunday on Direct TV, Channel 378, and be here next week as John MacArthur begins a study that can show you how to avoid all of the things that distract you from the blessings that Christ makes possible. It's titled, Reaching for the Prize. Don't miss it, it's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time. On Monday's Grace To You. Thank you. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word. God's Word.