{"id":7524,"date":"2026-04-13T19:13:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/?p=7524"},"modified":"2026-04-13T19:13:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:13:24","slug":"joey-sampaga-sermon-the-doom-of-the-materialist-luke-1213-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/2026\/04\/13\/joey-sampaga-sermon-the-doom-of-the-materialist-luke-1213-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Joey Sampaga Sermon: The Doom of the Materialist, Luke 12:13-21"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em>Delivered by Pastor Joey | East Valley International Church | Gilbert, Arizona<\/em><\/strong><\/span><br \/>\nText: Luke 12:13-21 (ESV)<\/p>\n<p>In this sermon delivered at East Valley International Church in Gilbert, Arizona, Pastor Joey draws from Luke 12:13-21 to expose how greed interrupts eternal truth.<\/p>\n<p>In a teeming crowd hanging on Jesus&#8217; words in <strong>Luke 12:13-21<\/strong>, a voice pierces the air: <em><strong>&#8220;Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance!&#8221;<\/strong><\/em> The interruption exposes raw greed, yanking focus from eternal truths to earthly squabbles. Jesus rebukes sharply\u2014<em><strong>&#8220;Who made me a judge?&#8221;<\/strong><\/em>\u2014then thunders a warning:<em><strong> &#8220;Guard against all covetousness! Life isn&#8217;t in possessions&#8217; abundance&#8221;.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>He spins a stark parable. A rich man&#8217;s land bursts with euphoria-inducing crops. Alone in his scheming, he muses: <em><strong>&#8220;What to do? I&#8217;ll raze my barns, build grander ones, store my grain and goods. Soul, relax\u2014eat, drink, merry for years!&#8221;<\/strong><\/em> No nod to God, the Giver of rain and sun; no thought for workers, widows, or poor. Pure<em><strong> &#8220;me, myself, I&#8221;<\/strong><\/em>\u2014hedonistic isolation.<\/p>\n<p>God&#8217;s verdict crashes: <em><strong>&#8220;Fool! Tonight your soul is demanded. Whose will your hoard be?&#8221;<\/strong><\/em> All vaporizes; death mocks materialist dreams. Like salt water, wealth quenches nothing, fueling endless thirst. Solomon knew: Lovers of money starve unsatisfied.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus concludes: Don&#8217;t hoard for self; grow rich toward God. Audit hearts via bank statements, calendars\u2014does treasure feed comfort or kingdom? Hold loosely, bless boldly, face mortality. Jesus, heaven&#8217;s heir who died poor for sinners, offers true riches. Invest now\u2014faith in His gospel\u2014or court folly eternal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-PZMN10o3hU?si=KNGybLRuzd9lkUFw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<details class=\"collapsible-quote\" open=\"open\">\n<summary><strong>[<span style=\"color: #993300;\">Click here<\/span>] <span style=\"color: #003366;\">to read the full transcript<\/span><\/strong><span style=\"color: #003366;\"> <strong>of this sermon [<span style=\"color: #993300;\">Click again to close<\/span>]<\/strong><\/span><\/summary>\n<blockquote><p>Thank you, brother John. Appreciate that. Jesus is definitely our living hope. Amen? Amen.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll be doing baptism at their house, at the Gorden&#8217;s residence next Sunday. And we&#8217;ll also be celebrating some birthdays and anniversaries, right? Over there, so let&#8217;s be there, let&#8217;s witness this, because they&#8217;re proclaiming their faith in Jesus Christ. Also, I would encourage you to join the evangelism team as they go out next Saturday, or May 18th, I&#8217;m sorry, that is next Saturday, to participate in handing out those bags that will be packed. a good way to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with one another. And I&#8217;ve been there to that park because that&#8217;s close to West Valley. There are quite a few homeless people that are walking around, so it would be a good place to evangelize. Now here in Gilbert, I don&#8217;t want to say we&#8217;re lucky, but there&#8217;s just not a lot of homeless people walking around. However, if you have the opportunity to share with where&#8230; And we can at least be there to not just heal them, but more importantly, to share the gospel with them.<\/p>\n<p>And then just a reminder, I don&#8217;t have a bulletin there, but we will. May 1st will be a Bible study for Hebrews. I know we&#8217;re a perfect distinction. Again, I would encourage you to be there so that we can learn about Hebrews. So, we have Sunday school that you can be here at 9-15. We have, of course, a sermon. We have firm meetings on Thursdays, and we have Bible study once a month. And this is, so for the size of our church, we have quite a bit of activity. So, I would encourage you to get involved with it. And then we are going to take a couple Sundays off for adult Bible school, adult Sunday school. We&#8217;re actually going to learn how we got the Bible. So the Bible that&#8217;s in your hands, it didn&#8217;t just happen to be like that all this time. or codexes, as we called them back then, whether that&#8217;s the more theological terms, codexes. But back then, they were scrolls. And they were different scrolls. It wasn&#8217;t just one scroll for the entire Bible. It was 60-60. eventually came together the way God planned it to be. We&#8217;re going to talk about those who translated the books and actually were harder when they were translating the books because the church, the Catholic church, did not want anyone reading God&#8217;s word. They only wanted it to come from the priests.<\/p>\n<p>And so we&#8217;re going to talk about how God&#8217;s Word became what&#8217;s in front of you now, what you have in your hands, so that you can understand the sacrifices that were made for that Bible to be in our hands and quite available to us. Alright, so we are going to be in the Book of Luke, the Gospel of Luke. So, last week we had an amazing Pastor David preach on Easter, or the Resurrection. I know Easter is a term that we use today, but just so you know, Easter comes from a pagan term. It actually comes from the goddess Estra, who was known as the goddess of fertility. So, it&#8217;s, you know, probably a clear conviction, and maybe this will help, that we stop calling it Easter and we just start calling it Resurrection Day. That&#8217;s just my two cents on that. So, instead of Easter, we call it Resurrection Day, because that&#8217;s truly what it is. And then a couple weeks ago, we opened in the Book of Luke the 12th chapter, where Jesus was issuing a severe warning to this massive crowd of people. thousands that were following him. And he told them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.<\/p>\n<p>And if you recall, we defined the leaven as hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the scribes and the religious leaders back then. And we learned that false religion threatens to damn eternal souls. That was back then, and this is today. There are so many false religions that are out there. And I can tell you which ones are false in one sentence. It&#8217;s the religion that is not Christian is a false religion. Okay, and I know that&#8217;s a bold statement, but if you want to challenge me on that, feel free. I&#8217;m happy with this. So we also learn that Satan, he&#8217;s sad. through religious deception as he is through any natural or materialistic deception. As a matter of fact, Satan likes to focus on these false religions. He likes to build these massive false religion churches. That&#8217;s why you see, and I&#8217;m not saying all megachurches have false teachings, but the majority of them are. The ones you see on TV, false religions. When we start talking about health, wealth, and prosperity, And those who don&#8217;t talk about the Trinity mean that they don&#8217;t believe in the Trinity, or they don&#8217;t believe that God&#8217;s word is God&#8217;s word, that they believe it&#8217;s just written by man, then that&#8217;s of course religion. And then of course those who don&#8217;t believe in the Gospel.<\/p>\n<p>Now, we need to understand that hell will gladly welcome souls coming from a religious world or the secular world. We spent our time looking at the absolute necessity of honoring the true God and confessing the Son, Jesus Christ. where you still have tens of thousands of people following Jesus. So if the first warning was about the dangers of the spiritual world, the second warning that we&#8217;re going to be preaching on today is about the dangers of the physical world, the materialistic world. And Jesus is going to address the deadly sin of greed. We live in the United States. We live in a western society that enjoys staggering materialistic prosperity. Our lives are filled to overflowing with physical things. We have so much stuff these days. Right? We even have to have, we have so much possessions, we own so much things that we&#8217;re consumers being consumed by consumption. We have massive stockpiles of items that we take on heavy debts just to acquire them. That&#8217;s why we have credit cards, because we want things now, right? And people even rent storage units by the thousands just to hold the things they do not need and cannot easily get to.