For many, there is a process in life.
That process is that we set the goal,
we make the sacrifice,
we achieve the goal.
Then we sit back and take pride in our accomplishment, we feel good about what we have done.
We set a lot of goals for our lives, and we approach these goals with the mindset that the process of life is that threefold plan, set the goal, make the sacrifice, accomplish the goal.
We want to GET a house.
We want to GET a job.
We want to GET a new car.
We want to GET a boat.
Even the things that we want that are not actually THINGS, such as a wife, husband, family, happiness, we still think in terms of GETTING them. These are goals, and we feel that if we make the right sacrifice, we can accomplish the goal. Then when the goal is achieved, we sit back, proud of what we have done.
That is the mindset many of us have.
Set the goal, make the sacrifices, and sit back and enjoy the achievement. But is this the kind of mind set, the kind of values that we ought to have?
That is, in fact, the very kind of attitude that we see in the parable for this morning.
Jesus begins this parable with a preface, in which he gives a warning, telling us to "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
Then Jesus goes on to tell this parable.
“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ’What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
"Then he said, ’This is what I’ll do I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."’
Now that person is more like a 21st century American than anyone else in Scripture. He is concerned with success and retirement benefits; he is a hard worker who wants an easy retirement. Taken on face value, it is difficult to see what is so bad about the way he is handling his affairs.
But like so many of the parables of Jesus, this one has a villain, and the Villain is this hardworking farmer.
As the parable continues, God says to him, "You fool!" This very night your life will be demanded from you."
Our mind set is that we set a goal, we make the sacrifice, and we achieve the accomplishment. And we take pride in the accomplishments.
But is this the right frame of mind for us to have?
This is the frame of mind that the villain in this parable has, and look where it got him.
But this is such an all American frame of mind. This way of thinking seems so healthy.
How many of us live by this mind set, and teach this mind set to our children?
What is wrong with this way of thinking? What is wrong with the rich farmer in this parable?
His primary problem is that he is a man of possessions, who does not understand possessions.
Now there is nothing wrong with owning possessions, I’m glad I own two cars. I need both cars; my wife and I can’t work without two cars.
I’m glad I own clocks and radios and TV’s. They make life easier, and I enjoy them. These are possessions.
I’m glad I have my own home now. That is a possession. And there is nothing wrong with owning possessions, but there are dangers in owning possessions. There are hazards. And the rich man in this parable makes several mistakes, falling into these dangers.
First of all, he thinks he controls his possessions, but that is not true. In reality, his possessions control him.
When we lived on the coast of Georgia, one of our neighbors bought a boat. He later said this was the second happiest day of his life. He could go fishing, shrimping, crabbing, or just relax in his boat. But he soon found that in order to spend an hour on the water, he spent 3 hours getting the boat ready and then securing in afterwards. Eventually, the whole time he was on the water, he began to think about having to get back to clean it up. He and I went fishing one day. After a full day we returned to the marina to have the boat pulled out of the water so he could drive it back home. Someone came up and asked us "which of you two own this boat?"
"Nobody owns it," my friend replied. "IT owns ME!"
We often think that we are in control of our possessions, but that is not always true. There is danger in owning possessions. One of the dangers is that we begin to be possessed by our possessions -- that we begin to be controlled by them.
In the parable, the rich man thinks he owns his possessions, but in reality, his possessions own him.
He gets wrapped up into a greed that makes him want to own more and more. Even when he has plenty, he builds more and more barns, wanting more and more possessions.
There is nothing wrong with possessions. But there is a danger there.
And one of the dangers is that the possessions turn on us, and begin to possess and control our lives.
There is a second mistake that this rich man makes.
The second mistake is that he thinks that possessions are what gives to our lives value and add to the quality of life. But that is not true.
Jesus himself tells us in this parable that we need to be on our guard against all kinds of greed. "A man’s life" said Jesus, " does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
But that is not the way the rich fool in the parable operates his life. He operates under the assumption that the more possessions he can accumulate, the greater the value his life will have. And that is a dangerous assumption.
There is nothing wrong with owning possessions, but there are dangers. The rich man falls into some of the dangers. He thinks he controls his possessions, but he is wrong, his possessions control him.
He thinks he his possessions give his life value, but they don’t.
There is another mistake that the rich man makes. The third mistake is that he thinks he earned his possessions, but that is not true, God gave them to him.
That rich man looks at his crop and falsely thinks that he has produced it.
In the parable, Jesus begins the story by pointing out, "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop." Jesus does not say that the rich man produced it, but rather the ground produced it for him. It was a gift from the world that God had created. It was a gift from God.
There is nothing particularly wrong about owning possessions, but there is a danger in possessions, especially when we forget from whom these gifts have come.
