March 19, 2023 - Just Informed Talk - Craig James
11:09
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| God's Grace is Greatest segment where we're doing a deep dive in the scripture. | |
| Yes, we're picking up where we left off. | |
| We're in Luke chapter 12. | |
| And today we're going to be talking about the parable of the rich fool. | |
| Now, this is a very powerful tale, and it has a lot of wisdom from Jesus explaining what this parable means. | |
| And we're going to give you kind of the context of why Jesus is saying it and what it means and do a little bit of a deep dive into the interpretation of it, which I think, and the application of it for ourselves and our lives. | |
| There's a lot to be learned in this story of the rich fool, and I hope that we can basically learn from it together. | |
| So, we're picking up where we left off, though. | |
| Where we left off was Jesus teaching us about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, right? | |
| He told us to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, which is their hypocrisy. | |
| And then he talks about fearing God. | |
| And that we shouldn't fear man, we shouldn't fear the one who can kill the body and the body alone, we should fear the one who can kill the body and sentence your soul to an eternity in hell. | |
| And he goes on to say that we must acknowledge him before all others. | |
| And this is what's fascinating. | |
| We're picking up right where we left off, and throughout this long set of teaching from Jesus, continuously, time after time after time, Jesus is interrupted by people who have these questions. | |
| A lot of them are the scribes, and a lot of them are the Pharisees. | |
| They're trying to poke holes in what Jesus says. | |
| But in this particular instance, where we're picking up in verse 13 of chapter 12, a man cries out from the crowd something very telling about himself and... | |
| And Jesus responds with an answer that I think, I don't think he really wanted to hear. | |
| And we're going to get into the parable of the rich fool. | |
| So let's read it here. | |
| Starting in verse 13 to verse 21 here, we're talking about the parable of the rich fool. | |
| It says, someone from the crowd said to him, teacher, there's talking to Jesus here, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. | |
| Jesus replies, Friend, he said to him, who appointed me a judge or arbiter over you? | |
| He then told them, Watch out and be on guard against all greed, because one's life is not in the abundance of his possessions. | |
| Then he told them a parable. | |
| A rich man's land was very productive. | |
| He thought to himself, What should I do, since I don't have anywhere to store my crops? | |
| I will do this, he said. | |
| I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods there. | |
| Then I'll say to myself, You have many goods stored up for many years. | |
| Take it easy. | |
| Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself. | |
| But God said to him, You fool! | |
| This very night your life is demanded of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? | |
| That's how it is with the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. | |
| Now, I love this parable because it teaches us, as Jesus is teaching this person who asks about dividing his inheritance, it teaches us a very important, powerful lesson as well. | |
| In this particular parable, we actually see the beginning where a man shouts out, Teacher, tell my brother to divide my inheritance. | |
| Well, what do you think he was doing that for? | |
| Do you think he was doing that because he thought it was a fair thing to do? | |
| Perhaps. | |
| Does it seem though that Jesus thinks it's a fair thing to do? | |
| Well, how does he reply? | |
| He first says, who pointed me a judge or arbiter over you? | |
| Saying essentially that the The inconsequential nature of what he's asking. | |
| Excuse me as I'm getting over a cold I had earlier this week. | |
| He says, what is the inconsequential nature of this question and the things he's asking about? | |
| It's like if you're standing in front of the Savior, the Messiah, Jesus, and you're worried about material possessions in this world, Then you're truly missing the forest for the trees here. | |
| And Jesus warns him, he says, watch out and be on guard against all greed. | |
| So he's identifying what this man's motivation is, greed. | |
| Because he says, one's life is not in the abundance of his possessions. | |
| He's telling us, You think, I mean, I think the real story in this that is pretty obvious is that the man is standing with the Messiah and he's asking him about the abundance of his possessions and worried about his own greed. | |
| And Jesus then responds in that way, and then he tells this parable of a rich man. | |
| So this rich man, he's very productive. | |
| He has a farm. | |
| He's not doing anything sinful or illegal to become rich and wealthy. | |
| So it's not that he's done anything wrong, but he makes a poor choice after he gets what he works so hard for. | |
| He builds up this great wealth, which in those days crops could be considered wealth, and what does he do with it? | |
| Well, there's a few things he could do with it, but the first thing he does is think of himself and his own life. | |
| And what does he do? | |
| He says, I'll build bigger barns and I'll store it. | |
| And then I don't have to work for, you know, probably the rest of my life. | |
| And I can live comfortably and I can sit around and have fun. | |