<\/p>\n<p>Who here has a storage unit? Oh, your house. Who here&#8217;s garage is not used for your cars anymore? &#8211; Yeah, we used to have a storage as well. Well, there&#8217;s an excuse for that one, though. with garages are as full of stuff, right? So we just have so much stuff. You know, being at a care facility, when people move into the care facility that I work at, they live in a house for 50 years or more, and they have all this stuff that they didn&#8217;t need to downsize to, right? And you get rid of it. And, you know, as a matter of fact, I got a call from someone from the church that I was saved at, asking if I would help someone who used to attend that church because they sold their house, but their house was full of stuff and they didn&#8217;t know what to do with it. Everything material ultimately comes from the creation of God. And ultimately, if you look at it, God made everything. He made everything. And so everything comes from God. So the issue is not the possessions themselves. The issue is our attitude toward them.<\/p>\n<p>If something is material, it belongs only to this lifetime. It has no enduring value. It&#8217;s not going to be eternal. Today Jesus is going to show us a terrible human person who builds their life entirely on the things of this world. We&#8217;re well beyond the halfway point in the Gospel of Luke. And Jesus came to bring the good news of salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life, but as His The crowds are still big, they&#8217;re still huge, numbering in the tens of thousands, and the majority of these people have deeply consumed the propaganda of the Pharisees and the scribes and the religious leaders. They even bought the spin that Jesus operates by the power of Satan. Remember that? That Jesus casts out demons because he&#8217;s operating by the power of Beelzebul. And so the Pharisees and the scribes, they&#8217;re following him, but mainly to trap him in some opposition to their religious law. They&#8217;re not following him to learn, they&#8217;re following him to try and trap him. But inside this massive hostile crowd, there&#8217;s a smaller group of people. The original words used to describe them simply means learners. They want to learn more.<\/p>\n<p>And these are the people who are still wondering and seeking and studying Jesus. Like, is Jesus really the Messiah? Is what he&#8217;s teaching real? Right? And so these are the people who are still studying Jesus and still learning and Some of you may have gone through that phase where you&#8217;re trying to see if a Bible-based church is truly where God is. Because if a church does not teach the Bible in context and the way they&#8217;re supposed to be teaching it and preaching the gospel, then they&#8217;re not the church of God. They may have the name of Jesus Christ in them, like the Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ, or Jehovah&#8217;s Witness. They may have the name there, but it doesn&#8217;t mean that they&#8217;re a true Bible-teaching, God-worshipping, God-glorifying church. So their souls are hanging in the balance. It&#8217;s a small group that&#8217;s following Jesus. And Jesus directs his message to them. And if they&#8217;re going to know the truth and receive with hypocrisy and greed. Now with hypocrisy, that&#8217;s where Satan likes to focus because we have our own desires, our flesh, we have these fleshly desires of wanting things. Even as Christians, we long sometimes to have nice things. And again, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with nice things, but sometimes we have more than we need.<\/p>\n<p>of Jesus himself. So let&#8217;s start off with the reading and we&#8217;ll pray. So Luke chapter 12, verses 13 to 21. Luke chapter 12, verses 13 to 21. It says, someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. And he said to him, man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? And he said to them, &#8220;Take care and be on your guard against all co-existence, for one&#8217;s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.&#8221; And he told them a parable, saying, &#8220;The land of a rich man produced plentifully country flea, and he thought to himself, &#8216;What shall I do?'&#8221; &#8220;I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build a margin, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will save my soul.&#8221; &#8220;Soul? You have had ample goodwill for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.&#8221; But God said to him, &#8220;O, this night your soul is required of me, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?&#8221; So is the one who lays a treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. So is the one who lays a treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.<\/p>\n<p>to your choices in life, then honor you. Father, as we spoke about that in our Sunday school today, that we want to be obedient to your commandment of will. Father, you can adjust it. Apart from Jesus, all our choices will be bad choices. Lord God, thank you for redeeming us and giving us your word to direct our hearts, Father, I ask that you fill us with your spirit today. Father, we&#8217;re here learning about your word. Father, fill me with your light. Father, your word is speaking at my end. I know that you have your word. Father, thank you for the love that you pray for me. In Jesus&#8217; name, amen.<\/p>\n<p>So, verses 13 and 15. This is what greed can do. Greed can interrupt our life. our Christian life, our walk in Jesus. Jesus here is in the middle of preaching one of the most lofty, elevated sermons imaginable. He&#8217;s been talking about heaven, salvation, God, and the Holy Spirit. And right in the middle of his majestic spiritual teaching, a man in the crowd blurts out a command. Now imagine this. If I&#8217;m here preaching to you, God&#8217;s heart, and there&#8217;s someone in the back, a raider, for that person yelling this out, right? And so this man, he says, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. Jesus is talking about God, salvation, the Holy Spirit, and all of a sudden this guy says, Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. This man who yelled that out is a quintessential materialist. He has no interest in what Jesus is talking about. He wasn&#8217;t interested in the spiritual realm whatsoever. He doesn&#8217;t care about what he cannot see. He doesn&#8217;t care about him. He&#8217;s entirely focused on this world, on what belongs to him, what he deserves.<\/p>\n<p>He addresses Jesus&#8217; teacher, which identifies Jesus as a rabbi. So in that culture back then, rabbis routinely helped settle civil and family issues. And so that&#8217;s probably why he yelled it out. So under the ancient Israeli law, the estate was left intact and given to the oldest son. and the oldest son was supposed to manage the wealth for the benefit of the entire family. So we don&#8217;t know the exact details of the family dispute, but this younger brother most likely wants his cut of the cash right now. And he wants Jesus to order it to happen. He figured, oh, well, Jesus is a rabbi, and that&#8217;s what rabbis do. I might as well have blurted it out, because I wasn&#8217;t really paying attention to Jesus&#8217; sermon. Now, if you look at the unsympathetic response of Jesus, I love his response. He says, man, who will appoint to be a judge or arbiter over you? The word man is not an endearing term. It&#8217;s like saying man. Or the word, it&#8217;s maybe a title. or a mystery, right, to a total stranger. And Jesus is making it clear that his kingdom is not in this world. He&#8217;ll render no opinion on social, legal, or economic disputes. However, Jesus never hesitates for one second to render a decision on a person&#8217;s spiritual condition. That is what Jesus is worried about. That&#8217;s what he&#8217;s concerned about here.