Fools' Gold

A few years ago, I was able to go to a small mining town, a gold mine town. It was in a region that had boomed during Australia's gold rush. The story goes that thousands upon thousands of people flocked into that area, some even migrating from far overseas to pursue the incredible and instant wealth that you could get in mining for gold. I was particularly interested in hearing that a cruel twist in the story of that region was the incredible amount of pyrite that could also be found in the area. To the untrained eye, pyrite glittered like gold.

But in that region, it was almost as common as coal. It was therefore named fool's gold. Thousands upon thousands inevitably sold all that they had to pursue incredible wealth, but ended up with nothing but shiny rocks in their bags. We see a similar story this morning in a parable that Jesus tells about a lifestyle choice, choosing a lifestyle at the expense of one's soul. It's the story of a rich fool, and we read that this morning in Luke 12.

Let's turn there. Luke 12, verse 13. Someone in the crowd said to him, who is Jesus' teacher, "Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." And Jesus said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man produced plentifully. 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 I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.'" But God said to him, "Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. This is God's word.

This morning, I want to focus with you on three key statements in this parable which Jesus gives us in understanding its meaning. The first thing we see as Jesus teaches on this idea of covetousness is a warning. "Take care," Jesus says. The story of this rich fool begins with a warning: take care.

Take care against all covetousness. Now, I think if I were to ask anyone randomly at church this morning, "What is coveting?" you might struggle to give a definition. It's one of those inflated religious words that we often sort of throw around. Perhaps.

Perhaps not so much today. But traditionally, it is something that Christians talked about a lot. We either don't understand it today or we fear talking about it. To avoid coveting, as Jesus recommends here, is to actually obey one of the Ten Commandments, the tenth commandment, in fact. Coveting is a sin different to all the other nine commandments, which is a sin of the heart.

Everything else—don't kill, don't murder, don't steal, don't bear false testimony—these are all things that you do. Don't covet is a sin of the heart. It is something that you do in your desires. And what is that? It is to desire something that God hasn't given you.

It is to desire your neighbour's wife or husband. It is to desire your neighbour's ox or donkey. It is to desire your neighbour's manservant or maidservant. And if you were to unpack all of those categories that are listed there, you get an idea of really what was going on. It's to not have lust in your heart for your neighbour's wife that isn't yours.

It is to desire your neighbour's lifestyle, their slaves that gave them ease in life. It is to desire their generation of wealth, their ox or their donkey. Really, there's just about nothing covered in coveting. We cannot desire anything of anyone that hasn't been given to us. It's the inordinate desire that Paul says is actually the crux of idolatry, to desire created things more than God Himself.

And Jesus comes right out and says, "Take care against this thing. Take care against coveting." Now, if you're an eighties kid like me, and there's not a lot of us eighties kids in this church, but you probably grew up watching those family sitcoms from the nineties, like Full House or Family Ties. At the end of those shows, there was always a moral to the story, a basic lesson to learn for your life. Don't lie.

Don't cheat on your tests. Don't be proud or arrogant. Work hard. But more often than not, there was also this moral of the story: don't be greedy. Don't think that money is worth more than your relationships.

Your family is more important than wealth. I think it's a funny thing, but if you were to talk to every ordinary Aussie today, they will tell you that at an intellectual level at least, the idea that possessions don't make up the most important part of your life is a true statement. It's something that most Aussies would like to think they pursue. But look closely at the way people live, and you'll soon realise that that knowledge hasn't changed their priorities. Why?

Because Jesus will tell us that it's not a knowledge problem. Coveting is a heart problem. This is why Jesus begins the parable in a way that he doesn't normally begin his other parables. He explains the moral of the story upfront. He basically says, I'm going to tell you about covetousness and its danger.

And then he focuses our attention by firstly saying, "Take care. Watch out. Be careful." Why does Jesus do this? Because covetousness is deadly and silent.

If you don't highlight it, if you don't put your focus on it, it can permeate and go into everything, and you can rationalise it away so easily. In other words, covetousness needs a watchful heart. Jesus begins his teaching in response to a man who was elbowing his way through a crowd to ask Jesus if He will please be the one that judges whether he gets part of the inheritance that his brother has received. Let him tell him to share it with me. Haddon Robinson points out the unfortunate situation of a man whose heart has been consumed with the desire for possessions or experiences, that this thing has become so important to him that it keeps him from hearing what Jesus has to say.

