The Trap of Closed Hands

Why does more never feel like enough? Jesus exposes the lie of accumulation and shows us how chasing security apart from God ultimately leaves us empty.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Um, but hey, if you have a vision book, turn to this week. If you don't, open your Bible, open your app. We're gonna be in Luke chapter 12. So if you don't know where Luke is, it's in the New Testament, so it's past the halfway point in your Bible. It's the third of the four Gospels, so Matthew, Mark, Luke, and we're gonna be in Luke chapter 12 this morning. Um, here's something that we have to really understand. Um, when God calls you a fool, you should listen. I use name-calling a lot. Too much. I use it very flippantly. It's a love language that wasn't a part of the five in that book that I use constantly with other people, right? And when I call a name, you know, it's usually in jest and fun, and even unfortunately, sometimes at the expense of others, right? But when God calls you a name, it's with full intent. It has purpose and meaning that we ought to listen to. And God in this passage calls a man a fool. We're gonna look at what that means, why he did that, and how we can, by his grace, live differently in response and in light of the gospel. So, Luke chapter 12, there's a moment in this passage, right? We're gonna be in verses 13 through 21, in this chunk of scripture that I think we tend to kind of read right past. And if we just slow down this morning long enough to kind of sit with it, I think it really changes how we hear what Jesus is saying in this story. Right? A man just interrupts Jesus. And he doesn't do it privately or respectfully. He interrupts him mid-teaching in front of an entire crowd of people with really a demand. Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Now we don't know the full story here, right? We're just told on an account of what happened. We don't know if this brother was cheating him, or even if his complaint and grievance was legitimate. What we do know is this whatever Jesus was teaching about, whether it was the kingdom of God or the cost of discipleship or eternal things, this man's mind was on his money. And Jesus doesn't even answer his question. He responds with his own question, he kind of makes a statement, and then he turns to the crowd to teach through a parable. He wants to do something here. He wants to cut to the heart of anyone who's willing to hear what he has to say. You think at times we think of words as having this power, right? Uh, and a lot of times words hurt or harm or wound. And I think that often that's really difficult, right? Because we've been wounded by others' words. But but there's times where that is purposeful and intentional and a good gift to us. Proverbs tells us how um that we should be cautious or weary of the kisses of an enemy, but but we should find it a blessing to be wounded by a friend. I think Jesus here is like a surgeon with a scalpel in his hand, and he's cutting open our chest that we might see what's residing within our heart through this parable, if we will listen. Now, here's what he says in Luke 12, 15b. This is kind of the crux of his caution. Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. That's the caution. Now he's gonna tell them a parable, a story about a man who had everything, but in the end he lost the only thing that actually mattered. So let's look at it together. Before we get to the parable itself, right? I want you to notice something in verse 16. So go down to verse 16 that's easy to miss if we just read right past it. It says this the land of a rich man produced plentifully. The land of a rich man produced plentifully. The land produced, not the man. That's critical for us to understand. He didn't create his wealth through intellect or effort, it was the ground beneath his feet, simply producing abundantly. And so ultimately, he was the recipient of a harvest that he did not generate himself. The Bible is very clear about this. We can do everything possible to get the soil ready, to till it up, we can put the seed in the ground, but unless God causes the rain to fall, unless he puts fruit on the vine, all of our work will be in vain. And so this man ultimately is a receiver of the abundance of which the land produced through the grace of God. God was rich to this man. And this is an essential theological detail in the entire passage. God was rich to him. The abundance that he experienced, it came from outside of himself, from the hand of a generous God who causes rain to fall, seed to multiply, and harvests to produce. The man didn't earn this, he received it. And that reality informs us about what Jesus is actually diagnosing in our hearts. Let's look at 17 through 19 together, the story of this man. And he thought to himself, What shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And catch this. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. If you want to understand what Jesus is exposing here, all you have to do is count the mys, M Y, in this three verses. My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, my soul. In three verses, not just isolated to the word my, but in many ways, the man refers to himself eleven times in three verses. There is not a single reference to God, to neighbor, to anyone outside of himself. He received an abundance that he did not produce, and his entire response was to turn it entirely inward on himself. This is actually how Luther the reformer describes sin. Sin is man turning in on himself. But there's something even more striking about this man's self-centeredness. Look at what he does with the wealth. He doesn't just store it or spend it. This is the dangerous part. He speaks to his soul with it. He speaks to his soul with it. Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. You see, it's not that he's just building bigger barns to store his stuff. It's that he's actually seeking to answer his soul's deepest questions with it. He's telling his soul that that what it needs, right? Rest, security, satisfaction, joy, all of those things can be found in the size of his storehouse. He's formed a theology for his soul. And it's built entirely on how much he has. Luke 12, 20. But God said to him, fool. This night your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? Now, the word fool in Scripture doesn't just mean like stupid, right? Um it means someone who has built their life on a foundation that cannot hold. So this man being called a fool by God, it's not just name-calling, God's very intentional about the language and especially the names he calls us. He's being called a fool by God himself because he has built on a foundation that cannot hold him in this life or the life to come. He has built his life on a foundation that cannot hold him in this life or the life to come. And so God's only right and proper response in calling him is to call him a fool. And the question that God asks this man is absolutely devastating. Whose will they be? He doesn't ask the man, where did you go wrong? To have this self-reflection of what lies did you believe? No, just simply this. It's whose will they be? Because here's what he realizes. Or what he's making known to this man. The barn is full, but the soul is empty. And everything that he spent his life building is now going to belong to someone else. I just want us for a moment to think about all the stuff we have. And the reality is that maybe this afternoon or maybe 40 years from now, the Lord's gonna visit you in the night and require your soul. Where's all that stuff gonna go? You see, there's a verdict that's being presented, but it actually has a contrast tied into it, a contrast to the fool. Look at verse 21. So is the one, so here's the verdict, so is the one who lays up treasure for himself, but here's the contrast, and is not rich toward God. Here's what Jesus is trying to say there is a better way, a more faithful way to live in response to the abundance of which God has provided to us. And it's not by building bigger barns and turning that abundance in toward ourselves. There's actually a better way. And Jesus calls it living rich toward God. And whatever that is, because he's not explicit, he doesn't fully describe or define what this being rich toward God looks like, but what we do know is that it is the opposite of everything that we just heard the fool do. You see, he received the abundance of God and he turned it inward. So to be rich toward God must mean to receive abundance and turn it outward, to turn it back toward the God who gave it and outward to the people around you. So here's what I believe is the claim at the very heart of this passage. God is rich to us that we would be rich to him. God is rich to us that we would be rich to him. We're gonna try to define that and explain that throughout the rest of this sermon. The abundance in your life, whatever that looks like, if it's your income, your home, your health, your family, the harvest of whatever God has caused in your life, none of it was produced by you. The scriptures are clear that every good and perfect gift that we have received has come down to us from the Father of lights. It is by the goodness and richness and kindness of his grace that we have anything we possess in this life. You are in the deepest sense of the word, a recipient, like the man in the story. And the same question that Jesus is pressing on us is this What is your abundance for? What is your abundance for? You see, God's richness toward us isn't really meant to be spent or stored, it's meant to be stewarded with a willingness to be surrendered. Let me say that again. God's abundance toward us isn't really meant to be spent or stored, it's meant to be stewarded with a willingness to be surrendered. He gives richly so that we would live richly, not toward ourselves, but toward him and toward others. You see, the fool's tragedy wasn't that he was wealthy. That's not the fool's tragedy, right? It's not simply so neat and clean as though, oh, he had so much stuff, he had abundance, he had wealth. That see, he never could have lived righteously in obedience to God. No, that wasn't his tragedy. It's tragedy is discovered in that he received richness from God and never once asked the question that wealth is supposed to produce in the heart of man. Lord, what is this for? What is this for? He didn't honestly ask the question, he simply assumed it was all for himself. And I would submit that I most of us in this room have probably never asked that question or probably haven't asked it in a long time. God, what is all this for? You see, what often happens to us is this that when God is rich to us, we enrich ourselves. When God is rich to us, we enrich ourselves. This is what we have a propensity toward in this life. And we often just do this habitually, right? It's not that it's always malicious and full of this wickedness of covetousness. There's a just a habit, there's this natural reality, even as much as the fool just naturally started calculating how much more square footage he could have in his bigger barn that he was building. When God opens his hand toward us, our instinct is to turn the gift inward toward ourselves. And the end result, for all of us, it involves building a barn. It's just that some of us build different kinds. I think some of us, we we here's what's driving this. A desire is driving this. We desire a present indulgence with our riches. This determines the type of barn we build. We desire a present indulgence with our riches. For some of us, the barn is actually physical, visible, full of present comfort. Take a look around us at the way we actually live. And I'm talking a little bit beyond our congregation, but there are many of us even in this room that can see ourselves in this situation. We're having fewer children than any generation before us, fundamentally. We're having less and less children, smaller families than our parents or our grandparents knew or even imagined, and yet somehow we need bigger houses to put them in. We have extravagantly bigger houses comparatively to the family sizes that we have in our modern culture. We have more closets, bigger closets that you can like walk into and get ready inside of, right? And somehow many of us in this room still feel like we have nothing to wear. Right. SUVs. And I know some of you need them, some of you need like buses or or or