The Rich Fool

May 17, 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Boredom is a gift. I firmly believe that this morning. In fact, if I can, can I get on my soapbox for a minute? Can I just rant for a second? Can I do that? My ladder rant up here? Okay. I think we live in a day and age where unfortunately one of the biggest problems in our society is that people don't know how to be bored anymore. Growing up, we were always bored, right? We didn't have cell phones, didn't have tablets, didn't have the internet, which means we had to find ways to occupy our time. We had to find things to do. And I realize, you know, for a lot of you young people out there, that sounds like torture. And I get it. But that's what life was like way back in the 1900s. It's just you were bored. And the good news is when you were bored, you would have to figure out things to do and be creative. That's what boredom produces is creativity. And so as a child, I would engage in all these things. My imagination would run wild, and I would have all these opportunities to just entertain myself, right? Find things to do, keep busy. One of the things I did a lot when I was really young is I would go on these imaginary treasure hunts. And so I remember I used to make a treasure map, and like I would spend a lot of time and detail to make it look old and really cool. And I would kind of draw the things in my neighborhood, and then I would pick a spot where I would pretend there was buried treasure and kind of make a map toward it, and then I would go outside and I would go searching for buried treasure. I spent hours doing that as a child. And I did this because the idea of a treasure hunt is exciting, right? What's more adventurous than a treasure hunt? The search for a treasure was exhilarating because buried beneath all of it is this hope that maybe, just maybe, you'll find something of value. Maybe you'll find something that changes things. Find something that makes life better. And while most of us eventually grow out of drawing, pretend treasure maps and going on treasure hunts, the truth is as adults, we never really stop hunting for treasure, do we? Well, the difference is we just reassign what we call our treasure. For some people, maybe it's wealth. For others of you out there, maybe it's climbing the corporate ladder. And maybe for some of you, treasure for you is getting that dream house you've always wanted. They're buying that brand new car. There are a host of different things that we could view as treasure in this world. But this morning, I believe that Jesus wants to challenge the things that we often hunt for. I think that Jesus wants to confront the things that we ascribe ultimate value toward. I think that Jesus wants to question the things that we perceive as treasure. And so if you want to see what Jesus has to say about this this morning, I want to invite you to join me in the pages of Scripture. We're going to be in Luke chapter 12 this morning. Luke chapter 12 is where we're going to be at. If you brought your Bible, awesome. We open our Bibles every Sunday. If you didn't, we got you covered. There's a Bible in front of you. If you don't own a Bible, take that home. And if you're looking for the book of Luke, it's three-quarters of the way into your Bible. You get to the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, if you hit John, go back. We're in Luke chapter 12. I'm thankful that you're here. I'm Joe. I'm the lead pastor here. I'm excited to preach God's Word. It's a thrill for me every week to join you and leading and teaching the Word. We're going through a series, if you've been with us the last couple weeks, it's called Once Upon a Time, and it looks at some of the parables of Jesus and unpacks those parables. And if you're familiar with this, you know that Jesus, he tells these parables, which are really just simple stories. But these simple stories, they carry deep and profound meanings and truths. And what's interesting about parables, something we haven't mentioned thus far, is that often Jesus would tell parables, but people wouldn't understand them. And that's what's interesting about the parables of Jesus. For some, the parables were amazing because it was a simple story. And from that simple story, Jesus was unveiling something, for example, about the kingdom of God that was significant. And so his disciples, his people who followed him, they would hear these stories and they would be instructed and they would learn from that. But there are also some people who would hear the stories, in particular the religious leaders of the day. They would hear these stories, but they wouldn't understand their deeper meaning. And so they would hear it, but they would realize that there's something that was hidden from them in the parable. And that's the significant thing about the parables. You see, in many ways, the parables of Jesus, it actually does something pretty profound. It operates in a unique, unique way because it exposes the heart of the people who are listening. And so this morning, as we engage in this parable, as we approach God's word, may we have eyes to see and ears to hear, and hearts that are able to understand and apply all that God wants to give to us today. My hope and prayer for you and for myself is that the Holy Spirit would illuminate God's word to allow us to see and