A Fool and His Money

"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?”
(Luke 12:20)

A very wealthy man passed away & his sons, daughters, grandchildren, cousins, ect… all gathered in the grand study of his lavish estate, greedily awaiting their reward for being kin to this wealthy man. The lawyer entered the study with the will in hand, “How much did he leave!” the family asked with excitement. The lawyer smugly answered, “Everything…he left it all.”

Someone once said that there are no pockets in a shroud & you never see a hearse towing a U-Haul, those are all very true & Jesus states it here, In Luke 12. In these verses Jesus gave a story of a very wealthy man whom He labeled as a fool. But notice what kind of man this guy appears to be. On the outside he seemed to be an upstanding citizen, a good neighbor & a great family man. He was very successful & lived in a very nice part of town. He wasn’t crooked; he wasn’t mixed up in shady business deals, he wasn’t an alcoholic or keeping a lady on the side, but Jesus still calls him a fool. Why?

By what he says & does, he put all his thought on himself & he’s covetous…he was storing up for himself. He wasn’t concerned with the needs of the poor, but with the needs of himself. Boy does that sound like us today. We…& notice I’m using “we”, because I’m apart of it…We have become a people more worried about what we have & what we want than what others may truly need. Now don’t get me wrong, Jesus isn’t saying don’t save for a rainy day, God does give us the example of the ant (Proverbs 6:6-8). He is saying, don’t hoard up for yourself. This guy in the story was putting up more than he could ever use, while people around him may have been in dire need. Jesus called him a fool for that, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?” This guy had collected all these earthly treasures, but had not laid anything away in Heaven.

This epitaph fits well here:
“Here lies john Racket, in his wooden jacket. He kept neither horses nor mules. He lived like a hog. He died like a dog, and left all his money to fools.”

Again this man stored up riches for himself & stored nothing up in Heaven. He was living as though this life was it, you know the “Eat, drink & be merry…for tomorrow we die” mentality. It wasn’t that this guy was outwardly bad & awful, but inwardly he hadn’t done a thing. He was focused on himself & his wants instead of the wants of Jesus & he was called a fool.

I sat in the living room of a man who lived in our town, he was a very wealthy man, had land & a great business. While there I shared Jesus with him. I asked him “If you died today, would you go to heaven?” he said, “I don’t need that stuff, I’ve got all I need.” About a year or so later, I heard that he passed away; it broke my heart, because I heard that others who shared with him heard the same reply. I drive by his home daily & every time I do, I think of that night in his living room & I wonder now if he would change his mind. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34)

Vern