charters. You you are have you have so many children. I love it. But fundamentally, right? Soccer moms with just two kids having this giant SUV that we park in garages that used to fit three cars, but now sometimes can only fit one because we've lined our walls with all of the things that we have. We're not building bigger barns in some like ancient agricultural sense to store our crops like Jesus was speaking in this parable. But we are doing it every single weekend when we go to Home Depot to see how we can make our stuff bigger and better through these DIY projects, or when we go to TJ Maxx to fill in the empty spaces we think is in our wardrobe, or we order from some online boutique just to have the convenience of it dropped off on our doorstep. All of us in this room have received God's abundance in ridiculously extravagant ways. Genuinely, really received it. And our response has been to expand our life to contain it. More space for more stuff, more margin for more of whatever, and here it is. However, we define that life and we make it worth living right now in this moment, and like the fool. We've been speaking to our soul, not the same exact words that he used, but this internal voice, it's there. You've worked hard for this, you've earned this, you deserve the good life you have imagined it to be. So take it, relax, eat, drink, be merry. We work to feed our soul with stuff, but our soul has been trying to tell us that none of it actually satisfies the hunger. But we don't listen. The noise of more is loud and deafening. And so the next thing is always right within reach. And so what do we do? We just keep building. We just keep building because we don't pause to ask what is this abundance for? Lord, what is this abundance that you've given to us, the way that you have blessed us and been Rich to us, what is this for? Why don't we ask that question? Well, it's we've already known the answer. It's for me. Of course. Others of us though, we don't want a present indulgence. It's not our desire. We desire a postponed indulgence with our riches. You see, we're building barns, they just look a little different. And here's what their intention is for it's not for the now, it's for a future date. A future date rather than a pleasant, a present pleasure. We're not spending recklessly. Oh, no, no, no. We're saving wisely. We're maxing out our IRA, we're managing our portfolio, we're watching the market, we're building toward a retirement that projects security. And we give. The barn's just made of different material, but it's still there. And God's question lands on him the same way that it lands on the other fool. This night, your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? Now I want to be careful here because I want you to hear what I'm not saying. I don't want you to assume what I'm not saying. I want you to hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that saving for retirement or even generational wealth is sinful or foolish. Faithful financial stewardship is a genuine biblical principle that I think actually most of us in this room, I'm not saying because I know your bank accounts, but just like standard across American culture, we're probably not being more faithful to that reality of building financial generational wealth. You see, Proverbs actually commends the ant who stores in the summer for the winter ahead. And so the issue isn't planning, that's not what I'm saying. The issue is not in the planning, the issue is what that planning means to your soul. That's the issue. What does that planning mean to your soul? Is your retirement account a tool held loosely in the hands of someone whose soul belongs entirely to God, who is resting in God, who is finding their security in God? Is it a resource for living rich to God and to others? Or is all that planning and projection the one thing that you tell your soul, hey, you can relax now? The future stuff laid up for years to come. Does it try to convince your soul that one day you will have your delight? You see, both of us we have received God's richness. But both of us turned it inward. One built a barn for now, the other built a barn for later. But they're both building for themselves. You see, Jesus is telling this parable to cut our chests wide open and expose something about our hearts. Because right there in verse 21, in the contrast that he draws, Jesus points to the only kind of wealth that survived the night God came for the full soul. So let's go there. Here's what we need to see in all of this. What is the balm that is applied to the cut heart? Jesus is the storehouse of eternal riches. Jesus is the storehouse of eternal riches. You see the fool's barn? It was stacked to the rafters the night God came for his soul. And it couldn't save him. He couldn't take it with him. Every head of grain, every treasured good was utterly helpless in the moment that actually mattered. But church, there is a storehouse that death cannot empty. Christ Himself. There's a treasury that no threat can touch, no economic collapse can endanger, no diagnosis of health can diminish. That what we've seen in his resurrection, no grave can claim. Jesus said it plainly in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 through 21, he says this do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So the location of your treasure is the location of your heart, which means the question of where you store what you value is ultimately a question about who or what has your heart. The fool's heart was in the barn. But when the Lord required his soul, his soul was found empty. But Jesus is himself the storehouse that cannot be emptied. He is the eternal treasure. And he didn't reserve himself from us. No, he gave himself abundantly and fully to us. We talked about this last week. The apostle Paul captures this so beautifully in one single sentence. In 2 Corinthians 8 9, he says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. You see, Jesus. In him. And rather than building some bigger barn, right, what does Jesus do? Jesus empties himself completely for us. He gave his very life for us so that we who were spiritually bankrupt could be made eternally rich in him. And here's the paradox of the