Sexagesima

Luke 8:4-15

February 8, 2026

This is the second time I’ve made this particular mistake. A few years ago I bought a book by Victor Davis Hanson called Who Killed Homer? Since we have a wonderful classical school, I try to periodically read books on classical education, and the subtitle seemed to say it was: “The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom.” But the book was about how classics departments at American universities are captivated by LGBTQ ideology, and PhD candidates write dissertations with titles like, “Marxist Postcolonial Genderqueer Themes in The Odyssey.” I’m glad I read the book, but it wasn’t what I thought I was getting.

I made the same kind of mistake last month. I read the book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. I thought the book was going to be about investing for retirement, and drawdown strategies. Nope, it wasn’t about that at all, other than the suggestion to buy annuities.

Perkins wants you to spend all your money because money represents “life energy,” and you should spend your energy on “maximizing life enjoyment” and “positive experiences.” And he says you should spend all your money while you still can enjoy it. Some of that is common sense. You can’t spend the summer riding trains around Europe when you have little kids. And you’ll enjoy traveling more when you are still in good health.

But the key philosophy underlying the book is that life is the sum of your experiences. It’s a refined Epicureanism for late-stage America: instead of wealth management, its wealth enjoyment.

This idea—that life is the sum of your experiences, so have as many positive experiences as soon as you can—perfectly encapsulates the spirit of our age. The world has no underlying meaning, God has no purpose for you, spend your days accumulating experiences.

God’s Word paints an entirely different picture, an entirely different purpose for your life. After creation, the blessing and command: Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Man is God’s regent in the world, His governor. Man has a purpose, rooted in marriage, family, and an ordered beauty in nature.

What have we done with the world? We’ve fallen to such an extent that our society celebrates carnal unions that are inherently infertile, couplings that are physically incapable of producing offspring.

In this world, children become acquisitions, products of the laboratory or obtained through surrogacy. The union of husband and wife is intentionally disconnected from the procreation of children.

To such a world, Proverbs 4:7 is more meaningful than ever. To the fallen, God’s Word says, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.” Life is not about gaining experiences and memories for mental pleasure. “Get wisdom!”

King Solomon, the son of David, famously was asked by God to name what he wanted. He asked for wisdom. He was given divine wisdom, along with the wealth of the kingdom. But he fell. He adopted the underlying philosophy of Die with Zero. After gaining wisdom, Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 2:

I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” I [then sought] to cheer my body with wine…. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem…. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure….Then I considered [it all], and behold, all was vanity … and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. [Eccl 2:1-11]

Now the book of Ecclesiastes, I think, is Solomon’s act of repentance. He loses his wisdom as he descends into folly. He accumulates women by the hundreds. He experiences every pleasure. If anyone was going to die with zero and go out with a bang, it was Solomon.

But the purpose of man is not to die with zero. It is to live faithful to God’s Word, and die in such a way that your death becomes the portal to life. You die entrusting yourself into the hands of God, who raises the dead.

So at the very end of Ecclesiastes, after Solomon has had every experience and found it all empty, he says:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. [12:13f]

Now what does that have to do with today’s Gospel? Much in every way. In the parable the farmer scatters the seeds wildly; they go everywhere. Some fall on the roadside, devoured by birds. Some fall on rocky soil; they don’t last. But if you’ve been here more than a year or two, now we have something of the other two kinds of soil.

There’s the last kind, that keeps the Word and bears fruit with patience, all the way to the end. We pray that’s us. But we still face this danger: “Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.” Now what’s happening in your life? What are your cares? Do you have riches? What pleasures of life are you enthralled by?

Let’s start with cares. This word indicates anxiety, worry. It’s what occupies your mind, it’s what troubles your heart. In the Psalms, it’s called your burden; Psalm 54 says, “Cast your burden on the LORD, and He shall sustain you.” 1 Peter 5 says, “Cast everything that causes worry on God.” It is truly good, right, and salutary that you should care about what happens to your children, what happens to your church, what happens to your country. But when the things we care about become burdens, anxieties, it’s an indicator we have forgotten there is a God. That’s the first thorn.

The second thing Jesus identifies that chokes us is riches. Are you rich? You probably think, “No.” But for almost everyone, rich people are whoever has more than you. We are all rich. Anyone living in America is rich. We live in northern Virginia. Our wealth is obscene.

But Jesus isn’t talking about being rich. He just says riches. It’s your possessions, your stuff. They have a hold on you. How much you have. What you want. They idea of being without.

What is your money for? What are your possessions for? God’s Word teaches us that the righteous man, as his first priority, returns a portion of what he receives as thanksgiving to God. That’s the first thing you do. Offering. Thanksgiving. Sacrifice. How will God bless you and free you, if your fists are clenched in a death grip on your possessions?

If you are a husband, your next priority for your money is to provide for your family. If you get married in the Lutheran rite, the husband promises to nourish and cherish his wife. That means you provide for and protect your wife.

As God gives you children, you provide for them. Proverbs 13:22 says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.”

Money is also used to show mercy to those who need it. Money has a hold on us. To loosen that grip, God gives us people in need.

In Die with Zero, Perkins definitely had one thing right: He says people get so used to accumulating that they hoard their wealth instead of using it. Our desire to accumulate is good, if we are being wise and preparing for emergencies, or trying to avoid debt. But too often the desire to accumulate is an attempt to secure the future. And this is not possible. We cannot secure the future. We do not know when our last hour will be. Death comes for us all. War, famine, disease – these things come without warning. So the desire to accumulate becomes a denial of the world’s fallenness.

Finally, Jesus identifies the pleasures of life as the last set of thorns. We like to be comfortable. So we adjust thermostats by a single degree in the quest for perfection. The slightest hunger must be sated. Any problem must be solved by the pharmaceutical industry.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Repent of your vanity. Repent of the meaningless ways you’ve squandered your life. Repent of the banality of what has occupied your mind.

Disciples of Jesus, this is what we must do: Get Wisdom. Fear God. Obey His Commandments. And when we fail, as we do daily, and God doesn’t answer our prayers with what we think we need, we listen again to His gentle rebuke, spoken to Paul in today’s Epistle, but recorded for us: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” +INJ+