The Rich Farmer

Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

by Pastor Dave Wilkinson

Luke 12:13-21

October 31, 2004

In 1966, Randy Johnson, a nephew of President Lyndon Johnson, was a quarterback for Oklahoma State University. By the expert’s judgment, he was a mediocre quarterback for a mediocre team. But mediocre or not, quarterbacks and teams at Oklahoma State could be lifted to legendary greatness if they could just beat their archival – the University of Oklahoma. They came close yesterday – 38-35.

But winning wasn’t going to happen in 1966. Oklahoma State was behind by six points with only seconds on the clock. Rain was pouring down, but the mud covered uniforms didn’t look half as bad as the battered despairing faces of the State players.

As a gesture of goodwill, the Oklahoma State coach put in all the seniors of the last play of the game so they could end their college football careers on the playing field. He told Randy Johnson to call whatever play he wanted since they were almost eighty yards from the goal and had zilch chance of scoring.

The team huddled, and to the surprise of his teammates, Randy called play 13. It was a trick play that had never been used in a game. It had never been used for a good reason. It had never worked in practice.

Well the impossible happened. Play 13 won the game. Oklahoma State scored from 80 yards away. Oklahoma State kicked the extra point and won the game. The fans went wild. They carried Randy, the hero of the game off the field. Later his coach called out to him, “Why in the world did you call play 13?”

Randy answered, “Well we were in the huddle, and I looked and saw old Harry with tears running down his cheeks. It was his last college game and he had never beaten Oklahoma. I saw that big 8 on his chest. Then I saw Ralph and tears were running down his cheeks too. And I saw that big 7 on his jersey. So in honor of those two guys I added 8 and 7 together and called play 13.”

“But Randy,” the coach shouted back, “8 and 7 don’t add up to 13.” Randy reflected for a moment and answered with a smirk, “You’re right, Coach! And if I had been as smart as you we would have lost the game.”

Sometimes things just don’t add up. That was certainly the opinion of a man who interrupts Jesus as He is teaching.

Jesus is sharing some tremendous things with His disciples and the others who are listening in. He gets into some very heavy topics such as hell, hypocrisy, the count God keeps of people’s hairs, the unforgivable sin, and what to do when persecuted.

There is, however, at least one man in the crowd who isn’t at all interested in the things that Jesus is teaching. This man had brings with him a problem that so grips his attention that he can’t think about or hear anything else. “Teacher,” he suddenly shouts, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

It used to be said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” But it often seems more accurate to say, “Where there’s a will, there’s a quarrel!” I am currently serving as the executor for my parents and I am responsible to my brother and sister for the estate. So I am very sensitive to this man’s issue. Families divide over this stuff. It was the same in the First Century.

This man brings a quarrel over a will to Jesus. “Teacher, command my brother to divide the inheritance with me!”

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt kills Mecurtio and Romeo kills Tybalt. The bodies of the dead are brought before the Prince and Lady Capulet cries out, “I beg justice, which thou, prince, must give!” By which she means, “You’ve got to kill Romeo.”

This is the cry for justice. How does Jesus deal with it in this case. Simply speaking, He refuses to be the problem solver. But He brings forth a new dimension to the problem without which the real problem of life will not be solved by anybody.

Jesus refuses to be used to settle their quarrel. But He points to the one who does judge. He tells the parable of a rich man and spoke the heavenly judge’s stern words: “Fool, this night your soul is required of you.”

If you study the really, really tiny print at the bottom of financial advertising you will usually find a phrase which says something like this: "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns" Well, never has that been truer than for this man. All his carefully made investments are about to be wiped out overnight.

“Fool! This night your soul is required of you.”

Dying had never entered the mind of the rich farmer.

