The Folly of Storing Earthly Instead of Heavenly Treasure

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

In the parable of Luke 12, the rich man has an abundant fruitful harvest. In an interior monologue, he asks himself: “What shall I do…?” He replies to himself that he will tear down his old barns and build new and larger barns to store his harvest and goods so that he can “have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!” And yet G-d Yahuwah, speaking to the rich man in Luke 12, says, “You fool (Aphrōn), this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Yahushua ends the parable saying, “Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in Yahuwah.”⁵³ The unwise or foolish rich man has placed his faith and future in the things of the earth and when death comes upon him, what good will these earthly treasures have for him? These earthly treasures (or credits) will not matter when one is in the debt of sin because of the rich man’s faith in the power of wealth and possessions. He will not be rich in Yahuwah but only rich in himself with no heavenly treasures available to him in his time of need.

Three minor features of this story are worth attending to because of their repetition in the Lukan Gospel. First, the land of the rich man has produced an abundant/fruitful harvest. This should remind one of John the Baptist in Luke 3 and his discussion of producing good fruit and the saying from the Sermon on the Plain about where good fruit comes from. Second, the rich man asking himself, “What shall I do?” echoes the crowds in Luke 3:10: “What then shall we do?”⁵⁴ To which John the Baptist urged the crowd to share their possessions. And third, this desire for more and larger barns expresses the deep-seated greed and impurity present in the Pharisees of Luke 11 and how such greed makes them “fools” and “unclean” from within. The earthly wealth sought for by the rich barn owner and the Pharisees represents an earthly credit for which there is no heavenly return when they live lives filled with greed and impurity. For Bovon, “The failure of the human project [of the rich man] confirms the guilty intention” in that the rich man’s life will be taken away and his desire for new larger storehouses was not only misguided but sinful. The rich man, in this parable, “symbolizes the attitude that should not be adopted … he should have been making donations to others rather than hoarding. Yahuwah gave, but this person refused to share.” Yahushua’s concern for greed, impurity, and misplaced faith does not end in verse 21.