"The Parable of the Dishonest Manager" Luke 16:1-13 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, Clint Archer, who is pastored for many years in Durban uh South Africa, has recently moved um to Mobile, Alabama, where he is pastoring now Christ Fellowship Baptist Church.

Is the word Baptist in the title?

It is there.

Christ Fellowship Baptist.

So you get a Okay, started by Steve Lawson.

You do baptism, you get him all the way under.

All the way under.

You have an evening service.

So you're a Baptist church right there.

Um so we're thankful to have Clinton with us.

He's in town for the weekend.

He was ministering to our foundry students uh this week down in Lake Anna.

We're thankful that he's back here tonight.

Clint, would you come share the word with us?

Thanks, brother.

Thank you, JC.

Uh thank you, JC, for the invitation.

And uh it was wonderful to get to know some of the young adults a little bit better at Lake Anna and uh to see how fervent they are about uh the Lord and ultimate frisbee.

Um what a blessing to be able to be here tonight.

It's always a privilege to to come and preach at this church, and uh I know that you must feel very blessed to be part of uh such a wonderful church congregation.

Um I do have lots of stories about Jesse that are very embarrassing, so make sure you speak to me afterwards.

I'm not gonna use that time up here.

Well, EcoBelly, Suede, and Primal Scream are three bands that are big in Europe.

You've probably never heard of them here.

Uh they're often mentioned together because they have a lot in common.

Um, Ecobelli, Suede, and Primal Screen uh have all made millions of pounds uh selling their albums.

They all three had band members who had absolutely no knowledge of accounting, something else that they had in common.

They all three got into trouble with the courts for not paying their taxes.

And the other thing they all three had in common is that they all had the same accountant.

Uh accountant Frank Dixon was placed in complete control of the finances of uh these three bands, and over a period of eight years, he siphoned off millions and millions of pounds.

Uh this went completely undetected by the bands because uh what he did was quite clever.

He didn't actually steal their money, he took the money that was meant to be paid in taxes and stole that.

So the bands were still getting their full profits, so they didn't realize what was going on, and he just told them he had been paying their taxes, and he didn't until the government realized that, and they all got into trouble for it.

Of course, they moved the blame to where it needed to be, and um he went to court for that.

But Dixon isn't your average everyday crooked accountant.

He was a mastermind.

He was brilliant.

Most swindlers would take the millions that they'd stolen, they would splash out on lifestyle choices, you know, buy a yacht, uh, buy more homes, go and expense the vacations, but he didn't do any of that.

Firstly, uh he used the money to open credit lines and spent only the money that he borrowed.

The other thing he spent all the money on was business investments.

He didn't buy any assets with it.

He set up businesses and set up investments, knowing that he would get caught for this.

Well, of course he did get caught for it.

He also knew the the law well enough to know that um judges were more lenient on people who were swindling out of desperation rather than swindling out of greed.

And so uh when the investigation was done, it showed that the reason he had to steal this money was to pay off all the creditors because everything that he spent was on credit.

He also didn't have any assets to seize, he didn't have to pay any of the money back, and uh he was sentenced to jail, but only for one year.

So he went to uh you know Her Majesty's prisons for one year, didn't have to pay anything back, and then when he came out, he was 47 years old, and he was able to retire from all the proceeds of all the businesses that he had set up with the borrowed money.

And so he just retired now.

He's a very wealthy man who doesn't have to work and done his one year in prison, and um I mean what he did was despicable, right?

It's just it's really sleazy.

And yet you have to admit that there's something in you that admires him a little bit for being quite brilliant, right?

I mean, to think of that.

One year of your life to to retire as a millionaire at age 47?

The guy's brilliant.

And the shocking thing about this is Jesus says that you should be just like him.

Well, kinda.

Turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 16.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

Luke 16.

Now, when you're studying parables, as we will tonight, there's a little recipe that I find helpful in interpreting the parable.

