our life now and in so doing
you will both save yourself and those who are influenced by you.
"Therefore, choose you this day whom you will serve."

XVI

A SHREWD FOOL--THE RICH FARMER

_Luke 12:16-21_

"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."

I count with confidence on your interest in this sermon. You will be
interested, in the first place, because the picture that our Lord has
given us in this wonderful story is the picture of a real man. This
farmer is no wax figure. He is no bloodless nonentity. He is
altogether human stuff. And we are interested in real folks.

Then we are interested in this man, in the second place, because he is
successful. We are naturally interested in the people who make good.
If you go out on the street to-morrow and start to tell your friends
how you failed, the chances are that they will turn their backs upon
you to listen to the man, with triumph in his face and victory in his
voice, who is telling how he succeeded. We are great success
worshippers. And the man who wins the prizes of life interests us very
keenly.

But there is a shock for us in the story. The Master calls our shrewd
hero a fool. "Thou fool." That is a harsh and jarring word. It
insults us. It shakes its fist in our faces. It cuts us like a whip.
It offends us. We do not like the ugly name in the least.

"Thou fool." Our Master frowns upon our using such language at all.
He will not trust us with such a sharp sword. He will not suffer us to
hurl such a thunderbolt. He forbids us, under a terrible penalty, to
call our brother a fool. And yet He calls this keen and successful
farmer a fool. And He doesn't do so lightly and flippantly, but there
seems to ring through it scorn and indignation--positive anger, anger
that is all the more terrible because it is the anger