Jesus is teaching, and he barges into the crowd and he tells Jesus, "Make a decision, please, on our behalf." There he is standing, imagine this, in the presence of the Messiah, the one who has come to teach the world about God, and instead, he wants Jesus to be a small claims judge. Jesus turns to him and he says, verse 14, "Man, who has made me a judge or an arbitrator over you? You don't know me. You don't know why I've come."

This man's request is a living example of what Jesus warns against when He says take care. We need to take care against covetousness because our obsession with worldly priorities keeps us from understanding what Jesus was really on about. We need to take care against coveting because our obsessions with worldly priorities will keep us from understanding what Jesus was on about. Alternatively, what we're seeking when we desire to build our lives on possessions or experiences, well, you can say that that is building a life on a security or an identity that can only come from the things that are eternal. That's the foolishness of this: to build your security on the things that can only come from God Himself.

My first question as we hear Jesus giving us the warning upfront, take care, is are you taking care? How often do you take stock of your lifestyle? Perhaps the single best diagnostic question to ask yourself is, do you feel like you're missing out on life if you don't have that one thing? Is your life worth less if you don't have that thing? If life doesn't consist of the things we possess, which Jesus says here, if life doesn't consist of the things we possess, why have some of our people in this church walked away from this church?

To pursue different lifestyles. Why would you sacrifice the gospel for something else? It's because your heart wants that thing more. Why, even as practising Christians, why do we hedge our bets weekly, living a godly life on Sunday and yet playing in the mud with non-believers during the week?

I think it is because our young people that have walked away, our old people that have walked away feel that they are missing out, that there is something greater to pursue. This morning, do you feel has your heart been tempted to think that you are missing out? Take care. Take care, Jesus says, because this is the type of stuff that silently steals your heart away from the kingdom. But then Jesus, after giving a warning, gives a positive command: be on guard.

Jesus gives the moral of the story, like I said, right up front. He says, take care, and then he says, be on guard. Now, once he's done that, he tells the story. Take care. Be on guard.

And he tells the story of a farmer, a wealthy man who had a very successful business. He had a farm that was very fruitful. And notice right up front that Jesus doesn't say these things in any sort of negative way. This is just what he had. He was a successful man.

In other words, Jesus doesn't denounce his wealth or his success. The problem arises when he desires the upgrade. When he says there's more profit to be made. I need to break down the barns. I need to build bigger storehouses.

Yet as soon as he's finished with his building project, death comes knocking at the door. God says to him, "All those things that you have worked for, what do they mean to you right now? How does your bigger barn house help you?" The parable then drives to this sharp conclusion. Jesus says, the one who lays up treasure for himself is not rich towards God.

And the one who does this, Jesus says, is a fool. Verse 17, we find the reasons for why God will make this declaration over him, over his life, that he is a fool. Verse 17, he says to himself, "What will I do now because I don't have any more space to store my crops?" Verse 19 says, "I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods now laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.'"

The focus of these words is on the internal dialogue, the self-focus that's going on here. This is the heart of the problem. Here's a man who spends his time thinking about himself, talking to himself, building for himself. And it is the core of coveting. There is nowhere any speaking to God.

There is nowhere any reflection on what God might want of his wealth. In other words, coveting is supremely self-centred. We find a man who does all the talking. He talks in the beginning and he talks in the middle. But in the end, it is God who has the final say.

"You fool," He calls him. In all of that talk, the rich man has never talked to God. The wealthy farmer is not said to be a fool because he had wealth, but because he loved his wealth. The man was rich, but not rich towards God. And so this is why at the centre of Jesus' call to discipleship, remember famously the call to deny yourself, to take up the cross, and to follow Him.

Remember those words. Ask yourself the question, why self denial? Why the command to deny oneself? Well, the definition of this biblical self denial is the willingness to deny yourself possessions or status in order to grow in holiness and commitment to God. That's what the Dictionary of Bible Themes defines it as.

Self denial, in other words, isn't an austere denial of nice things. It's not saying no to some things and that being sufficient. It is saying no to certain things so that you may say yes to the important things. It's saying no to nice things in order to say yes to Christ. And so the words that Jesus uses when He talks about it in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and even in the gospel of John, that same call to discipleship that's used, "Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Me," well, it's a similar wording as Paul's counting of loss, all the good that he had given, all the gain that he had received in Philippians 3, where he says, "Whatever gain I had accumulated in life, I count now as loss for the sake of Christ."

"Indeed, I count everything," he says, "as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord." The purpose of Christian self denial in our discipleship to count as loss all earthly gains, this self denial is to become more like Jesus in holiness and obedience to God. That is the aim. And whatever comes in the way of that should be considered a loss. Whatever causes us to stumble on that path needs to be written off, needs to be denied and forsaken.

