Faithful in Little/Faithful in Much

Trying to figure that one out.

The scripture reading this morning is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16, verses 1 through 13.

Luke 16:1–13

I want to encourage you to uh turn there and follow along as I read.

And uh if you're here this morning and you don't have a Bible with you, there should be one located in the pew in front of you.

You can find uh the scripture passage on page 875.

And if you're here this morning and you don't own a copy of the Bible for yourself, I want to encourage you after the service to take that pew Bible and take it home as our gift to you.

Uh put your name in it and read it, study it, and we trust that you'd bring it back each week and we'll study together, learn more about uh God's grace through the person of Christ and the relationship that we can have with Him.

Luke chapter 16, beginning in verse 1.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

He also said to the disciples, There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.

And he called him and said to him, What is this I hear about you?

Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.

And the manager said to himself, What shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me?

I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

I have decided what I will do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.

So summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, How much do you owe my master?

He said, A hundred measures of oil.

He said to him, Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty.

Then he said to another, And how much do you owe?

And he said, A hundred measures of wheat.

He said to him, Take your bill and write eighty.

The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in in a very little is also dishonest in much.

If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you the true riches?

And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?

No servant can serve two masters, for 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 God and money.

This ends the reading of God's word.

Of all of the parables in the Gospels, uh, this is one of the most difficult to understand.

Uh many commentators, I read uh about seven commentaries this week on this passage, and it was interesting, all of the different speculation they had about some of the details of what this passage is about.

And let me remind us that a parable has at least one point, but it may not have more than one point.

It might have multiple points, but it might only have one.

And so, whenever you're interpreting a parable, uh care has to be taken that uh the context governs and guides your understanding of it.

Uh it's possible to go into rabbit trails and try to assume that every nuance of the story has to have a meaning, and then we can get into uh some very speculative theology and find ourselves uh out on a limb in areas that really don't have textual support.

And so I just want to remind us of that.

Jesus here is not affirming dishonesty or unrighteousness.

Clearly, uh we know that, knowing the character of Christ, and the parable is a fictional story with a shocking reversal to arrest our attention.

That is what Jesus is doing here.

Uh as I mentioned, a parable is not an allegory with necessarily multiple points or every point corresponding to some spiritual truth.

And with all scripture, scripture interprets scripture.

And so we know that Jesus never affirms or says anything that contradicts the character of God or revealed truth.

And so even when we're struggling to understand what it is that Jesus is saying here, we know he is not in any way encouraging or affirming wrongdoing.

Having said that, I actually don't want us to get so bogged down in all of the details of this parable that we miss the lessons that Jesus is trying to teach us.

So I'm going to walk through the parable and spend most of my time dealing with the application of the main point of the parable and uh the other lessons that Jesus has with that.

So if you have your Bible open, let's walk through and I'll highlight uh some of what's happening in this parable and then show where uh the application point is that Jesus is making here.

The story begins with a rich man.

Uh, he was wealthy, he had a household manager.

Uh, this uh in this story that Jesus gives, this manager wasn't a slave.

He would have been more of an employee, uh, he would have been a freedman in this case.

Um, just how they relate to one another, it becomes apparent that that's part of the story that Jesus is giving.

And the manager is a loos.

He is uh contemptible, he's unethical.

And it says here uh that the manager charges were brought against him because he was wasting his possession.

And the word for wasting here is the same word that we saw with the uh younger son scattering his wealth around, except this man was scattering uh the rich man's wealth, wasting it, scattering it like seed.

Uh just uh, and so word comes back to the rich man, and so he calls him to account.

Verse 2.

And he says, What's this I hear about you?

He's he's hearing all of these things, and apparently it is it is so verified that uh this man doesn't even put up a dispute.

He says, Uh, what is this I hear about you?

Uh turn in your ledger books, turn in your accounts, you're fired.

You're no longer my manager.

And so this man, verse 3, he realizes uh he's in a predicament.

Reality is starting to settle on him, and so he begins to think about uh what is he going to do?