A lot of people get confused and mixed up of different parables and the different possible meanings.

Uh so there's this little recipe.

One thing you have to remember about parables is um uh the word parable, pare boles, para means to come alongside, like a parachurch organization comes alongside the church.

So that's the para.

A boles means to throw, uh like a bolo is something you throw at someone, right?

So para boles means to to throw alongside or to cast alongside.

And what it means is that if you're trying to teach a truth or a lesson, you can throw a story or a picture alongside it to help it make sense or help reveal the truth or to hide the truth or whatever you're doing.

And this is what a parable is, and this is what Jesus does.

So you always want to know what the truth is, that the story is cast alongside.

And so to interpret that, the little three-step recipe that I find helpful is to set the scene, to tell the tale, and push the point.

And Jesus does this whenever there's a parable.

Um, so setting the scene means you need to understand the context very well so that you know what sparked the question that Jesus is answering with the with the parable.

Or the situation that brought it about that he wanted to tell the story to address the situation.

So the better you understand the situation, the more likely it is you'll get the right interpretation.

So we need to set the scene.

Then you tell the tale, you make sure you understand the details of the story the way the original listeners would have understood those details, and then you push the point, you make the application.

And often Jesus makes the application for his listeners as he does in this parable.

So let's start by setting the scene of this parable.

In other words, what prompted the telling of the story?

And for that, you actually don't start in chapter 16, you go back to chapter 15.

And if you just look at your Bible, most of your Bibles will have little headings over the paragraphs, and you can just see what chapter 15 was about.

It's the parable of the lost sheep, then the parable of the lost coin, and then the parable of the prodigal son, or the lost son that was uh recovered, the coin that was recovered, the sheep that was recovered.

So there's this theme in chapter 15 um about the recovery of lost precious items.

Look at verse 1 of chapter 15.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to him, near to Jesus, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them.

So that's the scene being set.

That issue, the the fact that these clean-cut uh religious types were upset that Jesus, uh a rabbi, was spending time with sinful people, wretched people.

The scum of the earth, the lowlifes, the tax collectors who were thieves and traitors to their nation, and all of the enforcers and thugs and the prostitutes and and just the lowlifes of society all hanging out, and then here's this you know, preacher who hangs out with them and eats with them, him and his disciples, and they're grumbling about it.

And so Jesus responded by telling a series of parables, and those three parables of the the sheep and the coin and the sun talk about the fact that there's something valuable that is lost and it needs to be recovered, and it can be recovered, it can be rescued, but it takes effort because that's what Jesus is doing.

These people were lost, but that's why he came.

He came to seek and save the lost, and so he's he's trying to teach people that.

Well, that's why I'm hanging out with sinners.

It's not because I want to sin, it's because I want to save them from their sin.

That's why I came, because I love them.

It's not the healthy people that need a physician, it's the sick.

So that's the flow of the context of these parables.

And then this flow narrows down into uh a tighter context in chapter 16, where he's now going to teach about resources.

Um spending your resources on the lost.

So chapter 16 starts talking about um money, money and using money for the right reasons and for eternal reasons, for building relationships.

So let's drill down with this chapter for this use of money, focusing on evangelism, but also introducing the theme of how to spend money.

And so it's appropriate in a in a chapter and a parable about money that the two main characters are a rich man and his accountant.

So that's the scene that we've set.

We understand the context.

Now let's tell the tale.

Let's let's look at what the parable actually says.

And I'm not going to read the whole thing for you in one shot.

I'm going to kind of explain it as we go along.

So don't get whiplash as we start and stop.

Um, chapter 16, verse 1.

And he also said to his disciples, after the prodigal son parable, he also said to his disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager or a steward.

And charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.

So stop there for a second.

A manager or a steward is one who's put in charge of the estate.

One of the great advantages of being rich is that you can hire other people to do the stuff that you don't want to do so that you can spend time on important things like your golf swing or shopping or whatever.

