Luke 16:1-15

All right, Luke 16, Luke 16, 1 through 15.

It says this.

Jesus told his disciples, there was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions.

So he called him and asked him, What is this I hear about you?

Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.

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, so that when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.

So he called in each one of his master's debtors.

He asked the first, How much do you owe my master?

Nine hundred gallons of oil, he replied.

The manager told him, Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.

Then he asked the second, How much do you owe?

A thousand bushels of wheat, he replied.

He told him, Take your bill and make it eight hundred.

The master commanded commended the dishonest manager, because he had acted shrewdly, for the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.

I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

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.

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?

No one can serve two masters, either either you will hate the one and you will love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

The Pharisees who loved money heard all of this and were sneering at Jesus.

He said to them, You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your heart.

What people value highly is detestable in God's sight.

Man, such an interesting passage.

We're gonna have fun looking at this one this morning.

Let's uh let's pray before we get into it.

God, we lift up our hearts before you, and that's the that's the material that you work with, our minds and our hearts.

Um, we pray that you would shape um shape our hearts, the desires of our hearts.

Um, we ask that you would open up our eyes, the eyes of our understanding to understand um what you're teaching here.

And then by the Holy Spirit, that you would um just write these things upon our own hearts, into our own lives.

You know our stories, you know the relationship we have with money, you know, the responsibilities that we have, you know, our character.

Um as we talk through this passage and we look at it and study it, Lord, we want to give you permission to speak into our lives.

So thank you for the gift of your word and that it corrects us, it teaches us, it reproves us, it instructs us in righteousness, and we give you permission to do that in our lives this morning.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

What a fascinating passage, huh?

Luke chapter 16.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

I this is one of those parables that is not um easily apparent, right?

And we're gonna we're gonna dig into this and we're gonna wrestle with it a bit.

But I want to remind you again that we're in a section of Luke where Jesus is on a sixth-month journey.

This is the last six months of his life.

He's on his way up to Jerusalem, and he's primarily focused on training his followers.

We call those followers disciples.

Um another word that maybe we would use in um in English for that is like those who are um learners.

The disciple is somebody who's a learner of Jesus, somebody who is uh really following or an adherent of uh of an individual.

It's more than just like second period math where you check in and you learn math from this person.

This is really like you're a devotee of that person.

Everything that they're doing, you want to learn from them.

Everything that they model is what you want to imitate.

And so Jesus is teaching his disciples what that looks like.

And Jesus not only had 12 disciples, but he had others.

He had 72, he had um over 120 that were gathered together after his resurrection.

So the group of followers, Jesus' followers, was growing over a period of time, and then he invites us to be followers of him.

He wants us to follow him and devote our lives to him and learn from him.

So the material that we're covering is instructions for life.

It's important for us to understand what Jesus is saying.

He's going to deal here with the subject of money, and he's gonna do that at least three more times before we get to the end of this section, which ends in chapter 19, verse 28.

1928.

So the whole theme of money is gonna keep coming up.

Fascinating.

The character, um, and the characters in some of Jesus' parables are gonna be defined by their financial status.

So some of the um material we're gonna cover over the next few weeks isn't necessarily about money and wealth, but the characters in the story are defined as either a poor man or a rich man.

Jesus talks a lot.

Jesus talks a lot about money and our relationship to money.

And so here's what I have underlined in my notes.

This tells us that following Jesus means that we let him lead us with our finances.

It means that we let him lead us with our finances.

So wherever you're at, you may be a person that doesn't have many resources.

Um, that still means he leads you with what you have, with what resources you have.

Um you may have plenty of resources.

That means that Jesus wants to lead you with your resources.

You may come into wealth later on in life.

There may be a future time where all of a sudden you're doing really well financially.

If you're a follower of Jesus, that means that he wants to lead you and I in how we use our money.

And so the question for us right off the bat is are you and I ready to be led by Jesus with our finances?

Are you ready to hear what he has to say to us about our money?

There's a um, so we we we're gonna get into this parable, and obviously a guy's about to get fired, and uh this week as I was studying this passage, I looked up what do you do when you're about to get fired?

