Daily Bible Reading 17th September 2026 // Luke 12:13-21
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of one's possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.”
It is the context and background of this parable which highlight its real message and significance, although of course it can also stand on its own as a forthright challenge on eternal issues. Our Lord's theme in the previous verses has been discipleship and the need for living with eternity's values in view; but here was a man whose mind was very much on other matters, and who had so slight an interest in what was being said that he could break in at such an inopportune moment with his request to Jesus to bid his brother divide the inheritance with him. This is the force of the parable and its real point: it was told by our Lord because here was a man who gave himself away as being so preoccupied and obsessed with the material that he had become utterly unreceptive to the things of the Spirit. The man may well have had a case, for injustice may well have been done; but Jesus refused to countenance his request. For preoccupation with even a just grievance, especially in view of the subject of Christ's teaching, and the emphasis He was making in it, really put the man into the class of the Rich Fool. We should particularly take note of the fact that Jesus deliberately introduced the dimension of eternity into what was, for the man, an ordinary situation! This is surely something as relevant today as then. And Christ's point in 15 is clear: Better to be a victim of injustice than to fall into the error of thinking that abundance of life is to be found in material possessions (cf 1 Corinthians 6:7, 8).