<\/p>\n<p>And if you ever, if you really study Jesus&#8217; sermons, or any sermon for that matter in the Bible, it&#8217;s not about your things. I mean, there are things about your things. There are some scripture about your things and how you&#8217;re treated and be good stewards. But Jesus, in any other sermon that was preached in the Bible, is all about our spiritual being, our eternal life. And that&#8217;s what Jesus is teaching about. So Jesus returns to the entire crowd in verse 15 and he says, Beware, be on your guard against every form of what? Greed. He uses two forceful words here. First is a command to behold, mark, or observe. The second is a military term meaning to provide protective vigilance. Again, in this world, in the United States, it&#8217;s hard to do that because we have so much things. Even in, let&#8217;s say, third-world countries, they don&#8217;t have a lot of things, but if you introduce things, they&#8217;re going to want that as well because that&#8217;s just our desire. Jesus tells them to guard. thirst for more. We always want more. What we have is never enough. We always want more. It&#8217;s like drinking salt water. The more you drink it, the thirstier you get. I don&#8217;t know, do you ever swim in the ocean and drink salt water? It tastes pretty yucky, doesn&#8217;t it? And if you drink it, you just get more thirsty.<\/p>\n<p>The Apostle Paul warns us about this exact same danger. Look at 1 Timothy chapter 6 verses 9 and 10. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. That&#8217;s not saying that money is evil, because money is amoral, meaning there&#8217;s no feelings there. It doesn&#8217;t lean to evil, it doesn&#8217;t lean to good. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. So money is amoral. Money only acts the way the person who has it spends it. And I say, this is my belief, is money only accentuates or it&#8230; shows what a person is really like even more. If a person is evil and they have a lot of money, well, they&#8217;re gonna do a lot of evil If they&#8217;re sinful. If they do good, if they&#8217;re, you know, let&#8217;s say Christian and they&#8217;re saved and, you know, they want to do good and let&#8217;s say God has given them the gift of giving, then God gives them wealth. And then they have an open hand, they receive it in this hand, and then they give it right away. money more than God will plunge you into destruction. King Solomon, one of the wealthiest men who ever lived, actually the wealthiest man who ever lived, wrote in Ecclesiastes chapter 5 verse 10, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve heard a lot of people who we consider successful commit suicide with depression or they just go crazy because money never satisfies. Although that&#8217;s what the devil likes to use to entice you to the world. Money. For not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possession. So the word abundance means excess or surplus. So even if you have more than enough, it will never provide real life. A person can exist biologically, but true satisfaction, true fulfillment for meaning and eternal purpose cannot be found in things. Jesus is telling this greedy man that you can have mountains of surplus, but you are never going to get real life from a material world. And then the second thing is just a selfish illusion mentioned in verses 16 through 19. So to drive this point home, Jesus tells us a parable. He says in verse 16, the land of a certain rich man was very productive. And the original word used here is euphoria, or euphoria. Euphoria. in the Greek, which means to yield an incredibly good crop that is actually, and when you think about it, that&#8217;s actually where we get the word euphoria. In the farming culture, a massive crop brought ultimate feelings of happiness and well-being. Notice that this man didn&#8217;t steal the land or exhort anyone, he came to his wealth honestly. Since farming depends entirely on practice completely outside of human control, he should have immediately thanked God for his harvest. Because farming does not depend on how well he farms, how well he plants it, and how well he waters it. It depends on God to allow what to grow, and how it grows.<\/p>\n<p>Now instead, this crops. It&#8217;s like saying I have so much money I don&#8217;t know what to do with it. So this is a reasonable question. If he builds more storage it will take up the fertile land and so he needs to grow the crops. So he&#8217;s saying okay well what I&#8217;m going to do instead is tear down my barns and just build them bigger rather than taking up more space. So verse 18, he says, &#8220;I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. &#8220;There I will store all my grain and my goods.&#8221; Now if we really look at this, he&#8217;s a crafty businessman. And if he flooded the market with his massive harvest, if there&#8217;s too much of something, what happens to the price? Usually drops. So he&#8217;s being smart about it. He&#8217;s saying, &#8220;Well, I&#8217;m gonna build your barns, bigger barns, And then I&#8217;m going to store all his grain and I&#8217;m just going to release it a little at a time so that the price stays high. Because if he keeps his regular barns, well, he&#8217;s producing a lot more than he needs, and so it&#8217;s just going to be out there and the prices are just going to drop. So he&#8217;s being smart. He&#8217;ll build higher barns on the same foundation, forward all the grain, and then release it slowly to control the market prices. So what&#8217;s glaringly wrong with this picture? Doesn&#8217;t seem like there&#8217;s anything wrong with it, right? Now if we look at verse 17 and 18, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my thoughts. And he said, I will do this. I will tear down the walls and build large ones. And there I will store. And the good is laid up in the ears. The last things are in the ear.<\/p>\n<p>So if we look at that context, in the original text there are eight uses of I and four uses of my. It&#8217;s all about him. Me, myself, and I. We call that the unholy trinity. My, my, my, my, my, my, my. He never once considered giving back to the God who makes the rain fall and the sun shine. He never once considered the hard-working people who pulled the harvest for him. And he never considers the widows, the orphans, or the poor in the village. He never considers giving up to the synagogue or the Lord God. That&#8217;s why Jesus says that it&#8217;s harder for a rich man than it is for a camel to walk through an eye of a meat, right? To be saved. Wealthy people usually think, I don&#8217;t need Jesus. I&#8217;m doing just fine where I&#8217;m at. I don&#8217;t need your God. I can provide on my own. So this farmer, he&#8217;s a pure miser. You see the depth of his isolation in verse 19. He says, &#8220;&#8230;that I will save my soul.&#8221; So he lives entirely alone. He doesn&#8217;t say that he&#8217;s married or has kids or anything. And the only conversation he has is with himself. Did you notice that? He lives in the singular. He tells his soul that he has enough goods laid up in many years. And so, you should just relax, eat, drink, and be normal. So, this is a blatant hedonism. Okay? It&#8217;s blatant hedonism. It&#8217;s the ultimate materialist model. You only live once, so grab all the gusto you can get. Get as much as you can get from this lifetime. No matter what it takes, get as much as you can get.<\/p>\n<p>And the third point we&#8217;re going to talk about is the divine verdict of the first 20. It&#8217;s a terrifying surprise. Verse 20 says, What is that telling us there? God calls him a fool, and the Greek word used here is aphron, and the word means someone who is mindless, ignorant, and entirely destitute of truth. God tells him, this night your soul is required of you. And the actual Greek verb used here is aphitousin, aphitousin. that he&#8217;s going to die. Now back then, Jewish teachers often used the plural word, they, to talk about God&#8217;s actions. And Jesus is showing that the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the one stepping into the man, this man&#8217;s life. He&#8217;s not going to live for long. All that stuff he worked for, all the things that he&#8217;s planning to do, what is it for? All the stuff that he&#8217;s gonna leave behind. Who is it gonna go to? Right, Solomon, before that, all his grandiose plans are instantly vaporized. Everything that he earned and built is gonna be gone. He faces the materialist&#8217;s worst nightmare, that somebody&#8217;s gonna get his stuff. about this exact nightmare in Ecclesiastes chapter 2. He says, I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me. He&#8217;s saying, all this wisdom, all the things that I&#8217;ve built, all this money, this is going to go to someone else. And who knows whether he will be wise or fool? Yet he will be master of all, for which I toil and use my wisdom to decide. This also is in. So everything that we work for in this world, it&#8217;s going to go to someone. Would they take care of it as well as you would take care of it? Maybe, maybe not. So what we have in this world, we ought to be doing, we ought to be using it to glorify the Lord. If you have a nice house, again, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with that. Right? If you have a pool, let us use it to baptize people in it. If you have a car, a nice car, maybe you can get people over to be nice. Whatever it is. If you have extra clothes, well, you buy new clothes, maybe you donate your own clothes.