embrace and respond to his profound truth. So we're in Luke 12. If you're ready, we're gonna jump in. We've been looking at these parables the last couple weeks, and if you notice, there's been a pattern. So Jesus doesn't just speak these parables typically in a vacuum, right? Normally, there's some sort of situation or conversation that precipitates the parable that Jesus shares. And today in Luke 12, the same thing is true in our text this morning. So let me just quickly set the stage for you. At this point in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 12, Jesus is traveling around teaching, and a massive amount of people are gathering around him. In fact, uh our text is a little further in the chapter. Just go to the very first verse for a moment in your Bibles. And notice what Luke says in the beginning of the chapter. He says, In the meantime, when so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, right? And then it goes on to talk about what Jesus begins to teach. Now, isn't that an interesting setup? You have crowds that are literally massive. Thousands and thousands of people have now flocked to Jesus by this point. And the crowds, they're they're fighting for position to get closer to Jesus, to hear from him, to connect with him. It literally says they're trampling on one another. And so Jesus has really grown in popularity up to this point. And it just so happens that there was somebody in the crowd that day who was there. And in that crowd that day, this person was feeling pretty desperate. In fact, there was a situation that they were looking for Jesus to help them with, a situation with their family. And so they made their way through the crowds and they they pressed through the people and they pushed people out of the way, and they finally made it to the front. And now this person is going to engage with Jesus, and he's going to tell Jesus exactly what he's looking for. And that's our context as we jump in. And the first thing we're going to see from this person is what I'm calling number one, the pursuit. The pursuit. This person is pursuing something, and they're looking for Jesus to give it to them. So notice what it says in verse 13 and 14. Someone in the crowd said to him, said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you? Now, as our passage opens, it's important to understand what this guy is pursuing. He is approaching Jesus because he has a dilemma. He's hoping that Jesus can help him with a greater share of the inheritance. Now, just a reminder, in ancient Israel, the inheritance was something that fathers would give to their sons after they died. So an inheritance would include wealth, right? The full estate of a father. So it included land, it would often include material possessions, you know, animals, cattle, other assets. And when the father died, he would give those to his sons, and that would be the inheritance. Now in Israel, there was a pretty established set of laws and rules that guided this process. Very simply, the way an inheritance was dispensed back then was if you were the firstborn son, you would be given the lion's share of the inheritance. So you would get a double portion, and all other sons would only get a single portion. So I'm not great at math, but let me just explain it. Imagine there's two sons. The older son gets two-thirds of the inheritance, and the younger son gets one-third. That's the way it typically worked. Now we don't know what's happening here, but it's likely, based on the scenario, it's likely that the person who's approaching Jesus is a younger brother, and this younger brother felt as though they deserved more. We don't know how much he got, we don't know how much he had, but all we know is that he feels like it wasn't enough. This guy wanted more. Now I want to pause for a moment and just say something. I was a younger sibling myself. Many of you perhaps were. In fact, let's just do a little exercise. If you were the oldest sibling in your household, raise your hand right now. Okay. That's a lot of you. All right. Okay. If you just raise your hand, let me just say something to you. If you just raise your hand, you guys will never understand. All right? I I don't know how to say it. You just don't get it, okay? You don't know what it's like to be us. I was the baby of the family, and I know what you're thinking right now. Knock it off, okay? A lot of times, babies of the family, we get a bad rap, okay? That's not the case. Think about it from our perspective for a moment. Being the baby of the family meant that I was always familiar with losing, okay? When you're the baby, you never win at anything because you always have an older sibling to compete with. I had an older brother and I lost at everything for my entire life. So if you're the younger child, you are familiar with losing. You older children, you have no idea, okay? We're familiar with losing. And so the fact that this guy is probably the younger son, and he's come to the point at this stage in life where now he's an adult, his brother's an adult, and once again, what does his brother get? He gets the majority of all the stuff. Like at this point, it's kind of like the last straw. He's probably a little miffed by this. I resonate with that somewhat. All right. He spent his entire life losing, and now finally, once again, he's he's lost again. He's fed