In the parable, the farmer regards the crops as his, and as the product of his hands. Nowhere does he stop and give thanks to God, for what God has given to him.
You remember the old movie with Jimmy Stewart? Shenandoah? In that movie, there is a large family that is caught up in the tragedy of the Civil War. But throughout that movie, the family, this large family gathers several times for meals. Jimmy Stewart, the father, always has the blessing, which went something like this --
"Lord, we plowed this field, we planted the seeds, we worked this land, we harvested it. We did it all ourselves, but we thank you anyway."
How easy it is to think of all the accomplishments we achieve, of all the things we GET in life. How easy it is to think of them as things we have earned and done on our own. But I’m not sure that we do anything on our own.
I have a friend in the ministry who is a former professional football player.
We used to be members of the same health club, and I worked out with him once, only once. We worked out on a Friday, and on Sunday, I was still so sore that I gave the benediction like this. Of course, that is one reason why we admire athletes. Their skill, their discipline, their achievements.
At any rate, he told me once that we never could understand why folks admired athletes so much. He said that most people have the impression that athletes set goals, make great sacrifices and achieve great things all by themselves. He said that he had never met any football player or other athlete that really achieved or accomplished that much. What he had met however, were athletes who were the product of a family, who were the product of years of different coaches, who were the product of a team. He said that no matter how strong or skillful the athlete is, if you take away one of these, the family, the coaches, the team, then you take away the accomplishment itself because no athlete makes these kinds of accomplishments alone.
Our mind set is that we set a goal, we make the sacrifice, and we achieve the accomplishment -- all by ourselves. But I’m not sure that is true, we don’t do these things by ourselves.
The man in the parable sets a goal, he makes the sacrifice, he achieves the accomplishment and then he sits back to enjoy himself. Then God says, "You fool!
This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?"
The word used here, "demanded from you," is in Greek a word that was a banking term. It referred to a process by which the payments on a loan were called in.
Everything in the rich man’s life was a gift from God, loans from God. The rich man never fully understood this. In fact he doesn’t seem to have understood it at all. Instead, he is under the impression that he set the goals for his life, he did all the work, and he is the one who is responsible for the achievements.
But not true. God gave to this farmer all the crops, all the possessions.
Knowing this ought to affect the way in which we handle our possessions. We don’t achieve our accomplishments by ourselves. God brings us into these accomplishments. We do not own our possessions. God owns them. The house, the car, the clothing, the food, our jobs, our lives. They are loaned to us.
Our Old Testament Lesson comes from Deuteronomy 6. Moses is addressing the people who are about to enter the promised land.
"When the Lord your God brings you into the land which he promised to your fathers -- with great and goodly cities, which you did not build, and houses full of all good things, which you did not put there, and cisterns already dug, which you did not dig, and vineyards, which you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, then take heed, lest you forget, that it is the Lord who brought you here.
When the people of the Old Testament made their offerings to God, they were asked to remember this heritage.
It is interesting to think in these terms, but it may be that the offering is the most dangerous time in the worship service. Most of us may not think in those terms, most ministers I know think of the Children’s Devotional as the most dangerous time because who knows what they will come up with next.
But the offering is dangerous, because it is at this time that you are being asked to make a statement about what you believe about your possessions.
Are you controlled by your possessions so much that you cannot share them with God? Or do you control your possessions enough for you to share them?
Do you think that possessions add to the value of your life, and there by refuse to part with them, or do you see you life being given value by your acts of charity?
Do you own your possessions, or do you realize that God already owns them, and that in the offering you are simply returning a portion of the offering back unto God.
There is danger in owning possessions, but there is also a great danger in the offering.
Because at the offering, the temptation is there to think in terms of here I am being asked to give my hard earned bucks.
I heard a story recently about a minister who was approached by a member of his church. The member said that years ago he had made a pledge to God that he would always tithe. Faithfully, he’d give his tithe, which would amount to $1, then $5, then $10, and as the man became successful in his business, it became $100, then $1000, then several thousand.
The member asked the minister if he could be released from his pledge to tithe. The minister thought about it and then said no, couldn’t do that, but what the minister could do would be to pray that God would reduce the member’s income so that the tithe would not be so great.
One of the things the church member was failing to recognize was that the income he received came from God to begin with.
When we begrudge the offering, we misunderstand possessions.
When we begrudge any request for our charity, it indicates that we have fallen into one of the dangers of owning possessions. There is nothing wrong with possessions, but there are dangers. We can be controlled by our possessions, we can think that they add value to life, we can think that they are ours, when in fact they are God’s and are simply on loan to us.
When you enter your own promised land, and achieve the accomplishments you have set, when you reach some of your goals in life; remember that it was the Lord your God who brought you there, and take heed, lest you forget.
