James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 12:18 - 12:20

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James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 12:18 - 12:20


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

THE RICH FOOL

‘And he said, This will I do … But God said unto him, Thou fool.’

Luk_12:18-20

How busy are the streets of a great city! How anxious and eager are some of the faces we meet! Look at this man—poor a few years ago, well off now. He has been successful in his business. This is what all these business people are striving to be. Our Lord’s parable is a solemn warning about success in life. The rich man had good land, good harvests, and no doubt looked well after his farms. See the result (Luk_12:16-17). He became richer and richer.

I. What the rich man said to himself.—He was pleased with his success; congratulated himself, looked proudly on his wealth (Dan_4:28-30). The man hardly knew where to stow all his wealth. Yet there were plenty of poor to feed, many a heart he might have made glad. But no. All his thoughts were centred on himself; his increase of wealth only made him more selfish. This is just the danger the Psalmist saw in wealth (Psa_62:10). So the rich man became more selfish. He will build more barns and get richer and richer. But does he think of the future? Yes. See what he has in his mind (Luk_12:19). He will enjoy himself, be merry; his soul shall be happy for years!

II. What God said to him.—God had a startling message for him. What was that? (Luk_12:20). He had been priding himself on his cleverness in getting so rich—yet see what God calls him.—A ‘fool’! Let us see where his folly lay.

(a) He had been speaking of ‘my’ barns, ‘my’ fruits, ‘my’ goods. Were they really his? (see Psa_50:10-12). They were God’s, and only lent to him.

(b) He had forgotten how uncertain his riches were. He had seen others fall from wealth to poverty. Might not he fall too? Riches often have wings and fly away (Pro_23:5). He was not a very wise man to have forgotten this.

(c) What folly to count on ‘many years’! He could not count on ‘to-morrow’ (Pro_27:1). All his wealth could not purchase one minute’s life when God called for it!

(d) And could he be sure of being happy with all his wealth? Many a miserable life is passed in grand mansions and palaces.

He knew this too. He wanted something more than wealth to make his ‘soul’ happy and at ‘ease.’ He would have found out his folly if he had lived.

III. God’s call.—God’s decree had gone forth. His soul was ‘required’ that very night! Could he not refuse? No. God ‘demanded’ it. It was His, and must be yielded. What good was all his wealth to him then? Was he willing to go? No. He would have refused if he could. No wonder, for he was losing his all! How different with God’s true servant! He commits his soul to God (Psa_31:5; Act_7:59). He is not quitting, but going to his riches.

—
Rev. Canon Watson.

Illustration

‘It is an awful thought that the character which Jesus brings before us in this parable is far from being uncommon. Thousands in every age of the world have lived continually doing the very things which are here condemned. Thousands are doing them at this very day. They are laying up treasure upon earth, and thinking of nothing but how to increase it. They are continually adding to their hoards, as if they were to enjoy them for ever, and as if there was no death, no judgment, and no world to come. And yet these are the men who are called, clever, and prudent, and wise!’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE RICH MAN’S FOLLY

What was the folly of this rich man’s life?

I. He mistook the true gauge of the worth of life.—He valued his days by the money he could make in them. He reckoned up his years by the increment to his little stock of gold. Ask him how much so-and-so might be worth; he would answer you at once by estimating the amount of money that he had amassed.

II. He mistook the true use of his superfluity.—He had more than he wanted. His fields brought forth in plenty. He began to wonder what to do with the superfluous wealth, and he thought that there was no other use for it except to reserve it for himself, and so he proposed to pull down the barns and to build greater, and to store the abundance, the overplus, the superfluity of his life for other and coming days.

III. He mistook the true way of being merry.—Men sometimes talk to themselves, sitting in a reverie when the house is quiet, and by their fireside they talk to their souls. And this man talked in the strangest way to his. ‘Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’

IV. He mistook the tenure of his life.—He thought he had many years before him, and he had not a single day, for that night his soul was to be called back to the God that made it, and went up to God leaving everything behind it. It went up a meagre, starved soul. He never missed a business appointment, but he was not prepared for the appointment of death. He had taken infinite pains not to be bankrupt, but he ended by being a bankrupt for eternity. He had a good title for earth, he had no title for heaven. He had taken care of this life, but not of the other.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

WHAT THE RICH MAN FORGOT

What is the fault of the man that we might call prudent, but that God calls a fool? Just these two things: first, that he did not at all recognise even, as it were, the existence of a higher life than that which we live here; and secondly, that he did not in the least recognise that sacrifice is the basis of all life. These were the two negations that made this man, with his accumulated wealth, and with his prudential resolves, and with his negative morality, a fool in the eyes of God. Just one word, as it were, about each of them.

I. He did not recognise the higher life.—‘He said within himself,’ that is where we hear the truth; not the explanations we give to others, but what we say within ourselves in the still moments of thought and communion, ‘Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years.’ He thought those things, the bursting granaries and accumulating gains, were things that could feed all the life of a man; he did not recognise that man cannot live by bread alone—whether that bread be the mere material resources that are to support your animal life, or the higher intellectual sources that are to support your intellectual life, but that man must live by every word of God; and he thought there was food for his immortal nature in the things of this life. Oh, there is a hunger and a thirst that nothing on earth can satisfy! There is a hunger and a thirst that only God can satisfy, and there is a life that can only live in God.

II. He did not recognise that sacrifice is the basis of all life.—He had no idea that sacrifice lies at the root of life; that as the cypress is o’er the tomb, so the roots of life are in the grave; he did not read the lesson that was written for him, that ‘Except a grain of seed fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit;’ and his whole idea was not that what was given him was to be dispersed, to bring forth other and greater harvests amongst the perishing children of men, but that it was all to be accumulated. ‘Thou hast much goods laid up, eat, drink, and be merry, and let the world take care of itself’; that was the man’s philosophy, and that is the philosophy of many a man like that man to-day; neglectful of that great principle, that sacrifice, the giving forth of what we have, the giving up even, if need be, of what we are for others, is the art of all life, national life, Church life, individual life. In every case selfish isolation is death, and self-sacrifice is life; not only life for others, but life for ourselves. Let a nation shut itself up in isolation, and it hears the first whispers of its coming doom. Let a church shut itself up, and forget the lessons taught it in the parables of the salt, and of the light, and of the leaven, and that Church is hastening to decay. Let individuals shut themselves up, men or women, and say, ‘Let my country, my Church, take care of themselves; let my neighbours take care of themselves; soul, thou hast much goods laid up, eat, drink, and be merry,’ and such a person is denounced by God as a fool; and in the darkness of the night of that soul’s self-satisfaction its very life shall be required of it.

—
Rev. Canon Teignmouth Shore.