As the word would come out, he already had a reputation, apparently, of being uh a spendthrift with his owners, with the with the uh rich man's money.

And so word would come out he would have a very limited uh opportunity for another job, and so he begins to talk to himself.

He begins to self-reflect and begins to wrestle with it.

He says, What am I going to do?

I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm too proud to beg, is what he says there.

He says, uh he's not strong enough to work, and he is too proud.

Uh he says, I'm ashamed to beg.

And so he's he's considering, he's thinking about what do I do in this predicament that I find myself in by his own doing.

So, verse 4, he comes up with the solution.

It's this aha moment, this epiphany.

He realizes what he can do.

He decides in his heart what he's going to do, uh, so that when he's removed from his position, uh others will receive him into their home, that he's going to ingratiate himself to others so that they will have a sense of responsibility and obligation to him.

And so he comes up with this plan.

So he begins to summon his master's debtors, people who had borrowed money from him, and now he uh he is the one that's over the books, he's the one that's responsible, he's the accountant now, and so he's going to all of the debtors, and he's renegotiating the terms of the loan, is what he's doing.

And commentators speculate what exactly is he renegotiating?

And some commentators say, well, he's cutting into the profit margin.

Uh, other commentators say, no, no, no, he's not doing that.

He's really just cutting out his commission.

Other commentators say, well, no, uh, this uh rich man was probably charging interest.

He wasn't supposed to charge interest according to the Old Testament, and he had just factored it in so it looked to the debtors that it was principal, but he was he was really uh uh charging interest to these people, and so what this man did was he just cut out the interest and charged them the true principle.

Well, all of those are possibilities, but the fact is, is we don't know.

Um it the text doesn't tell us, and so it it may be one of those, it may be a multiple of those, it may be part of the part of the interest, it may be part of his commission, it may be a combination of them.

Uh but what he does is he takes one, one of his, one owes a hundred measures of oil, and he says, write fifty.

He says, Quickly write down fifty.

And presumably here the original bill uh would be uh destroyed, and so the only thing that they would have record of now is this new bill.

And he goes to another one, he says, How much do you owe me?

And he says, 100 measures of wheat.

And he says, take your bill and write 80.

And again, commentators speculate why the difference in number.

Uh oil is easier to uh to adulterate and to cut, and so there would have been a higher interest or a higher, there are all these speculations.

We don't know the exact reason for the numbers, but nonetheless, this man schemes so that these people will now be indebted to him.

They will have a sense of responsibility towards him, so then when he is kicked out of his master's house and he's out of the master's employment, that these people will feel an obligation to take him in.

So that's what we come to in verse 7, and then we get the master hears about it.

And here's the shocking reversal because we would think that the master would be angry, that there would be some type of retribution that would come on this man because of what he's done, but that isn't what happens.

The master commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

And again, commentators wrestle with that and say, why is he uh commending him?

Maybe uh the manager was a crook, the owner was a crook too, and he just, you know, recognized that he he as a crook got bested by a better crook, and and others say, well, no, he was uh he wanted to save face, and because uh people didn't know he was charging interest, that he wanted to look good, and if he had condemned his manager, then people would know he was doing it independent, he would lose respect in the community.

And again, we don't know uh what the motivation behind this master is, but nonetheless, the master points out one point, and it says here that he commends him for his shrewdness, for his use of his ingenuity and his uh resources and the predicament that he's in, that he he thought and he schemed and he planned and he put forth effort and he executed his plan and it worked.

And so Jesus then, in the middle of verse 8, begins uh his commentary and he really only points out one point, and it's a point of contrast.

It's a point of contrast between what this man did and the sons of light of those who are a part of the kingdom, those who are followers of him.

And so in the end of verse 8, he says this.

He says, For the sons of the world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation, with their own age, than the sons of light.

And so here is uh Jesus begins by giving this, and then he moves into a commentary on the use of wealth and possessions.

And so Jesus points out the shrewdness, and he says that unbelievers in their dealings in this life have a measure of shrewdness that exceeds believers in pursuits of eternal matters.

