Let us start with a question:
Are you really wealthy?
Before answering the question, we should know
what real wealth is.
There is a difference
between rich and wealth.
If you have a lot of money with you, you are
rich.
You might have inherited the money from your
ancestors; or you might have earned it by hard work.
You may keep the money in bank or in your house
without using it.
You may hide it from others or live a luxury life
spending all or a part of it.
You may be kind enough to share a part of it to
the poor around you.
“Rich” simply is like water you have in your
large water tank which you pour out as you wish.
It is a lazy dog which barks only when it is
beaten by the master.
It decreases as you spend.
It has no personality and it is not faithful.
When you die, you leave everything for others.
This is the ultimate fate of a rich person.
But a wealthy
person is different.
Wealth is different from rich.
Wealth is money or any property over which you
have complete authority.
It is yours and you are the master of it.
Wealth is a faithful slave to a wise master.
Wealth works for you 24 hours in a day and 7 days
in a week.
Wealth works to multiply itself; it works even
when you are asleep.
It multiplies even when you put no effort to it.
It provides you and multiplies itself again.
It is for you as long as you live and for your
descendents as long as they live.
It has a personality and it is faithful to a wise
master.
All its loyalty is for a wise master and it hates
a foolish man.
Wealth is a loyal slave that works and multiples
for a wise master even while he is inactive, unto eternity.
With all these thoughts in our mind let us get
into today’s message.
Jesus talked about a rich farmer it in the
parable usually known as the Parable of the Rich
Fool.
We read the parable in Luke 12 : 15 - 21
The occasion
The occasion of this parable is that a certain
man came to Jesus and asked him to arbitrate between him and his brother.
During the time, the firstborn was guaranteed a
double portion of the family inheritance.
More than likely, the brother who was addressing
Jesus was not the firstborn and was asking for an equal share of the
inheritance.
Jesus refuses to arbitrate their dispute and goes
to the heart of the matter: Covetousness!
Jesus warns this person, and all within earshot,
that our life is not to be about gathering wealth.
Life is so much more than the “abundance of
possessions.”
The Parable
Then Jesus goes to the Parable of the Rich Fool.
Jesus starts the parable with a
warning about covetousness.
And Jesus
gives a new wisdom that one's life does not consist in
the abundance of the things he possesses.
If wisdom of wealth
is not the abundance of material possession, what else is?
The rich farmer in the story got
an unexpected good harvest that year.
He had never got such plentiful harvest
and so he had no store house sufficient to keep the grains, seeds and fruits
safely.
He already had large store
houses for keeping crops but the harvest is so abundant that time so that there
was no room in his store house.
So he decided to pull down his
store houses and built larger ones.
And then he will take an early
retirement and rest and enjoy his life.
But the parable says that God called
him ‘fool’ and foretold that he was going to die on that day itself.
God asked him a question: who
will enjoy all these crops in the store house, if you die today?
Surely he had stored a good
amount of crops but if he died the same day he could not enjoy even a single
grain.
This was the tragedy.
There is one more sentence in
the parable, concluding the story with a moral.
But before that, let me ask you
another question: what was the problem with the rich man?
It is not wrong to be rich.
Abraham, Solomon and Job were not simply rich, they were very rich.
The parable does not say that he
was an evil or good man.
We have no reason to say that he
was an evil person.
It is really a blessing that he
got a good harvest.
It is the result of his hard
work.
There is no hint in the story
that he adopted any evil method to create a great harvest.
It is God’s gift.
God kept his farm safe from all
possible natural calamities like flood or draught.
His store house is small so he
decided to build larger one.
Then a man cannot but enjoy his
richness.
There is no evil in any of these
things.
Wealth itself does not damn. Poverty does not
save.
Wealth is not a vice. Poverty is not a virtue.
It is not riches but the "trust" in
riches that dooms men.
The material blessings are not a window through
which we should see God.
In the words of the rich farmer
there is a tone of worldliness.
He forgot the God-part in the
abundance.
Jesus does not appreciate it.
And Jesus goes on to clarify
that this rich man was poor towards God’s Kingdom.
That is point – poor towards the Kingdom of God.
In the parable God asks the rich man a
significant question:
What will happen to all his richness if he died that
night?
The rich man did not foresee this eventuality.
He forgot that he may die today for the time of
death is uncertain to all men.
Could he take anything along with him while he
died?
Did he have any wealth in the Kingdom of God?
His answer was a tragic ‘No”.
He was oblivious to eternity.
He is
a fool who forget the certainty of death and eternal life.
This man thought that his successful plan would extend
his life as long as he wishes.
He envisioned the future as continually expanding
and under his control.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
He had no investment in the
kingdom of God - no riches laid up in heaven.
His affections were all fixed on
this world, and he had none for God.
He failed to realize God’s plan for blessing him
with a rich harvest.
He was not blessed by God to hoard his wealth to himself.
Let us also remember that we are blessed to be a
blessing in the lives of others, and we are blessed to build the kingdom of
God.
The foolish rich person was poor
towards the Kingdom of God.
He decided to store his rich
harvest in the wrong place.
Whatever care
he may take, his store house is subject to the attack of thieves and rodents.
Mathew 6 : 19 - 21
19 "Do
not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and
where thieves break in and steal;
20 "but
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves do not break in and steal.
21 "For
where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (NKJV)
Is he not a foolish person who store up his
treasure in a place attacked by thieves and rodents?
The place of thieves, rodents and rust is not a
safe place to store our wealth.
We are fools when we store
our treasure in the wrong place.
We are supposed to store our
wealth in safe place for us to enjoy in the future?