up. And so he asks Jesus to help with the situation. But notice the response of Jesus here. Jesus says, Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you? Now, this response of Jesus feels a little bit cold, doesn't it? In fact, even in the Greek, it is a little bit cold. Jesus calls him man. This suggests that this guy was a stranger to Jesus. And so even though Jesus is the sovereign Lord of the universe, even though Jesus is ultimately the judge of all the earth, you see, Jesus' priority at his first advent, at his first coming, was not to involve himself in earthly affairs and judgments like this. Essentially, Jesus is like, hey, I'm Jesus, I'm not Judge Judy. I'm not gonna answer or scratch that itch that you want, I'm not gonna help you, buddy. Now, the truth is Jesus came to make pronouncements, but it's a different kind of pronouncement. He came to pronounce the kingdom of God. He didn't come to pronounce, you know, how many goats this guy wanted or whatever the situation was. So he he rebukes the guy. Now here's the thing. We might go, well, man, that's still pretty harsh. This guy's feeling pretty upset, he wants something. Why are you so harsh with him, Jesus? But but keep in mind, this is Jesus. First of all, Jesus says everything perfectly. Secondly, even though this guy's a stranger to Jesus, the truth is Jesus knows exactly who this guy is deep down because Jesus is God. We read throughout the New Testament that there are numerous moments where Jesus interacted with someone, and the text explicitly told us that Jesus spoke that way because he knew what was in the hearts of men. So Jesus knows this guy deep down. He knows that when he makes this request to divide the inheritance with him, he knows that this isn't coming from a place of health. He knows that deep down in his heart, this is something that's coming from a place of greed. It's a corrupted heart. This is why Jesus goes on to say this. He says, 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. You see, Jesus rebukes this guy and he gives him a warning because this guy is struggling with covetousness. Now, uh, if you grew up in the church, you might be familiar with the word covet. We don't tend to use it in our common vernacular very often. This word covet means wanting something that you don't have, and usually it means wanting something that somebody else has that you want. That's where the word is used. Now, if you grew up in the church, you know that to covet something is sin. In fact, it's one of the Ten Commandments. The tenth commandment is thou shalt not covet. Now, we know it's bad, right? We know it's sin. But can we be honest this morning? Sometimes when we think about something like coveting, we kind of think, well, it's bad, but like it's not really that bad. Right? In fact, you look at the Ten Commandments and you go, Thou shalt not murder, like, yeah, that's top-tier sin, all right? Or maybe you even go, okay, adultery, stealing, we're gonna put that on the second rung, those are really big things, but like coveting, like wanting something you don't have, like, isn't really that big of a deal. Well, I would suggest to you that if you read through the New Testament, on more than one occasion, you get the picture that covetousness is actually a really big deal. In fact, the Apostle Paul, he says it's the same thing as worshiping a false God. Now we would think, oh, I would never worship a false God, but to put that in the same category as coveting, that sounds strange. Why? Well, think about it this way. When this desire for more, wanting something you don't have, when that begins to rise up in our heart, when greed takes root and that begins to grow, it germinates and begins to grow, in those moments, what we start doing is we start taking those things we want and we elevate them to a position they were never meant to hold. In essence, when we covet something, what we're actually doing is we're taking God and we're trying to dethrone him, take him off the throne, and we're trying to replace him with some of the things that he's provided for us in this world. So coveting is not a small thing, it's actually a pretty big deal. It's idolatry. And so this is why Jesus gives this guy such a sharp rebuke. His heart is filled with greed, he's coveting. And Jesus goes on to clarify, he says, Hey, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Translation life is more than stuff. Your life is more than stuff. It's far more than the possessions that you have. Some of you maybe need to preach that to yourself this morning. Remind yourself of that. Tell yourself that. Your life is more than the car that you drive. Your life is more than the house that you live in. Your life is more than the money that you have in your bank account. You are far more than those things. And your life is not about all the things that you can lay hold of. Now, for this guy, this brother who's looking to divide the inheritance, he feels as if he's been short-changed. He feels as if he's missing something, and he feels like if he can just get a hold of it, well, then life will be better. He has this false notion that to acquire more will satisfy what he's looking for. And so he's trying to remedy this, and by doing this, he's asking Jesus if he can help. And so this is the pursuit, number one. But as we continue moving through the