And so this is the first of the five lessons on wealth and possession that Jesus gives.

That they shrewdly use their wealth.

And the point that Jesus is making here is that believers should shrewdly use earthly wealth in eternal pursuits.

And let me explain what uh what is meant here by that.

Jesus draws this contrast between the unrighteous people in the pursuit of temporal goals and the sons of light in pursuit of eternal goals.

And he says the sons of this age are shrewder in their earthly dealings than we are in pursuing God's agenda.

Now, he's not saying here, clearly he's not saying that we should be unrighteous in our dealings as long as we have good goals.

He's not arguing for pragmatism and utilitarianism, saying that if it works, do it, and if it works, it's good, and the ends justify the means.

That's not Jesus' point here.

But think about what Jesus is saying here.

You have unbelievers all around us.

Think of the business world.

And they have their goals, and their goal is the bottom line.

Their goal is to make a profit, their goal is to expand their customer base, their goal is to see a larger share of income, a larger share of revenue.

Their goal is to expand their kingdom.

That is their goal.

That is the purpose why you go into business.

A business is not a nonprofit organization.

They have a goal, and their goal is the bottom line: to see their product, to meet the needs of people, so that their product will continue to be sold, and they will do everything they can to see that that happens.

They will strategize, they will uh they will plan, they will organize, they will sacrifice, they will invest, they will do whatever it takes in all of the creativity that they have to fulfill the goal of that bottom line.

In thinking and strategizing and planning and organizing and sacrificing and investing, and they do this all for things that don't last.

And he says, by contrast, oftentimes the people of God aren't that savvy and creative, and they don't have the ingenuity and the insight and the fortitude and the sacrificing and the investing, and oftentimes the people of God are very passive in their pursuit of advancing the kingdom and expanding the gospel.

We can be very passive in how we deal with eternal matters, assuming that if God wants it done, he'll let us know, and if he doesn't let us know, then we don't have to worry about it.

And there's no creativity, there is no ingenuity, there is no strategizing, there's no planning, there's no organizing, there's no sacrifices, there's no investing compared to what the world does in temporal, ultimately insignificant pursuits.

We have tens of thousands, let's bring it home here, we have tens of thousands of people in our community that need to hear the gospel and have yet to trust in Christ.

According to the best statistics that are available, North Dakota is the second most church state behind Alabama and the United States, with 27% of the population attending a church on an average Sunday morning.

Of that 27%, at best there may be 10% that go to evangelical, gospel-believing, Bible preaching churches that will hear the message of the cross.

So 90% of the people that we have all around us in the community need to hear the message that we have.

So I ask you, how much time and energy and thought and strategy and planning and sacrifice do we do for eternal purposes to advance the kingdom and to share the gospel that the world does to sell Coca-Cola and Max?

And so we're called to think and to be shrewd.

There's a second lesson here.

He says, use verse 9.

He says, and I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth, so when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings.

Secondly, use unrighteous wealth to make eternal friends.

No, Jesus is talking here.

Keep in mind, he's talking here, and it's we're moving towards the idea of possessions and wealth and resources, time, talent, energy, and effort.

All that we have that we use in the pursuit of our goals.

And he says, use unrighteous wealth to make eternal friends.

Why does he call it unrighteous wealth?

It's not that money is inherently evil.

In fact, the Bible tells us that in 1 Timothy 6.10, it says, For the love of money is the root of all, uh is the root of all kinds of evils.

It is not money in and of itself, it is our desire, our inordinate and improper desire for money that is the root of all evils.

The money is the object, it is our desires that are evil.

But so often in this world it is the pursuit of money, the pursuit of wealth and and and pleasure that we gain by wealth that becomes our goal.

And so Jesus is talking about the general reality that most people pursue wealth and riches for unrighteous reasons.

And what he's saying here is that we as children of light ought to use what God has given us to impact other people for Christ.

