TOPIC:‌“Three Men Who Talked to Themselves”

                  by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌Luke 12:16-21

 

‌‌“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” (Luke 12:19)

 

‌I want to begin this message with a question: Have you ever observed the common practice of people talking to themselves? I am sure that you have. As a matter of fact, from time to time our own lives become so demanding that many we end up talking to ourselves. You may not want to admit it, but it's true. Some do it because they consider it to be therapeutic. It enables them to communicate with their subconscious mind.

 

‌One of the most humorous examples of a person seeming to be talking to themselves happened back in my youth. Some of you, I believe, may remember it. Candid Camera, the old television show with Allen Funt, was a great study of how people behaved in unusual circumstances. The show was about catching people in the act of being themselves. This was especially true of the episode regarding the talking mailbox.

 

‌In New York City a man is about to put a letter in the mailbox, when it talks to him by way of a speaker inside. The voice from the mailbox says it is a new service from the Post Office. Remember, the man is conversing with the mailbox when a policeman comes over to investigate what is happening. The man said to the policeman, “Look, I'm talking to a talking mailbox.” The mailbox doesn't say anything. The man says to the mailbox, “Say something to the policeman.” Still silence comes from the mailbox. The policeman looks at the guy as if he is insane. The man who talked to himself.

 

‌Let me now turn your attention to three men upon the pages of the Bible who carried on conversations with themselves. They were not demented, but were men who desperately needed to communicate some words of counsel and caution to their own souls. Let's consider the conversation that each man had with themselves.

 

I.

 

‌Think of the first man who talked to himself. He was a FOOLISH man who said something SENSUAL to his soul. Listen to the lengthy conversation he had with himself as found in Luke chapter 12 verses 17 through 19: “And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no place to bestow my crops? And he said, This will I do; I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my crops 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.”

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