passage, we're gonna see secondly that Jesus is gonna begin in a parable. And what he's going to do is the first part of the parable, he's gonna tell a story about somebody who was doing the exact same thing. And what he basically does is he gives us number two the plan. So this is the story, the parable. There's somebody here who's planning to acquire for themselves something. So notice what the text says now, picking up in verse 16. And he, Jesus, told them a parable. So here's our parable, here's our story, 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, this bird cracks me up, by the way, I'll say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. Now, as we jump into this parable, we're introduced to the rich man. This guy is in the agricultural industry. He is a wealthy landowner. The text doesn't tell us this, but I think we could probably assume that this is a dude who's worked really hard in life. Right? He's somebody who owns land and he's given himself toward making sure that the crop that he's producing is bountiful, but this time at harvest, it's far more than he ever imagined. Right? This guy has received an incredible yield. In fact, it's so much crop that there's so many crops that he actually doesn't have space for all of it. He doesn't have barns big enough to store this. That's a good problem to have, right? And so what does he do? Well, he's industrious, he gets to work, he demolishes those old smaller barns, he builds bigger ones to store all his crops, he makes investments to expand his business, and at the end of the day, this guy has really built up quite an empire for himself, right? Life is pretty good. Now, can I pause for a moment just to clarify a few things? First of all, if you have a lot of money, that is not bad, that is good, that is a blessing. Good for you. And let me add on to that. If you've worked really, really hard to earn that for yourself, that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing. You should be commended for that. That's a blessing. Good for you. And let me add on top of all that, if you've been smart and strategic, maybe you're an entrepreneur who's found ways to expand your business, or you've made investments over the years, and now you've prepared for yourself something that's far more successful and far more prosperous than you could have imagined. That is not a bad thing, that is a good thing. That is good, good for you. I want to suggest to you that in the church, sometimes we label things like wealth as evil. That is simply just not true. Listen, it's not. We, first of all, were created to work. You should be productive in what you do. In fact, that's part of the creation mandate. We as human beings were created to do things, to prosper, to advance creation in such a way where we're producers. We shouldn't just be consumers, we should be producers, especially believers. And if you've worked hard and you're enjoying the fruits of your labor, that is a blessing from the Lord that you should rejoice over. You should enjoy those things. Good for you. That is a blessing. Money in and of itself is not evil, it's good. But if you love money and you make money the most important thing, that's where trouble begins. It's the love of money that's the root of all evil. And that's the problem in our story. The fact that this guy has built wealth and he's made plans to expand and invest, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. We should commend that practice. The problem is that this guy begins to elevate his wealth to a place it's never meant to go. Money, possessions, earthly treasure for this guy had become his idol. How do I know that? Well, because the text is clear. It's what he's trusting in. It's what he's relying upon. It's what he's placing his ultimate confidence in. Wealth for this guy had become his functional savior. It gave him a false sense of security, which is why he ultimately decided to, whew, I'm gonna relax, eat, drink, and be merry, right? His soul is now feeling secure because he's he's amassed for himself something that he believes is his savior. Well, that's a problem. We're gonna see, that's a very dangerous posture. Oh, we're gonna continue the parable in a moment, but before we get there, can I just unpack some things about this passage that I think are significant that we should pay attention to? It's a really short section of story, but we can glean so much from it. Uh, first of all, first of all, let me highlight the way that this man thinks about his resources. If you notice in the text, in this parable, he talks about my crops, and then he goes on to talk about well, let's go back one slide, I think. Yep, my barns, my grain, my goods, and my soul. Somewhere. Along the way, this guy developed the perspective that he was the owner of all the things that he had. Can I remind you of something? If you've worked hard for what you've had, that's awesome. I think that's commendable and that's important. But let me just tell you, no matter how hard you've worked, everything that you possess ultimately is a gift from the Lord. And all those things ultimately belong to him. Want to know why I say that? Well, read Psalm 24, verse 1. It says, The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him. So if the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, and the world is the Lord's and all who are