The downside of entrusting all of your stuff to somebody else is that they might want to go shopping too with your money.

Um, and so this is everyone's fear.

But the the more you trust the guy, the more you're going to entrust to him.

So, for example, in Genesis 39, verse 6, Potiphar, who was a rich Egyptian, it says Genesis 39, 6, that Potiphar left all that he had in Joseph's charge.

Genesis 39:6

And because of him, he had no concern about anything but the food he ate.

So Joseph was one of these stewards, one of these managers in charge of the estate.

So Potiphar didn't care because uh about anything except the food in front of him, um, because Joseph handled everything.

For Downton Abbey fans, the manager would be the head butler, Mr.

Carson.

The master would be Lord Grantham, right?

So that's what's going on.

There's this estate, and there's a head guy, a manager.

Um, for those of you older, Higgins from Magnum PI.

Okay.

Um, looking after Robin Masters' estate.

Now, the risk is that you would get a corrupt manager and that he would siphon the funds for himself.

This would be your biggest fear.

So if you heard rumors, or in this case, charges, that your steward was wasting your money, what would you do?

Well, you'd dismiss him immediately.

Look at verse 2.

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

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

This is the equivalent of have your debts cleared out by the end of the day.

Or in Donald Trump's words, you're fired.

And when a financial manager gets fired for wasting money, he becomes unemployable.

I mean, would you hire somebody who's just got fired from their job for stealing money from someone?

No, I mean, this guy's unhirable.

It's like being unemployed in Greenland.

I mean, this is the worst case scenario.

So in verse 3, it says the manager said to himself, Well, what shall I do?

Since my master is taking the management away from me.

I'm not strong enough to dig.

I'm ashamed to beg.

I mean, he's saying, Yeah, what am I gonna do for a living?

I'm too weak to work construction.

You know, I've got too much self-respect to cut out a cardboard sign and ask for money.

So, what am I gonna do?

But then his devious little mind hatches a sinister plot to feather his nest.

Life gave him lemons, he's gonna make a lifetime supply of lemonade.

So instead of using his last few hours to clear out his desk and say goodbye to his co-workers, he sets up a series of power lunches with his boss's debtors.

Verse 4.

Ah I've decided what to 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?

And he said, A hundred measures of oil.

Now, a hundred measures of oil is between nine hundred and a thousand gallons.

So for the purpose of the story, Jesus is showing that this is a huge debt.

This guy owes the master a thousand gallons of oil, which would be the product of a hundred and fifty olive trees or three years' labor.

So, whatever you make in a year times that by three, and imagine owing somebody that.

This is a huge debt.

What does he do?

He said to him, again in verse 6, he said to him, uh, take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50.

So he slashes 50% of the debt.

I mean, imagine your um mortgage company did that.

You know what?

You look like a nice guy, I'm just gonna give you a 50% discount.

You'd be like, I want to kiss you.

What's your name so I can name my next child after you?

I mean, this is this is great news.

And I like how uh Jesus includes the detail.

Uh, take your bill and sit down quickly.

You know, grifters always want you to do it quickly.

I've got this deal for you, but you've got to strike now.

You've got to sign now.

No, this deal's going away immediately.

It's now or never.

And so the guy, he doesn't ask any questions, he just sits, he doesn't want to know the answers.

He doesn't know why he's suddenly getting a 50% discount.

He just wants it in writing.

So he sits down, he gets his discount, and then there's another verse 7 how much do you owe?

And he said, 100 measures of wheat.

And he says, Well, take your bill and write 80.

100 measures would be a thousand bushels.

This would be the equivalent of um the product of a hundred acres of land or eight years of man hours of labor.

So this again, this is a very, very, very big debt.

He gets a 20% discount.

So, and the implication is that he was doing this the whole day.

It wasn't just those two.

He went from one to the next to the next to the next, slashing bills.