And uh, there's this one article that was kind of on the front page of Google, first page of Google, they give you like 10 things you should do.

Here's six of them.

First of all, get every personal item out of your work area, take your stuff home bit by bit.

Don't take it all at once, right?

It's a slow process of getting it.

You know it's coming, right?

The second thing you should do is clean out your work computer of all your personal files and get your files off any devices that they gave you in use in connection with your job, right?

So you want to have access to that stuff.

Number three, get the contact details from your workmates and any other customers, vendors, or other business associates you want to keep in touch with.

I don't know how ethical that is, depending on how you relate to them after you get fired.

But um, yeah, those those relationships are important, and that kind of rings true with our parable today.

Number four is make sure you take the email addresses of your active customers so you can communicate your departure to them rather than letting this company control that important communication.

Number five, compose a polite, pleasant, and non-disparaging goodbye email messaging to send your customers and other business contacts if and when you are terminated.

Grab whatever resume uh fodder you can while you're still there before you are gone.

So there's definitely things to think about when you know you're about to get fired.

There's also a number of hilarious stories that are out there about things that people do on the way out.

Now, I hopefully you know this.

You all seem very well educated and um smart, but there are these hilarious stories about what people did on the way out because they're angry.

I remember um I had a friend that used to act on Broadway, and he told me a story about one of the cats.

Uh, cat's a terrible Broadway show.

I don't know why it was ever famous, but um, one of the ladies that was like a cat's actor, she got fired, but she was like kept around for one final show.

And so what she did um in her last act was she put on the wrong costume.

Like they have these giant like cat heads, right?

So she put on the wrong outfit and went out there and kind of screwed up the uh final, the final um show that she was in.

Well, that kind of burnt every possible bridge she would have with future acting jobs, right?

So it's really important when you're about to get fired on what steps you take.

And it's it's no doubt a very upsetting thing to have happen, being at a point where you're gonna get fired.

Um and you can at that moment when you know you're gonna get fired, there's some things that you can do.

So that's that's what's happening in this parable.

We see that there is a steward or an employee of a rich man who is doing a poor job, so he deserves to be fired.

Um, and so he decides what he's going to do, knowing that this is an impending action by his boss.

He makes a what the text calls a shrewd, and it also calls it a dishonest move at the end of his employment to put himself in the good graces of the other business people around him.

So one other businessman owed his master um 800 gallons of um olive oil, and they cut that in, he cuts it in half.

The employee cuts the debt in half.

Um, and then there's this other item that's owed, and he cuts the debt in half.

Again, it's also that when he's fired, he has some f somebody who's friendly that will take him in.

So the rich master, this is kind of the surprising aspect in verse 7, um, 6 and 7, is that the rich master, while having lost money by his employer employee's action, commends the shrewdness of this particular individual.

He commends him and says, um, that was a very shrewd move.

So here's the questions that we have when we interpret this.

As we look at Jesus giving this parable, well, the question is, you know, what um was the actions of the manager or the employee were they moral?

When does the parable end?

And when does Jesus' commentary on this parable begin?

A little bit of a question about that in in verse 8.

Um when does it when are we hearing the end of like the manager the map the rich ruler or the rich master talking?

And then when does Jesus' commentary come in?

There's a some ambiguity about that.

And then the question is what was the main point of the parable?

Like, why is Jesus telling this parable?

Um and again, that relates to the fact that there's a series of principles that Jesus teaches, which are very easy to follow from verses 10 through 15, but understanding kind of like what's this parable driving at is a little bit um confusing.

So here's the kind of the interpretation that we're gonna use this morning.

And there's two schools of thought.

There's the school of thought that that looks at the um actions of the employee as if they were moral.

And the way that they get to that conclusion, and that's not the position we're gonna take, but the way that one group interprets this as moral is because of the fact that maybe there was some interest that was able to be cut out of the deal.

Maybe um cutting it down by 50% was the true amount that was owed in the first place.

