In this video, Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke discuss Luke 12:13-21, focusing on the parable of the rich fool. They explore the themes of greed, wealth, and the dangers of storing up treasures for oneself. The conversation delves into the importance of gratitude, trust in God, and the reminder that our possessions do not determine our worth. Join them as they unpack the teachings of Jesus and reflect on the implications for our lives. Subscribe to our channel for more insightful biblical discussions!
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Transcript
00:00:00:41 – 00:00:33:02
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us on a Wednesday mid-week. We appreciate you being with us as we continue through Luke. A familiar story, I think today we find ourselves in the 12th chapter of Luke Jesus after some teaching stuff has kind of gotten back to at least for the moment, a parable. And this this parable is probably not a favorite, but it’s probably one of those that once you hear it, kind of sticks with you.
00:00:33:07 – 00:00:56:08
Clint Loveall
I think it again, Luke shares with us a relatively edgy version of it, but let me read it for you and then we’ll we’ll talk through it. Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. But he said to him, Friend who sent me to be the judge or an arbiter over you.
00:00:56:13 – 00:01:17:39
Clint Loveall
And he said to them, Take care and be on your guard against all kinds of greed. For one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Then he told them a parable, The land of a rich man produced abundantly, and he thought to himself, What should I do for I have no place to store my crops. And he said, I’ll do this.
00:01:17:43 – 00:01:43:54
Clint Loveall
I’ll pull down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I will store my grain and my goods and I will say to my sole soul, You have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, You fool, the very night, this very night, your life is being demanded of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?
00:01:43:58 – 00:02:11:46
Clint Loveall
So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves. But are not rich toward God. We’ve said this before in the intro and we will get back to it many, many times before this study is concluded. But Luke is passionate about conversations that have to do with money and wealth and the danger of money and wealth. If if you look at each gospel, you can pick out a couple of key themes.
00:02:11:51 – 00:02:37:13
Clint Loveall
That is one of the significant themes woven through the Gospel of Luke. Luke is very hard on wealthy people, particularly selfish people. Luke in in Luke, Jesus is very upfront about the dangers of money, the dangers of wealth. And so this parable fits squarely in Luke. It’s not only in Luke, but but it, it does especially belong here.
00:02:37:13 – 00:03:07:45
Clint Loveall
I think it is one that I’m sure Luke appreciates, and it’s occasioned by a question or rather a request. Teacher Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. So you want to be careful? You don’t want to get too bogged down in details of parables. But what this could mean is that this is a younger brother because typically the older brother in Jesus culture gets the lion’s share, or often the entire inheritance.
00:03:07:49 – 00:03:30:25
Clint Loveall
And so this is for a younger brother, a kind of question of fairness. Now, it’s not necessarily the text doesn’t tell us that, and we don’t know that for sure. But for some reason here, one brother seems to have the lion’s share or perhaps the complete family inheritance. And this other brother sees in Jesus a person who should help him.
00:03:30:30 – 00:03:59:10
Clint Loveall
Jesus is a religious person. Jesus talks about what’s right and wrong. So he tells him Jesus can you help me here? Tell my brother what to do? And these kind of requests, they just never go Well, when when someone tells Jesus what to do, it is always, nearly, always the case that they’re asking for the wrong reasons. And Jesus is about to make an example of them, which is exactly what happens here.
00:03:59:15 – 00:04:35:10
Michael Gewecke
This is an interesting story because I think in many ways it is probably determined and a lot of our reading of it is probably determined in a great deal based upon our own life experiences as opposed to the story itself. Because in this particular story, the really good news is that even the poor can be rich and that even those who lack physical resource, who don’t have the stuff of life, have the capacity to be rich and abundant in God’s blessings in their life.
00:04:35:15 – 00:04:56:49
Michael Gewecke
That, of course, downside of that is if you’re in the position in which the stuff of life is of particular importance, or if you have been fortunate enough to be able to acquire those things, then a text like this can immediately land as criticism. And so in this circumstance, I think you’re right to start with this conversation about the the cultural move.
00:04:56:49 – 00:05:25:01
Michael Gewecke
That would be that if this was an older brother, it wouldn’t make sense because it’s likely the older brother would probably get the inheritance just straight away. So that that assumption, it’s a fair assumption that’s probably a younger brother, younger family member, or there’s a very different circumstance happening here. But either way, this idea that maybe Jesus would be an ally in the conversation about the distribution of wealth, you might even read that at first and think, Well, Luke is going to be all in favor of it being equal.
