Financial planning and the rich fool

Luke 12:13-21

Here we have someone else trying to enlist Jesus to their ‘just’ cause.
‘Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me’.
Only a few verses earlier we have been told about Martha who said to Jesus, ‘Tell my sister to help me’.

And in both cases Jesus challenges the one who would enlist him to their cause.

With Martha he spoke about the need to listen to him.
With this man, he speaks about money.

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Still life with skull, candlestick and coins. Johann Stumm c.1645. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

1. Jesus warns him, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed”.

Barns come in many shapes and sizes. There are plain old barns. There is property and land. There are the investment portfolios.

There are some very big barns in the Burnhams. And equally there are many who aspire to have bigger barns.

And it is very easy for the desire to get those bigger barns, the desire for money and all the things that it brings, to get a grip on us, to control us.

And that is spiritually very dangerous.
1 Timothy 6:9, “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”
(Notice it does not say that money is the root of all evil. Money is a very useful gift that enables society to operate. It is ‘the love of money’ that is the root of all kinds of evil.)

The problem is when money becomes our idol, our god.

They say that it gets harder to resist the more you have.
I have found that to be true. The more you have, the more you want and the harder it is to let go of what you have.

We’ve been watching ‘The Gold’ on TV – the story of the Brink’s-Mat robbery.
One of the characters depicted is John Palmer. He was a crook, a successful crook, able to keep under the radar, and doing rather well. But he wanted more. The desire for more money became like a drug, and it ended up destroying his relationships and destroying him.

And for us, the desire to get more money may push us to the edge of what is legal; it may make us unwilling to question what our investments are doing; it may make us think that doing everything we can to legally avoid paying tax is OK, rather than thinking I can afford it and someone needs to pay for our schools, hospitals, police and security.

Incidentally, when the Welsh revival broke out in 1904-5, among other things, the police had people returning stuff they had stolen, and the tax authorities found people paying undeclared tax.

But the greatest danger of treating money as an idol is that it twists how we see other people.

Everything becomes about trade, about money.

If we have money, it becomes easy to trample over people to get more money. 

Micah 2:2, “The rich covet fields and seize them. They defraud people of their homes”

Or we come to see life as a war: people as either potential exploiters or as potential customers to be exploited.

And we end up building bigger walls and gates to protect our barns.

2. Jesus teaches the man: “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (verse 15)

That is hard to conceive of in a money driven economy.

But you are far more precious than your money and possessions.

Some of the most significant people on this planet, who have touched and shaped the lives of billions, are people who have had nothing.
We think of Siddhartha Gautama, known to most people as the Buddha; of Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and of course of Jesus himself.

I was very struck by the fact that Princess Diana and Mother Theresa died in the same week. Princess Diana left, if I am correct, £15m. Mother Theresa left a bucket and two saris.

I am not saying that we have to be like Mother Theresa. I’m just saying that the value of a life does not consist in material riches, and Jesus is pointing to a different set of values which states that our worth does not depend on how big a barn we have.

Your true worth is founded on the fact that you were created by God, are beloved by God and that you have the potential to become a son or daughter of God – that we can become like the Lord Jesus Christ, and that in heaven, we will be so filled with the light and radiance and love and holiness and beauty of God.
And because we are of such eternal significance and value, we can trust that God will provide for us here and now – what we need at the time that we need it. We pray to our Father in heaven, ‘Give us today our daily bread’. And yes, there will be times when he empties us, when he sends us away as the rich, but it will be because he loves us and because he wants to fill us with what truly matters and what truly will make us rich.

3. Jesus puts our money and possessions in the context of eternity

The story Jesus tells is not telling us that we should avoid financial planning.
Far from it. It is telling us that we need to be wiser in our financial planning.

Don’t just plan for this life, and your earthly inheritance. Plan for this life in the context of God and eternity.

The man here had a great financial plan. He was going to knock down his barns and build bigger barns. He had just forgotten to include God in it. He was not rich towards God.

There was no fear of God. No acknowledgement that God could strip everything from him in a moment. I’m currently reading the book of Job in my bible readings. He had everything and lost everything, and he was still able to say, ‘the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord’.
But for this man in Luke there was no recognition that one day he would stand in front of God and give account for how he had used the gifts that God had given him.

There was no gratitude to God. No thank you for the great harvest. No recognition that so much of it was out of his control. No acknowledgement of the one who had given him life, who had given him his land, who had given him farming abilities, who had given him the sun and the rain.

There is no indication of any generousity.
As a good Jewish man, the least he should have put aside to give was a tenth, especially of a bumper harvest. I personally think that that should be pretty standard for those who profess that Jesus is our Lord. We put aslde one tenth of our income to give. It is not even giving. It is the least we owe God. Our giving comes on top of that.

Of course, this man was very wise if this world, this life is all that there is. That is what most people think and say. You hear it. They say, ‘You only live once. So spend it on yourself, or on those who make you feel good – your family. And give a little – because that will make you feel good’.

But if Jesus is right:
If the love of money will destroy us,
If our life is far more than money and stuff
If each life is precious to God,
If everything we have has been given us by God
If, one day, we will stand before God to account for how we have used what he has given us;
And if these 70, 80. 90, 100 years are just the beginning of eternity 

– then that will completely transform how we live, what we live for and how we spend our money.

And if that is the case, if Jesus is right, then the man that he tells this story about is a fool.