So um that seems to be a bit of a stretch, especially because it says here that the master commended the dishonest manager.

Do you see that word there in the text?

He commanded he commended the dishonest manager.

Let's see if we can find that.

Verse 8.

The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.

So it's very difficult to say that what was going on was moral.

So, how is Jesus taking and giving a good example from an immoral man?

Doesn't that seem confusing?

How is Jesus telling a parable where the the chief operator, the kind of the uh the hero of the story, is acting dishonestly?

Well, this is actually not new for Jesus.

Do you remember the parable?

Actually, you might might not have read it yet, because we're going to get to it in the future.

There's a parable about an unjust judge.

Jesus is trying to encourage his disciples to pray, and he likens God to an unjust judge.

The way that the parable goes is that there's an unjust judge, a woman comes before him and pleads her case and pleads her case and pleads her case, and finally, even though he's unjust, the unjust judge gives in to the lady who's pleading her case because she's just begging and begging and begging.

And Jesus is saying, you need to continue to pray, you need to be a person that prays and prays and prays, just like this lady does in this story.

Again, the issue there as you look at it is like, well, that's kind of weird that Jesus would tell a parable where he kind of likens God to an unjust judge.

But it's within the bounds.

It's similar to this.

It's similar to in Matthew chapter 5, when Jesus, or it's Matthew 7, when Jesus instructs us to pray.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Remember, he says, if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?

The way that the logic is working there is that if this character can do it right, then how much more can God do it right?

Or how much more can you do it right?

So it's this how much more logical progression.

So Jesus is using a story about a shrewd employee to illustrate the need for shrewd use of resources and opportunity for God's kingdom.

The logic builds from a lesser to a greater.

It's the idea, again, of how much more ought you to do this.

So we have a bad character who acts in a particular way with opportunity and resources to achieve a particular outcome.

And Jesus is holding up that individual and saying, if this earthly individual could achieve this particular outcome, how much more should we as Christians be able to be good stewards in the environment where we are at?

So here is what I have again underlined in my notes, really bold.

We want to be using wealth as an instrument rather than being acted upon by wealth as a master.

That combines both verse 9.

Verse 9 says this I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

Again, this is a weird verse, right?

And I'm not trying to pull any punches on you.

It's a weird verse because it seems like how do you use money for eternal, like to have be welcomed into eternal dwellings?

Because you know how salvation and your our relationship with God works.

We don't buy our salvation from God.

Our money doesn't leverage us a relationship with God, right?

But yet Jesus here is talking about the use of resources and opportunity for something that relates to something that's eternal.

But then also when we go over to verse 15, do you see that, or rather, let's go to um verse 11?

No, I want to go to verse 13.

No one can have served two masters.

Either you'll hate one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God in money.

So just notice in the text that we're looking at, there's this relationship to money, which is opportunity and resources, right?

Kind of packaged together.

Money can either be your master, or in verse 9, it can be something, again, that you can use, you can use your worldly wealth to gain friends.

Interesting, okay?

So we want to use wealth as an instrument rather than being acted upon by wealth as a master.

Note that the manager, or which we've been calling the employee, was just a middleman.

Do you notice that?

The employee in the story, he's a middleman when it comes to wealth.

His boss was wealthy and he was interacting with other wealthy business owners in the community.

That's a key thing to understand as we relate to opportunity and resources in our life.

We're just a middleman, right?

What is easy, the temptation is to fall into this place where we're looking to accumulate, where we're the end of wealth, right?

And our accumulation of wealth is the goal.

But no, we're actually similar to this employee in that we're the middleman relating what God entrusts to us for a season for his kingdom for other people, right?

So this ties in with this whole theme of mission that we've been talking about.

Now, we have kind of gone over this parable.

Let's go to verse 10.

Let's just pull out a couple of things from verses 10 through 15.

Okay, these are just principles, and then we're gonna finish off with um application.

Okay, some just principles in 10 through 15.

First of all, notice that character scales.

What you do with little translates over to what you do with much.

Do you see that we have in verse 11 or verse 10 whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.

