The Grove Church

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail dig into Luke 12 and one of Jesus' most pointed parables — the Rich Fool. It starts with a guy in the crowd interrupting Jesus mid-sermon to settle a family inheritance dispute. Jesus' response: "Man, who appointed me your judge?" And then, just to make sure nobody's comfortable, he turns to the whole crowd and says: watch out for greed. Life is not about what you own.

What follows is a parable that sounds completely reasonable at first. A farmer has a great harvest, runs out of storage, tears down his old barns, builds bigger ones, and plans to finally relax. Dave Ramsey would approve. But God calls him a fool.

Charlie and Abigail work through what's actually being indicted here — because it's not wealth, and it's not even the barns. It's the orientation of an entire life around acquiring and securing things for yourself while never asking what it means to be "rich toward God." That strange, deliberately awkward phrase Jesus uses — and what it demands from anyone who hears it.

Honest, a little uncomfortable, and surprisingly relevant to anyone who has ever quietly planned around money more than they've planned around anything else.