Sermon by Bob Bradley - PDF Free Download

What are we doing with what God has lent us? Sunday, July 16, 2017 Bob Bradley Luke 16:1 Luke 16:2 Luke 16:3 Luke 16:4 Luke 16:5 Luke 16:6 Luke 16:7 Luke 16:8 Luke 16:9 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. Luke 16:10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. Luke 16:11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? Luke 16:12 And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Probably this is one of the most difficult parables that you will read about in the scriptures. I know there are lot of things that can be said about these things, but there is a tremendous lesson here tonight that I think we need to see and the Lord wants to

teach us. That lesson is about the responsibilities that we have. The things that He gives us in life that we have a responsibility to use for His glory. Sometimes we think I have heard people say, What s mine is mine and what s yours I m going to do my best to make it mine. We think sometimes that everything we have is ours. Everything we have in life is just lent out to you and me. We don t own any of it. I promise you that you don t own anything. When you die, if you should die tonight they may bury with the clothes you have on or they may not but the possessions and things you own, your bank account that you may or may not have, the gold or silver that you may have laid up and all the other things that you have are not going with you. They are just lent to us. God just gives them to us while we are here on planet earth. It is more than just to make us happy. God lends us things and material things and monies and all kinds of different things. God lends us all these things for a space of time and sure He wants us to enjoy living here but the things He allows us and lends us to have and to be under our control while we are here, He wants us to use them for His glory. That is the lesson that I want us to talk about and learn tonight is what we are to do with what God has lent us. When we try to horde up what God I m talking to Christian people, I m talking to us tonight if we try to horde up, if God has blessed us and we try to horde up what God has given us and we waste it on ourselves and all kinds of different things then it is never going to work. The Lord is going to teach us some things here, the Lord being our helper tonight. He is talking to His disciples here in verse 1. Luke 16:1 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. In the land of Palestine and the land of Israel, there were a lot of people who owned land that did not live there. They may have lived a long way away. They may have lived on another section of land. What they would do we don t do this much around here, we used to do it a lot more when farming was a bigger thing than it is now you would rent out your fields, or your farm. Sometimes people would come along and wanted to plant corn or plant something in the fields you had then you could strike a deal with them and you could agree with them on what one would pay for their field. That is what is going on here. This guy that owns the field has a steward here that is overseeing his land, property and everything he has. He has steward here that is overseeing it all. The Bible says here that this steward this steward didn t own anything. If you rent the farm, if you make a deal with someone to rent their farm or to take care of their farm or to manage their farm; you don t own any of it. There is not a thing that belongs to you. It all belongs to somebody else. You have the responsibility to take care of it. You have the responsibility to take care of it in a way where it will

make your master or the fellow who owns what you are taking care of money. That is the whole thing that this is all about. Here is this steward. These guys here were rascals. They were some people here that this guy was a crook. He was very unfaithful. He was a wicked person. I don t know how long he had been stealing. I don t know how long he had been misusing and abusing and taking advantage of this guy who owned the property, but somewhere along the line the Bible says here Luke 16:1 Luke 16:2 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. In other words, what he is saying is Hey, I ve got news, I ve got word, maybe he got the bank statements, maybe someone told him; the fellow who is taking care of your farm, the steward that you have down there is stealing from you. He is taking things that doesn t belong to him. Things that belong to you, he is misusing. He is doing things that are wrong. Therefore, the land owner, the property owner gets word of that. He goes to the steward and says, Hey, we have a problem here. I m hearing that you are stealing from me. I m hearing that what you are doing and the things you are doing is not proper. It is not right. I want you to give an account of your stewardship. What he is saying is I want to audit the books. I m going to look at the books. I want to see what you are doing and where my money is at and where all my foods and grains and everything that should be there; I want to make sure that it is all there. That is not a bad thing either. That is a good thing. If you have properties and you have somebody overseeing those things then you need to have people who are faithful to be looking after them. This guy had been unfaithful. He is an unfaithful guy. This guy is a bad man but there is a great example, and a great lesson here and a good lesson that we can learn from this guy. Luke 16:3 Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. Now he did not go out and get on Facebook. He did not tweet anybody. He did not get on the telephone. He did not do that. He said within himself; What shall I do. What am I going to do? I ve been caught. The land owner has caught me. It is going to be revealed unto him that I have been stealing from him. He knows he is going to get fired. He is not going to have a job. So, he says to himself, What am I going to do? The Bible says this Luke 16:3 Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh

away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. Do you see the dilemma this guy is in? He has got a big problem. He has been caught embezzling from his employer. He is thinking what he is going to do, what he needs to do. He is too ornery to dig. Amen! He is too lazy to dig. Do you know what? He is too ashamed to beg. So, he is in a dilemma of what he needs to do. I thought today as I read this and studied on this for a while, never one time I don t think, this guy ever thought about going back and saying, Sir, I did steal from you. I did take it from you. But if you will let me make it up to you, would you please forgive me and I will make it up to you. He never once said that. He never once begged for forgiveness. He never once asked for forgiveness. He was trying to figure out some way he could get out of the mess he was in. He knew he was going to get fired. He knew he was going to put out on the street. Now he is thinking how am I going to make a living? How am I going to eat? What am I going to do now? I am not going to be able to be a steward. I am not going to be able to be here where I can steal and take. I am going to have to eat some way. So, what am I going to do? This guy is a shrewd guy. He is a smart fellow. Look what he does. Luke 16:4 I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. Here is what he gets to thinking. I am not going to dig. I am not going to be a laborer on this farm where I used to run. I was talking to someone the other day about some different things in life. Sometimes in life, we have to take a step backwards. Sometimes in life we have to take a step backwards. That is hard for us to do sometimes. There are times in life, even as Christian people that we have to take a step backwards and see what is going on. Things don t always work out the way that we think they should work out. This guy says Hey, I am going to get put out of my stewardship. Now I must figure out what I am going to do. The Bible says here he is thinking in himself what can I do when I get fired and I am out on the street, what can I do right now so that all these people that I know and all these people that I have dealt with; what can I do that they may receive me. What can I do to be friends with these guys, so that when I get out on the street and I am going to need a favor and I am going to need some money; what can I do right now to get the in a place that they will look favorable to me and help me. Look what he does. Luke 16:5 So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?

Here is what he is going to do. He is not going to dig. He is not going to beg. He won t ask for forgiveness. He gets to thinking, this is what I am going to do. I m fired. I know I m fired. I m going to need some way to eat. I need a way to get some money. Therefore, all these people who owes my master money, I must do something with these guys so that they will look favorable upon me and help me. He calls them in. He calls all the debtors in. I don t know how many debtors owed this master, this land owner something; but I know there were at least two. He calls them in and says to the first, How much do you owe my master? Luke 16:6 And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. A hundred measures of oil are six or eight hundred gallons of oil. What they would do back then, if you owed debts, you rented properties, and parcels of properties then they did not necessarily pay in money but they paid in wheat, oil, fruits, grain, cattle. They did a different system than they do now. The first guy says, I owe a hundred measures of oil. I owe your master eight hundred gallons of oil. Which would have been a considerable amount of money. The wicked servant, this steward here said Luke 16:6 And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. If you owe someone eight hundred gallons of oil and the guy that is over it comes in and if you owe $1,000 at the bank and they call you down and say, I know you owe a $1,000 but we are going to be good to you today. Just give us a $100 and we will write it all off. Do you know what you would do? You would probably think there is something going on here somewhere. You would think something isn t right somewhere. However, these guys did that. Even though they owed eight hundred gallons of oil, they are going to sit down and write him a check for $50. Not only is this guy trying to make some friends, but he is also trying get this he is also trying to some others in his little misdemeanor things that he has going on. He is trying to get other people involved in sin. These knew it wasn t right. These guys knew that they owed eight hundred gallons of oil and now he is saying just pay me for $50. They know that is not right. Amen! You have heard the old saying, If it is too good to be true, it is probably not true. That is true with this guy. The next guy says this. Luke 16:7 Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.