Self denial for the Christian means renouncing oneself as the centre of existence, and this is the hardest thing because the human heart's inclination is to be the centre of the universe. Self denial is a recognising that Jesus Christ is our true centre. It means acknowledging that the old self is dead and that our new life is hidden in Christ. Now, I can preach a sermon on this, and I have preached a sermon on this, and we all feel really convicted and guilty about it. Right?

Because being rich is hard as a Christian. But I can tell you, it's even harder without Christ in your life. Being rich is incredibly hard. We may never realise it, but if all our neighbours and all our friends are rich, then there's a high chance that we're probably running on the same treadmill as they are running. We're chasing the same carrot on a stick, probably.

Because coveting is always comparison. It is always looking over your shoulders, always looking at what is happening around me, and it's such a relative thing, isn't it? We rise and we fall with our friends. That is why it takes a tremendous amount of clarity, a tremendous amount of willpower and intentionality to have, on the one hand, friends that chase that carrot, and for yourself to choose not to pursue those things. Now, this clarity, this willpower, really only comes through that clarifying moment of being born again.

You don't see it otherwise. You can't pursue anything else apart from being born again. It's not easy being rich. It's hard work, and that is perhaps a motivation why to not give too much attention to it. It's hard work to constantly worry whether we need to go to Bali this year or South Africa.

It's hard work to figure out if we want the white SUV or the black one. Again, wealth as a passive reality is not wicked. But boy, oh boy, is it a massive distraction. And if you really want to sound moody, go to the writer of Ecclesiastes and he will tell you that wealth is meaningless, vanity, pointless. The wealth of wealthy people like us is a very hard thing to manage.

And now, pursuit of lifestyle, well, that can be likened to a game of chess. We pull out the board, and we place all the chess pieces, and we start agonising about which moves to make. But every now and then, we need the perspective that Jesus gives us in this moment.

And that is that when all is said and done, those chess pieces go back in the same box. When we die, we go back in the same box. Yours might be an ivory laden. You might have a nice tombstone, but the end is the same. And in a sobering way, what Jesus is saying is this: when you and I measure what we have and what we've given our life to, please don't measure it by the flesh of your youth or by the anticipation and energy of your twenties.

Don't measure your success by the stability of your thirties and your forties. Don't measure it by the relative flexibility of retirement years. Instead, stand by the side of a grave, look down into it and ask, "Were the things you pursued worthy of your eternal life?" That is why Jesus says, be on guard. To live a rich life not directed towards God is to be a fool.

And so we need to take proactive steps not to fall into that treadmill of chasing after the carrots on a stick so many of our friends and colleagues chase after. There is no peace there. There are plenty of distractions, and God may give us that burden to bear. But do so mindfully, intentionally, because in those things themselves, there is no eternity. There is no lasting satisfaction.

Instead, search the things that are eternal. So firstly, Jesus says, take care. We have a warning: take care. Then he gives us a positive instruction: be on your guard against covetousness.

But then what? How do we actually win this battle that rages even in the Christian heart? Well, Jesus says we win by being rich towards God and His kingdom. We need to find something worthwhile to invest in. If you scan a little bit further in Luke 12, you'll notice that Jesus follows this parable with that famous teaching on not being worried about what you have in your life.

"Consider the birds," He says. "They don't have barns, they don't have storehouses, but look at how God provides for them. Consider the flowers of the field. They don't sow, they don't go to Amazon.com, and look how beautifully they're dressed. How much more important," says Jesus, "are God's kids to Him than birds or flowers?

So why do you worry about God not providing these things for you? Don't run after those things," Jesus said, "but verse 31, seek first the kingdom and these things will be added to you." Now this bit of teaching that comes after the parable of the rich fool is telling. This comes to us in God's word, and it gives us the explanation here, I think, that the parable is less about being rich or poor than it is about being a certain type of wealthy. In fact, it's a kind of richness that you can have, Jesus suggests, that you can have even if you're poor.

You can be wealthy even if you're materially poor, and that is to seek the kingdom of God. It's the equivalent of what Jesus says to be rich towards God in our parable. It is to look at life through the lens of what Christ is wanting to do with this life. It is to ask the question, "What can God have in me?" To seek first the kingdom is to look at your bank statement and to see firstly God's fingerprints all over it.

