Rich Toward God
Rich Toward God: Where True Security Is Found
Luke 12:13-21
Introduction
If I asked you tonight, "Are you secure?", what would come to mind first? Perhaps it's whether the mortgage is under control, whether the visa is in order, whether the superannuation balance is on track, and whether the kids' school fees are covered. And if you're a young adult still working it out, it might be whether you've landed the right job, the right course, the right relationship, the right five-year plan.
Notice something. Almost all of us measure our security by something we can see, plan for, or work toward. None of those things is wrong to think about. But underneath all of them, there's often a quieter question we don't say out loud: if I had all of that, would I finally feel safe? Would I finally have secured my future?
That's exactly the question Jesus is confronted with in Luke 12. A man interrupts him, mid-sermon, with a very ordinary, very relatable problem, a family inheritance dispute. And Jesus' response takes us somewhere none of us really wants to go: into our own hearts, and what we're actually trusting to keep us safe.
Let's read together, Luke 12:13-21 (ESV)
The Parable of the Rich Fool
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”
15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully,
17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’
18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.
19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’
20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
This passage isn't really about money. It's about what we do with our hearts when we have or don't have, what we want. And Jesus is going to show us, through a request, a warning, and a story, exactly where true security is found.
1. Never enough (vv. 13-15)
A man in the crowd interrupts Jesus: "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." (V.13). It's not an unreasonable request on the surface. Inheritance disputes are as old as families themselves. But notice Jesus' response. He doesn't take the bait. "Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?" (v.14). And then he goes further than the man ever asked him to: "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (v.15).
Jesus refuses to referee the money dispute, not because fairness doesn't matter, but because he can see something underneath the request that matters far more. The word used here for "covetousness" is the Greek word pleonexia. It doesn't just mean "wanting money." It is described as an appetite for more, a restless, acquisitive craving that's never actually satisfied by getting what it wants, or, biblically, as an internal obsession that takes the place of God. In Colossians 3:5 and Ephesians 5:3, covetousness is explicitly defined as idolatry because the pursuit of "more" becomes the ultimate object of worship. Janwillem van de Wetering described greed this way: "Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth, and whatever you feed it is never enough." That's pleonexia, you feed it, and it just gets hungrier.
You've probably seen this described more simply and honestly in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (an old comic strip published from 1985 to 1995 about the friendship between 6-year-old Calvin and his best friend, a tiger named Hobbes). Calvin tells Hobbes, "Getting is better than having." When you get something, it's new and exciting. When you have something, you take it for granted, and it's boring. Hobbes points out, "But everything you get turns into something you have." And Calvin's answer says it all: "That's why you always need to get new things." That's pleonexia in a six-panel comic strip. The moment we finally get what we wanted, it stops satisfying us, and we're already looking for the next thing.
And here's what's confronting: Jesus says, "Be on guard against all kinds of covetousness." Not just the greed of the wealthy. Both brothers in this dispute were probably guilty of it, one for hoarding, one for demanding his share. It doesn't matter which side of "having" or "not having" you're on. The have-nots want what they don't have. The haves want more of what they already have. Nobody's exempt.
So where does this show up for us? Maybe not inheritance disputes, but the scroll through property listings, car listings, branded goods that we can't afford yet, wondering if we'll ever get there. The comparison when someone's visa or citizenship is approved, and ours isn't. The quiet resentment when a friend's business takes off, while ours stalls. The pressure to have the wedding, the car, the job title that says "I've made it." It's not that wanting a stable life is sinful since Jesus doesn't condemn having things. But, He's naming something deeper: a heart that believes if I just had that, I'd finally be okay. That belief is the trap, and it never delivers.
Here's what's remarkable, though: the one issuing this warning had every right to grasp, and didn't. Jesus, who owned everything, who spoke galaxies into being, didn't cling to what was his. Paul tells us in Philippians 2:6-7 that though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, the very opposite of pleonexia. Jesus isn't just warning us from a distance. He's showing us, in his own life, what it looks like to hold everything loosely, because his security never depended on what he had.
So tonight, what would it look like to loosen your grip on one thing? Don't necessarily give it away, just stop asking it to be your security. Because if Jesus, who had everything, didn't need to hold onto it, maybe that's a clue that we don't need to either.
2. Bigger Barns, Same Fear (vv. 16-20)
Jesus tells a parable. "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, 'I 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." (v.16-18).
