Parables of Grace: The Parables of the Friend at Midnight and the Rich Fool; Surrender is the Key

So, our sermon this morning's following, we're going through different parables of grace during the summer.

Today we have two different parables.

Hopefully, I'll be able to connect them a little bit.

So, Tuesday night was our children's last swim meet.

It was Tuesday night.

Christy was volunteering.

She was a lane, not a lane manager, but like she helped the kids line up.

So she sort of like over all the lanes and she stood back, and a parent would bring their child down to her and sort of deliver the kid to her, and then she would deliver the kid to the right lane in the right spot to make sure the right kid jumps off the block to do the right race.

And so she's constantly making sure all the kids are lined up in the right places.

And so she's interacting with all these different parents and different kids, getting them lined up.

So she tells me this story, she says, this one mom, she didn't know this mom, she didn't know this child.

And this one mom comes down and the mom gets the child just in the right lane, got that right, got the right spot.

And then the mom does what most parents do at this moment.

Says, you know, uh, sweetheart, I'll be walking to the other end of the pool.

It was a little six-year-old girl.

So they're not swimming two ways, just one way.

Sweetheart, I'll be at the other end of the pool.

You know, so so you have nothing to worry about.

I'll be down there, I'll be cheering for you, I'll be, I'll be waiting for you, I'll be down there.

I'm gonna walk down there.

That's normal.

It's usually the end of the conversation, usually the parent leaves at that point.

But this mom did something different.

This mom then knelt down, looked the child right in the face, and said, I love you.

You have nothing to worry about.

I love you before you swim.

Isn't that amazing?

I mean, isn't that amazing?

I mean, what a moment, right, for a parent to give that to her little child.

And do you think this meant the child, ah, I'm not gonna swim at all?

I already got the love, good to go.

Right?

No, of course not.

But it relieved the child.

What an amazing picture of the gospel.

This was good news to this little girl, right?

That her performance had no sway in her mom's love for her.

And I start with that thought because that's the foundation of these parables.

I mean, that's the gospel, that's the good news that in Jesus the love's already settled, right?

Your absolution, your acceptance, all of it is already settled before you do anything, before you perform.

The love is given to you because of Jesus' work for you on the cross, not any work you do.

And so we come into this parable of Luke 11, and so we come into this idea of a good father who gives.

And one guy's asleep, this other guy shows up in need.

He doesn't show up at like 11 a.m.

during Judge Judy when everybody's awake in the world, right?

Like he shows up at midnight, right?

I mean, this is desperation.

You can't get more desperate than knocking on your friend's door in the middle of the night.

I would dare say probably most of us have never done that because I'm not gonna bother them right now.

I'll bother them in the morning.

I'll talk to them in the morning.

Like, most of us have never been to that level of desperation to wake our friend up in the middle of the night because we have some need.

So there's just huge desperation here.

This guy is at the end of his rope.

And here's point number one: life and freedom are found in the surrendering of the self to God.

Life and freedom are found in the surrendering of the self to God, not the assertion of the self apart from God.

That's what Jesus is saying.

He's saying, do you not see, do you not see that you're the guy at the door?

Like, that's the best position for you to be in, is to be the guy at the door.

His need is overriding his concern of image, his need is overriding, you know, I'm the father of friend.

He's he's at a dead end.

That's the persistence, right?

Like, this is the persistence that we see, this persistence in prayer, this knocking, he won't go away.

And it's not for more stuff.

If you look at the context of this whole passage, it's not like ask and you'll get whatever you want.

No, the whole context, right?

You get to the end of it, right?

Verse 11, what father among you, if a son asks for a fish, we'll instead give a fish, give a serpent.

Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion.

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

The context is about life in the spirit.

It's not about getting whatever you want.

I mean, uh, you've probably been like me and tried, right?

Like ask and you'll receive, and you're asking a whole bunch of different stuff, you don't get anything.

Of course you don't get anything.

That's not what this is about.

This is about life in the spirit, which is what the life are really made for.

Now, often we busy ourselves with like some sort of like moral, uh moral deeds or religious behavior to remove our guilt, or some achievement, try to get ourselves to the perfect body size or salary level, and then we won't have shame.

But under that, under that is the desire to be known and to be loved, to be forgiven of sin, the removal of guilt, free from shame, right?

To be to be fully known and to be loved, to be loved before you swim the race.

And that's life in the spirit.

And that's what the kingdom is always about.

And the father gives it to those who desperately stand at the door and knock, and you're so desperate, you don't go away.

It's just an all the time, constant, I need you.

I need you in my life, I need you in this, I don't know what to do with this, I don't know how to handle this, I'm feeling ashamed, I'm afraid, I'm anxious, I feel guilty, I don't know how I'm feeling tempted, I don't know how to have your way with me.

Like it's just a constant need, desperation.

Point number two, our prayers and our life, our prayers are a sharing in the victory of the friend's rising, not the victory of our ability.

Right?

That's how this guy at the door gets anything.

He gets something because the friend rises.

Prayer's not the persistence of our agenda.

That's not what this parable is.

It's about the persistence of our need before God.