It's not to buy the lie that this is what you've earned. It's to recognise His incredible generosity to you and to know in the deepest part of your heart that you owe it all to God somehow. Now, how often do we look at all these wonderful gifts that we've been given, the massive houses that we have, the fancy cars that we drive, the gadgets that we buy, and we forget about God? It is exactly what the rich fool did. We look at ourselves, we speak to ourselves, and then we think to ourselves.

Wow, this is nice. But the heart of the Christian who has denied themselves to look to Christ, to pick up their cross, they're the ones who see their possessions, their experiences differently and who pursue goals differently. You see, the truth is money holds very little value in the kingdom. Generosity, kindness, compassion that may be linked to your wealth, that's actually the currency of the kingdom.

And the funny thing is, whether you believe in God or not, whether you are a Christian or not, somehow we know that it's the intangible things like love, like generosity, like kindness that actually make us happier anyway. The instruction is to seek the kingdom above yourself. Why? Because it is the thing that is worthwhile investing in. And that wealthy farmer is a fool because he didn't seek out the kingdom.

The tragedy of this story is that the farmer, rather, would have sought out the kingdom, and if he had done that, he would have found the King. He would have been rich towards God, but the rich farmer thought he was being very wise building his larger storehouses, and yet on his tombstone are stamped the words "fool." Yet when Jesus came to earth, it was the people that He met that thought He was the fool because He didn't build storehouses. He didn't keep His own money. "Foxes have owls. Birds have nests," He said, "but the Son of Man has no soft place to lay His head."

What a strange man He was. He seemingly didn't find satisfaction in His reputation. He didn't swell with pride at the crowds who came to Him. Indeed, you never saw Him with an attitude of looking over those incredible amounts of followers and saying to Himself, "Soul, you have ample followers. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry with them."

He remained restless. His eyes were set on unseen things. He was the fool from heaven. He is the one that left all the riches of equality with God to take up human life. All that exists, imagine it, all that exists, all that will ever exist belong to Him, and He gave it up.

What kind of a person would do that? Well, I tell you, that person is a King who loves His kingdom. That is a King who will do anything to rescue that kingdom. And so leaving behind the crown of glory, He exchanges His throne for a cross. Instead of sitting on the judgement seat, He lays Himself down into a tomb.

He goes from the everlasting to an untimely death, and He exchanges praise for shame. Jesus becomes the fool who saves fools. So to the question, why would we seek the kingdom of God? Why will we forsake the carrot on a stick that the world runs after? It's because now that Jesus has come, the kingdom can finally be found.

And this kingdom is so full of joy and glory that we would be willing to sell all that we have to gain citizenship there. This kingdom currency is not coin, it's not card, it is love exemplified on the cross. And there is no better place to invest your gifts, your talents, your resources than into that paradise. There's nothing worth being distracted over than to compare with His eternal joy. There is no better investment in all of Australia than in His kingdom because it is a kingdom not of rust or of dust, but a kingdom of everlasting glory.

A place where one day you'll see all those friends that you invested your cold hard cash into, and you'll see them standing around that throne, praising the eternal glorious God. And all you'll be thinking to yourself when you see them is that investment was worth it. Why didn't I give more, soul? These people were worth every cent. So don't exchange your soul for anything less, friends.

Take care. Be on guard against all covetousness for our life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. It turns on being rich towards God and seeking first His kingdom. Let's pray. Our Lord, this teaching is such a personal one because it's one that affects all of us in such personalised ways.

We can be wrestling with coveting by wanting to buy a $100,000 car. We can wrestle with coveting by buying a $1,000 iPhone. We can wrestle with it in terms of material things and we can wrestle with it in terms of the desires of our heart. It seeps into why we lie. It seeps into why we steal.

It seeps into who we want to sleep with. Help us to see, Lord, with clarity the dangers. And help us, Lord, to resist it not with white knuckle willpower, but through hearts that are transformed with the eternal beauty that we have received in Jesus Christ. Love that never ends. Glory and joy that cannot be extinguished.

And so, Lord, help us to weigh up the things that You have given to us, the wealth that we have been given, the things that we have honestly acquired. Thank You for the gifts that You have given us, the talents, the work ethic, the determination, the good and noble ambition, Lord. Thank You for those things. We honour You, and we praise You for those things. We thank You for every dollar in our bank account because these are all good and gracious gifts from the giver.

But help us never to stop at those gifts alone. Help us to know what You would have us do with those talents, with those gifts. And then, Father, help us to be so careful not to look over our shoulder, not to desire the things that You haven't given us, that we are distracted to do the thing that You have told us to do. We ask for Your power, Your strength, Your constant reminder in these things. In Jesus' name. Amen.