When he says make friends here, it probably particularly relates to the poor, but I think it's it's talking about all people that we would take the resources that we have, this temporal, finite resource that most people pursue for unrighteous ends, and take it and use it in such a strategic way that we can influence and impact people so that we might, by demonstrating our grace, even through the things that we own, might be the instrumental demonstration of the gospel so that people might come to know Christ.

And in coming to know Christ, some of those people may precede us in death, and then when we die, those same people that God used us to influence meet us and greet us when we go to heaven.

And so he tells us to use what God has given us for eternal purposes.

He gives us a third lesson here in verse 10.

True faithfulness is revealed in the small things.

Look at what he says in verse 10.

He says, One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.

It's a very straightforward principle.

If you can't be trusted in little things, you will not be trusted in big things.

If you can't be trusted with small amounts, what would make you think that you would be trustworthy in large amounts?

I remember my the dean of men, uh Virgil Adams, at the undergrad I went to, he was a former missionary, he was the dean of men there, and he shared a story with us about a young man, and he and he said uh the man was going into ministry and he he worked in the office there where Virgil worked, and he said, you know, this this young man would come in and he would, whenever he had a letter, he would just come into the secretary's desk and personal letter and would take a stamp and put it on his own letter uh and not leave any money for it, and he would just And he would put it in the mail.

And Virgil said, you know, it really bothered me, but it was so small and insignificant, I decided not to say anything to him.

And he said, years later, I regretted it when this man was in ministry and I got word that he was removed from office because he was stealing money from the church.

And he said, it always hounded me.

What if I had confronted him then on that insignificant stamp?

But if you can't be trusted with little things, what makes you think you can be trusted with large things?

I remember hearing a story from Greg Lawry, a pastor out in California, and I've shared this before, but uh when he was a young Christian, he had just come to Christ at about age 19, he had been partying on the beach, and he came to Christ.

It was during the 60s and the Jesus movement.

He was going to uh, I think it was Chuck Smith's church, and he he was a young Christian, and he comes up to the pastor, he sets up an appointment, and he just presents him to himself to the pastor and says, Pastor, uh, give me a ministry.

And in his mind, he thought, well, the pastor's gonna ask me to lead a Bible study or maybe disciple other guys or maybe lead their evangelism team, and the and the pastor goes into the closet and he pulls out a broom and he hands it to him, and he says, Go and sweep the parking lot.

And so he does, and he comes back and he comes the next day and thought it was just a test, and he comes back, he does it the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and he just gives them all these piddly little tasks to do around the church.

Finally, Greg goes, Well, what's the deal?

And he says, Well, you need to learn to serve in the little things.

What makes you think you're going to be responsible in the big things if you can't be faithful in doing the little things?

And his pastor told him he wasn't ready to leave until he had learned to serve.

And what makes us think we're ready to lead a group when we we aren't able to take care of a parking lot?

Well, there's a fourth lesson here in verses 11 and 12.

And I'll sum that one up as well.

Why stewardship leads to eternal ownership?

It's directly tied into what we just talked about, and so um I won't uh belabor it too much, but why is this this is a little bit forward-focused in this, why stewardship leads to eternal ownership.

If you can't be faithful with temporal, ultimately insignificant wealth, why do you think you will be entrusted with true riches?

There's the Bible tells us that we will be rewarded.

We will hear, well done, good and faithful servant, we will be rewarded based on our uh God is pleased to reward us uh for our faithfulness to Him.

Uh there is a judgment of rewards that uh that we look forward to and anticipate.

And Jesus alludes to that here.

Under the context of uh if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, if you're not faithful in what you have now, if you are not strategically using what God has given you and maximizing it for the advancement of his kingdom, for his glory, and for the gospel, why would you think that you would be entrusted with what is true wealth upon his return?

So Jesus here challenges us.

And let me share just a little story, and then I'll lead to my uh concluding point.

Uh, there was a rich man who was near death, and he uh he, of course, this is a this is a fictional story, so the theology is bad.

Um there's a rich man, no letters, uh there's a rich man, uh, and he's he's grieved because he has so much money, and so he just praise and praise and praise God.

Please let me take some of my money with me.

