Luke 16:1-13 *
Dear
Friends in Christ,
I
want to caution you about prejudging this parable of Jesus.
What
I mean is this. After hearing this text,
you might be saying to yourself, “Alright.
I have a pretty good idea what this sermon is going to be about. This one is going to be about money.” And to some degree this is true. Consequently, we will gladly and willingly
talk about the subject because Jesus does.
After all, if our Savior wishes to engage us in a conversation on this
topic, we, His blood-bought children, are eager to sit at His nail-scarred feet
and hear His words of instruction.
But
the bottom line message of this text is not about money. It’s about something bigger. It’s about our priorities in life. It’s about the way in which we go about our
decision making. Ultimately, it’s about the
choices we make; choices on how we manage our lives and the various affairs and
blessings in our lives. In this parable
JESUS
ENCOURAGES US TO CHOOSE WISELY
As He reminds us of
1. The impact our choices can have on others
2. The impact His choice had on us
I
believe it is fair to say that of all the parables Jesus told this one is
sometimes cited as being hard to understand, and at times may even be misunderstood.
So let’s proceed by carefully working
our way through it in order to glean the important message our Savior is
communicating to us…
Jesus told His disciples,
“There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 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.” Jesus tells the story of a rich man. He may have been the owner of a large estate
or a prospering business. Whatever the
case, he was big-time enough to be in need of a full time business
manager. Unfortunately for both of them,
this manager was not doing his job, a fact which was brought to the rich man’s
attention.
Whether
through carelessness or dishonesty, the manager had betrayed his master’s trust
and squandered the possessions he was hired to safekeep. The consequence for such actions was swift
and decisive: the rich man called him on
the carpet and fired him on the spot.
However, before he was to leave his employment, the manager was
evidently given a chance to straighten out the books for the person who would
follow him.
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 – I know what I’ll do that, when I lose
my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.” Truly this manager was in a predicament. He saw only two solutions. “Plan A” was manual labor. “Plan B” was begging. Neither was acceptable. So he comes up with a “plan C” that will help
him feather his nest when he joins the ranks of the unemployed.
This
was his solution: “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, how much do you owe my
master? ‘Eight hundred gallons of olive
oil,’ he replied. The manager told him,
‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.’ Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do
you owe?’ ‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’
he replied. He told him, ‘Take your bill
and make it eight hundred.’”
Here
was the plan: He would take maximum
advantage of his last moments as a manager to greatly reduce the huge debts
which various tradesmen owed his master.
That this was less than ethical is indicated by the fact he wanted these
debtors to act quickly. The intent of
all this is not hard to figure out. It
was an obvious, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” type of deal. By giving the debtors a big break, the
manager would get on their good side and is therefore confident that later on
when he is jobless he can go to them for help.
Having
carried this scheme out, and after it had obviously come to the attention of
the master, we read, “The master
commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Here is where confusion about this
parable sometimes comes in, so let’s make sure we understand what’s happening
here. The manager was commended not for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. He was praised not because he cooked the
books, but because of his cleverness in looking out for himself and his future.
And
it is this shrewdness Jesus comments
on when He says, “For the people of this
world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the
light.” His point? The people of this world live only with their
own purposes in mind. Christians, on the
other hand, live with the higher purposes of God in mind. Regrettably, Jesus says the people of this
world work harder and show more shrewdness and ingenuity and passion in
managing their temporal lives than children of the light do in managing their
lives for the higher purposes of God.
He
then goes on to zero in on one particular area of managing our lives and the
choices we make: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that
when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” People of
this world look ahead and use their wealth for what they feel is important. Jesus asks believers to do the same. Jesus asks His children to look ahead and use
the gifts God has given them to support truly important causes. He furthermore attaches the promise that when
the givers die, there will be a grand welcome for them in heaven by the ones
who benefited from their generosity. Let’s
expand on this thought a bit…
Throughout
Scripture we are told that true faith gives evidence of its genuineness by
actions. Here Jesus tells us to put our
faith into action and use our wealth to gain friends with whom we will one day share eternal life. In other words, the wisest use of earthly
wealth is to make investments which can be realized not after a certain period of maturity or upon retirement, but
investments which pay dividends now and for all of eternity.