Now, by no stretch of the imagination is what this guy is doing considered ethical.

Right?

Uh and yet some commentators, if you ever study this passage, will spend several paragraphs trying to justify what he's doing.

Well, you know, the master shouldn't have been charging interest anyway.

Uh and so what he was doing is he was just making it a little bit more fair.

He was actually doing a good thing here.

In those days, Jews weren't supposed to lend money to other poor Jews at interest, and that's obviously what the master's doing.

So he's actually the good guy in the parable.

Well, that that doesn't work because these amounts are huge.

These aren't poor people he's dealing with, these are rich businessmen that he's dealing with.

And uh it doesn't say that there was usury involved or or interest.

This is a business development.

So this is not a good guy, in case you were wondering.

Uh, even though commentators try to make him a good guy, I know why would people even bother trying to make him sound like a good guy?

Because of verse 8.

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.

So Jesus in the parable commends this guy, the crooked accountant.

And so people feel like, well, if Jesus is saying we need to be like him, then he must be a good guy, and we need to be like him as a good guy.

But you read the story and he's not a good guy, A, and B, Jesus calls him a dishonest manager.

Jesus calls him the unrighteous steward.

But notice what the master commended the dishonest manager for: his shrewdness.

Uh the word shrewd means crafty, wily, like a fox.

And the master's doing exactly what we do when we hear about people like Frank Dixon, who ends up spending one year in jail and retiring as a millionaire because of the plan that he had, and it was despicable and was dishonest, but it was pretty clever.

And the masters basically saw what happened and said, touche, well played.

You got me.

I shouldn't have given you till the end of the day.

I should have just kicked you out with security.

And that's what Jesus is saying, that even the master realizes, everybody realizes that what this guy did was clever.

The golden rule in interpreting a parable is that each parable has one main point.

Don't try to figure out, well, there's all these different details, and each detail represents something else, and there's lots of lessons going on.

There's one main point, and the main point here, Jesus actually supplies for us.

He's not saying dishonesty is sometimes okay.

He's not saying you can defraud your boss as long as you do it in a very crafty way.

And that's not the point of the parable.

The point of the parable is supplied by Jesus himself.

In verse 8, the master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness, and now Jesus comments for the sons of this world, unbelievers, are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

And I tell you, here's the point, here's the application.

Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, and it will fail, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Jesus is not saying it's okay to be unethical.

What he is saying is that you should be like this slimy guy in one particular way.

He was shrewd in using the limited opportunity he had to use those resources to have a lasting effect for his benefit.

That's what made him so smart.

That he made decisions with the limited time he had these resources that would affect the rest of his life.

Because can you imagine that?

Imagine you got called in and you owed, you know, a half a million dollars for some investment or or business venture or your house or whatever, and some accountant calls you up and says, please meet me for a power lunch.

Sit down quickly.

I got some good news for you.

We're just gonna chop that bill in half.

Right now, boom.

All you need to do is sign here.

No questions asked, no strings attached, it's legal.

Everything and and you you're you're you're just so overjoyed.

Like this is fantastic.

This is this is so great.

Well thank you.

Thank you so much.

This is like winning the lottery.

Um I'll sign.

Uh and and you do, and then you go home and you tell tell your wife, honey, we're going out tonight.

Buy yourself something pretty.

We just made a quarter of a million bucks.

And then the next day, you get a phone call from the accountant.

And he says, Hey, I need a place to stay for the next month.

Can I stay in your guest room?

You'd be like, uh sure.

Yeah, I mean, you know this guy now.

He's your favorite guy.

And he needs a favor.

And he just did you a pretty big favor.

So you'd say, sure, move in.

You got a month.

You know, and two months later, you're like, it's been real, but um, you know, we've got in-laws coming in, they need the guest room, and he's like, that's okay, I'm gonna call one of the other debtors.

Hey, remember that guy that I just saved you a million dollars by giving you the 20% discount on that whole thing?