And uh he wants to take it to heaven, and uh an angel hears his plea and says, I'm sorry, you can't do that, you you cannot take it with you.

The man implores and and begs, and and so the angel reappears and says, God's allowed you to take one suitcase with you.

And overjoyed, the man takes all of his possessions, he tree, he sells them, he cashes it out, he turns it into gold, he places all the gold bars in the suitcase, and he places the suitcase next to his bed so he can take it with him when he dies.

And soon afterward, the man dies and shows up at the gates of heaven, and uh he meets Peter, it's always Peter.

Uh he meets Peter and uh he's holding the suitcase, and Peter says to him, Hold on, you can't bring that in here.

And the man says, No, no, no, I've I have an exception, I can bring this in here.

And so Peter says, Well, uh, let me go and check.

And he checks and he says, You're right, you're allowed to bring one carry-on bag.

Um, you paid your 25.

No, no.

He says, but I have to check the contents.

And so Peter opens a suitcase and he expects and inspects the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind, and he looks at the man and he says, pavement?

You brought pavement?

The wealth of this world is insignificant.

And it is only leveraged for eternity when we invest it now for then.

But let me bring us to the last point.

And that's it's impossible to serve God in worldly wealth.

And this is what Jesus says no one can serve two masters.

Now notice what he says.

He doesn't say that you shouldn't serve two masters.

He says you can't serve two masters, that it is an impossibility, that your heart cannot go in two equal, opposite directions in the same time.

These are mutually exclusive realities.

You will be going in one direction or the other, depending on where your heart is and what you're pursuing.

So he says you not only that you should not, he says you cannot, it is an impossibility.

And Jesus is not saying that you cannot earn money or that you shouldn't earn money, but he's saying you should not live for money, and that and that wealth, mammon, the the word here translated, uh, which would be money and possessions, property, more than just the love of money, it's the love of possessions here, that it can become an idol.

Idolatry isn't something that we often think about.

At the end of 1 John chapter 5, verse 21, uh, John writes in the last verse, he says, Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

1 John 5:21

And we think about it in the terms of like Isaiah 44, and he says, you know, Isaiah says that a man takes a piece of wood and he cuts it in half, and half of the wood he throws into the fire and he cooks his food over it, and the other half he carves, and then he bows down to it.

And it shows the foolishness and the and the futility, the silliness of worshiping a dead inanimate object.

Well, I would submit to you that we are as much idolaters oftentimes as they were.

The only difference is we're more sophisticated than they are.

And yet our heart pursues and we, when we look at what we spend our time and talent and treasure and energy on, we find ourselves, more often than not, pursuing things before and above God.

And those things are idols.

Not only can we not serve two masters, God is a jealous God, and he will not allow us, he will brook no rivals in our lives as believers, as his children.

And so there's a heart struggle.

But let me say this in closing.

God doesn't want your money, he wants you.

God doesn't want your checkbook, he doesn't want your investments, he doesn't want your 401k, he doesn't want your your Roth IRA or your IRA, he doesn't want your house.

He wants your heart.

He wants you.

All of you, everything about you, he wants your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength.

He wants all of you to bow down and worship of him and say, All that I am and all that I have is for you and for your glory and for the advancement of your kingdom and for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is all yours anyway, and I am yours.

You have purchased me, and you love me with an everlasting love in Christ.

And the true reality of it is the reason why God will brook no rivals and why we cannot serve two masters is it is foolish if we understand the love and the grace and the goodness and the mercy of God our Father in the person of Jesus Christ.

How in the world could we ever put anything before that?

And so He doesn't want your money, He wants your heart, He wants you to say, God, all that I am and all that I have, I will serve you, and I will serve you alone.

Let's pray as we close our time and song.

Father God, Father God, you have loved us so much that you sent your son to die on the cross for our sins, to redeem us, to call us to yourself, to forgive us, to place us into your family, to be the object of your love and affection, that you would take this wretch and make it your treasure.

And you call us to love you because you have first loved us.

And Lord, may we treasure you in response to you treasuring us.

We pray in Christ's name.