Thank you very much, it's a great privilege
to be allowed to share the best news
in all the world with you this morning.
Before I do that I would like to
express gratitude on behalf of my dear wife
Mrs. G and her board for the support
of this congregation.
In the missionary work of Bible Stories Alive,
you can read about it on the web,
visitwithmrsg.org, you can listen to the program
every Saturday morning on Joy Radio and on
WDCX 99.5 on the dial at 11
.15. We are tremendously grateful for the support
of this church and I'm sure my wife
would like to express thanks to every one
of you.
The mail comes in from some 200 countries,
it's vast.
And the other morning Mrs. G, when she
was reading the mail, came to my desk
which is near hers and said, would you
read this?
It was a letter from a lady, a
supporter of the ministry in Oshawa.
She is, I believe, in her mid-80s,
85, and she has been a Christian for
over 70 years.
During those 70 years she has prayed and
tried again and again to win her sister
to the Lord, with no success.
But some days prior to her writing this
letter to Mrs. G, she had very good
news.
Her sister, who is 94, phoned her and
said, I have good news for you.
I have now become a Christian.
I have been listening to Charles Price on
Living Truth.
I don't suppose you have an idea concerning
the outreach of that ministry.
Last year, I think it was, I had
the privilege of preaching here and the program
was televised.
And I was just astonished that wherever I
went, I met people who were not believers
who said, I listen to you, I listen
to Charles Price.
The outreach is enormous.
Charles Price is God's gift to this church
and to this whole city and the greater
Toronto area.
And because he is so gifted in the
proclamation of the Lord's Word and is being
so widely used, it follows that he will
be a special target of Satan.
I've not been in the ministry as long
as I have without recognizing the reality of
satanic attack.
And I would urge you to pray lovingly
and consistently for this very special servant of
the Lord, that God will protect him, keep
him at the feet of the Lord Jesus,
and speak to him through his word that
he may speak in living tones of the
Savior's voice.
Pray for him.
And I'm so happy, and my wife is,
and my family, that you have the benefit
of his ministry from time to time.
We are turning this morning to Luke's Gospel
chapter 12 and reading verses 13 to 21.
Luke's Gospel chapter 12, verses 13 to 21.
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher,
tell my brother to divide the inheritance with
me.
Jesus replied, Man, who appointed me a judge
or an arbiter between you?
Then he said to them, Watch out.
Be on your guard against all kinds of
greed.
A man's life does not consist in the
abundance of his possessions.
And Jesus told this parable.
The ground of a certain rich man produced
a good crop.
He thought to himself, What shall I do?
I have no place to store my crops.
Then he said, This is what I will
do.
I will tear down my barns and build
bigger ones, and there I will store all
my grain and my goods.
And I'll say to myself, You have plenty
of good things laid up for many years.
Take life easy.
Eat, drink, and be merry.
But God said to him, You fool.
This very night your life will be demanded
from you.
Then who will get what you have prepared
for yourself?
This is how it will be with anyone
who stores up things for himself and is
not rich toward God.
It's rude to interrupt a person when he
is speaking.
The Lord Jesus is speaking to his disciples
on the beach, on the north shore of
the Sea of Galilee, with thousands upon thousands
of people listening in, the crowd, the uncommitted
crowd.
Jesus is speaking to his disciples with this
crowd listening in.
He tells his disciples that they will soon
face persecution, and he tells them what to
do.
Don't fear men who can only kill the
body.
Fear God who has the authority to cast
into hell.
Anyone who acknowledges me publicly before men will
be acknowledged by the Son of Man before
the angels.
Anyone who denies me will be denied in
the last day.
You have nothing to fear from men.
God will take complete care of you.
The Holy Spirit will give you every word
that you need to say.
That's what Jesus said to his disciples on
the eve of persecution.
There was one man in the crowd who
wasn't in the least bit interested in heaven
and hell and judgment and God's care and
the testimony of the Holy Spirit.
He had more urgent things on his mind.
Cows, sheep, goats, barn, land, wheat and barley.
