October 30, 2016
Pastor Alan Smith

Sermon Notes

They say there are three topics that you should never talk about. One is religion but since we’re at church that should be okay. The second is politics. Never talk about politics; however, I will say this. You should have received a voter’s guide inside the Worship Guide today. We’re not going to talk about politics but I am going to recommend that you engage and read about what’s going on. If you haven’t been keeping up with the news and don’t know what’s going on, November 8th is coming. Next Tuesday get out and vote. Be part of the process. That is an important thing to do. We’re not going to talk about politics today. The third topic not to discuss is money. You don’t talk about money! Well, today we are going to talk about money. The Bible talks about money today in our Scripture reading.

We’re currently systematically studying through the book of Luke. Today we’re in Luke chapter 16. I’m going to be honest with you. This is a hard passage. There are a lot of passages in the Bible that are hard because they’re dealing with some deep theological topic. You may wrestle with what it means. Or, it is dealing with trying to describe an infinite God and you don’t know what that means. Today we are dealing with a very challenging parable. One of the commentaries I was reading to better understand this parable indicated that in the first four centuries this parable was not hardly written or talked about. So as we go in to this today I want you to understand this is a difficult one to grasp and wrestle with. However, I think it’s an important one because the Scriptures have recorded it for us and we need to understand it. Let’s try to unpack it today in a way that I think can be meaningful to us and hopefully help us understand a little bit better about how we should deal with money.

In order for us to understand this passage we need some context. Context matters. Without context this passage becomes even more difficult to understand and the importance get lost in translation. Let me give you the back story or context to frame our story. In Jesus’s day in the first century, the rich and wealthy would have servants serving their home and managing their resources. Some of these servants might have been bought at a slave market. Others may have been indentured servants because they owed some kind of debt to someone. Some of the servants could have actually been hired employees from the local community working for the master. Much like our workforce today, they started out at the ground level. Once you proved your worth over time you may move up the ranks. We have a great example this in Scripture with Joseph. His brothers sold him into slavery. He gets down to Egypt and is sold to Potiphar. We find that over a period of time Joseph becomes so valuable to Potiphar that he makes Joseph lord of the house. He now runs the place. He’s managing all the people. He’s making decisions for Potiphar. We see the same thing in Pharaoh’s house. Before long this slave is now the Prime Minister of all of Egypt. Pharaoh basically gave him the reigns of the city to make decisions. This was normal.

Servants were given positions of authority in the home of the master based upon how well they performed. If they failed or their performance was lacking, there were always consequences. A servant could be demoted. They could be kicked out to manual labor. If things got really bad the servant could literally be kicked out of the house. If they were kicked out of the house, they became untouchable. They were worse than beggars because they had demonstrated their untrustworthiness or their inability to work for someone. No one would hire them back. No one would bring them into their home because they had proven their unworthy or untrustworthy. They would literally be homeless on the street and they would have to beg for a living. Since they weren’t lame, sick, leper, or something of this nature, people didn’t have pity on them. So it’s kind of the worst-case scenario to get kicked out of the master’s home because of something you’d done.

The second thing that is important for you to understand about this is that it was against the law of Moses for a Jew to charge another Jew interest on a loan. It was acceptable for people to give loans but it was against the law to charge interest on that money. The people began to find loopholes and work the system. For example, if you needed a loan and you happened to have a couple barrels of olive oil or a couple bushels of grain, you have a commodity. They would make an arrangement that was mutually beneficial. Let’s say for example you needed a loan from some guy and you needed the equivalent of 40 barrels of oil, half a year’s wages. You may say, “I will give you the financial equivalent of 40 barrels of oil but I’m going to write to bill of sale for 80 barrels of oil. You just pay me back.”  They would say this wasn’t interest it’s just the deal. They worked the system. It was not supposed to happen but they made these arrangements anyway. They would structure these interest payments into a loan so they could deny that they were charging interest. With this context as the background, let’s look at the parable of Luke chapter 16.

1. Use your financial gain to influence others

Luke 16:1-9
Jesus told this story to his disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money. 2 So the employer called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Get your report in order, because you are going to be fired.’ 3 “The manager thought to himself, ‘Now what? My boss has fired me. I don’t have the strength to dig ditches, and I’m too proud to beg. 4 Ah, I know how to ensure that I’ll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I am fired.’ 5 “So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe him?’ 6 The man replied, ‘I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.’ So the manager told him, ‘Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.’ 7 “‘And how much do you owe my employer?’ he asked the next man. ‘I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat,’ was the reply. ‘Here,’ the manager said, ‘take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.’ 8 “The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light. 9 Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.