Whoever is dishonest with very little will also be trusted with much.

So this is not just like Jesus coming on the scene and teaching anything that's like revelatory.

This just translates over into stewardship and business.

But what God is doing, what Jesus is saying, is that this principle applies to his kingdom as well.

This is where God's kingdom has shared values.

You notice that we're going to go and we're going to pack backpacks today with people that didn't come to church this morning because we share a value with those people.

People that don't know Jesus yet share a value with us that we love the kids at City Spring, right?

And here in the text we see there's a shared value between the business world of responsibility and privilege and God's kingdom of responsibility and privilege, right?

How do we how ought we to relate to responsibility?

With good character.

And what we see is that character scales.

If you handle responsibility on a small level poorly, then it's unlikely that all of a sudden you'll have greater opportunity and your character will improve.

And so it is essential for us in doing life that we have good character.

This has become more and more a theme in my life as I've looked around me and seen spiritual leaders fail.

We just finished up two weeks ago, we saw this massive report out of Philadelphia about the sex scandal and the abuse in the Catholic Church, right?

They're a religious organization, right?

They they um pride themselves on their on who they know God to be.

And yet here is this major, major scandal.

But it's not just in the Catholic Church, it's in the Protestant Church as well.

I have friends who have a lifetime of doing ministry and they got loose with their character and they disqualified themselves from doing ministry.

Character is more important than giftedness.

It is essential that we're growing in character.

You never change.

You never, you never outgrow the need for good character.

And God, right now, is putting you in a season where you need to have good character, right?

Where you need to live out godly character.

And it's not wrong to see that based on your performance, God will in turn give you more responsibility.

This isn't legalism.

This is something different.

This is called good stewardship, right?

You doing a good job with good character in what you're doing leads to greater opportunities.

Now, that your bad character doesn't forbid God from giving you.

Great opportunities.

You're responsible for the opportunities that you have.

And we've seen that.

We've seen people who all of a sudden, you know, they win the lottery and they have bad character, and you're like, God, why'd you give it to them?

Well, God's allowed to do whatever he wants.

But it's very likely that if they had bad character before they won the lottery, it's likely they'll have bad character after they win the lottery.

So we need to be a people that are honoring God, having good character with the small stuff, and then letting God entrust us with more things beyond that.

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I was reading a story, I think it was in the Washington Post, about a couple that found a homeless guy.

They um took him in, they really had a heart for him, and they did a GoFundMe campaign, and they raised$400,000 for this homeless guy.

Here's the little catch.

They didn't give the money to the guy.

They gave him, they they kept everything in their they bought him a uh SUV that was junky and broke down, but kept it in their name.

They got him set up with a few different resources, but essentially the guy didn't even receive a fraction of it.

But meanwhile, these this couple that's like we wouldn't even maybe call them middle class, like they they both had, you know, not great jobs.

They're both making minimum wage, essentially.

They're struggling as it as it was themselves.

And yet all of a sudden they own a BMW and they're going on these trips down to Florida and all of this, and so this uh this homeless guy waves a flag and basically says, I don't think I'm getting the money that was designated for me.

Washington time, Washington Post got a hold of the story.

Now a GoFundMe is doing um looking into it, and they're saying, well, he's an addict, you know, and so we didn't want to give him, we didn't want to give him the money because he's an addict and he's just gonna misuse it.

Hey, that's that that might have been something you could have said up front, but I'm guessing that's not the only reason the guy didn't get his money yet, right?

Character scales, right?

Before you get the$400,000, if you were not honest with your money, man,$400,000.

All it does is it takes a magnifying glass and it puts it over your bad character, right?

The opportunity exemplifies how bad your character was.

Now, another principle here that we see in 10 through 15 is again this how much more logic.

If the world is shrewd with its resources and opportunities, how much more ought the saints be with theirs?

So, in other words, do the financial gains of a Warren Buffett or a Ray Dalio do they inspire you?

Do you look at these men and go, wow, man, they are just shrewd with their resources?

Embedded in their success are the principle of making uh is the principle of making money.