His father had died and his brother, older
brother, the executor of the will, had not
done the right thing by him, so he
thought.
He had not given him what he ought
to have.
So now he rudely interrupts the Lord Jesus
in the middle of his instruction to his
disciples.
Rabbi, he says, teacher, tell my brother to
share the inheritance with me, to give me
more.
But Jesus said, no, I'm not a licensed
rabbi to settle family property disputes.
And then the Lord turned now to this
great crowd.
And it's so important for us as we
follow the rest of the story to remember
that this is not being said to the
disciples.
It's being said to the crowd, the uncommitted
crowd.
And now the Lord Jesus, from being teacher
to his disciples, takes on the role of
being evangelist to lost people.
And he turns to them and he says
to them, watch out, be on your guard
against every form of greed.
Greed is simply the lust to get more
and more and more.
And the Lord warns the disciples of this
because, I'm sorry, warns the crowd of this
because humans so easily get deluded.
Some years ago, when I had the privilege
of being a pastor and a regular congregation,
we had from time to time a lady
who visited the congregation who believed that she
was Eve.
She was the mother of the human race.
And as the mother of the human race,
she would write me long letters telling me
what I ought to preach and how I
ought to preach.
She was deluded.
Other people are deluded thinking they're Adam, their
father of the human race, and some Abram
Lincoln, and some even the Lord Jesus himself.
Now, psychotic people are subject to delusions.
But sane people are also subject to delusions.
And unconverted people who have not been illumined
by the Spirit of God are subject to
this particular delusion.
The Lord says to them, watch out, be
on your guard against this lust to have
more and more.
What delusion?
The delusion that surplus equals security.
For the Lord Jesus said, a man's life
does not consist of, does not depend upon,
the abundance of his possessions.
Or as another translation puts it, a man's
life is not made secure by what he
owns even when he has more than he
needs.
Now, that's a delusion that unconverted people who
belong to the crowd so easily fall into.
A husband and wife are so anxious to
save money.
They don't spend.
They pay off the mortgage quickly.
They save what money they can in the
bank and invest it in order that they
will be able to retire with what is
called a competence, that they will have an
income to live comfortably on.
And if it happens that a rich relative
dies and leaves the fortune, or if they
won the lottery with five million dollars, hip
hip, hooray.
Now I am, we are safe.
We are secure.
That's a delusion, said the Lord Jesus.
Because all the money in the world will
not offer you security as you face the
two inescapable realities of life.
Every human being on planet earth must face
two inescapable realities.
And our Lord's great concern is security in
the face of those inescapable realities.
These are put very simply in the Bible
as you know.
It is appointed unto man once to die
and after that the judgment.
Two appointments every human being must face.
There's no way in which we can avoid
death and judgment to come.
And Jesus says all the money and all
the property in the world will give you
no security against those two inevitable and solemn
realities.
Then Jesus tells this story, the story about
a man who was a prosperous farmer, who
had bumper harvest.
The ground of a certain rich man produced
a good crop.
He had a problem.
He thought to himself, what shall I do?
I have no place to store my crops.
I have no place for permanent storage.
Because he was looking for long-term storage.
And as you know, you can store wheat
and barley and other commodities long term.
Joseph did that when he built those warehouses
in Egypt.
And this man, in addition to his grain,
was going to store other things.
Maybe his grapes in terms of raisins and
wine.
Maybe his olives in terms of olive oil.
Maybe figs and dates.
But he'd got wealth and he wanted to
store it long term.
How would he solve the problem?
He solved it.
He says, this is what I will do.
I will tear down my barns and build
bigger ones and there I will store long
term all my grain and my goods.
Big warehouses which would be vermin proof, which
would be ventilated, which would be dry and
there would be long-term storage for his
wealth.
And now the psychological response to the solution?
He saw the whole thing done and he
said, now I can give good news to
myself.
And he talks to himself.
I'll say to myself, you have plenty of
goods laid up for many years.
Now take your ease, relax, eat, drink and
be merry.
Fun, fun, fun.
No work.
And he goes home that night very pleased
with himself, saying to himself, I've done it.