Life seemed to stretch away to unlimited horizons. The things he had earned and the fruits of his labors, the lifestyle he enjoyed and the prospects he dreamed about were his only concerns. The thought of death had never occurred to him. And the thought of having to leave all he had was unthinkable. Leaving all that he had earned? Leaving it all to someone who had not earned it? Those were unthinkable thoughts. Which is why he never thought them. But when God speaks to him and announces the termination of the only life he had and the only lifestyle he knew, he is shattered. And that is the end of everyone who lives for material possessions and ignores spiritual realities.

Jesus warns us here in verse 15 against every form of greed. There is the greed of the rich to hold on and have more. There is the greed of the poor to get and grab. There is the poverty of the middle class -- which one humorist describes as a state of mind, sometimes induced by a neighbor’s new car. All of these greeds have the same root. They are oriented toward the drive for material possessions rather than “richness toward God.” Jesus says, “Beware and be on you guard against every form of greed.” And then He tells the parable of a man who isn’t on his guard and who is consumed by his possessions. Jesus paints a picture in this parable and he holds up a mirror and invites the man in the crowd, and invites us as well, to look in and see if we see ourselves.

The main and only character in the parable is a rich man. He has been abundantly blessed but responds poorly to his blessings. He owns productive land and is already rich. One year, however, his land produces far beyond what it had ever produced before. His response to this abundance is to tear down his barns and build bigger barns to hold the surplus. It’s amazing the amount of money he was willing to spend simply to advertise his success to his neighbors and make himself the envy of the countryside. Tearing down barns and building bigger barns is expensive --but sometimes it costs money to be rich.

Before the 1984 presidential election, Mayor Ed Koch of New York City described the agonizing choice he was facing. “If I support Ted Kennedy, there would be cruises, jet-set parties and long, lazy summers at Hyannis port. If I were to support Fritz Mondale, there would be winters in Minnesota. It’s a tough choice.”

This rich man too has a tough choice. But like Mayor Koch, the way he phrases his question indicates the choice he has already decided to make.

He asked himself, “What shall I do?” But he limited the available options by his mind set in approaching the problem. He is locked in to keeping “his own” so no choice except keeping “his own” is possible.

A student was once asked what parts of speech “my” and “mine” are. He answered, “aggressive pronouns.” That describes the rich farmer’s vocabulary very well. Listen to the aggressive pronouns in his monologue.

“What shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger barns 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.”

“My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, my soul.” Look at all that the rich farmer thinks he owns.

But he doesn’t own any of it -- not even his own soul. Everything he has is a loaner.

You’ve heard it said, “You can’t take it with you.” Well that is not true of our mental state. We will take with us what our thoughts have determined us to become for eternity. We all live forever. The question is how, where and with whom? Our mind set here in this life will determine whether we live with God or apart from God for eternity.

Now the fact that you are here this morning indicates that you have made a choice or are making a choice about your eternal relationship with God. You have asked yourself or are asking yourself “what shall I do?” and have responded by giving God His proper place in the answer.

And yet, as Christians, we are still faced with the question “what shall I do?” How shall I as a man or woman of Jesus Christ respond to the opportunity or the need at hand?

We have both needs and opportunities as a congregation. We need to expand our staffing for both Sunday school and the youth ministry. They are both very effective at reaching unchurched ki9ds in the community but they can’t continue to grow unless we do something. That’s a need. We also have the opportunity to better prepare ourselves in mission and evangelism as we prepare of the completion of our new building.

The pledge card you will be prayerfully considering this week is but one example of the constant choices we are called to make as God asks us “what will you do?” The main thing is to actually allow God into the conversation and not to create a circular dynamic in which we only seek to reinforce our own “wants” and “gotta-haves.”

As you read the financial page of the newspaper you sometimes find a column where a panel of experts advises someone on how best to invest what they have. What would such a panel make of our rich farmer?