Um, I noticed you had a pool house.

Do you mind if I just crash there for a couple of weeks?

And then and he goes around and he does this and he's he's set for life.

What else is he gonna do?

It's brilliant.

And Jesus says, be like that.

You have to realize that you have resources at your disposal right now.

You've got money, you've got time, you've got talents, you've got abilities, you've got relationships, you've got opportunities.

And the window of opportunity is closing on that.

Because everything you have has an expiry date.

It's the date that's written on your tombstone.

The second one.

You're gonna die.

And in that point, none of your relationships, resources, skills, talents, money, investments are gonna mean anything.

Unless you use them in such a way that there is a lasting impact beyond your death date.

We all have a small window of opportunity to make decisions and spend money and use our time and resources to forge relationships.

You see, that's what he was doing.

He's forging relationships with people who can then invite him into their house, and Jesus says, You should use your resources to forge relationships with people who can one day invite you into their eternal dwelling.

And then he kind of catapults the the parable into the afterlife.

You know, the the proverbial mansion in heaven.

Um John 14, Jesus said, I'm I'm going to prepare a place for you, and uh then you're you're gonna come and join me.

And he said, In my father's house there are many, and the old versions say mansions.

There are many rooms.

Well, in heaven, a room and a mansion is the same thing.

Um there are many really, really cool places where you get to live with God.

And and we're gonna visit each other's houses.

And and uh, if you were at the foundry retreat this week, you would have learned all about the eternal rewards and how you can invest laying up your treasure in heaven, not on this earth, but in heaven where it has eternal impact.

And we have this opportunity.

It's what uh Ephesians 5.16, what Paul said was redeeming the time for the days are evil.

Ephesians 5.16, redeeming the time, buying back the time for the days are evil.

There are ways of redeeming your time, working efficiently for the future.

And uh Jesus refers to this as unrighteous mammon, is what it literally says, this uh unrighteous wealth.

The the word used there is mammon.

Um it's it's fine that the ESV translates it wealth, because that's that is what it meant metaphorically, but it's interesting what the word mammon actually means.

It's not a word for wealth, it's the word for the god of wealth, the pagan god of wealth, that the Greeks would have worshipped.

So Jesus is saying that this money that you have, um, it's not he's not saying that it's money that you haven't earned or it's money that you've stolen or acquired unrighteously.

He's saying all money is dirty, all money is tainted, all money belongs to all money on this planet is part of a corrupt system that's not going to function in heaven.

You're not gonna take this money with you.

This is money that belongs with the unrighteous system.

The righteous system, you don't use this currency.

But you can use this currency now to affect the new system in the new life, in the new world.

And so all this unrighteous mammons tainted pagan currency, and then Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater.

And I'm gonna say this part twice because this is kind of the meat of the whole parable.

If the sons of this world, the unbelievers, understand that they need to use their money and time to secure dividends for their earthly futures, how much more should the sons of light, believers, use their time and money to secure dividends for their eternal futures?

That's the point of the parable.

From the lesser to the greater.

I'll say it again.

If the sons of this world, unbelievers, understand that they need to use their money and time to secure dividends in their earthly futures, how much more should the sons of light use their time and money to secure dividends in their eternal futures?

So take a page out of their book.

Learn from this shrewd steward.

Learn from how good unbelievers are.

I mean, you you look at the world, everything's about money.

Look at how politics works, look at how business works, looks at how any industry works.

It always boils down to how can I squeeze the last cent out of this?

Look at the farming industry.

Everyone's making enough money and they figure out, well, if we GMO this and and whatever that, then suddenly we can make a little bit more, worse quality, but more money, let's do it.

It's all about the money.

Everything's about the money and how to get as much of it as you possibly can.

Well, imagine doing that with your time and your money for laying up treasure in heaven.

Trying to squeeze the last drop out of the minute that you have before you go to bed tonight to glorify God.