I've achieved my goal, security.
Nothing can rob me and ruin me now.
No plague, no pests, no bad weather, no
collapse in the markets.
I'm so rich.
Nothing can ruin me.
Congratulations to me.
Well done, boy.
Well done.
You are secure.
And then he went home and he had
his supper and he went to bed and
he fell asleep purring these sweet thoughts concerning
his success and his security.
What a happy time he was going to
have in this long retirement that spread out
in front of him.
And then in the middle of the night
he woke up.
What's that?
Who's speaking?
Now he's wide awake.
It wasn't a dream.
It was a real voice.
A voice he hadn't heard before, perhaps.
Certainly a voice he hadn't heard for a
long time.
You see, he'd been so busy making money,
preparing for his long retirement, he had no
time to listen to that voice.
But now he had to listen.
God, was speaking to him.
And God said to him, you fool.
I'm not a fool.
My wife thinks I'm a very wise man.
And my neighbors do.
And my fellow farmers do.
I'm a first-class farmer.
I can detect the weather and I understand
the soil and I know when to buy
and when to sell.
And I'm a good money manager.
I'm no fool.
But God knew that.
And God was not suggesting that he was
a conventional fool.
He was suggesting that he was a fool
in a much more serious sense.
He was a tragic fool.
He was a fool in the sense of
Psalm 14, verse 1.
The fool has said in his heart, there
is no God.
He was an atheist.
Now, not a formal atheist.
He might have gone to the synagogue and
repeated the creed.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker
of heaven and earth.
He was a practicing atheist.
A fool, according to the scriptures, is a
man who does not acknowledge God.
A man who does not depend upon God.
A man who thinks of himself as being
autonomous, doing his own thing, able to manage
his own affairs without any help from anybody
else.
He was a practicing atheist.
And I want to suggest to you that
many in the crowds of today are practicing
atheists.
When you read what he says here, you
can tell what his creed was, the creed
of a practicing atheist.
What does he believe in?
First, I believe that everything I have belongs
to me.
He talks about I, I, I, my, my,
my, my barns, my crops, my.
It's mine.
Wrong.
Where did he get strength from and skill
from to be a successful farmer?
Where did he get the soil from?
Did he manufacture it?
Where did he get the seed from?
Where did he get the sunshine from and
the rain?
Did you learn that little rhyme?
Back of the loaf is the flour.
Back of the flour, the mill.
Back of the mill, the rain.
The wind and the shower and the sun
and the Father's will.
What do we sing at harvest festival time?
All good gifts around us are sent from
heaven above.
It's not true.
The very breath that we bear, as the
scripture says, what have you got that you
did not first receive?
And if you first received it, why do
you boast as if it were not a
gift?
Everything is a gift.
And a man who thinks this is all
my own work deserves the name God gave
him, a fool, out of touch with reality.
Point number two.
I believe that everything I have belongs to
me for my own enjoyment.
What's he concerned about?
The poor in the community?
No.
The surplus is for his own enjoyment.
That's his problem.
I'm looking for long-term storage.
There was plenty of storage, as someone put
it, in the stomachs of the hungry.
But he wasn't interested in that kind of
storage.
He was only interested in storage that would
enable him to enjoy what he had.
He says, take it easy now.
Relax now.
Enjoy yourself.
Eat, drink, and be merry.
Wrong.
The scripture says very clearly, let every man
work.
There shouldn't be any idle rich people around.
And the fact that a person has got
enough to live on doesn't mean to say
that he should be idle for the rest
of his days.
In Ephesians chapter five, the scripture says very
clearly, every man should labor, doing honest work.
For what reason?
That he may have something to give to
the needy.
As John Wesley put it, earn as much
as you can, to save as much as
you can, to give as much as you
can.
Surplus is not for self-indulgence.
Surplus is for sharing.
Fool.
I believe that everything I have is for
my own enjoyment for a long time.
And he saw these golden years stretching before
him.
He and his wife were going to have
a great time just enjoying their money and
what it could buy for them.
And God said, you fool.
To continue this message, please turn to side
two.