Again, he reduces his bill down drastically, from a whole bunch down to not very much at all. Again, he is doing to try to make friends with these guys. Again, but he is also incorporating them, or getting them to come in and to be part of the sin that he is doing. That is getting up to what we want to talk about. Luke 16:8 And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. The land owner small l, not big L, not Jesus, not the God of heaven; the God of heaven is not commending this guy for being a crook. The land owner when he sees what this guy has done, he says commended the unjust steward. When he looked at how shrewd and how cunning and how wise this unjust steward was; the guy that owned the property commended him. That is what that says. Because he has done wisely. Here is the message in all this. Here is a guy that made he was a crook. He got caught. He got caught embezzling. He is making some friends now with some people that owes his employer money. They owed him a lot of money, a lot of goods, and now he is giving them a discount and writing a bunch of it off. But when the employer found out what he is doing, he commends him. Man, you are smart. You are smart on what you are doing. You are wise, on what you are doing. This guy was looking out for himself. He did not care about his master. He did not care about the guys that owed his master money. They only thing this guy cared about he did not want to beg and he is too lazy to work. He was trying to figure out how to make a living after he lost his job. He was very wise in what he was doing to ensure that he was going to be able to have material things after he lost his job. Does everybody get that? That is the story up to this point. The thing I want us to understand and see here tonight is this. Luke 16:9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. Luke 16:10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. Here is the message that I want us to take from this tonight. This guy, even though he was a crook. He was cheat. He was an embezzler. He was a thief. He was very wise. He used his mind. His efforts were putting forth taking care of himself here financially. That is all he was worried about. I thought today as I read this and as I studied this; God has given unto you and I so much stuff to take care of. A lot of stuff folks. All you have to do is look at your own

house. There is a lot of stuff around your house. There is a lot of stuff that you have at your home that God has entrusted you with. Your health. God has entrusted you with that. Your time. God has entrusted you with your time. The money that you have whether it is much or not so much; God has entrusted that unto you. We are responsible to God how that we take care and use those things that God has placed us and given us responsibility over. Amen! You might say, well my life is my life. That is not right. Your life is not your life. If you are saved tonight, you have given your life to Jesus Christ. He has saved you. You have surrendered your will unto Him. What you have belongs to Him. It doesn t belong to you. All He has to do is stop one breath. In less than two or three minutes they will be covering you up with a sheet. Amen! God has given us so much to be stewards over. This fellow was very wise. He was cunning. He was diligent. He worked at it. The thought in all this message is this. If you and I would take and use and put forth the same effort, the same amount of money, the same amount of though and sweat on our spiritual life as we do on our material life we would be a whole lot better off. Listen. I m going to tell you something now. When your spiritually life is really going to shine, when you are really going to be satisfied with your spiritual life is when you take your time I thought this today. We probably spend twenty times more of our time, our effort, our energies on self than we do on church. Amen! Probably at least twenty times on sports, recreation, things we want to do, pleasures, where we want to go; we probably spend twenty times more of our money, our effort, our time on those things than we do on our church, on our spiritual life. When your spiritual life is going to flourish is when that is reversed. When God is going to do something great with you, is when that is reversed. When you start spending more time on your spiritual life, than you do on your physical life that is when God is going to bless you. That is when God is going to do something great for you. If we are unfaithful in using what God has given us then our spiritual life is not going to flourish. We are not going to get anywhere. If we would use the same energy on our spiritual life as this guy did on his material life he had it figured out man. He was smart. He was a smart dude. Crooks are usually smart. Crooks are usually very wise. In my lifetime, I have been taken a few times. Have you ever been taken? I have. I had a fellow stop one day at the house. He rode up and down the road. He was my neighbor. I thought I knew this guy. He said hey, I want to buy the tractor you have there. I said okay this is what I want for it. He said, I ll buy it. I said okay. He said I only have this much money but I get paid whenever it was. As soon as I get paid I will bring you the rest of the money and come and get the tractor. I said, na. don t do that. Just keep your money and you take the tractor and when you get paid you can just drop off the money at the house and everything will be fine. That has been thirty some years ago. He has never been back to my house. I never got a dime out of that tractor. So,