To forge a relationship with an unbeliever for the purpose of bringing them to salvation so that one day you will see them in heaven and they'll invite you over for coffee in their mansion because of money that you spent on earth.

You put money into missions.

I mean, missionaries cost money because jet fuel isn't free, you know, and visas cost money, and uh, you know, they have kids, and their kids need glasses and braces like everybody else.

And uh and so you you spend money on the missionary, but what that money eventually translates into a guy whose full-time job it is to meet unbelievers, build relationships with them, preach the gospel, as they get saved, disciple them, teach them to do the same, and so every dollar you put into that is a dollar that is turning from this unrighteous mammon into something that is producing dividends that last for eternity.

Why would you put money into a a C D or a uh uh I don't know what you guys use in the States, an index tracker or Berkshire Hathaway or whatever, you know, investing money into that, and I'm not saying don't do that, I'm just saying uh that's a it's a decent use of money for this life, but then you die, and all of that just goes to your kids who squander it.

Or you could use some of that money, and the amount is up to you because we all want different levels of reward in heaven.

Um, you could use some of that to invest in building relationships for the gospel that are gonna last forever.

So Daryl Bach summarizes it this way: people in the world give more thought to their physical well-being than the righteous do to their spiritual well-being.

Money has an expiry date, it's perishable.

When I went to France the first time, um I bought uh some currency, you know, with an exchange rate, and I I spent it while I was there, and I had left over when I went home.

And in those days the currency was the franc.

So I I had a wad of francs, and I thought, yeah, I'm just gonna keep this for the next time.

I love France, I'm gonna go back there someday, I'll take my francs with me.

And I did.

I managed to go back several years later, and uh I went back to France, but by then they had adopted the Euro.

And my wad of francs was now an expensive souvenir.

It was worthless.

I I couldn't use it for anything because they only take Euros.

The money that you have now can only be used now.

The currency in heaven is different.

So use it now.

Who wants to die with a massive bank account that you leave to someone else to spend when you could have some of that go on ahead of you in the currency that actually lasts for eternity?

This was a common teaching in Christ's um ministry, Matthew 6, 19.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal.

That's a verse about South Africa, by the way.

The highest crime rate you can get.

So don't do that.

Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

Mark 10, verse 21.

Mark 10:21

And Jesus said to the rich young ruler, You lack one thing.

Go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Come follow me.

Do you know that the only thing in this world that goes with you into the afterlife is relationships.

Just go ask King Tut.

You know, was buried with all of his wealth, all of his gold, a jar of honey, I think they found as well.

All the stuff that he would need.

Even his servants were buried with him in case you'd need that.

And then guess what?

They found the pyramid, they dug it up, and it was all still there.

The only thing that moves with you into the afterlife is relationships.

And you can forge those now.

And sometimes that's gonna take time, that's gonna take money, that's gonna take effort, that's gonna take sacrifice.

But you know what?

It's worth it.

It's gonna be worth it when you see them in heaven and they invite you over for coffee in their mansion.

So, how do I lay up treasures in heaven?

Verse 9 says, I tell you, make friends for yourselves.

There's the command.

That's the imperative that Jesus comes up with from this parable.

Make friends for yourselves by means of this unrighteous wealth.

Make friends with yourselves.

Verse 9, I tell you, make friends with yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, I love how he says when it fails, because he knows it will fail, because the moment you die, your money just evaporates.

But when it fails, they may receive you into their eternal dwellings, because your friendships and your relationships have now lasted into eternity.

Remember again what sparked this series of parables.

Um what sparked it was the idea that Jesus was making friends with sinners.

He's a friend of sinners and tax collectors, they said with distaste.

But that's why he came.

The reason Jesus was hanging out around places where sin was happening, like who knows what was happening at those parties, some drunken debauchery or whatever, you know, swearing, lewd jokes, who knows what gluttony, and whatever was happening.