<\/p>\n<p>So the application of this entire story comes in verse 21. Jesus says, So it is the one who lays a treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. So he&#8217;s basically saying, if you&#8217;re trying to lay a treasure for yourself here in this world, you are not rich toward the eternal life. Amen. And if you spend your entire life building bigger barns and accumulating physical things, but you never deal with your own mortality and prepare your soul for eternity, you&#8217;re a mindless fool. That&#8217;s what the passage is teaching. You cannot take a single penny with you when you die. You never, and I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve heard a pastor say this before, but you The only way to be rich toward God is to receive the true riches of Jesus Christ. He is the Savior who stepped out of the infinite wealth of heaven, became poor for our sake, and went to the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. All the sins that we&#8217;ve committed past, present, and future were nailed upon that cross of Jesus. He died and was taken off that cross. He was buried in a borrowed tomb by the way. He was sealed and three days later he rose. And that, beloved, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that is what God, that&#8217;s a power to salvation. One must hear the Gospel in order in order to preach it, in order for someone to hear it, and in order for someone to respond. You see how that all ties together? And I like to ask the Sunday school class, if I ask you to go to the gospel, My sins, it was buried, it was labored, and I was good. And as you start to mature in your faith, you get to expand on each component of the Gospel. Okay? So when you&#8217;re out there and you&#8217;re evangelizing to someone, yes, tell them your testimony, but eventually you need to get to the Gospel. There are a lot of mission trips that go out there, and it&#8217;s really not a mission trip, because a mission trip is, at least the way I see it, is you&#8217;re going out to a place where the gospel has never been preached. Some people go on what I call Samaritan, good Samaritan trips where they&#8217;ll go, they&#8217;ll go to houses, they&#8217;ll go to provide medical missions, but they never get to the gospel of Jesus. What&#8217;s the point is, you go there, yes, you win them over so that they trust you and they&#8217;re excited and that opens the opportunity to then share the gospel. But regardless, we share the gospel. You can do it as simple as one, two, three components, and you allow the Holy Spirit to do His work. You are not there to save anybody. You&#8217;re just there to share the gospel. Allow God to<\/p>\n<p>Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6, he says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So if your heart belongs to Jesus, your treasure will follow you. You&#8217;ll gladly invest your resources in His Kingdom, in your family, and in the needs of others. That&#8217;s just what we do as Christians, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re compelled to do. That&#8217;s where our desires take the way to life. So how do we apply this in our own lives? We don&#8217;t want to just walk away shaking our heads at a greedy farmer from 2,000 years ago. We need to look in the mirror. Are we like this greedy farmer? Whenever I tell stories of a sinner and we read the story of God, of Jesus sharing the parables, you know, someone not doing the right thing, Don&#8217;t worry about them, you worry about you. Right, because Christianity, walking in faith in Jesus Christ is a very personal thing. You&#8217;re not a Christian because your family are Christian, or your friends are Christian. It&#8217;s a very personal thing. Now most of us will never have millions of dollars to give away, but the principle remains the exact same. you&#8217;ll probably not live long enough to use everything you have anyway. No matter how rich or how maybe, well, we here in the United States consider poor. But the poor people here, compared to the third world countries, So how do we make sure that we are not blindly building bigger arms?<\/p>\n<p>So let me give you three practical ways, and we&#8217;ll go through this quickly, to be rich and toward God. First, do an honest inventory of your hearts. Jesus said that where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. Now we used to say the quickest way to find out is to look at your checkbook. We don&#8217;t write checks anymore, so just look at your bank statements. Maybe look at your calendar. You can look at your calendar or look at your social media if you&#8217;re on social media. Because typically people will post what their desires are on social media. And an action self, does your extra time and money, does it just feed your own comforts? Or does it build God&#8217;s people? If your heart is focused on heaven, that&#8217;s exactly where your treasure will go. It&#8217;ll invest in your family, it&#8217;ll invest in the kingdom work, and it will invest in the needs of others. So everything you earn goes strictly into your own earthly kingdom, like it did this farmer that Jesus was talking about. It&#8217;s like you&#8217;re simply drinking salt water. You&#8217;ll never be satisfied. Secondly, discover the joy of holding things loosely. So the rich fool saw his massive harvest, And his only thought was how to keep it all for himself. Right? He completely missed out on the joy of blessing others. And when God blesses us with a surplus, we have the beautiful opportunity to ask the Lord, Lord, who can I bless with this surplus that you&#8217;ve given to me? Right? Ask me. You don&#8217;t have to wait until the end of your life to experience the joy of generosity. It doesn&#8217;t have the work of the gospel, helping the missionary, helping the neighbor in a tough spot, or funding the kingdom, right? Helping, giving to the church. At least in our church. The more you tithe doesn&#8217;t mean the more money goes into my pocket. We&#8217;re not that type of church. We have a leadership that we all pray together and say this is what the pastor gets in the salary. No matter how much the church pays. We&#8217;re not about health, wealth, and prosperity in this church. We&#8217;re about God&#8217;s work. Giving is never meant to be a heavy obligation either. It&#8217;s simply the natural, joyful response from the heart that we want to God.<\/p>\n<p>And then thirdly, factor in your Lord&#8217;s power. This is important. The rich fool planned perfectly for his retirement, but he completely forgot to plan for his funeral. Now you assume he had years soon. We live in a culture that does everything it can to ignore death, but facing the reality of your own mortality is the most clarifying thing you can do. When I went to the hospital, I seen young children die, young adults and die from before they were even born to 100 plus years old. You never know when you&#8217;re going to die. So you need to be ready. We live in a culture that does everything we can to the more death we&#8217;re facing. The reality of your own mortality is the most clarifying thing you can do. It forces you to ask that hard question. If my soul is required to be tonight, what will happen but you can send it on to heaven. And if you give it to God, it will be there to welcome you. You can give your time to the church. That&#8217;s wealth that you&#8217;re going to be storing up in heaven. When I say wealth, I&#8217;m not saying wealth that we can keep and we can brag about it. It&#8217;s wealth that we&#8217;re going to throw at the feet of Jesus. The crowns and the jewels that we&#8217;re going to be throwing at the feet of Jesus. So if you&#8230; God&#8217;s kingdom and the spiritual needs of others, the passage says, you are a fool. And it&#8217;s talking to all of us. You&#8217;re a fool. Do not waste until the end of your life to figure this out. Give your life, your soul, and your resources entirely<\/p>\n<p>Father, we thank you that you give us that opportunity to make choices in life that honor you, glorify you, and Father, we confess that apart from Christ, our choices would all be the wrong choices, the bad ones, driven entirely by our own selfish desires. And Father, thank you for saving us, redeeming us, and giving us your word and your spirit to lead us and