Um the question is, are you able to translate their worldly wisdom, their shrewdness in a worldly sphere over to an eternal sphere?

I wrote here, let it inspire you to use your opportunities and resources for God's kingdom.

Imagine all these people that are just so shrewd and wise in how they handle money, and we're gonna see this in another parable with the ten minas in another few weeks.

God wants us to take the resources and the opportunities that we have in the same way that these earthly heroes do their business, and yet we are to take those things and use it for God's kingdom.

Um we've talked about this, how some people can easily demonize, some parts of the church can see poverty as being truly spiritual and wealth as being something that's evil.

And what Jesus is saying is no, no, no, what you have you need to use for eternal purposes.

Um the third thing here, the next principle that I've got is relationships are one of the most valuable resources that you have, which lead to more opportunities.

And we just see in the parable here that this guy uses the resources in order to develop relationships.

And I think that this is obvious, but it's it's an underlying principle that the work, uh, the opportunities that God wants to lead you in, um, and the new opportunities in your life are going to come from relationships that you have.

Sometimes I'm working with with people that um lack a lot and their life is in crisis.

In fact, my number is out all over the city.

There's actually social workers that work for the house uh the um housing authority, great guys, Christian people, um, that give out my number to people who are about to be evicted, and they call me up and they say, This is the crisis I'm in.

Can you help me out with money?

So we're really focused here on Southeast Baltimore in this one square um mile.

You know that.

So if people call me and they don't live in that mile or they're not related to that square mile, then I try to farm them out to other churches.

But we have a conversation that goes like this.

Um I say, well, what is what is your current family relationships look like?

And and and they're like, Well, my family's not around.

And I say, Well, look, God puts your family in our lives as the first group of people, the first institution that can help us.

Now, a lot of people don't have good uh family structures.

Um but and and I understand that, I know that, right?

Um, and I'm merciful, we're very merciful upon that fact.

But but God's created the family to be that first safety net that we have.

And and if your family relationships are not good right now, then here's what you need to do.

You need to begin to try to rebuild those relationships, or you need to be a positive, positive contributing figure to the health of those relationships as much as possible.

Um, and it may not be fixed, but let with your generation let there be a new work that God does in just rebuilding your family.

Be praying because, hey, and I tell the the this is the conversation on the phone is when when we have these crises, God puts those people around us to help us.

It's kind of like an insurance policy that God's designed through our families to help us.

The second institution, though, is the church.

And so I say, hey, what church have you been a part of?

And oftentimes the the answer is, you know, I haven't been to church.

A lot of people have been to church before, but they're not plugged into a church.

Man, this is this is why you go to church, you know.

We need to be a part of a church because they are the ones that help us as a family.

And as we're having, you know, when we're doing really well, we're giving to our church out of the excess, right?

We tithe, we give money to the church so that we can provide that for those that lack.

And then when we lack, we let our family around us know, which sometimes is embarrassing, but we let people know, hey, I'm in need, and hopefully the church can step up.

That's that's a healthy church.

That's what we're trying to be at Haven City Church.

And again, the people on the phone, I don't have that.

So, anyway, relationships are the most valuable resource that you have, even more valuable than money.

So I'd encourage you, if you're in a place where you're bankrupt on relationships, begin to rebuild those.

And you say, well, you know, I don't want to just use people for their opportunities.

It's not using people.

You're gonna provide other people with the connections you have.

It's this synergistic relationship that God has intended for us to have with other people, that we help one another out.

Um, but it's easy to overlook the value that that value in relationships that we can help each other out.

Um, and I think you know, the example of us doing these backpacks is a good example of where we're intending with these backpacks to build relationships with people.

Not so that we can get something from them, but we're using this to build a bridge so that we can establish a relationship with people so that we can give them something eternal, which is a relationship with God.

I'm fine with meeting a need, which is what most of the backpacks are gonna do, but it's gonna help us build a relationship with more people in the future.

It's essential in our dealings that we are working from a lesser to greater in our progression.

An initial mutual beneficial exchange that ultimately leads to a scaled benefit for the other party.