And Jesus was seen among that.

Of course, Jesus is seen where the sin is happening because that's where the sinners are.

And he came to save sinners.

And uh seeing him with them appalled these Pharisees.

It would be like, I mean, you go on Facebook and you see there's a picture of one of your elders at a nightclub or a bar.

And you're thinking, why would he go there?

Unless it was to sin.

That's what they're thinking about Jesus.

Well, we saw you there.

We saw the selfie of you and the the tax collector and the two prostitutes.

What were you doing there, Jesus?

So they're assuming the worst about his motives.

But was Jesus sinning?

Of course not.

Do you think the favorite thing Jesus ever did when he was at earth was uh go hang out at smoky bars where everyone smelled like beer?

Or the equivalent?

No.

He was there for a reason, he was there for a mission.

To build relationships that would last for eternity.

And if you live your whole life trying to make yourself comfortable, inviting only clean-cut Christians into your homes and only Christians to your parties and and into your life, then how are you going to forge a friendship with anyone other than those who are already saved?

I'm not saying don't have Christian friends, of course we must, but if you only have Christian friends, what good are you?

I mean, you can have Christian friends in heaven.

What good are you on earth if you don't have unchristian friends?

When I moved to Los Angeles to go to seminary, I moved in with a group of guys, this was before Jesse came, to join us.

And um when I got there, I asked one of my new roommates if he could recommend a Christian barber, you know, hairdresser.

Um I wanted to give business to the Christians.

And he said, Well, actually, all of us guys in this house use a barber down the road um because he's Buddhist.

And I thought, do Buddhists give particularly good haircuts?

They kind of look, you know.

Most Buddhas I saw didn't have great haircuts, but no, though the point was that barbers have to listen to you talk for, you know, whatever, 10, 12 minutes every six weeks for six years while you're in seminary, and there's five of us.

They g they gotta they gotta listen to this.

Every six weeks.

So so all of these seminary students would rotate in and go and get their haircut at the same guy.

I still remember his name, the Vietnamese young man who was not fantastic at cutting hair.

Um all of my pictures in seminary, I didn't have a great haircut.

Even my wedding picture, I didn't have a great haircut.

He cut my hair for my wedding.

But I'll tell you one thing if that guy doesn't repent and accept Jesus as his savior, it's not because the Christians in his neighborhood wanted to spend money on a better haircut.

The money we spent on those haircuts was an investment in a relationship.

You know, when we moved into um, we just moved to a new town and we found out immediately where the Starbucks are.

That's how you do it.

When you're from South Africa and you don't have Starbucks, you get to Newtown, where's the closest Starbucks?

Okay, there's a couple of them.

We decided which one we were gonna use as a family, and we we always go back to the same Starbucks so that we can get to know the people who work there.

You know, they got their little name tags, and so we learn their names, we introduce ourselves, and and um why?

Just we're gonna be spending the money anyway.

Might as well spend it and try to use that to forge a relationship, too.

And so there's already a couple of people when we walk in, they recognize us by name, and and uh the manager of the Starbucks that we go to actually asked us to pray for her and the people that work there already, and that's just been a a couple of months.

I mean, imagine what a few years of that relationship could do.

I don't know, it might not lead to anything, but it might.

But how great would it be to see your barista in heaven because of a decision you made of how to spend your time and your money.

Just to be intentional about it.

Think strategically about who you hire to do your garden service, who in your neighborhood you invite over for a meal, learn their names, pray for them, build relationships so that you can share Christ with them, so that you can be part of the mission of getting them into heaven.

And it'll all be worth it.

Every penny that you spend on missions, every penny that you spend on buying someone a milkshake so that you can talk to them about Jesus, every homeless person who's asking you for money and you say, you know what, let me buy you a meal, um, and while he's eating, you tell him about Jesus.

Every time you spend money or time or effort or go out of your way or service or do anything for a witness, you're forging these relationships.