On paper, this man has done everything right. He didn't cheat anyone. He didn't inherit his wealth or exploit workers to get it. His land simply produced well, and he planned wisely for the surplus. By every measure the world uses, he's a success story. But look closely at how Jesus tells it. In just a few verses, the man refers to himself, his crops, his barns, his goods, his soul, again and again. He's having an entire conversation with no one but himself. He asks himself a question and answers it himself. There isn't a single thought in this man's mind for the people around him who have nothing, and there isn't a single thought for God, who's the one who actually gave the harvest in the first place.
That's why the commentators describe him with words like thankless, self-absorbed, presumptuous. But one-word cuts closest to home: anxious. "What shall I do?" isn't the voice of a settled man. It's the voice of someone quietly panicking underneath a life that looks, from the outside, completely secure. He has more than enough, and he's still consumed by how to protect it, manage it, and make sure it lasts. That's the irony Jesus wants us to sit with. More wasn't the answer to his anxiety. More was the anxiety.
I know what that feels like from the other side. Not long ago, my own life looked stable in exactly the way this man's did. Steady income, full-time hours, a career I'd worked hard to build. And then within a matter of months, my hours were cut, other work dried up, and doors I tried to open just didn't move. What I discovered underneath that season wasn't just financial stress. It was realising how much of my peace had quietly been resting on that income and that title, not on God. The fool in this story never had to lose his barns to be exposed. I did.
He was self-indulgent, too. His plan for all this security was to "relax, eat, drink, be merry," to finally enjoy life on his own terms. And he was presumptuous, assuming he had years ahead of him to spend them. But God says to him that very night, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" The man's real problem was never storage space. His real problem was that he had built an entire life plan with no room in it for God, as though he would live forever and never have to answer to anyone.
Here's the honest question underneath all our own versions of barn building, whether that's career progression, superannuation balance, property, or simply working hard to finally feel secure: are we storing up trust in ourselves, or trust in God? Jesus isn't condemning planning or saving. He's exposing what's easy to miss: that none of it can actually give us the one thing we're really after, which is peace for our souls.
This is exactly the condition Jesus came to undo. He didn't come to scold anxious people from a distance. He came to carry the very anxiety this man was drowning in. Jesus himself, in the garden of Gethsemane, was "sorrowful, even to death," anxious in a way none of us will ever fully know, and he walked into that anxiety willingly so that we wouldn't have to carry ours alone. If that's the lie, that life and security are found in what we've built and stored, then here's the truth: life is found in Jesus. He says of himself, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Not barns. Not balances. Him.
So what have you been quietly trusting to keep you safe? Not in theory, but actually, tonight. Whatever it is, Jesus is inviting you to bring that anxiety to him rather than manage it yourself.
So if storing up treasure for ourselves is the fool's path, what's the alternative? Jesus doesn't just leave us with a warning and a diagnosis. He gives us a completely different way to live.
3. Truly Rich (Security in God Alone) (v. 21)
Jesus closes the parable with one line: "So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." (v.21)
Notice what this verse doesn't say. It doesn't say the problem is having wealth. It doesn't say only rich people need to hear this. This command is for everyone, for the person with a full bank account and the person still paying off HECS debts, for the family with the house and the family still renting, for the retiree and the twenty-five-year-old just starting out. The issue was never how much the man had. The issue was his heart's posture toward what he had. Was he holding it as his own, or holding it as a gift, given by God, to be used for God?
That word "rich toward God" is worth sitting with. It means something like this. When God's glory matters more to you than your own comfort. When you'd rather give generously than build bigger barns. When your first thought about what you've been given is gratitude and generosity, not protection and accumulation. Being rich toward God isn't a financial strategy. It's a completely different way of seeing everything you have.
Earlier this year, the co-founder of the cosmetics brand e.l.f., Scott Borba, gave away his multi-million-dollar fortune to enter the Catholic priesthood. He'd helped build one of the most recognisable beauty brands in the world, but he later said that even at the height of it, he experienced what he called a "sudden loss of joy." He described his old life, despite all the success, as spiritually empty. Whatever we make of the particular path he chose, his story is a striking, modern echo of exactly what Jesus is exposing in this parable. It's possible to have every barn full, every measure of success the world offers, and still be starving underneath.
