God grant that we may "avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called." With our hearts firmly grounded in the simple truth as it is in Jesus, and laid down in the Volume before us, let us hold fast through God's grace what we have. It is the power, the only power, unto salvation. Amen.
NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
And He spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool! This night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.—Luke 12, 16-21.
It is a serious matter to call any man a fool. It ought never to be done except when circumstances make it imperatively necessary. Christ, you know, employs very strong language in reference to this in the Sermon on the Mount when He says: "Whosoever shall say to his brother: Raca, shall be in danger of the council, but whoever shall say: Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire." But we must bear in mind that our Lord does not condemn the expression "Thou fool" in itself, but rather the spirit in which it is spoken. He does not affirm that it is wrong to say that a fool is a fool, even to his face, but that it is intensely wrong to do so from a feeling of hatred, from spite; and so when God in the words just quoted says to the rich man, "Thou fool," He says so, not because He hated him, but because it was a fact, because He pitied His miserable condition, and because He wishes to deter others from following his example.
To deter others from following his example, by the guidance of God's Holy Spirit, is what we shall attempt to do in our pulpit instruction this morning. Permit me simply and briefly to direct your attention to two points in this striking parable, I. That the rich man spoken of in this parable was in some respects a wise man; II. in some, and the chief respects, a foolish one.
That this man was in some respects a wise man, of this we have sufficient evidence before us. In the first place, he was a rich man. It says: "The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully." It is very often said that anybody can make money, that it requires no extraordinary powers to become rich, that those who have prospered in the world are more indebted to adventitious circumstances than to any merits of their own, and true it is that men without intelligence, without education, without genius, are sometimes, through a favorable combination of circumstances, enabled to accumulate a vast amount of wealth. Yet, as a rule, riches are acquired by those who work hard, who rise early and go to bed late, who devote themselves with untiring energy to the serious business of life. The great law is that "The hand of the diligent maketh rich." Success is a prize which can only be secured by those who diligently seek it. The very fact of this man being rich was in itself a strong proof of his prudence; for the two, riches and good common sense, stand, as a rule, connected.
Again, we are told that the land brought forth plentifully. What did that prove? Anything further than that the land was fertile? It proved that he was a skillful farmer, that he cultivated his land well, that he knew how to make the most of it. For while it is true that the abundance of the harvest depends on many circumstances over which man has no control, such as the refreshing dew, the genial rain, and the life-giving sunshine, so that after man has done his best it is God who must give the increase, we ought also to remember that God invariably observes the laws which He Himself has established: He never causes corn to grow where seed has not been sown; He never makes the uncultivated soil bring forth at the same rate as that which is properly tilled; the smiles of Providence and the help of God do not attend the indolent, and the careless and thoughtless. If a man would reap abundantly, he must sow abundantly, use the brains God has given him, and conform to God's laws; and so, when the land brings forth plentifully, it is a proof that it belongs to a skillful and prudent farmer.
And he was careful of his goods. He thought within himself: "What shall I do because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?" There was nothing wrong in this thinking, planning, and contriving. It would have been an unpardonable negligence on his part to let the corn rot in the fields for want of sufficient room to store it in, and it would have been hardly natural to expect him to distribute that for which he had no room among the poor. Doubtless it is the duty of those who are very prosperous to be also very liberal; according as they receive from God, so ought they contribute to God's institutions. But God nowhere commands them to give away all they have to spare after supplying their own immediate wants. Men are perfectly justified in storing up for the future, in laying aside, and allowing to increase what they have no need of at the present. And it's the part of a thoughtful man who likes to make the most of his advantages and opportunities so to do.