The parable seems to advocate
it.
Abundance is a blessing of God.
God may bless us with abundance
of material possessions.
God may bless us with abundance
of spiritual properties like peace, joy, love, hope etc.
Spiritual properties are
available to the few chosen and we are one among them.
It is a special privilege and a
special blessing upon us by God.
Why God bless us with all these?
Is it to enjoy everything
ourselves and with our immediate family alone?
No; rather God wants us to share
and spread what we have to the less privileged.
The less privileged include financially
poor and spiritually poor people.
God wants us to live a blessed
life by sharing, spreading and influencing others with all the material
prosperity as well as all the spiritual property.
It is spreading, influencing and
enlarging the Kingdom of God.
This is God’s purpose for our
life.
If we fail, we are living a
foolish life.
To be a fool is to have
missed the point of life.
Rich Towards the Kingdom
Now there arises another
question: How can we live rich towards the Kingdom of God?
Remember our definition of
wealth:
Wealth
is money or property that works like a faithful salve of a wise master and
multiplies itself even in the absence of the master.
That means, wealth is a property
in any form that is invested for a high return.
Combine all these three points
we have been discussing above, to get the right answer.
1.
He
is a fool who forget the certainty of death and eternal life.
2.
We are fools when we
store our treasure in the wrong place.
3.
To be a fool is to
have missed the point of life.
That means, to be wise:
·
We should
live always aware of the certainty of death and eternity.
·
We should invest
or store our blessings in a safe place where there is no thieves and rodents.
·
We should
live fulfilling the purpose of our life to influence and enlarge the Kingdom of
God.
Investing in the Kingdom
To be wealthy towards the
Kingdom of God is to invest in the Kingdom of God so that it works and
multiplies there for a high return as you finally enter the kingdom.
Look at the Rich Fool in the
parable.
He has hoarded a huge possession
on this earth.
But if he dies today he cannot
take anything along with him to the other world.
And he miserably failed to
invest in the Kingdom of God.
Which is better: to invest in
this world or to invest in the Kingdom of God?
We need material possessions and
money to live a comfortable life here on this world.
God is not against a comfortable
life on this earth.
But we need a good investment in
the Kingdom of God to live a comfortable life there.
All investments in this world return
your money only while you live here.
No bank or any other financial
institution assures you a return available in the Kingdom of God.
All material riches have one major weakness; they
have no purchasing power after death.
The “rich towards God” are those who use what God
has given them for others.
The rich towards God are those
who invest in the Kingdom of God for a purchasing power in the eternity.
That means we need money to live
in this world and also in the eternity.
We need an investment option to
invest our money in the Kingdom of God while we are living here on this earth.
Only
investors get a return.
So we need to invest for a good
return while we are here on the earth and in future in God’s Kingdom.
The only option available is to
invest in God’s Kingdom.
How
can we invest in the Kingdom of God?
It is very easy to invest in
God’s Kingdom.
Everything that you spend
towards the advancement of God’s Kingdom is considered as an investment in the
Kingdom of God.
Everything you spend in the name
of Jesus is considered as an investment in God’s Kingdom.
That is fine.
Rich people with surplus money
can spend money for the advancement of God’s Kingdom.
But, what about the less
privileged with less money and less material possessions?
How can the poor invest in the
Kingdom of God?
There is good news for the less
privileged also.
God’s Kingdom record not the
earthly value of the investment but the percentage of the invested money in
connection with your total income.
That is a strange way of
accounting, but that is how it works.
Remember the offering of the
poor widow.
She put only two small coins in
the treasury of the church.
But Jesus said that she gave
more than the sum of all offerings made by the rich people in the church.
Because she gave all she had
while the rich gave only a small part of their whole wealth.
The value system in heaven is
different from the value system of this world.
Heaven counts the percentage of
money invested in the Kingdom of the total money in our hand.
So, there is a possibility for
any amount, however small it is, to be considered as a large amount in the
Kingdom.
There is one more attraction
about the investment in the Kingdom of God.
The less privileged with nothing
in their pocket also can make a good investment in the Kingdom.
The Kingdom of God accepts all
kinds of things as investments.
Your time, health and materials
possessions and all are accepted as investments.
This is in contrast with the
world banks or financial institutions.
Here on earth, only money is
accepted as investment.
But Heaven accepts all kinds of
things – time, heath, money and everything.
Let us read some verses from the
Bible.
Matthew 10 : 41, 42
41 "He
who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's
reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man
shall receive a righteous man's reward.
42 "And
whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of
a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his
reward." (NKJV)
Luke 18 : 29, 30
29 So
He said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left
house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom
of God,
30 "who
shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come
eternal life." (NKJV)
Conclusion
Are you really wealth?
Real wealth should multiply
itself and give us a good return when we retire in our life.
All our investments should
support us in this world and in the eternity.
There is only one kind of
investment that can fulfill the above two requirements.
That is investing in the Kingdom
of God.
If you are investing in the
Kingdom of God on a regular basis, you are really wealthy.
Or you too will be called a
“Rich Fool”.
God gives us the ability to create wealth and manage it
wisely.
It is God’s blessing out of his graciousness towards us.
God is the real source and owner of all our wealth.
God has entrusted us with his wealth for a special purpose.
So, material success should call for more humility and
responsibility.
We should possess a greater sense of gratitude to the
ultimate owner of all there is on earth and the giver of life.
Do not forget the eternal life.
Eternal life is longer and more meaningful than the life
here on the earth.
So invest in the Kingdom of God to receive a good return
while we are in this world as well as in the eternity.
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