They would say things like, “Mr Richfarmer should be commended for his ample provision for his retirement. However we are concerned that his portfolio is overweight in grain, and that he is therefore overexposed to the volatile commodities markets. We recommend diversifying, perhaps into promising new technology markets such as steel-making and aqueducts.” They might also suggest moving some barns off-shore to take full advantage of the available tax breaks.” That’s what they would write. I think it's pretty unlikely that we would find any serious criticism of him in the article. The advisers wouldn’t see anything wrong with this rich man's lifestyle.

And the same would have been true in Jesus' day. Right up to verse 19 of the parable, Jesus' listeners would have been cruising along with no problems. They might even have thought, "This man is an example to us; Jesus is giving us something to shoot for."

They would have seen nothing inherently wrong with this man being wealthy. After all, wealth and riches, especially in the Old Testament, are seen as a sign of God's blessing. The early church certainly had well-off members. No, this man's wealth was not what Jesus had in his sights, and we should not be embarrassed about the good things that God has given to us.

In addition, Jesus' audience would have seen nothing inherently wrong with this man making provision for his future. Don't the Proverbs say that we should learn prudence from the ant, storing up provisions in the good times to live off in the bad? No, this man's prudence is not what Jesus had in his sights, and we should certainly be careful to take measures to ensure that we and our families are provided for if we should fall on hard times.

Furthermore, Jesus' audience would have seen nothing wrong with this man enjoying his wealth. They might have thought of Ecclesiastes chapter 5, where the philosopher says, “When God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work-this is a gift of God.”

Christians are not ascetics: we are allowed to enjoy what God has given us.

But this man is a fool because he has neglected to invest in the life to come. He's put everything he has into one singularly terrible investment-an investment in the things of this world-and one day it will be literally wiped out; he will be left with absolutely nothing. And there won't be anyone to sue for compensation.

A financial company called Virgin Finance used as an advertising slogan, "you could be better off if you see things differently". This statement is truer than they know. A Christian must see things differently from the world. In verse 21 Jesus insists that we must not merely store things up for ourselves, but we must be rich towards God.

That means we must be generous with what we have. We must be good stewards of what God has given us. The Bible is clear that someone who is rich towards God will find themselves being a cheerful giver. If we put a true value on the things of this world in relation to the things of the next then we will be happy to give away what we have, because our security comes from trusting in God. The state of our giving is a very good indicator of our spiritual health.

Practically speaking, then, how much giving is healthy; how generous should we be? Well, the Bible teaches that a Christian should give a tithe, a basic 10% of income as a foundation to his or her giving.

So I encourage you to go home today and review your giving. It's probably the surest indicator of whether you are storing things up for yourself or being rich towards God. Sacrificial giving is a direct measure of how much we are prepared to trust in God rather than ourselves

As I close, I want to let you in on a secret in this parable that isn’t seen unless it’s read in the original Greek. It’s a marvelous series of puns that Jesus includes in this parable.

He says first that the land of a certain rich man “brought forth abundantly.” The word there is eu-phoreo. To have something bring forth abundantly, eu-phoreo results in eu-phoria which literally means to have a swelled chest -- the expanded diaphragm of the self-contented life. “Take you ease, eat, drink and be merry.” But God comes to him and says “Fool.” And the word there literally is a-phron which means to be without a diaphragm at all. A fool is literally a person who has lost his guts -- who has lost his own self.

“You have lost yourself, God says. Your soul isn’t your soul at all. It was loaned to you and this day it is required of you.” That’s the condition of the rich farmer. He thought he had it made, when he had really lost himself -- possessive pronoun by possessive pronoun and barn by barn as he moved further and further into himself and away from the God who had made him. His god was success so he never got acquainted with the God of the truly successful -- the God of the future. This is exactly what Jesus meant when He said: “The person who would save his own life shall lose it but he who loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will find it.” You see, Jesus gives us abundance right now -- whether we ever get another barn or not.

There is no better way to close this parable than the way Jesus closed it. For as soon as He had spoken it, He turned and said to His disciples then, and to His disciples here today these words: Luke 12:22-34