So we pray for guidance and wisdom and clarity and direction.

We even pray for healing, right?

And we do all of that with open hands in a position of desperation, of surrender.

Now, if we do that, we begin to understand what to pray for, which is just happens to be the verses right before this, Luke 11, 1 through 4, which is the Lord's Prayer.

So it's like Jesus teaches the Lord's Prayer and He goes, Oh yeah, all right, now let me teach you about the position of your heart when you begin to pray.

See, for you to pray on any consistent basis, will only come if you feel desperate before the Lord, that you actually need them, that you understand that position that you truly are in.

Now we come to the second story, the parable of the rich fool.

Someone yells out in Luke 12, 13, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

And Jesus starts into a parable and he says, to guard against coveting.

Right?

Like that, and coveting is like it's not to envy.

So to envy is like, I really like that.

Like I like your car.

Coveting is I want your car, right?

Like those are two different things.

It's to want what your friend has and take it for yourself, to want your friend's house so they don't have it anymore and you have it.

Like it's to that degree, and you want it.

And Jesus says, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

That's not what life is.

Like you're gonna waste your whole life.

Life doesn't consist in the abundance of your possessions.

You're gonna waste your whole life.

Don't do that.

That hit me this week as I'm driving down the interstate and I see that billboard.

You see them all the time, right?

They said 202 million.

Right?

It was like 196 the day before, and then went to 202, and I don't know if anybody got it last night.

Anybody in here get it last night?

I don't know.

And I didn't buy a ticket, but I'm thinking, I'd like to give that a try.

Like, you know, I mean, I mean, I know the statistics, right?

I mean, we all know the statistics.

Like, you won't win, number one.

Number two, if you do, you'll probably ruin your life, right?

Like it's all the statistics, but I want to I I still go, I'd still like to try it.

I think I can handle it.

Maybe nobody else can.

Because I have a hard time, and I don't know if you're like me, I have a hard time believing a car is just a car.

Or a house is just a house, or a room is just a room, clothing is just clothing.

I always want it to be something more.

I try to use it for more, right?

Like I try to use it to deliver me from my own anxiety or my guilt or my shame.

To be my comforter, to be my functional savior.

That's my sin.

That's your sin.

That's using the abundance of your possessions as a savior.

And then I always need the next one.

That's just that's the trap.

You just always need the next one, and it keeps going.

And maybe you've received your retirement report lately, your savings, and it comes in the mail.

And then in January, we've got so excited every time we open those things, right?

You know what I'm talking about, January and February, we're opening them up.

We're feeling great, we're telling people about it.

It kind of leveled off here in the middle of the year, right?

The Trump bump was over, starts to level off.

And you read it, it's not as exciting.

I found myself not even opening it some months.

Some of you don't care, some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Some of the rest of you, you went to like a party at a friend's in a nicer neighborhood than your own, and you're in the backyard and you look at their shed and kind of the back corner of their yard, and you think, that shed is nicer than my house.

You walk back there and look around it, and you're pretty sure it is nicer.

It is nicer than your house.

Everybody would agree.

Right?

You start to compare barns, right?

And you realize you have like one barn, and then they have 17 barns or 37 barns, and the person, here's the here's the trick of the whole thing.

The person with 37 barns, you have one, they have 37.

The person with 37 seeing somebody with like 102, right?

And then we always just need a few more barns.

Because then, then, then you could eat and drink and be merry.

And the secret is that the entire time you're chasing and managing these barns and another one, life and the spirit of God is available to you to eat and drink and be merry right now.

So Jesus starts to tell this story.

He says, There was a rich guy.

Guy was doing really well for himself.

I mean, it was the revenue was coming in, the crops were coming in.

He had so much he didn't even have enough space.

Right?

Like one bank account at the bank wasn't enough.

That the insurance ran out.

He had to start opening up multiple bank accounts at different banks so they would all be insured, not just one barn, another barn, another barn.

He had to keep going and going, couldn't even keep up with as much that was coming.

So he tears down the small barns, he builds bigger barns, and more crops go in it, right?

Because more and bigger is better.

Right?

I'll be more important if that would happen.

I'll feel safe.

And then I'll be able to do what Luke 12, 19 says.

Soul, you have ample goods for many years.

Relax, eat, drink, be merry.

And Jesus says that this man is foolish.

He says, because you'll get the barns, you'll get the house on Sea Island, the mountain house in Blue Ridge, and you'll get there, and you'll be sitting on your front porch, and you'll be bored.

Or your kids hate you.

Or you still have the shame that drove all of that ambition to get to that.

Or you've never dealt with your sin before God.

And your life had nothing of a richness and a wealth into God's call for you.

See, you can be rich and you can be a fool.

And point number three is this the folly is not having barns.

The folly is thinking the barns will deliver you.

More and better barns cannot save you from the guilt of sin.

Have a barn.

Have more barns.

Save, be wise, give, do all that.

But be rich unto God.

The barns won't save you.

The shame and inadequacy you live in today, the issue of eternal life before God, all of that, barns can't help you.