Which
is really a neat thought. What Jesus
tells us is that the money we give to home and world mission work or for worker
training or local evangelism – in fact, that which we contribute when we use
the general term of saying we are giving “to church” – that money is not merely used; it is invested in
people – people who will welcome us into heaven. Consequently, I don’t think it is unrealistic
– and may actually be helpful – to think of these words of Jesus in this
way:
Try
to imagine the day you die and, thanks be to Jesus, go to heaven. Imagine that shortly after you arrive in
glory someone comes up to you – someone you’ve never met, someone from perhaps
a different ethnic background than you – and says: “Excuse me.
I don’t think you know me, but I wanted to let you know that while you
were on earth you supported Christian mission work. And through your support a missionary came to
my town or my land and told me about Jesus Christ. I am here today because of the gospel message
that you helped bring to me. And I just
wanted to thank you.”
Or
how about this even more personalized possibility: “Excuse me.
I don’t think you know me, but I wanted to let you know that you were
part of
You
know, we hear a lot of people today talk about how they want to make a
contribution to this world; how they want to make their lives count; how they
want to make a difference in people’s lives.
Jesus invites us to use what we have to help make the difference in people’s lives – both now and through eternity.
Back
to the text. Continuing with the
application of this parable and how it relates to wise choices and wise
management and the character of those who carry them out, Jesus states: “Whoever
can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is
dishonest with very little will be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in
handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with
someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?”
The
key to understanding this pronouncement of Jesus is catching the clear
implication that we are the ones who have been entrusted with “someone else’s property.” In other words, everything we have is not
really ours – it is God’s. It’s all His,
yet in His grace He has given us the multitude of things we so often speak
about as being “our own.”
And He has entrusted these things to us with the instruction that we use our resources wisely – meaning to His glory and for the benefit of His kingdom. Jesus encourages faithful and trustworthy use of the gifts He has given us. He encourages us to operate this area of our lives on the basis of an honest and appreciative understanding of where it all came from in the first place.
The hymnist summarized it well when he wrote the familiar words we find in the stewardship section of our hymnal: “We give Thee but Thine own, whate’er the gift may be; All that we have is Thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from Thee.” We are but stewards, or managers, of the blessings God has bestowed upon us.
Jesus
then closes with a summary statement: “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the
other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” Other than calling attention to the fact that
the word “Money” here is spelled with a capital “M” – as if it is as much a
potential master for us as is Christ – these words are self-explanatory and in
need of no comment. Jesus makes it
clear. A choice must be made. And depending upon what choice is made, one’s
life, attitude and actions will follow.
And
that is what this text is all about. Priorities. Decisions.
Making choices. Personal choices. Financial choices. Thoughtful choices. Informed choices. Choices which have implications all the way
into eternity.
As
we consider the various choices we must make in life, let us never forget the
ultimate choice that has already been made for us by Jesus Christ.
It
was His choice to give up His majesty in heaven in order to live a humble,
sinless life as our substitute for 33 years.
This was not an obligation.
It
was His choice to die on the cross in our place and for three hours (as darkness
covered the earth) suffer the very pangs of hell that we as sinners rightfully
deserve. This was not an obligation.
It
was His choice to become the Way and the Truth and the Life so we might live
forever. This was not an obligation.
And
it continues to be His choice – a choice which He promises to honor – to watch
over us, hear our prayers, guide our lives and comfort us with His
promises. This is not an obligation.
In
view of all this, may the choices we make in our lives, such as how we use our
time and how we conduct ourselves and what we make our priorities and, as Jesus
makes clear – even how we manage and use our money, reflect the wisdom of
understanding the impact our choices can have on others, and the impact His
choice had on us. Then…
“Brothers, sisters, let us
gladly give to God our all, our best” (CW 484).
Amen.