We have other other types of relationships that exist.

You've got the bait and switch type relationship, which is I'm gonna tease you with something good, but I'm gonna give you something lesser.

That's not what we see in this passage here.

And then you have a quid pro quo, which is an exchange of receiving equal values.

I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine, right?

And what Jesus here seems to be commending is a um working from a lesser to a greater position.

And he says, you cannot serve two masters, right?

You cannot serve two masters.

Notice money can be a boss, and if it is your boss, you will struggle to have God be your boss.

When money is your boss, you end up justifying yourself by comparing yourself with the people around you rather than being justified by God.

One last thing about this whole idea of money being a boss.

Debt principally puts you and I into a position where money is the boss.

So we want to make sure one of the reasons why Christians are oftentimes trying to move out of debt is because we do not want money to be the boss in our lives.

We ought to be getting ourselves out of debt, or rather, well, here's what I put in my notes: go get yourself into debt and then try to follow God on the mission.

And what you will find is that you're restricted, right?

You want, if you put yourself in debt, you're gonna be restricted from doing the mission that God's called you to do.

Now, look, I've got some debt that I'm trying to pay down from a couple years ago that's what was on credit cards.

So I'm not here pointing my finger at all you that have debt, like you shouldn't have it.

But generally, this is the principle, this is why Jesus wants us to move away from indebtedness, is so that we're not mastered by money.

Instead, we want to move out of debt, make money from the work that we do, enjoy the freedom to be on God's mission.

Amen.

We want to be out of debt so that money is not our master and we're on mission with God.

Let's just finish this up with um because there's a lot of rich stuff in there, right?

We do money every week, right?

And we relate to money in different ways.

And so Jesus wants us to follow him with our money.

But I want to finish with this, which is even a more important, it's even more important.

Hebrews 2.17 says this, for this reason, he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

This is Hebrews 2.17.

It's talking about Jesus as our high priest paying off our debts, making an atonement for us.

Jesus is our great high priest, he's the great middleman.

The exchange that he made on our behalf is greater than any monetary exchange that can ever be made.

Jesus stands between God and man making this atonement, paying for our debt.

The currency that he used was not money, but it was his own body and his blood.

And what did he purchase?

He purchased our very souls for eternity.

He didn't just take our debt and have it, right?

He didn't just cut our debt in half.

No, he canceled our debt entirely so that we could relate to the true heavenly master for eternity.

Jesus is the good, but the better employee of this parable.

Right?

While there's good principles embedded in here, there's some values of the kingdom that we see.

The great thing that we discover is that Jesus, in that high priestly role, has paid for us to have our debts canceled, so that we could live with the master forever.

Let's pray.

Lord, we are so grateful that you did that work, that you canceled our debt, uh, that you were that great high priest standing between us and the Father, making a way for us to be truly enriched by your presence.

Thank you for canceling the debt of sin that we had through the cross.

Thank you for paying for our sin.

And God, we pray that you would continue to work in our lives to help us to be good stewards over the opportunities and resources that you've given us.

Lord, I want to thank you for the people that have been a part of Haven City Church, the many lives that we're connected with.

And I pray, Lord, that you would continue to just bless and take care of financial needs that are represented here in this room and outside this room.

I pray that you would multiply the opportunities and that you would make abundant provision for those that are suffering.

And Lord, for those that are blessed with wealth, we pray that you would give them wisdom and resources, God, in a in a magnificent and a powerful way.

Um, that you would supply, Lord, for those that are in need.

Lord, continue to reach people for the gospel in Fells Point and this whole neighborhood area.

We pray, Jesus, that you would bless the backpack outreach tomorrow and that you would help us to build relationships with the families in Perkins and Douglas and the families of City Spring Elementary.

Um, that Jesus, you would um you would use this to extend your kingdom in very real ways.

And so continue to work through this church, Lord, provide for it.

Let it be a healthy church, Lord, that is able to do that whole idea of being fail-safe for people who are in crisis, that we can care for the vulnerable, that we can care for those who are suffering.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.