19And I will say to my soul, a“Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; beat, drink, and be merry.” ’
20But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night ayour soul will be required of you; bthen whose will those things be which you have provided?’
21“So is he who lays up treasure for himself, aand is not rich toward God.”
Do Not Worry
22 Then He said to His disciples, “Therefore I say to you, ado not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on.
23Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.
24Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and aGod feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?
25And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
In Luke 12:13-21, a listener in the crowd surrounding Jesus asks Him to instruct his brother to divide the inheritance due to him equitably. Jesus declines, saying that life should not be based on having many possessions. He uses this occasion to teach His disciples that a godly life is more important than material things. To explain this, He tells a parable about a rich man who builds larger and larger barns to store all his crops and goods.
Since he had everything he could possibly want or need, the rich man's focus was on living an easy life. God's response is that the man was foolish because, when he died later that night, his goods would do nothing for him. Someone else would inherit and enjoy them. A person whose life is caught up in what he owns is not rich toward God. The Parable of the Rich Fool illustrates Jesus' teaching to guard against every kind of covetousness.
This phrase "not rich toward God" summarizes human folly and the error of thinking one does not need God. A person who "is not rich toward God" lives to accumulate and enjoy wealth only to die with nothing permanent or eternal to show for his efforts. Godly living—and all that God esteems to be true riches—is eternal. To think of life only in terms of physical things is both foolish and fatal because life is not comprised and enhanced even by abundant material possessions but by spiritual and eternal things (James 2:5). If we place God first rather than the accumulation of wealth, then we will use whatever He allows us to have, no matter how little or how much, to glorify Him (I Corinthians 10:31).