00:05:25:01 – 00:05:48:27
Michael Gewecke
Luke’s going to be all in favor of it being distributed fairly amongst the people, and he would be prone to sharing a story like that. But that’s not what happens. Now, the story that gets told here is that the one who’s asking for the distribution of wealth for the sake of enriching themself is the one who’s now going to be criticized as the one who’s laying up the goods for their own benefit.
00:05:48:41 – 00:06:08:58
Michael Gewecke
And it’s going to ultimately be required from them or it’s going to be taken from them. And that is, I think, a really hard parable to hear, especially if we find that tendency within ourselves, the desire to store up, the desire to sort of try to bend things to our own benefit, that this parable is going to land hard on us.
00:06:09:00 – 00:06:24:19
Michael Gewecke
It is a hard teaching to say example of Jesus calling people to honesty and to authenticity, even when that’s not an easy practice to have in our life. And I think the the parable may not be a favorite, but it’s a valuable parable.
00:06:24:34 – 00:06:53:48
Clint Loveall
And I think the word for us here is really two fold or the lesson for us. Michael. The first is we we get a hint of the first one right away here in Jesus response. You know, he speaks to the man. Look, why is it my job to figure out your inheritance? And then he said to them, Be on guard against all kinds of greed for life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
00:06:53:52 – 00:07:26:47
Clint Loveall
And so the first temptation of stuff, of wealth is greed. Rarely do we find ourselves at a position where we get what we want and then we think, I don’t want anything else. There’s a kind of cyclical pattern to that. There is an acquiring of more. We, you know, we I don’t want to make this kind of a cultural thing, but we do live in a culture that does materialism really well from the time we’re born.
00:07:26:52 – 00:08:03:59
Clint Loveall
We are advertised to and we’re under a constant barrage of buy this, try this, do this, you need this, upgrade that. And we live in that environment. We swim in that water. And the danger of that, as Jesus points out here, the first danger at least is greed, believing that our life consists of the abundance of possessions. And so for Luke, that’s a deep seated danger and one that Luke understands is among the most important, because he emphasizes that the most often.
00:08:03:59 – 00:08:08:48
Clint Loveall
And so the first thing I think we see here, Michael, is a warning against greed.
00:08:08:53 – 00:08:32:58
Michael Gewecke
I agree. And I think that as the parable goes on, there’s a really interesting turn here because in verse 16, we’re told that the land of the rich man, this is in the parable, the land of the rich man, produced abundantly, that is by definition in Scripture, a gift from God. This is God’s blessing upon this individual. God has given them a resource which now Jesus is going to make clear.
00:08:32:58 – 00:09:10:55
Michael Gewecke
The expectation is to understand as being received as a steward and not as an owner. It’s the responsibility to be gracious and giving of the gifts that God has given to us. But instead this man thinks to himself, Where am I going to store my crops? This speaks to the greed, that idea that I’m going to be the one who’s going to save up for my own benefit, my own use, and I’m even going to enrich myself with bigger barns to hold on to this so that I can therefore be determined in the future what I’m going to have and this is, I think, where it moves from greed to a kind of spiritual grasping,
00:09:10:55 – 00:09:34:48
Michael Gewecke
the idea that humans would be able to control our fate and that we would be the ones who are able, by our own sort of thought, our own planning, our own cunning. We’re going to be able to work out for ourselves the future. And instead it’s at that moment that God uses this word. You fool your life as being demanded of you and the things that you have prepared.
00:09:34:48 – 00:10:06:21
Michael Gewecke
Whose will they be? I mean, ultimately, this is a reminder that God is the one who’s in control and greed is the temptation that we have a constant temptation to think that the stuff that we might acquire would have a specific ability to quell a kind of hole inside of ourselves. But the danger of that is that we are actually living out a kind of self idolatry where we think that we’re the most important and that we can live on, and that acquiring that stuff is something that might determine what our future will be.
00:10:06:21 – 00:10:25:48
Michael Gewecke
And Jesus makes it abundantly clear the one who blessed you in your fields, the one who gave you the riches, is equally able to take your life. And this hearkens back to the study we had a couple of days ago. It’s the very God who promises to be with us, the very God who promises to be near to us and our witness.
00:10:26:00 – 00:10:35:49
Michael Gewecke
This is also the God who calls us to be faithful and the God who we should rightly have a holy fear because He’s a great, powerful Almighty God.
00:10:35:54 – 00:10:56:40
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think there are a couple of things in that part of the text. Michael. The first we see by its absence, at no point does the man express gratitude. At no point is there thankfulness and you have to be a little careful inserting those things in the text. But you would want in a moment of abundance to see gratitude.
