One hundred years ago a man named Oskar was born in Germany
who would change the face of history for more than a thousand people. In his
mid-twenties, after starting several businesses, he went bankrupt. But then in
1939, with the help of the Third Reich, he gained ownership of a factory in
Poland and began making a profit. The first thing he did was hire a Jewish
accountant named Stern and together they began to make some serious money.
Within three years, he was spending it as fast as he made it. You say, “On
what? Homes?” No. “Perks?” No. People! He began buying people. He’d go to the
commandants of the German concentration camps and offer bribes and payoffs to
buy Jewish prisoners to work in his factory. Sometimes the price would be
meager, other times it would be exorbitant. Either way he’d pay it. By the end
of the year he had spent his entire fortune buying as many people as he could.
By the end of the war he had risked both life and fortune buying 1,100 Jewish
men and women, boys and girls, and sparing them from certain death.
When the last scene of Schindler’s
List was aired twenty-two years ago on NBC, the television audience was as
large as the first moon landing, some sixty million people. There, standing
before his factory full of workers, Oskar Schindler announces the war is over,
the Nazis are defeated, and everyone is free to go. And as he bids them
farewell, he’s overcome by emotion. He cries out, “I should have done more! If
only I had not wasted so much money. I could have done more!” He looks over at
his automobiles and says, “I could have traded one of those for another ten
lives.” He looks down at a small gold pin on his lapel and says, “I could have
given them this and saved at least one more life.” And at that moment Schindler
realizes something that most of us never realize – the difference between life
and death is often just a matter of money. And, nowhere is that any clearer
than in Jesus’ parable of the rich fool.
Of all the Gospel writers, none is more acutely aware of the
power of money than Dr. Luke. In fact, as you read through his Gospel in one
sitting (or maybe two) you quickly see that Luke has a rich/poor theme running
all the way through it. And that stands to reason, for of all the things Luke
knows about the Gospel and the culture into which it is preached, he knows it’s
all a matter of the heart and its affections.
Think of it. Here in Luke 12 Jesus is surrounded by
thousands of people who are listening to His words. But, interestingly instead
of focusing on the crowd, Jesus is addressing His disciples. He’s talking about
the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who say one thing in private and do another in
public. He’s talking about the difference between pleasing people and pleasing
God. He’s talking about their willingness to stand up for the Son of Man in the
midst of a hostile, religious world. When you review verse 1 through 12 you see
that it’s all weighty matters that occupy Jesus’ attention; and at the root of
it all is a passion for the lordship of Christ. But suddenly in the midst of
this sobering teaching, Luke says someone in the crowd interrupts with a
self-serving demand, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with
me.”
Talk about a non sequitur! Talk about cognitive dissonance!
But when you take a step back and analyze what Jesus says in response to this
demand you find that there is perfect symmetry between what He says in verses
1-12 and what he says in verses 13-21. Here Jesus is talking about money – the
very thing that is the master of most hearts. Here in a few verses Jesus
enumerates three ways in which money can capture our hearts and make fools out
of us.
In preparation for Sunday’s message entitled, “Fools and
Their Money” you may wish to consider the following:
- What evidence can you find of the rich/poor theme in the Gospel of Luke?
- What significance is there to Luke’s description of crowd size in verse 1?
- Why does this man interrupt Jesus in verse 12?
- What leads him to think Jesus can help him get what he wants?
- What does Jesus’ warning in verse 15 imply?
- Why is the parable of the rich man so apropos to us?
- Where do these thoughts come from?
- What does the frequency of personal pronouns in verses 17-19 signal?
- What does his desire to hoard signal?
- What does his mention of his soul in verse 19 signal? How does that differ from what David says to his soul in Psalm 103?