direct us toward an eternal life. Lord, we ask that you would help us to take an honest inventory of our hearts today. Father, break the suffocating grip of materialism in our lives. that produces immense beauty, wonder, and treasure so that we might enjoy it, but remind us constantly that we were called to invest it back to you. To you. Give us a grace to be generous right now, investing in the spiritual needs of others, in your kingdom, your kingdom work, and in the expansion of the philosophy of And finally, Lord God, remind us of our own mortality. We don&#8217;t know how long we will live or how many days we have left on this world, on this earth. But Father, I pray that there will be no one listening today who has failed to make the most important investment of all, which is entrusting their eternal soul to you by faith in Jesus Christ. Father, help us to lay a treasure in heaven to truly be rich toward you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/details>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">Abstract and summary of the pastor&#8217;s sermon:<\/h3>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\">The sermon centers on\u00a0<strong>Luke 12:13\u201321<\/strong>, where Jesus warns against greed and the illusion that life consists of possessions. It argues that material abundance can distract people from eternity, while true wealth is being<em><strong> \u201crich toward God\u201d<\/strong><\/em> through faith in Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\"><strong>False religion and spiritual deception<\/strong><br \/>\nThe sermon begins by contrasting false religion with true Christianity, warning that religious deception can be spiritually deadly. It frames Jesus\u2019 teaching as a warning not only about hypocrisy, but also about misplaced loyalty to religious systems that miss the gospel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\"><strong>The danger of materialism<\/strong><br \/>\nIt then shifts to the physical world, stressing that modern life is filled with possessions, debt, and consumerism. The preacher says the issue is not possessions themselves, but the heart\u2019s attitude toward them and the danger of craving more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\"><strong>The crowd and the interruption<\/strong><br \/>\nA man in the crowd interrupts Jesus to demand help with an inheritance dispute, revealing a focus on money rather than spiritual truth. Jesus refuses to act as a civil judge and instead turns the moment into a warning about greed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\"><strong>Beware of greed<\/strong><br \/>\nJesus\u2019 command to <em><strong>\u201cguard against all covetousness\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>is explained as a call to vigilant self-protection. The sermon emphasizes that abundance cannot produce real life, and that money is not evil by itself but becomes dangerous when loved and pursued above God.<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\"><strong>The rich fool<\/strong><br \/>\nThe parable of the rich farmer illustrates selfish planning: he hoards his surplus, speaks only of himself, and never considers God or others. The preacher describes this as <em><strong>\u201cme, myself, and I\u201d<\/strong><\/em> living in isolation, with no concern for generosity or eternity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\"><strong>God\u2019s verdict<\/strong><br \/>\nGod calls the man a fool because his life ends suddenly, and all his stored wealth becomes meaningless. The sermon stresses that death exposes the folly of building one\u2019s life around earthly gain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"my-2 [&amp;+p]:mt-4 [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:inline-block [&amp;_strong:has(+br)]:pb-2\"><strong>Application for believers<\/strong><br \/>\nFinally, the message calls listeners to examine their hearts, hold possessions loosely, and plan for eternity. It urges generosity, kingdom-minded living, and readiness for death by trusting in Jesus Christ as the true treasure.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>The following are Supplemental notes generated by AI as a study resource for Pastor Joey\u2019s sermon. This study was taken from Claude AI.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 align=\"center\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><b>The Doom of the Materialist, Luke 12:13-21<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p align=\"center\"><i>A Synthetic Theological Essay on Luke 12:13-21<br \/>\nDelivered by Pastor Joey<br \/>\nEast Valley International Church \u2022 Gilbert, Arizona<\/i><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Sermon Notes &amp; Bible Study Guide<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>The Passage: Luke 12:13\u201321 (ESV)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p align=\"left\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: small;\"><i>Someone in the crowd said to him, \u2018Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.\u2019 But he said to him, \u2018Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?\u2019 And he said to them, \u2018Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one\u2019s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.\u2019<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><i>And he told them a parable, saying, \u2018The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, \u201cWhat shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?\u201d And he said, \u201cI 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.\u201d But God said to him, \u201cFool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?\u201d So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>Introduction: A Question Born of Greed<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>There is a moment in Luke\u2019s Gospel that cuts through the centuries with the precision of a surgeon\u2019s blade. Jesus is in the middle of teaching His disciples about the dangers of the Pharisees, about the fear of God, about the courage required to confess Him before men \u2014 and then, without warning, a voice erupts from the crowd. It is not a voice of hunger for truth. It is a voice of hunger for money. <em><strong>\u201cTeacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>The man does not want theology. He wants his share.<\/p>\n<p>This interruption is itself a parable. It tells us something painfully accurate about the human heart: that even in the presence of divine wisdom, the preoccupied mind hears only the echo of its own desires. The crowd was listening to the Son of God, and this man was calculating estate values. He had reduced the living Word to a legal arbitrator for a family squabble over property. And yet \u2014 Jesus does not dismiss him with irritation. He uses the moment. He seizes the interruption and transforms it into one of the most devastating parables in the New Testament: the Parable of the Rich Fool.<\/p>\n<p>What follows in Luke 12:13\u201321 is not a sermon against wealth per se. Jesus is not engaging in economic theory or advocating for some ancient form of redistribution. He is doing something far more serious. He is performing a spiritual autopsy on the soul of the materialist \u2014 and the diagnosis is terminal.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>I. The Warning Before the Story (v. 15)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Before Jesus ever tells the parable, He issues a command so direct and unambiguous that it demands to be treated as a foundational axiom of Christian living:<em><strong> \u201cTake care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one\u2019s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Greek verb translated <em><strong>\u201ctake care\u201d<\/strong><\/em> is <i>hora\u014d<\/i> \u2014 a word of acute, focused attention. And the second imperative, <em><strong>\u201cbe on your guard,\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>is <i>phulassesthe<\/i> \u2014 a military term describing a watchman at his post, scanning the perimeter for infiltrators. Covetousness is not presented here as an unfortunate personality flaw. It is presented as an enemy that breaches walls, a smuggler that slips past the gatekeepers of the soul undetected. The doubled command is not rhetorical redundancy; it is spiritual urgency.