I believe that, if our Bibles weren’t broken up into chapters, it would be much more logical to read last week’s stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son with the story that we’re about to be told. These parables are all tied together. As a matter fact in chapter 15 we’re told that the prodigal son got his money, went to a foreign land, and wasted it with riotous living. Luke is using the same word from chapter 15 of the prodigal son wasting his money as he’s using here in verse one. That word “wasting” is a really interesting because the Greek word really means to separate. Literally it means to “come apart from” or to “take away from”. It is the word often times used when they break the husk off of the kernel. They would throw it all up in the air so that the husk which is lighter than the kernel would blow way. It is the idea that something is completely wasted. It’s unusable. It’s essentially disposed of in a frivolous way. So, it literally implies that this manager was spending money like it was his own on things that don’t matter.

The manager realized that his time was up. It was time to make a move. He was either going to the fields today or he was getting kicked out to the streets. Neither were ideal scenarios. He decided the best solution for him was to get in to good graces with some of the people who owed a debt to the master. He figured if he could help them make a better deal and save some money, they would be more likely to let him go and be a servant in their house when that time came. So, he began to eliminate the debt. He was essentially wiping away the fraudulent interest that shouldn’t have been applied to the debts of these people. When the employer finds this out he’s kind of in a rather precarious position. He can’t negotiate the interest back because it was illegal in the first place. Now he has a manager who’s willing to be a whistleblower. He recognizes what the manger did and that he had made shrewd deal. He had figured out how to use this money to make friends so that his life was benefited.

Jesus instructed his disciples with this parable. He tells them that the world has figured out how to leverage money and influence people to benefit themselves. The world is good at making deals. Let me give you some gifts so that when I need something I know who to call. I’ll scratch your back; you scratch my back. The world is good at this. We see it all the time. You can watch it in the political arena. You can watch it in government, business, and family relationships. The world is good at this idea of using money or leveraging resources so that they can benefit down the road. Jesus challenges his disciples to learn this. Not so they can benefit themselves but so that they could benefit others. Jesus challenges his disciples to leverage the resources that they had so that others may benefit. This is a paradigm shift. This is countercultural. This is not normal. How could they use the limited resources that Peter, Andrew, James, John, Matthew, and Jesus have? How can they leverage what they’ve got to bring people into the Kingdom of God? Verse nine says, “Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.”

Have you used your resources wisely? This is the challenge. How can we use the money that God has given us to grow the Kingdom of God? How can we use our home to benefit others? There are people in our church right now who are hurting with physical issues and people in our church have invited them to live in their home. How can we leverage our home as a resource to grow the Kingdom of God? How do we use our possessions that we have to see people come to know Jesus? This is the reward of power, money, and possessions. When our possessions go to someone else or something else and our money pays for our funeral, what is the influence on eternity? Are we using our money to benefit others? Or, are we using our money to make our lives more comfortable? When we hear a pay raise is coming, what’s the first thing that goes through your mind? Is it a vacation or is it helping someone go on the mission field? What is our thought when it comes to money? Are we using it as a means to make life comfortable or are we using it as a means to grow the Kingdom? If we’re going to use our resources to grow the Kingdom, then we have to be good stewards of our money. We have to be good stewards of the resources that God has given us.

2. Marks of a good steward

Luke 16:10 – 13
10 “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. 11 And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? 12 And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own? 13 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

What does it look like to be a good steward? Be faithful and honest in the small things. A good steward is faithful and honest in the small things. Remember the story of Naaman, a man who was a leper. One of his little slave girls said to him, “We have a prophet in our land. If you go see him, he can make you whole.” He loads everyone up to go see Elijah. Elijah tells him to go and bathe in the River Jordan. Naaman thought he needed to do the something bigger. The servant finally says, “King, if you’re willing to do a big thing, why not this small thing?” Naaman does what Elijah instructed and he is healed. Until we are faithful over the little things, how in the world can we expect God to give us the big things? So, a good steward is someone who is faithful and honest in the small stuff. A good steward is trustworthy with money trustworthy. Are we good stewards with money? Can people trust you with money? Do you respect other people’s possessions as if they’re your own?