you get taken sometimes. It happens. It just takes a little bit of money sometimes to figure out who your friends are. Amen! That is all it takes, just a few dollars. This guy was a wise guy, a smart guy He was making sure he was going to be taken care of materially after he lost his job as a steward. I pray that we would turn things around in our life. I pray we would start spending more of our energy, more of self, more of our spare time, instead of playing with our phones reading our Bible. Instead of doing things that has to do with pleasure of this flesh. All the things that this world has going on, I wish it is my prayer that we will turn it around and start spending more time on our spiritual life and less time on the material side of life. Listen. If we will be faithful in that which is least and what God has given you and I is a very small thing. Our time, our money. I am going to say this. I would say that some of us spend more money on soda pop than we give to this church. We spend more money on stuff that has nothing to do with nothing, instead of giving money to the church. Then we wonder why we don t have any money. If we are not going to be faithful with what God has given us, do you think God is going to bless us to have more? It is not going to work. If we want to be able to flourish in our spiritual lives, we are going to have to take what God has given us and use it the way God wants us to use it. He tells us to make friends of the unrighteous mammon. Luke 16:9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. Do you know what that means? Do you know what you and I need to do? We need to take what God has given us, what God has blessed us with and make friends with it. do you know what I can do with my time? I can either use for myself, or I can use it to make friends. Amen! I don t always have to take all my time just for myself. If I take what time God has given me I know we all must work and we all have things to do but I would say this tonight; the majority of us the last week has worked a whole lot more for self than we have for the Lord. No amen s on that one! Probably the last seven days, we have spent a whole lot more on self than we have given to the work of God. Have we tried to make friends? Do you know what happens? When we make friends with people and we are friendly with people, do you know what we can do? We have an opportunity to witness to them and tell them about Jesus Christ. If you never make friends with people, if you never even want to try to make friends with people, you don t get to do that. I thought about this today. How many people that this church, Campbell Chapel Church, has been a blessing to. They may not know one person s name here at Campbell Chapel but how many people knows the name of Campbell Chapel Church

and knows the name of Backpack Buddies; how many people we have been a blessing to that don t know our names. Amen! That is the way it should be. If we are doing something to get somebody to pat us on the back then we are doing it for all the wrong reasons. We need to take what we have, what God has given us, what God has blessed us with, what God has entrusted into our hands; our time, our effort, our heath, our bodies, our life, whatever it is; what God has entrusted us with and use it for His glory. Use it to make friends. Use it to bring glory to His name. I know we say well I give ten percent. That s great. Is that all you are doing? There is a whole lot more to giving to God s work than giving ten percent of what you have. Amen! This guy here was a guy that was very intelligent. He was very smart. Luke 16:10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If we will be faithful in this small stuff of what God gives us, our health, our life, our strength, our monies, or whatever it is God has blessed us with; if we will be faithful to Him with that stuff then we will also be faithful in a whole lot more stuff. We will get to the place in life when we will be faithful for this little stuff that God can entrust us with a whole lot more stuff. If you are not faithful in a small amount of stuff then you will never be faithful in that which is a whole lot of stuff. That is what he is saying here. If you won t be faithful with God giving you a hundred dollars a week, then God is not going to bless you with a thousand dollars a week. Amen! That s true. Luke 16:11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? Luke 16:12 And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. I really think this folk. How that we handle there is a reason I believe this how that we handle what God gives us here on this earth, our money, our time, our bodies, our strength, and all that we do and all we have I think the Bible teaches us how that we handle that and use that here will determine what we will be doing over there. You might say, I don t believe that. That s okay. How that we handle what we have here will determine a lot of things in this life. I know we think we are all going to get to heaven and we are all going to be butterflies and humming birds. Well, that s not true. We are going to have things to do. We are going to be worshiping and working. I can read about streets of gold and walls of

Jasper. I can read about trees, rivers, and fruits and all kinds of things. I can read about kings, the earth, and nations and a whole lot of things about this afterlife. You and I as Christian people are going to have responsibilities after this life. The responsibilities that we have after this life will be determined by how that we have used what God has given us in this life. Amen! That is the true riches that he is talking about there. I hope we understand that our spiritual life depends on how we handle things that He has given us. If we just horde things up, and use everything God has given us, time, money, effort and everything we have just on ourselves, then what good are we? What good are we doing? That is all we are doing is hording it up and taking care of self. What are we doing? What good are we? Luke 16:12 And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Do you know what that means? Very plainly. Nobody can have two masters. You have one person you answer to. You either answer to God, or you answer to the world. You can t serve two masters. It is impossible to serve two masters. You may have two jobs, but you have one master. Amen! You may have a lot more than one job, but we must have one master. Our master must be the God of heaven. Listen. Who that we surrender our time, our efforts, our bodies, our strengths, and everything to; he is our master. If we surrender our time, our effort, our money, our bodies, our strengths, our mind; if we give that to the Lord, and use it for His glory then He is our master. If we don t do that then the world is our master. We follow them. We listen to them. We do what they tell us to do. That is so sad. Get this. If you want your spiritual life to flourish folks, then let s use everything that God has lent us in this life; let s use it for His glory. Let s use that for His glory. When we use that for God s glory then God will bless us spiritually. Come and pray