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The 1980s will probably go down in American
history as "the decade of the yuppies." Much as an earlier era
chanted, "You can have it all," the yuppie slogan became,
"You should have it all." The early part of the decade was
marked by acquisition and consumption. Economic downturns later shifted
the emphasis from the pursuit of "more" to the pursuit of
security. But materialism reigned supreme--and it was not confined to
yuppies.
A study of contemporary American youth by the
Cooperative Research Program in 1988 concluded that "they are
overwhelmingly materialistic; interested more than ever primarily in
making money" (Trinity Journal, Fall 1988, p.216). A breed of
preachers baptized this impulse into a "health, wealth, and
prosperity" theology, epitomized by one preacher's question,
"If the Mafia can ride around in Lincoln Continental town cars, why
can't the King's kids?"
Babyboomers
did not invent the pursuit of possessions, although they certainly have
refined the art. And the decade of the nineties was not characterized by
any radical turning from materialism. We have been nurtured in a society
that seduces with the promise of affluence and measures worth on the
basis of possessions and positions. There is nothing inherently wrong
with professional success, financial security, or personal prosperity.
But at some point, a follower of Jesus Christ crosses the line into enemy
territory.
The Lord once told a group of Pharisees,
described as people "who loved money," that "what is
highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight" (Lk. 16:15).
Undoubtedly, we value the fruits of being well-to-do and successful.
Could it be that Jesus detests what we aspire to? He has a very painful
way of probing the central nervous system of our lives. In the parable of
the rich fool (Lk. 12:13-21),
Jesus forces all of us to face some searching questions about ourselves.
As Jesus moved toward Jerusalem,
huge crowds were drawn to Him. Luke tells us that "a crowd of many
thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another"
(Lk. 12:1). At the same time, His enemies had begun "to oppose Him
fiercely and to besiege Him with questions, waiting to catch Him in
something He might say" (11:53-54).
In that context of popular acclaim and deep hostility, the Lord called
His disciples to bold and fearless witness on His behalf (12:1-3).
One of the men in the crowd had little
interest in such matters. He had come with a family problem that was
related to an inheritance. Apparently he was the younger of two brothers.
According to Jewish law, his older brother would have been both the
executor of the estate and the largest recipient of the inheritance and
would usually have tried to maintain the estate intact. But that wasn't
the younger brother's plan. He wanted money of his own to use as he
pleased.
Since it was common to bring disputed points
of the law to an accredited rabbi, he blurted out his concern to Jesus:
"Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me"
(v.13). His words are revealing. He doesn't ask the Lord to make a
judgment, but to side with him to provide ammunition against his brother.
Like many since his time, he wanted to use Jesus to meet his monetary
desires.
The Lord refused to be drawn into such a role:
"Man, who appointed Me a judge or an arbiter between you?"
(v.14). Jesus had no legal standing as an accredited rabbi to be involved
in such cases. But more important, such a task was not part of His divine
mission. As Leon Morris observes, "He came to bring men to God, not
property to man" (The Gospel According To St. Luke, p.212).
That is an important truth to embrace when
some teach us that believers can and should expect the Lord to provide
physical well-being and prosperity. Even if this man was being wronged by
his brother, getting his rights may not have been best for him. There is
a deeper issue involved, and a greater danger than being cheated out of
one's inheritance.
It is that danger the Lord had in mind when He
turned from the man to the multitudes ("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" (v.15).
The initial words, "Watch out! Be on your
guard!" put the Lord's message in neon lights. This is not an
abstract possibility or a theoretical concern. What Jesus had in view was
not just a sin, but a serious, yet subtle, sin. Some sins are clear and
recognizable, and evangelicals are quick to label them as evil and
condemn participation in them. Rarely do we see greed as a horrific sin.
But remarkably, Jesus never warned about adultery and drunkenness in the
kind of dramatic terms He used here against covetousness.