<\/p>\n<p>What makes covetousness so peculiarly dangerous is precisely what Jesus identifies in the second half of verse 15: it rests on a false philosophy of life. <em><strong>\u201cOne\u2019s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> The word translated <em><strong>\u201clife\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>here is <i>zo\u0113<\/i> \u2014 not mere biological existence (that would be <i>bios<\/i>), but genuine, substantive life in its fullest sense. Jesus is asserting that material accumulation cannot constitute or construct authentic human existence. The materialist has not merely made a financial error; he has made a metaphysical one. He has confused the catalog of his possessions with the content of his being.<\/p>\n<p><b>This is the lie at the core of every materialist worldview, and it takes many forms in our own age:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li value=\"1\">The retirement account is the measure of a life well-lived.<\/li>\n<li>The square footage of one\u2019s home is a proxy for significance.<\/li>\n<li>The portfolio, the vehicle, the vacation, the wardrobe as evidences that one has <em><strong>\u201carrived.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<li>The quiet, corrosive assumption that more is always better, that enough is always slightly more than what one currently has.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Jesus does not argue against these assumptions. He simply declares them false. And then He tells a story to show us why.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>II. The Anatomy of a Fool (vv. 16\u201319)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The rich man of the parable is, by every external measure, a success. His land has produced abundantly, and this fact is presented by Jesus without moral condemnation. There is nothing sinful about agricultural prosperity. The man did not steal his harvest. He did not exploit anyone, at least not in the narrative as Jesus tells it. He is simply rich, and his harvest is exceptional, and his problem is entirely one of abundance, not scarcity. This detail is deliberate. Jesus is not telling a parable about a wicked man who deserves punishment for obvious crimes. He is telling a parable about an ordinary, respectable, prosperous man whose crime is invisible to the casual observer.<\/p>\n<p>The internal monologue that follows is one of the most psychologically revealing passages in all of Scripture. <em><strong>\u201cWhat shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>The question itself is instructive: the man\u2019s problem is not poverty but storage. And his solution is entirely self-referential. Count the first-person pronouns in verses 17\u201319, and you will find a cascade of ego: <em><strong>\u201cI,\u201d \u201cmy,\u201d \u201cI,\u201d \u201cI,\u201d \u201cI,\u201d \u201cmy,\u201d \u201cmy,\u201d \u201cI,\u201d \u201cmy.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> The man is the architect of his own universe, the sovereign of his own soul, the sole actor in the drama of his life. God does not appear in his calculations. Other human beings do not appear in his calculations. The poor do not appear in his calculations. Only the man, his crops, his barns, and his future comfort.<\/p>\n<p>There is a profound irony embedded in verse 18. The man says,<em><strong> \u201cI will tear down my barns and build larger ones.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Barns, in the ancient Near Eastern context, were not merely utilitarian structures. They were expressions of family legacy, of permanence, of rootedness in the land. To tear them down and build larger was to rewrite one\u2019s narrative, to literalize in stone and timber the ambition of the soul. He is not merely expanding his storage capacity; he is constructing a monument to self-sufficiency.<\/p>\n<p>Then comes the fatal declaration: <em><strong>\u201cSoul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>This is the voice of the materialist in its purest, most unguarded form. The soul is addressed not as an immortal being accountable to God, but as a stomach. It is not a vision, not a calling, not a relationship, not a transcendent purpose \u2014 but provisions. The man\u2019s highest aspiration for his own soul is prolonged comfort. He has no theology of eternity, no concept of stewardship, no awareness that he stands on borrowed ground breathing borrowed air. He is the creature who has forgotten the Creator, and in that forgetting has constructed the most elaborate prison imaginable: a prison built of abundance, furnished with pleasure, and locked from the inside.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>III. The Divine Interruption (v. 20)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Verse 20 arrives like a thunderclap after a long summer of silence. <em><strong>\u201cBut God said to him\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/em> This is only the second time God has appeared in the narrative \u2014 and the first time is conspicuous only by His absence from the rich man\u2019s interior dialogue. Now He speaks, and what He says demolishes everything the man has built.<\/p>\n<p>The first word God speaks is a verdict: <em><strong>\u201cFool!\u201d<\/strong><\/em> In the Old Testament, the word <i>fool<\/i> (<i>nabal<\/i> in Hebrew) carried a weight far beyond mere intellectual deficiency. It described the person who had structured his life without reference to God \u2014 the practical atheist, the one who says in his heart,<em><strong> \u201cThere is no God\u201d<\/strong><\/em> (Psalm 14:1). The Greek here is <i>aphr\u014dn<\/i> \u2014 one who lacks <i>phron\u0113sis<\/i>, the Greek concept of practical wisdom. The man was not intellectually stupid. He was existentially senseless. He had organized his entire life around a principle that was fundamentally, catastrophically wrong.<\/p>\n<p>The indictment that follows is not of his wealth but of his presumption: <em><strong>\u201cThis night your soul is required of you.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> The verb translated <em><strong>\u201cis required\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>is remarkably precise in the Greek: <i>apaitousin<\/i> \u2014 <em><strong>\u201cthey are demanding back from you.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>It is the language of debt collection. The soul was never the man\u2019s own possession; it was on loan, and the loan has been called in. He had been a steward, not an owner, and now the true Owner has arrived to settle accounts. The man\u2019s great error was not in working hard. It was not even in enjoying the fruit of his labor. It was in treating himself as the sovereign of a life that was never his to begin with.<\/p>\n<p>And then the question that unravels everything: <em><strong>\u201cThe things you have prepared, whose will they be?\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>The barns are full. The plans are laid. The retirement is secured. And none of it will matter in twelve hours, because the man who planned it all will be gone, and the inheritance dispute he was never consulted about will begin afresh. The very wealth he hoarded will become the instrument of the family conflict that opened this passage. There is a terrible, circular irony in this \u2014 the man who ignored the quarrel over inheritance has now become its unwitting cause.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>IV. The Verdict and Its Application (v. 21)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Jesus closes the parable with a summary judgment of crystalline clarity: <em><strong>\u201cSo is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> This final verse is the interpretive key to everything that precedes it. Notice that Jesus does not say, <em><strong>\u201cSo is the one who is wealthy.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> He does not condemn the having of resources. He condemns the orientation of the soul. The man\u2019s sin was in the direction of his accumulation: inward, toward self; downward, toward earth; backward, toward the present age \u2014 and never upward, toward God.<\/p>\n<p>The phrase<em><strong> \u201crich toward God\u201d<\/strong><\/em> is one of the most suggestive in the Lukan corpus. What does it mean to be rich toward God? The immediate context of Luke 12 offers several clues. Jesus will go on, just verses later, to speak of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field \u2014 creatures that do not anxiously hoard, because they live in dependence on the Father\u2019s provision. He will urge His disciples to <em><strong>\u201cseek His kingdom,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> and promise that the Father knows their needs. He will counsel them to sell their possessions and give to the poor, and thereby <em><strong>\u201cprovide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail\u201d<\/strong><\/em> (Luke 12:33). To be rich toward God, then, is to participate in an economy of eternity \u2014 to invest in things that survive death, that accumulate interest in the age to come, that cannot be destroyed by moth or rust or the demands of estate law.