Years ago I saw an episode of Dr.
Phil.
There's more the story. It was about this
old older lady
maybe in her 60s who had this
shopping addiction.
She couldn't stop buying stuff.
and what she bought was almost irrelevant she would just buy stuff
from the $2 shop or online or wherever she
could.
access products. She was constantly buying
and she had got to the point where she had literally completely filled her
house.
with things to the point where there was
lots of rooms you couldn't even get into though these little channels
through her house that you would you would walk through to
be able to get to one spot to the other and only a few
chairs and a bed were left empty. You
know, her garage was filled her car was filled and had
got to the point where she'd started storing stuff at her elderly mother's
house who was in her 80s. She
had filled her house with stuff too and her
car with stuff too. And this was the first time
I ever kind of come across this phenomenon of
hoarding. I'd never heard of this idea before
but there are
these people this this kind of
global phenomenon of people who
just collect stuff.
Things possessions sometimes possessions
that have no worth at all like a stack of newspapers from
the last 50 Years or or you know things which
the rest of the world would literally think of as rubbish but there's
this need this desire to hold on
to them.
And it's interesting that this I think
is most likely a pretty
modern phenomenon. You know, this is probably a problem that really has only
come about say in the last 50 to 100 years as we live in
a world where we just have so much stuff -so
many things I look
at my kids today and I look at
all of the things that my two little boys have all of
the toys all of the gadgets all of the stuff that they
get and I think to myself. Oh my goodness. They have so much
stuff. It's completely out
of control.
Of course, my parents probably looked at me when I was
a child and said to themselves "Wow, he has
so much stuff. I can't believe how much
he has compared to me when I
was a child" and their parents would have looked at them and thought
to themselves "these guys have so much stuff". You know,
it's this it's just generational thing particularly in
this modern world where we live where every generation
seems to have even more than the last and
products and having possessions is cheap
and easy and yet
it is an ongoing problem for
who we are and as we
saw in the reading today, it's a problem that has been
hanging around for Humanity for a long
long time.
America as an example of overabundance consists
of roughly 5% or
less than 5% of the global population.
So, you know all the Americans in the world is about
5% of the global population, yet they consume 25%
of its products. They
produce 25% of
its CO2 emission and
they produce 30% of
its global waste, you know,
one American has the
same impact or you know, footprint as
250 sub-Saharan
Africans - so much
has our society come to a point of overabundance particularly
for the wealthy Nations that one
person can consume and produce enough the same
amount of waste as 250 other humans from
another part of the world.
We live in a time and space when materialism is completely out
of control in our world and the
story that we read today rings very
true of the world in which we live.
A man comes to Jesus while Jesus
is teaching. He's teaching the words
of eternal life. He is teaching people how it
is. They are to come and know the
kingdom and see in their own lives and he interrupts Jesus
in his teaching and gets him
or wants him to
Be a judge between him and his brother who are
fighting over an inheritance.
He comes up to Jesus and says, you know, give get him to give
me my half of the inheritance, you know, this Injustice of
his brother keeping this inheritance from him has brought
him to the point where he comes and interrupts Jesus
in his teaching to get him to to make
his brother see straight.
Because what he wants is he wants his his fair share. He wants to
get his possessions. He wants to get his retirement plan or
whatever it is that I might look like and let's
say Jesus isn't all that
particularly interested in helping him out in this. Have a look. If you've got
your Bible open there at verses 14 and 15
where Jesus says: "Man who
appointed me a judge or an arbitor between you?" Watch
out be on guard against all kinds of greed.
a man's life does not consist of the
abundance of his possessions.
And after this Jesus tells this story
about a rich fool.
Of course, he tells the story about a rich
fool to a rich full. Well, maybe
he's not rich yet, but he's hoping
to become a rich fool. There's this reality
there the story that Jesus tells is
mirroring or reflecting the person for whom
is asking him this question.
And he goes on to tell this story about a farmer
a farmer who has a good crop a great crop a
bumper crop. Right? And if there's any farmers watching
this perhaps, you know more about that than I do
and this crop is so good and so bountiful that he
can't fit it all in his barns. He knows
that if he can store all of this well that he
will be set up for life. So he builds, knocks down
his barns and he builds bigger barns and he saws his huge
bumper crop that he has created and
put together and he rests and puts his feet
up and knows that he's done. All he needs to do to be
prepared for retirement for the rest of his life.
Now this guy he he got
this crop not through ill-gotten means
not through stealing or taking something
that wasn't his not through, you
know, abusing his workers or mistreating people around him.
It seems in the story that he got this bumper crop
through hard work, right? He got this bumper crop
through hard work and and luck and
good timing and you know having the right crop in
the right field and having the right weather conditions or whatever. It
was that made this this crop possible and
this money that he has
earned isn't from being any doing something
bad or being terrible to people.
It seems to have come from the hard
work of his own hands.
So I guess what is it about him that makes
him a fool? It seems like he's wise when
he gets this big crop. He doesn't like spend it.
Or throw parties or you know, it's not like the
prodigal son and goes and waste it all in fact, you kind of does something wise with
it doesn't he? He puts it away. He stores it he prepares
what he has now for the
future so that he will always have something available like that seems
like a wise thing to do and yet he's called a
fool.