in it, that means that everything we see is the Lord's. It all belongs to him. God is the owner of all things. And because our God is generous, he does give gifts, but the gifts that the gifts that he gives, the things that we have, they don't last forever. We only have them for a short season, right? We can't take them with us. So instead of thinking of ourselves as the owner of anything, it's probably better for us to understand ourselves as stewards of the gifts of God. You know what a steward does, don't you? A steward manages the assets that have been entrusted to them by their master. And that's what we're all doing. The things that you have, your possessions, the stuff that you quote unquote own, those are yours for a temporary season. God has given them to you ultimately. They're meant to be enjoyed. You should care for those things, be a good steward of them. But in the end, they're not yours, and they're not ultimate. God is ultimate and everything we have comes from him. Our crops, our barns, our grain, our goods, our soil, it all belongs to him. But this rich man clearly thinks he's the owner and he doesn't understand. He's truly a steward. But he thinks he's the owner. That's one thing. Secondly, you know what's interesting here is just how egotistical this guy is. As a practice, if you're somebody who studies, tries to study the Bible, I would invite you at times to take pages of scripture, maybe even print out a blank page with a passage on it, and just take some time to dig in. And if you see repetition, highlight it. So when I studied out this passage, one of the things I did was I highlighted all the I's and me's and my's, and the whole page was just lit up. Because this guy is full of himself all the way through the parable. He's self-absorbed. Notice it's so funny. In the beginning of the parable, there's an internal dialogue, and then later on we read the external dialogue. But the thing is that's funny about it is the only person there is this guy. So notice how in the text he's thinking to himself, and then he's even talking to himself, right? The only person there is me, myself, and I, right? He says to he thinks to his soul or says to his soul, soul, like he's talking to himself. In his horizon, he's the only one who exists. Nobody else is there. And what's interesting is that's really what sin does, isn't it? When our heart is corrupted in such a way like this guy is, everything about the way that we live, we make it about us. We take all the things around us and we curve them inward. We bend them toward ourselves, we make it all about us. That's what sin does. What's interesting is sin is almost like uh it's like the law of gravity. When our heart is corrupted with sin, it pulls things toward ourselves. Uh, Martin Luther, when he was studying the works of St. Augustine in the fifth century, Augustine wrote about the city of God. And Luther was studying that as he was writing his commentary on the book of Romans. And so Luther was reflecting on this, and what Luther talked about was he he called this idea that Augustine touched on, that he developed further. He called this incurvatus in se. That's Latin. It basically means a bending in, curving in toward yourself. That's what sin does. That's exactly what we see here. It's funny how many times this guy just focuses on self. In fact, notice how many times he says, I will. He says, I will, I will, I will, I will. Everything about this life, this guy's life is about what he will do. And isn't it interesting that when you look at the life of Jesus, what does he say? It's not what I will, it's your will be done. So here in this parable, the plan is very, very simple. This guy is thinking, you know what? If I do well enough, I can fashion myself an idol. I can create my own functional savior in my wealth and in my possessions, and I can trust in those things. Those things will give security for my soul. That's the plan, at least. But we see a disruption in the plan. So now that we've seen the pursuit, right? This is the guy who says, Divide my inheritance. Jesus jumps into a story to challenge that. Number two, it's the plan of this rich guy who's trying to secure for himself a savior. The third section we're gonna see is where that parable ends, and it's the peril. The peril. You see, the best laid plans of this guy we're gonna see are all gonna fall apart. And it's super cool the way it happens. So so far, we've had this guy thinking to himself and talking to himself, and as he's talking to himself, someone finally interrupts him, and it's God. So God's gonna interrupt this guy as he's talking to himself, and notice what it says. 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, as we finally hear the voice of God in this parable interject, we now know why this is called the parable of the rich fool. We know the guy is rich, and now we know that in the eyes of God he is a fool. God calls him a fool because everything he acquired for himself in life, all his riches, all his resources, the stuff he was trusting in, those were ultimately stripped away from him in death. Doesn't this sound a lot like Ecclesiastes? If you guys were with us in the beginning of the year, we went through 12 weeks in Ecclesiastes. I loved it. It's a great book. Through Ecclesiastes, we hear the voice of the preacher who doesn't sugarcoat things. He gives us the honest truth. And even though we hear it and it kind of stings a little bit, we know it's true. And one of the things he does early in the book is this preacher talks about all these areas of life that he's explored and all the bubbles that are popped when he realizes the stuff he's trusting in really didn't work out. I'm gonna read a little bit from Ecclesiastes chapter two. Notice what it says. The preacher says, I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun. Why? Why does he hate all his hard work? Well, he says, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he'll be wise or a fool. Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and use my wisdom under the sun. He says, This also is vanity. You remember the word vanity, what that means? It's the Hebrew word heavel. It's a puff of smoke, right? It's something that we try to grab onto, we try to secure, we try to hold, we try to maneuver, we try to take with us. And the moment we reach for it, the more it whisps through our fingers. The fact that you work hard and at the end of your days you leave everything you worked for to somebody else who might squander it, that's heavily. He goes on to say this So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill. Notice all the work he's put in. But he must leave it, leave everything to be enjoyed by somebody who did not toil for it, somebody who did no work. This also is vanity. It's heavily and a great evil. He says, What has what has man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation, even in the night his heart does not find rest. This also is heavily. It's vanity. It's trying to grab onto something in this world only to realize you've lost it all. This is what we see. If we place our ultimate confidence in the things and resources that we amass for ourselves, that we lay up for ourselves according to the parable, this is foolish because those things don't last and we can't take them with us. But the truth is, we're hearing all this. It's intended to land on our ears and remind us of this amazing truth that stuff, things it's a terrible savior. Maybe you need to tell yourself that this morning. Money, the stuff that you work for that you feel like is going to bring security, it is a counterfeit. God, hear me. Don't trust in it, don't rely upon it, don't bow to it. There's a reason that this parable is included in the Gospel of Luke, and it's because all of us have a propensity to elevate the stuff of earth to a place where it should never be. And Jesus wants to warn us that when it comes to greed and covetousness, when it comes to laying up earthly treasures, don't build your life on the wrong foundation. Perhaps you need to hear this this morning. Don't build your life on something that can't sustain your soul. This is abundantly clear in the text. Don't build your life on something that can't sustain your soul. That's the warning that we have here from the parable. I don't care how big you build those barns, it's not going to be enough. Death robs us of all that we seek to acquire in this life. And so now that we've seen in this passage so far, this pursuit, the guy who says, Jesus, help me with the inheritance. Jesus launches into the story. Now that we saw the plan of the rich man who laid up for himself all these things, so he thought his soul was secure. Now that we saw, number three, the peril that God took his life and he was a fool because he was trusting in the wrong things, the fourth and final thing we're going to see, Jesus hits is the point. There's one more sentence we have here. It's a poignant conclusion to everything he's talked about. Jesus closes by saying these words. He says, So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Now I want to pause here for a moment and just reflect. I opened the message by saying that when I was young, I loved to go on these treasure hunts, right? I would go and make these elaborate maps and I would draw all these things, and I would then go out in the yard and I would go out searching for treasure. I would do that because it was fun. It was exhilarating, right? I thought that if I found that thing, right, the joy of it, the excitement of it, if you find that treasure, right, then it'll make life better. That impulse I felt as a child, if I'm honest with you, I don't know if that's fully left me. Let's be honest, we all pursue treasures in life, even today. Many of you out there are chasing something that you believe that if you find it, if you can secure it, it will make your life better. As I said, maybe it's wealth, right? Maybe it's just having enough money to feel secure and stable. For others of you, maybe it's that job that you want to land. If I get that job, man, then I'll be set. I'll be good. For others, uh, maybe it's that house you dreamed of, that car you've always wanted, that cabin up north. Maybe it's finding a spouse, right? That will satisfy that, right? Then you'll be good. Or maybe for you it's autonomy, freedom to be able to do the things that you want to do. Maybe it's having children, settling down. I don't know what the treasure is in your life and heart. But deep down at our core, we're all treasure hunters. And this is the point in the message where you're probably going to assume that I'm gonna say, so stop pursuing treasure. I'm actually not gonna do that. And here's why. I don't