Main point: Money is simply a resource, that should be used to advance your eternal standing.

Transcription

1 The Shrewd Steward March 5, 2017 Luke 16:1 13 We come this morning to perhaps the most difficult parable to understand, the parable of the shrewd steward from Luke 16. Indeed, it is so difficult to understand that there are almost as many ways to take it as there are people who have preached on it. Maybe that s why most of us have never heard a sermon on it: it is too difficult to comprehend. But after considering it, I have concluded that this is a perfect example of a parable. A parable is a story with intent, a story designed to make a difficult, yet important point.and nothing more. It is not meant to be probed in each of its details, correlating each detail with a truth. No, it is a story intended to teach something specific. And the problem with the parable of the shrewd steward is that it seems to be elevating something we would all think is wrong, immoral, certainly not to be lifted up. It seems to lift up cheating your boss. But this is where I want you to see the limits to a parable. It does not and would not lift up something that is wrong or immoral. It simply draws an analogy from one realm that we are then to apply in another realm. If it is true in this worldly sense, how much more is it true in a spiritual sense? In this case, if the world understands this concept, why don t the people of God. They ought to, but they too often don t, and that s the point. We will see that clearly as we unpack v. 8, where Jesus applies the parable. So, I ve teased you enough. Let s read the parable of the shrewd steward, Luke 16:1 13. And yes, know going in that this is another parable about money. And this is not the last parable about money. The next one in two weeks is also about money, so beware. If you don t want to know what God has to say about your money, then you might want to skip town for a few weeks. READ Luke 16:1 13. Main point: Money is simply a resource, that should be used to advance your eternal standing. Can you see why this truth might be given in the form of a parable? How welcomed would a statement like this be? And more to the troubling aspect of the parable, Jesus here seems to say this is something that the world understands all too well. But the people of God do not but ought to. Welcome to the parable of the shrewd steward! Once more, we will study it in our three step process: setting, parable, and application. In this case, the bulk of our time will be spent on the latter.

2 I. As we have seen before, Jesus is concerned that the people who would claim to be God s people are not using their money wisely. There is no immediate setting to this parable. In a very real sense, this parable builds on the parable we studied last week from Luke 12. As we said then, this whole section of Luke s gospel is dominated by this issue, this cost of discipleship, what do you do with your wealth, how the kingdom operates. In fact, you might glance later in the chapter where we have the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which we will study in 2 weeks. They are all related, they are all on the same topic. The setting is that Jesus is on His final journey to Jerusalem, where He will be arrested, put on trial, tortured, and executed. He is on His way there. His thoughts are there, His concern is whether those who are following Him cluelessly will get it when it happens. Will they understand that this is the inauguration of a radical new kingdom? Or, will they think it is a dream gone bad, the failure of a hoped for savior? He knows the truth, but they surely don t. And in this passage, Jesus is addressing the issue of how people use their resources. Do they use them to help themselves? Or do they squander them? Do they understand that all their resources can be used to help them at the most critical time when they will need it? Or are they wandering through life oblivious that such a crisis will soon come upon them? That is the setting: are the people of God managing their resources shrewdly? II. A wise manager will use the resources entrusted to him for good purposes. vv. 1 8a This might be hard at this point to see, but I hope you will see it by the end. A wise manager wisely manages his resources. That is the point, plain and simple, not more, not less. Jesus told his disciples: There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. What do we notice here? Well, there is a man who is rich, who had a hired manager who answered to him. We don t know if the rich man is good or bad. The parable doesn t really tell us. We do know that in the end, he commends the manager for his shrewdness, even though it might have been to his own loss. But at this point, all we know about the man is that he is rich, he has someone who has been charged to manage his resources, and that he is concerned that the manager has not done a good job. It says here he was wasting his possessions. I think this is key. The issue is waste, versus put to good use. 2 So he called him in and asked him, What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.

3 The manager is in trouble. He is in the process of losing his job. Again, I see this declaration of loss of job as important. His chosen course of action is not from the standpoint of trying to keep his job, but knowing that his job is coming to an end. Pause: this is why in our modern world, there is no gap between firing and being escorted out of the building. If you are in a position to do damage on the way out, they announce the firing and stand and watch as you take your few personal belongings from your office. Right? So, there is an intriguing aspect to this story, the delay from announcement to termination. 3 The manager said to himself, What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I m not strong enough to dig, and I m ashamed to beg Verse 3 lets us into the man s thinking. Here we see his reasoning. He is losing his job, he cannot do an honest day s labor, he is too prideful to beg, so something needs to be done. 4 I know what I ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses. On the way out the door, he will be especially nice to those who might be in the best position to help him after he gets fired. Does this make sense? He has lived in this world, and he is going to need another job. To whom shall he turn? It makes sense that the most likely to hire him would be those who know him. And they would be most likely to hire him if he helped them. 5 So he called in each one of his master s debtors. He asked the first, How much do you owe my master? 6 Eight hundred gallons of olive oil, he replied. The manager told him, Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred. Notice he did not even know how much they each owed his master. They knew more than he did. And the amount owed was large, representing years worth of harvest. Now this is the difficult part. He subtracts half of the bill. Assuming these creditors then paid, the master went from having nothing to having something. It was half the owed amount, but it was something. And in the process, that person is indebted to the manager. Can you see that? The rich man gets something, the creditor has a large debt erased, and the manager has a new best friend. This is what we might call a win, win, win situation. Or, he is only owed one half as much. The debt would be smaller. 7 Then he asked the second, And how much do you owe?