You're turning unrighteous mammon into something that could make a relationship that lasts forever and be invited into their dwelling place one day in heaven.

Now, just a footnote.

Don't use your liberty as a cloak for evil.

I don't want you to go and say, the one thing I took from that sermon is Pastor Clint said I should go to a nightclub.

No, um this isn't an issue about going and thinking, well, you know, if there's sinners around there, that's good.

I need to have uh sinner friends.

The whole point is to do these things intent intentionally so that you can introduce sinners to Christ.

The way you were introduced to Christ.

And if you're here tonight and and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ in that way, uh you need to know him because he's amazing.

He's the most compelling person ever to live, the most dynamic, the most loving, compassionate, powerful person you've you've ever encountered.

And he's alive today.

And he wants you to be in a right relationship with him.

He doesn't want to have to be your judge.

He came as your savior.

And he lived the perfect life that you couldn't live.

He's the you know he's the only human being ever to not sin, to not incur a debt against the Father.

That every thought, word, and deed that he ever did, every attitude and everything that he did was absolutely perfect.

So he was the one person that didn't deserve to die.

For the wages of sin is death, but he didn't sin.

And yet he volunteered to offer his life in exchange for your sin.

So that your sin earned him his death, so that you could have his righteousness.

And in that great exchange, you can go free from sin, the sin that binds you in this life and the consequences that come in the afterlife.

And for those of you who are here tonight and you do trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you do know him as your Lord and Savior, you have the most precious commodity in the universe.

You have salvation.

Your name is written in the Lamb's book of life, it can never be taken from you.

And my question to you is what are you doing with that?

You keeping it to yourself or are you gonna share it?

Freely you've been given, freely give, right?

Your salvation was perfectly free, and you have it, and you can share it with anyone at any time.

So do that.

Just want to end with one quick happy ending story.

Um also at seminary, I met a gentleman who lived in the house next to us, and um he was a believer, Filipino gentleman, 50 years old.

And he told me his testimony.

His testimony is that at seminary students, um, because we lived right across the road from the seminary, uh, the seminary students used to come to him to pump their gas.

He was a he called himself a pump jockey.

Um he worked at a gas station, a full serve gas station.

And he remembered thinking that was strange because seminary students are poor, so they don't usually get someone else to pump the gas for them where you have to pay extra.

But they all kept coming there and sharing the gospel with him, and well, just becoming friends with him first.

You use the same guy each time, he gets to know your name, you know his name, you ask him about his life, he asks you about yours, and they would build these friendships, they'd share the gospel with him, and he got saved.

And uh last time I was out in LA, I saw him again, and he is graduating seminary and has gone into the ministry, and he's gonna spend his life proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, and more and more people are gonna be saved.

All because somebody chose to spend a few bucks more on their gasoline.

There's now gonna be someone in heaven and all the people that he brings with him.

Happy ending.

So use your gifts, use your talent, use your time, use your money.

The window of investment is slamming shut, and when it closes, when you die, the only impact you will have on eternity is the relationships you form.

Make friends for eternity while there's still time.

C.T.

Stud said, only one life will soon be passed, only what's done for Christ will last.

Let's pray.

Uh Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for this reminder, this challenge, that we have the ability and the responsibility and the stewardship to share what you've given us with the world.

I do pray, especially, Lord, for anyone who's here today who's feeling desperate, who's feeling alone, who's feeling uh the weight and guilt of their sin.

What a blessing to know that they can be forgiven in a moment because of what you did for them on the cross.

I pray that they would be convicted of their sin and comforted by the knowledge that they can place their faith in you even tonight.

And for those who are already believes in Christ, I pray, Lord, that you would give us opportunities this very day to redeem the time and this week and this month, that we could start building relationships that could result in souls being saved.

For your glory.

We pray this all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emanalbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Watch T area, we'd love to have you working with us here today.

Everyone uses the street first.