think pursuing treasure is inherently wrong. I actually think we were kind of hardwired to do that. It's part of our makeup. To pursue things that we feel like will bring security, satisfaction, wholeness, completion, make things better. It's part of our nature. I think on some level we've been made to pursue treasure. So I'm not gonna tell you to stop pursuing treasure, but I do want to challenge you with something. I want to challenge you to re-evaluate what you consider to be your treasure. You see, I think that's the key this morning. A little later in this chapter, as we move further into Luke 12, Jesus says something that he also says in the Sermon on the Mount. You're probably familiar with it. He says, For where your treasure is, what? There your heart will be also. Notice how Jesus isn't condemning this idea of pursuing a treasure, but he's trying to realign what we consider to be treasure. And beloved, let me remind you, in Christ we have the greatest treasure imaginable. Jesus left behind the glories of heaven to come to this earth, to die in our place, so that we could be reconciled to a holy God. Or as the Apostle Paul says it in 2 Corinthians, 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. In Christ, we have the greatest treasure imaginable. We are richly blessed. In the book of Ephesians, it begins by saying that we have been blessed with all the spiritual blessings and the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. God has given us the greatest of treasure, the greatest of blessings. And when we see Christ for who he is, when we see him, when we recognize who he is, when we treasure him above all other things, I think it transforms the way that we live. I think it reorients the directions of our lives. And I think that's what this is ultimately all about here this morning. The big idea I want to leave with you today, very simply, is this what we treasure directs our lives. What we treasure directs our lives. What are you treasuring this morning? What is it in your mind and heart that you've made ultimate? Who or what is on the throne of your heart today, ruling and reigning, directing the course of your life. You see, when Christ becomes our ultimate treasure, when Christ is the one we pursue, when Christ is the one we exalt, when Christ is the one who we place our confidence in, when he is the one that our soul ultimately is resting in, it changes the way that we live. My hope is that God would impress this upon your heart this morning. My hope is that God is grabbing a hold of your heart to change the direction of your life as you begin to, Lord willing, treasure Christ above all other things. You see, the fool, he laid up treasures for himself, and as a result, everything about his life was curving inward, and in the end, he lost it all. You see, those who are rich toward God, those who truly treasure Christ above all else, their lives are totally different. They don't bend inward, they bend outward. That's what it means to be rich toward God. They use their resources in such a way to demonstrate their supreme love for God and love for their neighbors. Those who are rich toward God, who treasure Christ above all else, they're generous and joyful and confident that when this life passes, there's something secure that their soul is truly resting in. Christ Himself. Jesus is the greatest treasure. You need to hear that. Stop assigning too much value to all the things around you. Those are false gods, they're counterfeit gods. Those things need to be dethroned. Worship and praise and celebrate. God alone is supreme. Jesus is the greatest treasure, and when we understand that, it directs our life. So my hope and prayer for you today is that your life demonstrates your total and complete adoration toward Christ. And that the way that you live is not centered on amassing for yourself some sort of treasure, but that you live in a way that's rich toward God, that you build your life on something that can truly sustain your soul. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for your word. Thank you for this incredible message that we have from this parable of Jesus. Lord, so many of us are toiling and striving to build for ourselves somewhat of a savior. May we come to the place where we realize that, Lord, that we can build nothing for ourselves of lasting value, but you have already done the work. You have sent your son Jesus, who did the work on our behalf, who suffered and bled and died on the cross and rose for our salvation, and by grace and through faith in Him, may we center our lives on Jesus, may we build our lives on Jesus, and may that direct the way that we live. Father, I pray that we would be people who'd be rich toward God. That we would enjoy the things that you've given, but we would hold on to them loosely. That covetousness and greed would not mark our community, but we would be joyful, generous people who bring you glory through the way that we live and bless the people around us. So, Lord, help us to do this through the power of your spirit. Help us to treasure Christ more and more. Lord, I want to pray for myself. That I would stop settling for idols and counterfeit gods. And that I would treasure Jesus as supreme in my heart and life, Lord. Help me for your glory, for my good, and the good of those around me. I ask and pray in Jesus' name. Amen.