<\/p>\n<p>It is worth pausing here to observe that Jesus presents these two orientations \u2014 hoarding for self and being rich toward God \u2014 not as two points on a spectrum, but as two mutually exclusive postures of the soul. The rich fool was not a man who gave a little and kept a lot. He was a man whose entire imagination was captive to self-preservation. And his doom was not simply physical death; it was the exposure of a life that had been, in the most tragic sense, wasted. He had access to real wealth \u2014 the possibility of generosity, of trust in God, of a life that would have mattered beyond the length of his own breath \u2014 and he spent it all on grain.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>V. The Theological Depth: What the Parable Reveals About God and Man<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>This parable is not simply a moral fable with a practical lesson about financial planning. It is a window into the biblical theology of humanity as image-bearer and steward. From Genesis forward, the Scriptures present human beings as creatures made in the image of God (<i>imago Dei<\/i>), endowed with dignity and purpose, but always as stewards of a creation that belongs to the Creator. The rich fool\u2019s tragedy is that he had inverted this order. He had taken the creation and treated it as his private property, and in doing so, had effectively denied the existence of the Creator \u2014 not in creed, perhaps, but in practice.<\/p>\n<p>The Apostle Paul\u2019s language in Colossians 3:5 is illuminating here. He identifies covetousness as idolatry \u2014 not merely a sin, but the sin of putting something other than God at the center of one\u2019s devotion. The rich fool had made a god of his grain, a temple of his barn, a liturgy of his consumption. He worshipped at the altar of self-sufficiency and offered his soul as the sacrifice. And like every false god, this one could not save him when death arrived at the door.<\/p>\n<p>There is also a profound eschatological dimension to Jesus\u2019 warning. The parable assumes what the rest of the New Testament makes explicit: that every human being will face a moment of account. The soul will be <em><strong>\u201crequired,\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>and on that night, the only currency that will matter is the degree to which one has been<em><strong> \u201crich toward God.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>This is not a doctrine of salvation by generosity; it is a doctrine of orientation, of what the heart was pointed toward during the years of breath and decision. The materialism Jesus condemns is not merely an economic posture; it is a spiritual one. It is the posture of a soul that has turned its back on transcendence and made its home in the temporary.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>VI. Bible Study: Digging Deeper into Luke 12:13\u201321<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3 class=\"western\"><strong>A. Historical and Cultural Context<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Understanding the inheritance dispute in verse 13 requires some familiarity with first-century Jewish law. Deuteronomy 21:17 established a system of double-portion inheritance for the firstborn son. Younger sons received single portions, and disputes over the precise division of estates \u2014 especially when the elder brother controlled the family property \u2014 were notoriously contentious. Rabbis were frequently called upon to mediate such conflicts. The man\u2019s request, then, was not bizarre; it was culturally plausible.<\/p>\n<p>What was unusual was Jesus\u2019 refusal. By declining to act as judge, He refused to reduce His mission to the settlement of temporal disputes. His kingdom operates at a different level than civil arbitration, and His response signals that the deeper issue \u2014 the covetousness driving the request \u2014 matters far more than the legal question being posed.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"western\"><strong>B. Cross-Reference Study<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><b>The following passages illuminate different facets of this text:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Psalm 49:16\u201320 <\/b>teaches that wealth cannot ransom a life from death and that the rich man who lacks understanding <em><strong>\u201cis like the beasts that perish.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>The parallel to the Rich Fool is direct and sobering.<\/li>\n<li><b>Ecclesiastes 2:18\u201321 <\/b>records Solomon\u2019s anguish over leaving his toil to someone who did not work for it \u2014 precisely the fate that awaits the Rich Fool\u2019s accumulated wealth.<\/li>\n<li><b>1 Timothy 6:6\u201310, 17\u201319 <\/b>presents Paul\u2019s apostolic application: godliness with contentment is great gain; those who are rich are to be <em><strong>\u201cgenerous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>This is precisely what it means to be \u201crich toward God.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><b>Matthew 6:19\u201321 <\/b>(the Sermon on the Mount) provides the positive counterpart:<strong><em> \u201cStore up for yourselves treasures in heaven.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> The command to avoid earthly hoarding always comes paired with an invitation to heavenly investment.<\/li>\n<li><b>James 4:13\u201315 <\/b>echoes the parable directly, warning those who say <em><strong>\u201cToday or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit\u201d<\/strong><\/em> \u2014 when they do not know what tomorrow will bring.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 class=\"western\"><strong>C. Key Greek Word Study<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><b>Three Greek terms in this passage deserve careful attention:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i><b>Pleonexia (v. 15)<\/b><\/i> \u2014 translated <em><strong>\u201ccovetousness\u201d or \u201cgreed.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Literally, the desire to have more (pleon + echein). It is not mere wanting, but the relentless, acquisitive compulsion to increase beyond what is sufficient. It appears alongside sexual immorality and idolatry in Paul\u2019s vice lists (Ephesians 5:3, Colossians 3:5), which indicates how seriously the early church took it.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Aphr\u014dn (v. 20)<\/b><\/i> \u2014<em><strong> \u201cFool.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Not intellectually deficient but morally and spiritually senseless, someone who acts without reference to ultimate reality. The cognate verb <em><strong>\u201cto be foolish\u201d<\/strong><\/em> (\u201caphrono\u015b\u201d) appears in Paul\u2019s discussion of boasting in 2 Corinthians 11:16\u201321, carrying the same sense of acting outside one\u2019s proper relationship with God.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Plout\u014dn eis Theon (v. 21)<\/b><\/i> \u2014 <em><strong>\u201cBeing rich toward God.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>This rare construction with the preposition eis (into\/toward) implies directional movement: the life of faith is one in which one\u2019s resources, energy, and attention are actively directed Godward. It is not a passive state but a dynamic orientation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>VII. Contemporary Application: The Modern Rich Fool<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It would be comfortable to locate the Rich Fool safely in the first century and observe him from a scholarly distance. But the parable will not allow that retreat. The man who tore down his barns and built larger ones lives on in every generation. He drives a different vehicle and stores his grain in different instruments, but his internal monologue is identical.<\/p>\n<p>We live in an age of unprecedented abundance in the Western world, and we have constructed an entire culture to serve the project of self-sufficient accumulation. Retirement planning has become the secular equivalent of building barns. Investment portfolios are modern granaries. The aspiration to <em><strong>\u201cfinancial independence\u201d<\/strong><\/em> \u2014 by which the culture means freedom from any dependence on anyone, including God \u2014 has become the secular gospel of the prosperous middle class. None of these things is inherently sinful. But all of them can become the infrastructure of a fool\u2019s life when they are pursued with a soul pointed inward rather than Godward.