Do you have undivided loyalties? You’re either loyal to God or you are not. Being a good steward is something that we as a church have made an investment in. We want everyone to be a good steward of money. As matter of fact, we teach some classes about this. We teach Financial Peace University. If you’ve never gone through Financial Peace University, I encourage you to do so. We will have another class starting in January. David Pittman teaches this class. If you’ve not gone through the class, you’re missing an opportunity to learn how to be better steward of what God has given you. Jeremy Gilmer started a class this past week called Smart Money Smart Kids. If you have children and you want them to grow up being a good steward of money, this is a great class for you to join. How do you help your children learn the value of money and be a good steward of it? We want to be a good steward which means that we use the money to God’s given us, the resources that we have available to us, not for our own betterment but for the betterment of others. We’re using our resources to grow the kingdom of God. We can teach our children and help ourselves be better focus because we should be good stewards of our resources.

3. Love God, Not money

The third challenge today is to love God not money. Up to this point Jesus has been talking to his disciples. He’s been teaching them about effective uses of money and worldly resources for the benefit of others and ultimately how that fits into the kingdom of God. Standing around, always lurking, and always looking for opportunities to accuse Jesus were the Pharisees. They are just waiting for him to say something they could jump on. When they heard him say that you can’t love God and money they began to scoff. The Pharisees are a classic example of hypocrisy. They love money more than anything, all the while claiming that they love God.

Luke 16:14 – 18
14 The Pharisees, who dearly loved their money, heard all this and scoffed at him. 15 Then he said to them, “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God. 16 “Until John the Baptist, the law of Moses and the messages of the prophets were your guides. But now the Good News of the Kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is eager to get in. 17 But that doesn’t mean that the law has lost its force. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the smallest point of God’s law to be overturned. 18 “For example, a man who divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery. And anyone who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

In my mind I like to try to see the scene playing out like it’s a movie. Remember Jesus and his disciples are not wealthy but poor. One time Jesus told his followers, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” The Pharisees on the other hand are your wealthy, power players. So you have the wealthy, power players standing around watching the poor little group of men led by this impoverished Rabbi. Jesus was teaching the disciples and pouring into them with his wisdom of how they could use their resources. All while in the shadows off on the edges are the Pharisees eavesdropping and whispering back and forth to one another. They were trying to find something they could grab ahold of. Then Jesus says you can’t serve God and money. I imagine at that moment the Pharisees couldn’t contain themselves any longer and asked Jesus what he meant by that statement. They were probably laughing, mocking, and scoffing at what they heard. I imagine that for a moment that Jesus has this sadness in his heart because they just don’t get it. In my mind, I see him turn, lock eyes, and then dive into them. He doesn’t beat around the bush. He goes straight to the heart of the matter.

The underlying issue of the Pharisees is they were trying to gain approval from the wrong place. The religious Pharisee were so concerned about how they looked to the public that they appear to be righteous. They stand in the synagogue and make these long, loud, boisterous prayers so that everyone will hear them. They visibly fasted. They put ashes on their cheeks to make them appear more frail for show. They would make large contributions. They would bring in their big bags of money and dump it in the offering plate. It was all for show. The Pharisees wanted to look the part. They were the keepers of the law. They’re the ones who said yes you can do that or no you can’t do that. It’s all for show. They look like they are doing the right things but inside their hearts are sinful. Money is their idol. Money drives them. They’re driven by greed, by wanting more, by what benefits them and how to live a better standard in relationships with other people. This is a detestable thing in God’s sight. By gaining the praise of men, they received a commendation of God.

The revelation of the law and the prophets was to declare sin. It was to point us to the fact that our heart is sinful. Paul said, “If the law didn’t say don’t covet, I wouldn’t have known that I was coveting. Now that I know I’m coveting I can’t help but do it. The law points out to me what sin is.” This is the point of the law. It is to draw us to have an inner conformity to the heart of God. He declares sin to be sin so we understand what is wrong, repent, and turn from sin. The Pharisees allow themselves to become subject to the money. Their idolatry of money caused them to abandon the true message of the law of the prophets, to ignore the message of God, to ignore the Good News of the Kingdom of God. They were standing in the presence of Jesus, God in flesh, as the changing point in history was taking place. They were moving from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. All that the laws and the prophets told about the Messiah were now true and he was standing in their very presence. It was fulfilled before them and they missed it. They were more concerned and focused on appearing righteous in public than being righteous in private. They lost everything. They were enslaved to money.