Let's have a look verses 20 and 21. You've got it open
there.
So after he has
torn down his stores built new ones
And says I'm going to eat drink and be merry. Jesus
God speaks to him and says verse 20. God says
to him: "You fool!. This very night you
this very night your life will be
demanded from you."
"Then who will get what you've prepared for yourself?
This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself, but
is not rich towards God.
This is the part where this man becomes
the fool. This is the part where
the man does something foolish because from all
he has stored and put away.
He has prepared nothing
for the next life
he has put all of his energy and all of
his eggs into the basket of the finite of
the things that are here in this world, and he's prepared nothing for
the world to come.
He's prepared nothing for life after death.
There is this great danger in this world isn't there in relying on
the things of this world the finite things of this world because as Jesus
tells us here in the Bible tells us in other parts,
these are missed. They are here one
moment and they are gone the next
Yet today this is kind of how our world operates isn't that we're always
thinking about retirement and having enough, you know,
super and having the house and having the deposit and having
like kind of stuff and when I have these things and then I'll be safe. If only
I could pay down the mortgage. They'll be safe. If only I could pay off
the farm, if I could pay off the business or
whatever it is. Then I'd be financially secure and
I wouldn't have to worry ever again. This is what we do
all the time.
We fall into the same trap that this rich fool
does. Yet Jesus says in this rich fool having
all of your energy and all
of your security
in the things of this world is foolishness.
They can be taken at any moment.
Famine, fire, drought, war, market crash,
a loss of your own personal health
all of these things can be taken in an instant.
Because they are of this world. Jesus says that this is
foolishness because the only security in this world,
the only true source of security is in the
Lord.
That is where security can
be found not in the fragile things of this world and the
finite things of this well, but in the infinite things of
the world that is to come. The irony of
this story, of course is that the rich man in the story is
actually someone who is concerned about preparing for
the future, isn't it? He is concerned about preparing
he is concerned about putting away and storing it up.
I'm not spending it all or living a lavish lifestyle,
but using it carefully.
And yet in all his preparation,
he forgot to prepare beyond his own
funeral, you know, like he's retirement plan stopped
there and the point that that God makes
him that night is You full you thought you were
prepared. But in reality you are
completely unprepared.
Because of all that you have in this world all of you stored and put
away from yourself your your account your bank account
with God is on zero because you
spent no time or energy seeking me
out in your life. You spent all your time in your energy seeking
out the things of this world.
And I wonder if as you are hearing this does that sound a little
bit like you does that sound a little bit like your life like
you spend a lot of time and energy in the day-to-day
in making ends meet in whatever
it is paying off the house or the car or whatever. It
might be and yet don't spend any
of that energy or that time.
on storing up Treasures in Heaven or
strengthening your relationship with a
God who loves you and who has called you to be his.
There's a simple message from Jesus isn't there
that a person's life does not consist of the abundance of
their possessions that you know, there's that old saying
whoever dies with the most toys wins. Well, Jesus
is kind of saying no whoever dies with the most toys
still dies. It doesn't matter how many
toys you have because someone else will take them when
you're gone. Whoever dies with the best relationship
with a God who loves them. That's the
one who will win right? That's the one who will share
in Jesus's victory with him.
This Parable so mirrors the world in
which we live.
So mirrors where we're at that
many of us fall into this trap of
being too consumed by the things
of this world and the day-to-day to not worry about the things of
the future you see because this whole parable comes
about because this this man interrupts Jesus, you know,
Jesus he is he's giving the the words of eternal
life, right? He is giving the The
Living Water. He there amongst them
is the Son of God the Messiah.
telling them
how it is they might find eternity.
Showing them how they might see the kingdom of God all
around them.
And he interrupts Jesus in that.
To talk to him about getting more stuff.
There's that that is the Crux of this whole story
and yet how much do we do the same?
How much in our lives do we kind of interrupt God?
Do we push him to the side so that we
might spend more time and energy and effort on finding the
things of this world and searching those things out.
When the reality is those things are here one moment and
go on the next yet. Our eternal life before him
is of such greater value than anything
we might find in this world.
The Clutter that we hold on to in our
lives can so easily choke at
our spiritual life. It can drown out what is
truly important. It can minimize the role of faith and
the importance of our spiritual life in our
day to day so that we forget it all together and
we fall into the same trap with this rich young
fool who would stop Jesus from talking about the
words of eternal life so that he might get him to judge
between him and his brother about who deserves to
get more of what
I'm not going to say much more but to say that what this passage
sets up is this great ideology - this
battle between these two ideologies - one ideology
is the eat drink and
be merry and the other ideology is that we
are not measured by
the abundance of our possessions and Jesus holds these two up
and says, which camp are you in? Are you
someone who lives their life by the "eat drink
and be merry" ideology? Are you someone who recognizes
that we are not?
measured by the abundance of our possessions
I'm going to pray.
And then you can continue on your service. That's pray together.
Our dear Lord and Heavenly Father. We thank you for your work. We
thank you for the way that your word
opens our hearts and our minds to
your message and your meaning and Lord. I just pray that what
we've heard today Lord that that might filter from our heads into our hearts
and we might live it out day to day Lord that we might not be
concerned of the things of this world, but focus our attention on
what is to come
I know we're just thank you for this and right now in Jesus. Amen