<\/p>\n<p>The question Jesus poses is not: Do you have possessions? The question is: Do your possessions have you? Do they occupy the center of your imagination? Do they determine the shape of your days, the content of your anxieties, the measure of your security? Does the prospect of their loss frighten you more than the prospect of losing your integrity before God?<\/p>\n<p><b>Practical diagnostics for personal reflection:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How much time in a given week do I spend thinking about money, possessions, and financial security, compared to time spent in prayer, Scripture, and concern for others?<\/li>\n<li>If God called me to give a substantial portion of my savings away, would my first response be obedience or panic?<\/li>\n<li>Do I give generously, or do I give what remains after I have secured everything I consider necessary?<\/li>\n<li>Am I investing in the things Jesus calls <em><strong>\u201ctreasure in heaven\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>\u2014 the poor, the gospel, the community of faith, the eternal souls of people around me?<\/li>\n<li>When I think about my legacy, do I think about what I will leave materially, or who I will have made more like Christ?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>VIII. Bible Study Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><i>Use these questions for small group discussion, personal journaling, or Sunday school engagement:<\/i><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Opening: <\/b>What is the most expensive thing you have ever saved up for? What drove that desire, and how do you feel about it now?<\/li>\n<li><b>Observation: <\/b>Count the first-person pronouns in the rich man\u2019s speech (vv. 17\u201319). What does this literary observation reveal about his spiritual condition?<\/li>\n<li><b>Interpretation: <\/b>Jesus says the man\u2019s soul was <em><strong>\u201crequired\u201d<\/strong><\/em> of him. What does this language tell us about human ownership of life itself? How should this reshape our understanding of <em><strong>\u201cmy time,\u201d \u201cmy money,\u201d and \u201cmy future\u201d?<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<li><b>Theological: <\/b>Paul calls covetousness idolatry (Colossians 3:5). In what sense is it idolatry? What is the <strong>\u201cgod\u201d<\/strong> that the covetous person actually worships?<\/li>\n<li><b>Application: <\/b>What does it look like, practically and specifically, to be<em><strong> \u201crich toward God\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>in your current season of life? Name one concrete step you could take this week.<\/li>\n<li><b>Challenge: <\/b>Jesus says life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Do you believe this? How would your weekly schedule and spending habits look different if you lived as though you fully believed it?<\/li>\n<li><b>Prayer and Commitment: <\/b>What is one area of your financial or material life that you need to surrender to God\u2019s lordship? Spend time in prayer, committing that area to Him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 class=\"western\"><strong>Conclusion: The Antidote to the Materialist&#8217;s Doom<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The Parable of the Rich Fool does not end with despair, though it ends with death. It ends with a question that contains within it a redirection: <em><strong>\u201cThe things you have prepared, whose will they be?\u201d<\/strong><\/em> The implied answer, in the broader context of Jesus\u2019 teaching, is that they belong to God, along with the soul that thought it owned them. And if everything belongs to God, then the only rational response is to live as a steward rather than an owner \u2014 to hold possessions loosely, to invest them wisely in things that survive the night God comes calling, to make oneself rich toward the One who gave everything.<\/p>\n<p>There is a man in the New Testament who faced a question similar in structure to the Rich Fool\u2019s situation. He was young, he was wealthy, and he came to Jesus asking about eternal life (Mark 10:17\u201322). Jesus loved him, the text tells us \u2014 and then told him to sell everything and follow Him. The man went away sorrowful, <em><strong>\u201cfor he had great possessions.\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>He chose his barns over the One who made the grain. He is the Rich Fool with a face and a name, and his tragedy is not that he was wealthy but that he was not willing to be poor for the sake of something infinitely greater than wealth.<\/p>\n<p>The antidote to the materialist\u2019s doom is not poverty. It is not the renunciation of all possessions as a universal mandate. It is the radical reorientation of the soul toward God \u2014 the recognition that one is a steward of borrowed resources on a borrowed timeline, that the soul which will be required is not one\u2019s own property, and that to be rich toward God is not a sacrifice but the only rational investment strategy available to a creature who will one day stand before the One who lent everything in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>The fool tears down barns and builds larger ones. The wise man tears down self-sufficiency and builds a life that points toward heaven. The fool talks to his soul about comfort. The wise man listens to God talking to his soul about eternity. The fool accumulates. The wise man distributes. And when the night comes \u2014 as it will come for every one of us \u2014 only one of them will hear, not <em><strong>\u201cFool!\u201d<\/strong><\/em> but the words that make all earthly gain seem like rubble: <strong><em>\u201cWell done, good and faithful servant.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><i>Soli Deo Gloria<\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>A Note on Research Methods and Accuracy<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><em>This work represents a collaboration among the author\u2019s theological and historical research, primary-source documentation, and the emerging capabilities of artificial intelligence research tools. AI assistance was employed throughout the investigative process\u2014not as a ghostwriter or a substitute for scholarship, but as a rigorous research partner: surfacing sources, cross\u2011referencing claims, identifying scholarly consensus, and flagging potential errors before they could reach the page.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Every factual claim in this work has been subjected to active verification. Where AI\u2011generated content was used as a starting point, it was tested against primary sources, peer\u2011reviewed scholarship, official institutional documentation, and established historical records. Where discrepancies were found\u2014and they were found\u2014corrections were made. The author has made every reasonable effort to ensure that quotations are accurately attributed, historical details are precisely rendered, and theological claims fairly represent the positions they describe or critique.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>That said, no work of this scope is immune to error, and the author has no interest in perpetuating inaccuracies in the service of an argument. If you are a reader\u2014whether sympathetic, skeptical, or hostile to the conclusions drawn here\u2014and you identify a factual error, a misattributed source, a misrepresented teaching, or a claim that cannot be substantiated, you are warmly and genuinely invited to say so. Reach out. The goal of this work is not to win a debate but to get the history right. Corrections offered in good faith will be received in the same spirit, and verified corrections will be incorporated into future editions without hesitation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Truth, after all, has nothing to fear from scrutiny\u2014and neither does this work.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Delivered by Pastor Joey | East Valley International Church | Gilbert, Arizona Text: Luke 12:13-21 (ESV) In this sermon delivered at East Valley International Church in Gilbert, Arizona, Pastor Joey draws from Luke 12:13-21 to expose how greed interrupts eternal truth. In a teeming crowd hanging on Jesus&#8217; words in Luke 12:13-21, a voice pierces&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46,172,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity","category-e-v-i-c-study-notes","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/EVIC-Church.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7524"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7526,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7524\/revisions\/7526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}