gospel. Jesus became the fool. In the world's eyes, Jesus became the fool. He had everything and he gave it all away. They just mocked him and ridiculed him and they pointed their finger at him and said, You're the fool. He was rich, though, toward God the Father in his obedience, in his righteousness, and he was rich toward us to the point of death. And because of this, because his poverty became our riches, we now have an inheritance that cannot be taken from us in a single night, nor nights eternal. Christ is the storehouse of eternal riches for us. Forgiveness that doesn't cease, adoption that cannot be revoked, righteousness that is not based on our performance, but it is alien, imputed to us. And here is what this means for the barns that we've been building. Christ is the storehouse that the fool never found. He is the wealth that survives the night that God comes for your soul. Because that night will come. And when Christ is your treasure, when the riches of his grace have actually captured our hearts, man, the barns we've been building, they just crumble. They crumble. They have no power over us. Because you found something so infinitely more valuable that the barn can't store. Honestly, ask yourself, what could you possibly store in the barn you've been building that Jesus hasn't already given you in Himself? Nothing. The answer is nothing. We've been trying to speak to our soul for so long. If you just have, you can relax, you'll be satisfied, you'll be safe and secure. But the true answer for the soul is Jesus. So let's ask what it actually looks like to be rich toward God as we wrap this up. Remember, Jesus doesn't explicitly define it in the passage. He just points to it as the alternative to the life of the fool. But we believe that to fully understand the truth and revelation of God, we've got to allow scripture to interpret scripture. We've got to start to look at all the revelation of God's word that we might put the pieces together to create or have clarity and understanding. And so I think that the rest of Scripture fills in the missing pieces for us. And here's what I think the call to us is, and we'll try to unpack it together. The call to us is that we would live rich with open hands to God and others. We would live rich with open hands to God and others. Now, I think that Paul actually gives us the kingdom principle that's missing in Jesus' absence of explanation. And I think he gives it to us in 2 Corinthians 9 10. Here's what he says. Right? Okay, here we go. You got me? All right. He who supplies seed to the sowerer, not the hoarder, not the storer, not the spender, soer. And bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing. Man, you're so much better than the first gathering. I can just I didn't set them up as well as, so some of that's my fault, but and increase the harvest of your righteousness. So so what's the kingdom principle? God supplies the seed for the spender, no? For the ster? No. For who? The sower. God is rich to us that we would be rich to him. God is rich to us that we would be rich to him. Do you see what he's saying there? He supplies seed to the sower, not the barn builder. The one who receives abundance and immediately asks, What can I sow with this? Is the one God keeps supplying. And so the storehouse isn't the destination. The barn you're trying to build isn't the destination. The field is. The field of God's kingdom is the destination of where God says, I'm going to be rich to you, so that you would be rich to me and that you would sow the seed of which I've given you in abundance into the fields of my kingdom. To be rich toward God is to receive what he gives and immediately begin asking, who needs this? Where can this be sown? What field is God calling me to invest this in for a harvest? And Jesus Himself teaches us what this looks like. In Matthew 25, he's describing the moment of final judgment at his second coming. And you would think of what is Jesus gonna say, right? When he's saying, here's what it's gonna look like when I return in judgment upon my people. What's he gonna incorporate into that? Well, he says this to those who are welcomed into his kingdom, he speaks these words. I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. And when they ask, Lord, when did we do any of this for you? When were we ever rich to you? When were we ever open-handedly generous to you? He answers, Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. So here's what I think Scripture teaches us. In the absence of Jesus' explanation, I believe that to be rich toward God is to be rich toward the people that He loves. That you don't just walk by and pass up, but you're rich to them out of the richness of God towards you. You see that? That's the life the fool never lived. That's the life the fool never lived. He simply received the abundance and assumed it was all for himself. He had every resource to live it. He was wealthy, he had abundance, he could have lived that life. God had been extraordinarily rich to him, and he spent it all convincing his own soul that in it he was safe and satisfied. You don't have to build bigger barns, church. We don't have to. It's a trap, it's a trap for our soul. You already have a storehouse that no dreadful night can empty. Your soul doesn't need stuff laid up for years to come. It needs the living God, who has already given you everything in his son Jesus. You see, the fool spent his life answering his soul's deepest questions with stuff. But Jesus answers the question of your soul with himself completely, permanently, eternally, freely. And when that answer actually reaches the soul, when the riches of Christ become more real and more weighty than anything that you have in the barn, open hands become the most natural thing in this world. When you treasure Christ and your heart is in him, all of this stuff can just be lived with open hands. Hear this quote from the Puritan Thomas Watson in his work, The Art of Divine Contentment. The man who has God for his treasure has all things in one. The man who has all things but God has nothing. Church God has been rich to us, unimaginably, extravagantly, eternally rich to us. May we be rich back to Him. Amen. Let's pray.