They did not love God. As a result, they had undermined the truth. They had made exceptions to the law. They had undergirded the law. They changed the commandments of God. They lowered the standards of God to be consistent with acceptable standards of men. It is illustrated in the example that Christ sites with marriage and divorce. God had defined the standard of marriage as between one man and one woman for life. God joins together; let no man separate. The law of Moses made it very clear. There were guidelines and acceptable system parameters for divorce. There were also financial consequences for divorce. According to Scriptures, there was a dowry paid when a bride comes to a man and they get married. That dowry is usually something on the order of a year or more salary. If a divorce took place under the parameters outlined very specifically in Scripture, the dowry went with her. That’s a strong deterrent from divorce, if you realize that you have to give up $60,000 today when you sign the paperwork. It was not something that was done. The cultures around them, to include the Roman and Greek cultures, allowed them to do what they wanted. The Jews wanted this too. The Pharisees began to make some changes. They began to find some exceptions to the rule. They began to redefine the way things should be. They changed the law of God so that it was more acceptable to men. These exceptions allowed for people to easily get divorced and remarry for any reason.

While men wished to talk about the exceptions which permitted divorce, Jesus insisted talking about the law because the law points out our sin. Our sin directs our heart back to the heart of God. He expresses that standard once again. God’s ideal for marriage is one man and one woman for life. Verse 18 is a specific illustration of the charge Jesus made against the Pharisees. The Pharisees had buckled to the standards of men. They buckled to the pressures of the culture and set aside the law of God. They came to live in a way that was men approved not God approved. Jesus challenged them on it. These so-called custodians of the law were actually its corruptors. As they changed requirements for divorce, whose coffers were full? The Pharisees saw this as another opportunity to gain more money.

The parable of the shrewd manager compels us to ask, how will we use our financial resources? How are we going to use the money that we have? How are we going to use our pay, our bonus, our raise, our home, our vehicles, our assets, or our clothing? How are we going to use the resources that God has given to us? Will we use our resources for the benefit of ourselves or will we use our resources for the benefit of others for the Kingdom of God? What about our relationships? Are we seekers of money like the Pharisees? Are we willing to fight for relationships? Are we willing to fight for our marriage? Are we willing to fight for the truth of what Scripture teaches about what we are to do and not to do? The law is a schoolmaster. It teaches us what is right and wrong so that our hearts can be drawn to the heart of God. Are we willing to put it all on the line? If God asks you to take that $20,000 cut in pay because he wants you to go to a different job, are you willing to do it? If God asks you to sell your house because he needs you to do this, that, or the other, are you willing to do it? If God says to sell your vehicle or give it to this person because they need it, are you willing to do it? This is the question of the parable because ultimately the answer to that question is either you love God or you love money. You cannot serve both. Are we willing to put our resources where our mouths are? Are we willing to stand the line? Or will we be like the Pharisees and try to figure out a way around it because we can always ask for forgiveness. Are we going to hold the standard of God in our life or not? Are we going to be like the Pharisees or the disciples?

Here’s what I want you to walk away thinking about today. Maybe as you’ve heard the word presented, the Lord has spoken to your heart and you realize for the first time that you need to accept Jesus as your Savior. He needs to be your Master. Or, maybe today you realized that you were putting your money, possessions, or relationships above God. It may be time to reorganize your priorities. Maybe you’ll say you’ll be a good steward of the resources God has given you so that others will come to know Jesus as Savior.

Next Steps

• I realize today, that I have not made Jesus my Master. Today, I turn to Jesus and accept him as my Savior and Master.
• Today I realize that I have put money, possessions, and/or relationships over King Jesus. I want to reorganize my priorities.
• I will be a good steward of the resources King Jesus has given me, so that others will come to know Jesus as their savior and master.

Discussion Questions

1. How does the manager of Luke 16 compare with the Prodigal Son of Luke 15? What is the connection between these two parables?
2. Why is the Master firing the Manager? Why is this action or behavior worthy of firing?
3. What about the Manager’s behavior proved him to be shrewd? What is the parallel for the believer?
4. How do Christians squander the resources God has given them? How have you squandered God’s resources? What should our response be?
5. When Christians are using their resources properly, what will the outcome be? What is evidence that we have been good stewards of God’s resources?
6. Jesus says one cannot serve God and Money. What does this mean? How is it possible to ‘serve money’?
7. Jesus says that ‘what this world honors is detestable in the sight of God.’ What is it that we tend to honor? What takes priority in our life?
8. To be a good servant of King Jesus, what must we do with our money, our possessions, and our relationships, even our marriage?