The term greed means simply "a consuming
desire to have more." It has the nuance of a grasping for more, a
lust to acquire. It is the very opposite of the contentment that
accompanies true godliness (1 Tim. 6:6). Someone once asked John D.
Rockefeller how much money was enough. "One dollar more," he
replied. The beast of greed is never full. It is insatiable.
We miss the point, however, if we see
covetousness as an issue of amount not attitude. The poorest can be
greedy; the richest can avoid greed. But the danger of possessions is
that they often arouse the desire for more.
Greed is no laughing matter. It is, in fact,
idolatry (Col. 3:5). The Lord left no doubt when He said, "A man's
life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Lk. 12:15).
God alone is the source of life; God alone controls life; God alone gives
life.
The Lord was not content to give us an
abstract warning. In the parable of the rich fool, He introduced us to a
first-century yuppie.
He told them this parable: "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.' 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. 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." ' 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 how it will be with anyone who stores up things
for himself but is not rich toward God."
Wealth often begets wealth, and his wealth
enabled him to possess land that produced a bumper crop. There seems to
be no criticism intended by the fact of his wealth, his manner of
acquiring it, or its increase. What is decisive is what he chose to do
with it. Even then, it was not his actions so
much as his assumptions that were crucial. Given his values, building
bigger barns was a wise, pragmatic decision. Yet that is precisely the
question: What were his values?
We can summarize his view of life with several
phrases that echo through the years:
"If I'm not good to myself, who will
be?"
"Success with possessions shows I'm a
success as a person."
"The bigger the barn (or car or house),
the better the life."
"If money can't buy happiness, it can at
least buy pleasure and security."
But in a moment, his bubble burst. God passed
sentence not only on the rich fool but on every life that is based on
covetousness: "You fool! This very night your life will be demanded
from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?"
The Lord's diagnosis was unrelenting in its honesty and revealing in its
insights. Three things stand out.
1. He was a fool, not a success. Almost
certainly, in the community's eyes, he was a man to be envied. In God's
eyes, he was a fool to be pitied. The term fool in biblical language is
not a description of mental ability but of spiritual discernment. In the
Old Testament language of Psalms and Proverbs, a fool is an individual
who makes choices as if God doesn't exist and who lives as if God hasn't
spoken. Eleven times over, we hear "I" and "my" in
this man's words. For all intents and purposes, God does not exist.
2. He was a servant, not a master. The rich
man was convinced that he was in control of his life and that wealth gave
him control. But God's words to him made it clear that he had no power
over the present: "This very night your life will be demanded from
you." The word demanded was a commercial term, used of a loan. At
this crisis point he discovered a truth that everyone learns sooner or
later: God owns life, and He merely loans our earthly existence to us. At
any time He can call in His loan.
The fool also had no power over the future:
"Who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" As the
writer of Ecclesiastes lamented, "I must leave [my wealth] to the
one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a
fool?" (Eccl. 2:18-19).
3. He was a pauper, not a rich man. In the
moment of truth, the wealthy farmer realized that he had worked so hard
for so little. He had invested in the passing, not in the permanent. What
makes death hard is the evaluation of what we lose by it. This was a man
who was leaving everything behind--the barns he had built, the people he
had controlled, the prestige he had acquired.
Death stripped him bare and revealed him for who he was, a man who "stores
up things for himself but is not rich toward God" (v.21).
That last statement should force each of us to
ask ourselves, "Am I a fool in God's eyes? What label would He
attach to my life?" The following words spoken by Jim Elliot merit
careful consideration: "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep
to gain what he cannot lose." I like that!
There is another type of foolishness the Lord
wants us to recognize. He has described in the parable the folly that
says, "God doesn't matter" and "I can't get enough."
The power of possessions is that they give us a feeling of control. But
disciples face another folly, the folly that says "God doesn't
care." We are tempted to believe that if we follow the Lord,
renouncing all our possessions, we may not have enough.