| And how many people in our society, if they won the lottery tomorrow, I mean, yourself included, myself included, how many of us would, would, what would be the first thing we'd want to do? | |
| Would we say, I'm never going to work again. | |
| I'm going to lay around and go buy a house on the beach. | |
| And I'm just going to, you know, get away from it all. | |
| And I'm going to enjoy my life. | |
| A lot of us would probably think to do that. | |
| Now myself, I've asked myself this question a lot and you never know until it happens what you would actually do. | |
| But I, I, my, I dream is that if I did do so, I don't play the lottery and I don't gamble. | |
| So, um, if, if I did win the lottery by some chance, like I found a ticket on the ground or something, then I would want to open churches. | |
| I'd want to share the gospel, because what else are you going to do with your life at that point? | |
| But this guy has a different idea. | |
| He says, I'm going to have the easy life. | |
| I'm going to live good. | |
| I'm going to live high on the hog, and I'm not going to do anything. | |
| I'm going to eat, drink, and be merry. | |
| But God said to him, you fool! | |
| This very night your life is demanded of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? | |
| How incredible is that? | |
| You see there, God teaches this man a lesson. | |
| His life ends. | |
| He doesn't have a chance to take it easy, drink, and be merry, because God is saying, your life is ending now. | |
| What's going to come of all this? | |
| It's all going to come to nothing. | |
| All the riches, all the power, all the wealth, it's going to come to nothing. | |
| And you're going to have nothing because God, because you will not have honored God with what you had when you had the chance. | |
| So Jesus says, that's how it is with one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. | |
| And this is also exemplified in Psalm 49. | |
| This is a psalm that is called Misplaced Trust in Wealth. | |
| And one of the sections I found here that I think speaks exactly to this, like what Jesus is trying to tell us is, it says, They trust in their wealth and boast of their abundant riches, yet these cannot redeem a person or pay his ransom to God. | |
| Since the price of redeeming him is too costly, one should forever stop trying, so that he may live forever and not see the pit. | |
| And that's what we should be doing. | |
| That's what we should be focusing on. | |
| We should be focusing on building our treasure in heaven, as Jesus directs us, not here on earth. | |
| And if we are given abundance through a chance or through our own hard work and labor, this parable of the rich fool tells us what not to do. | |
| We're not meant to just take it and sit on our laurels and enjoy cocktails down by the beach. | |
| Now, granted, it's okay to take time, I believe, to rest and meditate on the word and go do these things. | |
| If you want to have a vacation with your family, that's not what I'm talking about. | |
| I'm talking about Making an effort to take what you have, what little or what, if it's abundant or not, take what little you have or in the abundance of what you have and look to God to guide you on how to give back to others. | |
| And sometimes people go, well, I don't have a lot of money, so I don't know what you're talking about. | |
| I can't really do anything. | |
| Well, guess what? | |
| It's not just about your money. | |
| Time is money as well. | |
| Time is a valuable commodity. | |
| Giving your time to God, whether it's in prayer or whether it's in fellowship and service to your church or your community, to help others find the gospel and their help in their lives, give back. | |
| That's what the moral of all this, I believe, is to give back. | |
| Don't be the rich fool. | |
| Don't gain the whole world and lose your soul. | |
| Don't build your treasure here on earth. | |
| Build it in heaven. | |
| And you will be rewarded. | |
| That's where I'm gonna leave it and we'll say a prayer. | |
| Lord and Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this incredible story, this parable of the rich fool, that we may use it to understand better your incredible, powerful wisdom. | |
| Lord, we pray that you'll help us understand the things that we need to understand to do your work here in this world. | |
| To not focus on building our treasure here in this world, but building it with you in heaven and helping others find their way towards you as well. | |
| Lord, we're thankful for what we have and we pray we use what we have to honor you that we don't fall into the same traps as this parable warns. | |
| We thank you for all your scripture and all your word. | |
| We thank you for your son, our Lord Jesus and his example. | |
| And we thank you most of all for our eternal salvation. | |
| In Jesus name. | |
| Amen. | |
| Alright, well, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. | |
| I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up there, but we'll see you on the next one. | |
| This has been God's Grace is Greater. | |
| I'm your host, Craig. | |
| I hope you guys take care. | |
| We'll see you next time, but there's links in the description if you want to support this channel, links to the Rumble Show, if you guys are watching on YouTube where you can watch the live show every day, and yeah, there's just links all around where you can get all the information you need. | |
| I want to say thank you for watching. | |
| We'll see you on the next one. | |
| Until then, my name is Craig. |
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