Daily Bible Reading 10/23/23

October 23, 2023

    Good afternoon everyone, sorry for the week gap, I was booked all week and couldn't find any time to write, but it's a new week and we are here to start off fresh. Today's reading came from the book of Luke, chapter 12, verse 13-21. The Parable of the Rich Fool: 

    Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions."

    Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!"' But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?' Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God."

    Reading this parable, the message jumps out of you off the bat, don't let greed control your life. We focus so much on making it up in this world that we don't leave time for what's important. This first paragraph of the parable is so amusing to me because the man from the crowd has the opportunity to ask anything he wants, teach him how to be wise, how to love others, how to be a better person overall, but instead he yells at Jesus asking him to make his brother give him half the inheritance XD. Greed truly blinds you from what's important. The response Jesus gave him is just as funny, he pretty much says, why am I handling your personal affairs, it's not up to me, leave me alone. 

    Obviously, Jesus wouldn't stand there and laugh at the poor guy, he instead took this moment and turned it into a lesson. A rich man has a wonderful harvest and decides to tear down his barn to build a bigger one and store all that harvest for years and years to live a comfortable life. The catch is that he's gonna die that same night, and all that harvest is going to go to waste. The first thing we need to realize is that this man is already rich. He has a stable life and doesn't NEED to hold onto this harvest, but he does so due to greed. What happens next is what really makes this greed so sinful, he tears down his barn to make room for a new one. In our lives God provides what we need, not what we want. He will make us a rich man and give us the perfect size barn in our lives, but we let greed trick us into thinking we need more in our lives. What was once a perfect size barn now seems to be too small for our harvest, but the reality is, the harvest isn't for you. The greed ends up making us rip the blessed gift from God just to make our own barn bigger. Do you see how gravely sinful that can be? We are putting our judgment over God's judgment. We can't allow our own greed to influence us like that.

    At the end what did God tell the rich man?  ''You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?'' After denying God's judgment, after deciding that you know what is important in your life instead of God, after being influenced by the sin of greed, it all proves to be meaningless because he was meant to die that very night. All his riches are to sit in that barn to be wasted away instead of being distributed to the poor and needy. We'll never know when our time is to come, if we spend our life possessing over the treasures of the world, planning for the future without living in the present with God, then we'll end up pushing God away and wasting our life. "Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God." At the end of the day, the true treasure we must seek for is God, he will prevail with everything else. Have a good night everyone.