The folly of this man is he lived his whole life waiting for something and then he gets it.

And what if he dies then?

That's what Jesus says.

What if you just die?

You live your whole life for something out there, but it's always out there.

And then what if you actually got it and you died?

What a waste.

You see, the only rich one is God Himself, who gives wealth to us and then calls us to live a richness in life unto Him.

Two weeks ago, I met a man at Blue Skies Camp.

So Blue Skies is this camp we go and volunteer at.

Our church supports it each year, and we go and I go as a chaplain.

Sam goes and leads worship, and my family goes and we serve.

And so I was there with a handful of other people from our church.

And I sit in these group sessions, so three times during the week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, in the mornings, I sit in a circle with other parents.

And these parents are parents who have a child with cancer.

And I sit in this room with just these parents in a circle.

And these people start to talk.

And the first day they're pretty reserved.

By the second day, they start to warm up.

By the third day, they're pretty much just letting it out.

Then this one guy started to talk.

Let's call him Ron.

Let's call him Ron.

Ron was married, he had two little kids.

They were not rich, they were lower income from a rural town, but they were fine.

They could pay the bills, they could keep up.

And then one of his children got cancer.

Right?

So his dream was demolished.

Wife, two kids, paying the bills, all of that, all of his good.

All of a sudden, his child gets cancer.

They had attended a church, they quit doing that.

The anger took over.

The cycle of hospitals and treatment and watching his son just deteriorate and be sick, and then the treatment upon that.

His wife had to quit work to handle all of it.

So revenue dropped in the family, right?

The barns are going away.

There's no barns left.

Hospital bills mount.

And the entire time he's just watching his kid get sick and be sick.

His son's in recovery now, but here's what he said.

I'm angry all the time.

I'm angry at God and I'm angry at everyone.

My wife and I barely talk.

We never get along.

All I do is pay the bills.

My anger is poisoned to me and is ruining my family.

Now, I can't explain cancer.

And most of the time when I sit in these groups, I don't say anything.

It's just best not to say anything.

But I do know this.

I know from sitting in those groups and watching someone who's angry talk versus someone who has some measure of peace amidst this kind of suffering.

I know that Ron is not showing up at the friend's house at midnight.

That kind of surrender is not in his life yet.

And I told him that.

I said, I think your tight-gripping anger is your last bit of control in your life.

And as soon as you let go of that, you'll be in acceptance and surrender, and you'll know some measure of peace.

I don't know if that worked or many think to him, probably not.

But another guy talked who probably had more validity to actually talk because he was one of the other parents.

And let's call him Jerry.

And Jerry's daughter, she got cancer when she was five years old.

She's had it for 10 years.

She's had 15 surgeries.

She has learned to walk three different times, and now she has no short-term memory.

And he looked at the guy and he said, I was angry too.

I still get angry.

But at some point you accept what is real today.

And he said that he's prayed prayers of anger, he has prayed prayers of celebration, but most important, he has moved into some level of acceptance.

Surrender.

I'm in need.

This is my condition, this is my life, here's what's going on, here's what's going on in my family, here's who I am.

Like this is the thing that gets us at the door at midnight is understanding who we are.

I do not have complete control over my life.

I need the friend in there who has what I need.

And it's not always a cure to cancer.

That would be great.

It's not always an increase of salary or a new house.

A lot of times it's the stuff that's under that, right?

It's the acceptance, it's the absolution, it's the peace, it's the joy, it's the life in the spirit.

See, it's in the surrender, that death of self, in the acceptance of the rising friend, which is Jesus, by the way.

Or you may have one barn, you may have 17, you may have 17, you go back to 13, you go up to 19, you go down to three, right?

Either way, you have the wealth of God if you are his child and surrender to him.

You have the wealth of being the beloved of God, secured in Jesus' work for you, where all of your sin, even all of your anxiety, all your anger, all your love for more barnes, all of that is put upon him, Jesus, and his righteousness.

The way that he perfectly handles control, perfectly handles anger, perfectly handles greed and lust and suffering, the way he perfectly handles that righteousness is put upon you, given to you.

So you are forever, forever the beloved and right standing.

You're the child about to swim.

But the swimming has nothing to do with whether you're loved or not.

You're already loved.

That's the good news that there is a friend who loves you before.

That's what we all want.

To be known and to be loved, for our sin to be handled outside of ourselves.

And God always answers the door to those of us who are desperately surrendered and needing him.

He holds the wealth your soul truly desires.

My brothers and sisters, may you pray with great fervor, persistently, with boldness, and may you be rich unto God, because his love is forever rich to you.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you answered to the door for those of us that are in desperate surrender, and I pray that we would live in that place more, to know and see you as the rising friend.

Forgive us for the ways that we want to take control with our anger, towards circumstance, with our wealth, with achievement, with just us trying to self-effort things in our lives, and the whole time there is underneath a problem.

We're never satisfied without you.

We can never outwork our sin, remove our guilt, be free of our shame.

But you have a wealth of love for us and help us to know it in a greater and greater way.

That would support on our richness unto you.

We pray all things in Jesus.

In his name and his word.

Amen.