00:10:56:54 – 00:11:25:06
Clint Loveall
And again, one of the dangers of Luke is that wealth leads us to believe that we are self-sufficient, that we are self-sustaining, that we don’t need God. And so God is written out of the story. And it’s subtle, but I think it’s important ultimately, that delivers us then to the last part where he says, Saul, you can relax, that your security and that your future are found in the abundance.
00:11:25:19 – 00:12:03:04
Clint Loveall
They’re found in the wealth, they’re found in the stuff. And again, there’s no mention of God until God shows up to correct. And the the takeaway here, the most obvious piece is that Jesus ends this teaching with this sentence. So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God. And one of the tensions in the Book of Luke is that Luke comes very close in places of insinuating that wealth is not a positive thing.
00:12:03:09 – 00:12:33:43
Clint Loveall
But on the whole, I think we see a picture of wealth and possession in Luke that is tempered, that says there’s nothing wrong with, there’s nothing wrong with abundance. Abundance is often a gift. There is something dangerous in it because we trust it and we forget to be grateful. And we rely on our stuff and our income and our success rather than on God.
00:12:33:43 – 00:12:53:54
Clint Loveall
And so this last sentence is, I think, crucially important those who store up for themselves earthly things but are poor in heavenly things. They’re rich in the world, but not rich toward God. And for Luke, that’s a sad and dangerous status to have.
00:12:53:58 – 00:13:21:12
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, absolutely is. In fact, what this brings to mind for me is just not long ago we were talking together about the Lord’s Prayer and one of the key parts of that teaching of Jesus, as he taught his disciples to pray was this idea of give us this day our daily bread. The idea of give us enough for today that what we have been given each day would be sufficient for that day.
00:13:21:12 – 00:13:45:24
Michael Gewecke
And what we see happening here, Clint, and this is really important, is a person in the parable who has become convinced here in verse 19 that the acquisition of these things can lead one to tell our soul or to tell this individual soul that there’s enough stuff now laid up so that now you can relax, you can eat, you can drink and be married.
00:13:45:25 – 00:14:08:16
Michael Gewecke
And at that moment this is the turn that happens or this is the different path that’s chosen. An individual no longer is praying for their daily bread. They’re now simply relaxing upon their own ability. They have no need to be sufficient in their trust of God for this day, and instead they can trust themself in their own power, in their own will.
00:14:08:24 – 00:14:32:57
Michael Gewecke
And when that happens, the lordship of this story changes. It goes from being God, the Creator who gives you the gift is Lord to you, our Lord of the resources you’ve been given. And those resources are your tool to accomplish your end, to provide your security and that turn in the story is the thing that is going to at different stages of our life, hit us very hard.
00:14:32:57 – 00:15:05:13
Michael Gewecke
Then it should hit us when we find ourselves caught in the trap, which is inevitable. If you live in a culture like we do, so dominated by commercialism. But really I think anyone, any human, is going to be tempted by this idea of acquisition. And wherever that happens and whenever we slide into it in our life, a story like this is a good reminder that what you get in this life you don’t take with you at the end, no matter how much you’ve amassed, has nothing to say about the sufficiency of the one who who’s gone with you every day.
00:15:05:13 – 00:15:14:28
Michael Gewecke
And and that’s a good reminder. And it’s good to have those anxieties and fears quelled to know that God’s enough. And that’s enough.
00:15:14:33 – 00:15:42:06
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And I think, you know, that’s a good transition to where we’ll land in tomorrow’s passage. We will have other opportunities in the Gospel of Luke to examine the relationship between wealth and stuff and spirit and the Christian’s relationship to those things. And we we will be able to have that conversation again. I think the good word from this passage is that it introduces us to the idea.
00:15:42:10 – 00:16:15:36
Clint Loveall
It challenges us to be grateful and to put our trust and our faith in the right thing. I hope you can come back tomorrow if you get a chance or catch tomorrow, study at some point. Because once we know that Luke is going to share with us some of the impact, it has, the knowledge that we are accountable first to God and he’s going to tell us that actually leads to the security that we wish possessions and wealth did, but ultimately can’t take us.
00:16:15:41 – 00:16:39:48
Michael Gewecke
Hope that you will indeed join us tomorrow. If you found this study helpful, would you give it a light that helps other people find it? They might also find it helpful if you would like to be engaged in the ongoing sort of trajectory of this study as we go through. Luke The best way to do that is to subscribe on YouTube or to add us wherever you are watching or listening to the podcast, we’re glad to be with you and can’t wait to see you as we continue on tomorrow.
00:16:39:57 – 00:16:40:39
Clint Loveall
Thanks guys.