And here's where the whole passage turns from a warning into good news. Jesus calls us away from such poverty of soul to be rich toward the God who has been so rich toward us. Think about what that means. God hasn't just given us physical things, food, shelter, the ordinary blessings of life. He has given us the far greater gift of his own Son. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 8:9, ‘that though Jesus was rich, for our sake he became poor, so that we, through his poverty, might become rich’. The rich fool tried to secure his own life and lost it that very night. Jesus, by contrast, gave up everything, his glory, his comfort, his very life on a cross, so that we could actually become rich toward God, not by what we accumulate, but by what he has already given us in himself.
This is where that season of losing my hours and my income actually became a gift, not a punishment (it took a while for me to realise this). God wasn't stripping things away from me to make my life harder. He was stripping away the props I had quietly been leaning on, so I would finally ask the question this passage asks. Was I resting in him, or in my job title and my pay slip? I couldn't answer that honestly until those things were gone. And what I found underneath wasn't emptiness. It was grace that had been there the whole time, grace I hadn't needed to earn or protect, because it was never mine to secure in the first place. That's what being rich toward God actually feels like. Not less, but a different kind of wealth altogether, one that can't be repossessed, cut, or lost overnight.
So the invitation tonight isn't "try harder to be generous" or "manage your money better," although those things matter. It's this. Because you are already secure in Christ, who became poor so you could become rich, you are free. Free to hold your job, your savings, your house deposit, your future-plans, with open hands instead of clenched fists. Not because they don't matter, but because they were never meant to carry the weight your soul was asking them to carry.
Implications
Let me draw a few concrete threads out of what we've just walked through, particularly for where a lot of us are actually living.
a. For those still building, still chasing the first home, the stable visa status, the qualification, the promotion: this passage isn't telling you those things are wrong to want. It's asking whether your peace is waiting on the other side of getting them, or whether you can hold the waiting itself with open hands, trusting God with the timeline.
b. For those who already have some measure of security, a home, a stable job, a growing super balance: this passage asks a harder question. Has that security quietly become the thing you actually trust more than the God who gave it to you? Would you notice if it had?
c. And for anyone in a season like the one I described, where the props have been kicked out from under you through no choice of your own: this passage is not condemnation. It's an invitation to discover what was actually holding you together the whole time.
Practically, being rich toward God might look like reviewing your giving, not as an obligation, but as an act of trust. It might look like naming, honestly, in prayer, the one thing you're quietly leaning on instead of God. It might look like a family conversation about whether your lifestyle reflects generosity or accumulation.
Closing
The rich fool built his whole life around a lie, that security could be stored up in barns. That night, he lost everything. But if we're honest, his story is really our story too, because underneath his fear of not having enough, there's an even deeper problem this parable is exposing. Ever since humanity first disobeyed God, our hearts have been searching for something to tell us we're valuable, something to tell us we're accepted. And so we look for it in beauty, in achievement, in the approval of others, in how much we own. We were designed to find our worth in God, but our sinful hearts settled for cheaper substitutes, and we've been chasing human appreciation instead of God's approval ever since. That's why it's no surprise that our hearts are so easily enslaved by the world's standard of value, measuring ourselves and each other by how wealthy, how successful, how impressive we appear.
But here's the beauty of the gospel. God didn't leave us enslaved to that standard. He came to free us from it entirely. And he did it in the most unexpected way possible. On the cross, Jesus was not valued by any of the standards we use. He wasn't wealthy. He wasn't admired for his appearance. Instead, he was mocked, rejected, and considered utterly unworthy, treated as the very opposite of everything the world calls valuable. Why would God allow that? So that sinners like you and me, who have spent our whole lives grasping for worth in all the wrong places, could be fully accepted and restored before an almighty God. Through his death and resurrection, God doesn't just forgive our sin. He gives us an entirely new identity, one that isn't measured by barns, bank balances, or how the world sees us, but by the fact that we belong to him.
And from that new identity, something changes in us. A heart that's found its true riches in God begins to grow in love, wisdom, faithfulness, and humility, and becomes a genuine blessing to the people around it, rather than a heart still anxiously building barns for itself. That's the security the rich fool never found, and it's the security Jesus offers freely tonight. Not wealth that can be lost overnight, but an identity in him that can never be taken away.
Discussion questions:
- What struck you the most from the sermon?
- What are you currently trusting to make you feel secure, and what would it look like to bring it to God instead?
- Are there things in your life that God might be inviting you to hold more loosely, or give away?
- How does the gospel enable you to be rich toward God?