4 A thousand bushels of wheat, he replied. He told him, Take your bill and make it eight hundred. And so it goes with the second creditor. Another win, win, win solution. And now comes the surprising pronouncement by the rich man. 8 The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. This is where we cringe. Why is the shrewd manager commended? After all, the rich man just lost a whole bunch of money owed him. But on the other hand, he had nothing and now he had something. The story is clear that the man was dishonest and leads you to believe he still got fired. But the story does not focus on this aspect. Instead it focuses on how he used the assets at his disposal to improve his position in the future. The owner could see that the man was shrewd. He was clever, he used what he had for his benefit. There, that is the point and no more. We see that in the rest of v.8 and v.9. Just remember that the man was still fired and called dishonest. His behavior was not exemplary, but rather shrewd. II. Money is simply a resource. Use what you have wisely. Vv. 8b 13 This is where we have to make the leap from story to application. It is hard for us to do so because the man in the story was a crook, and yet he was lifted up. But that isn t the point. The point is that the man used the resources he had to benefit him in the coming crisis. v.8 For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. There you have it. The people of the world get this concept. They practice it. It is not good, it is not right, but this one thing they get: use your resources to benefit you. Oh if only the people of God would do so! Now, let s unpack the point here. Jesus is making a point to His followers, to those who claim to worship the One, true God. By the way they use their resources, you would never know that such people will soon face crisis. They have not leveraged their resources to help them in the coming crisis. In last week s passage, such people have stored their resources in ever bigger barns, not knowing how long they will live. Here, they simply squander it away (in between these two parables is the parable of the prodigals where the son squanders away his father s wealth. Coincidence??) So, Jesus is chastising the people for not using their resources to help them face the coming crisis. In this sense, they are not shrewd. They are not good managers on a sinking ship. Even as the people of

5 God, they are acting like the coming crisis is no crisis for them at all. They have not put themselves in a position to have people who will help them. They will have no friends to rescue them in the coming crisis. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. So the point of 8b is that the world gets a concept God s people too often neglect. They do it sinfully, but at least they get the concept. But the people of God don t get the principle. They have all this wealth, all of this mammon, or worldly treasure, and they don t put it to good use. They could be using it to help themselves, but they don t. They could be gaining friends through it, but they don t.what kind of friends? Those who will be IN the Kingdom of God. Now we see the context, eternal dwellings, entrance into the kingdom. There will be no one in the kingdom who will welcome them. They could have used this money to gain friends in the kingdom, but they did not. It might be difficult to understand, but the truth is there for us to see. This world s riches can be used for short term pleasure, or eternal benefit. That is the choice we make each and every day. Will I use these resources to enhance my position eternally? Or will I waste them on the here and now? The wicked world gets the concept of leveraging your resources to gain advanced standing upon a looming crisis. Why don t we? That s the point. In other words, Jesus knows what people do with the resources entrusted to them. He sees it all. He knows whether they have an eternal perspective or a short term perspective. And it grieves Him. They are not investing it eternally. He sees rich people, and all their resources, and what have they done with it? Nothing. It will not benefit them at all. They have been foolish managers. They should have used such resources with this looming crisis in mind (judgment). They should have used them to make friends who could help them. Make sense? The people are not living as if there is a coming judgment, where they ought to know they are going to be fired. If they had, they would have lived differently. They would have used what they have to influence the judge. They don t see themselves as needing help! They don t need anyone. 10 Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? These following sayings are not directly connected to the parable, but they take the point further. Money is just money. Wealth is just wealth. But what we do with it shows whether we can be trusted with things of real value. When we waste what we have, it shows we cannot be trusted with more. When we show that we can be trusted with some, we will be given more, of real value. No, God does

6 not care about our money, but He does care about our hearts and how our hearts are reflected in what we do with our money. That is the point. 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else s property, who will give you property of your own? Here it is put in the terms of trustworthiness. If you have not been trustworthy with plain old money, you will not be trustworthy with God s precious resources. He is not going to entrust them to you. So, how you handle your money matters to Him? If you want to own a piece of His kingdom, you will have to show yourself trustworthy with that which He gives you in THIS life. It matters how you handle your money. 13 No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. If you make money your master, you will use it in ways that stop at your death. You will keep it all for yourself. You will never use it to help you when you face judgment. But if you serve God, you will see your money as resources God can use to advance His kingdom. The money itself is not of value, but it can produce all kinds of benefit for the kingdom. Money can be used to gain people for the kingdom, people who will welcome you when you arrive. Yes, it is just stuff, but it can be used for great purposes. The world gets this, why don t the people of God? If we believe this passage is the Word of God, then what should be different about our lives? 1) We will pause once more to examine our perspective on our resources. 2) We will see those resources as opportunities to advance the kingdom and thus assist our eternal future. We will need friends in the Kingdom. 3) We will be good managers, not foolish managers. 4) We will not serve our money, but use our money to serve God. 5) We will be ever mindful that God sees all this and will remember on the day of judgment.