Luke made it very clear that verses 22-34 were
addressed not to the crowd but to the disciples. There is an implication
here that worry is one of the besetting sins of Christ-followers. The
reason is not hard to discover. The terms of discipleship are demanding.
To obey the call is to trust Christ completely, but what are the
implications of that obedience? Financial questions loom large. If I say
goodbye to all my possessions, will the Lord really meet my needs? My
head assures me that He will, but my heart is not quite so certain. The
writer of Proverbs put it this way: "An anxious heart weighs a man
down" (Prov. 12:25). Physically, this is so. As someone
has observed, people get ulcers not so much from what they eat as from
what eats them. Anxiety also steals emotional peace and removes spiritual
assurance.
Telling us not to worry isn't very helpful.
People who tell us that usually seem either unrealistic,
uninformed, or patronizing. The Lord forces us to think about why we are
not to worry. First, He said that worry is foolish (Lk. 12:22-24).
It is falling into the folly of the rich fool who believed that his life
consisted of his possessions. But life is more than food and clothes, and
God has promised us that He will care for us, much more so than He does
for His creatures, the birds. To worry is foolishly to forget that we are
God's valued children and He is our loving Father.
Second, worry is futile (12:25-28).
Worry can shorten life, but it can't lengthen it--and God who gives
beauty to the fields will not strip us bare. Anxiety denies the care of
God--and all to no effect. So the alternative is not to be
"care-less" but "trust-full." A little bit of
reflection helps us to recognize that most worry is about things that
can't be changed (the past), things that can't be controlled (the
present), or things that might not happen (the future). How much better
to entrust ourselves to our God!
Third, worry is faithless (12:29-31).
To be absorbed with physical and personal needs is ultimately to be
captured by unbelief. If the gospel is really true, our lives should be
different qualitatively from the lives of pagans.
Our great need is to worry about the right
thing. What is that? "Seek His kingdom." We do not refrain from
worrying. We replace concern about secondary things with concern about
the primary thing. Only His kingdom is worthy of our ultimate concern.
The Siamese twin of anxiety is fear, and the
Lord addressed fear in verses 32-34. He told us to take drastic action
with our financial resources and personal possessions. We are not to
grasp them or trust them. We are rather to dispose of them by investing
them eternally. In fact, the only way we can truly protect our treasures
is to invest them in heaven. Our hearts follow our treasure, and if our
treasure is in heaven, so will our hearts be. As David Gooding writes,
"Heaven is scarcely a reality to a man who is not prepared to invest
hard cash in it and in its interests; but by that same token it becomes
more of a reality to the man who is" (According To Luke, p.241).
The crucial issue in life is not the amount of
our treasure but the location of it. The rich man's treasures were on earth.
He was a fool because he built his life around what couldn't last and
what really didn't matter. Our call as a disciple is to be rich toward
God and to have a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted. D. L.
Moody once said, "It does not take long to tell where a man's
treasure is. In a 15-minute conversation with most men, you can tell
whether their treasures are on earth or in heaven."
No one wants to be called a fool by God. How
do we make sure that doesn't happen? We can choose limits, not luxury, so
our treasure can be invested in heaven. We can cultivate compassion, not
greed. Most of all, we can pursue confidence in God, not money.
The slogan "In God We Trust" is
printed on our American currency. Fine words--but do we trust God on our
money or with our money? When I am suffering financial hardships in the
face of growing needs, I focus on a saying that i
once heard which says, "If we find ourselves sinking, we will not
cry 'uncle.' Instead, we will cry out 'Father' to the One who knows all
our needs and possesses all resources."
Why do we serve the Lord? Fear? Duty?
Prestige? Reward? Motives are never entirely pure, and a variety of
factors propel us. But we certainly aren't hirelings, serving for wages.
We are God's children, delighting in His work and trusting in His
generosity. So don't spend your time worrying about building bigger
barns! Instead, spend your time on thanking the Father for all of the
provisions He has given to you !
Curtis
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