Did you, did you actually hold it?
Was it sort of your qualified allowance?
You know, you weren't given your money.
You had household chores and so you earn some money.
How old were you when you first owned money?
Did were you anyone under 8 years old?
First time you earned money? OK.
First time you earned money, was it when you were 10, 10/11/12?
How many of you've never earned money, do you know?
There is a bit of a rush that comes and I remember taking that
money, those quarters and going to school and knowing I'm going
to go to the cafeteria today and I'm going to buy an Ice Cream
Sandwich. Wow.
It felt so empowering, you know, in that moment and to slide
those quarters across and be like, I have that one.
You know, it was a really cool moment.
But the really cool moments in our lives change in regard to
money, not just by what we earn, but how we spend it, how we save
it, how we give it. Those aspects also can be really
cool and empowering moments because you're not just starting
this journey with money in order to worry about it, which we
noted last week is sort of what happens is that our relationship
to it changes as a kid as we begin to accept more
responsibilities. Adulting, I think it's called,
and as we get into adulting, then our relationship is
changing. And so we, we need the Lord's
perspective on that, that it's not just about worry, but it's
also about stewardship, being a steward, and to have that sense
of identity that I am a manager of something that's not actually
mine. I am a manager of something that
has been entrusted to me. And so I am a steward of what
God is giving. Peter put it this way, and he
heard Jesus teach a lot about stewardship.
We're going to look at one of the parables that Peter would
have heard Jesus teach. But Peter summarizes it this
way. Each of you should use whatever
gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of
God's grace in its various forms.
So he's encouraging the churches that he's writing to have this
sense about the stuff, the gifts, the great wealth, the
spiritual wealth, the physical wealth that God gives you that
you say I am a steward, I am a manager of it.
I'm not an owner, it has been entrusted to me.
And this simple shift is not so simple to get sometimes.
And Jesus told a parable that really we struggle with because
it seems like Jesus is making the hero of the story, someone
who was doing something wrong in their stewardship.
So let's try to unpack it. How did Jesus teach Peter and
the disciples to gain this identity of I am a steward?
Let's just go ahead and practice it.
Say I am a steward, I am a manager.
Now what kind of manager are you?
Let's find out. Jesus told the story this way.
What verse is this? Where am I?
Let's just read it off here. Luke 16 Jesus told his disciples
there was a rich man. In fact, it it's almost more
literal to say there was a certain rich man whose manager
was accused of wasting his possessions.
So he called him. He called him in and asked him,
what is this I hear about you? Give an account of your
management because you cannot be manager any longer.
Now let's back up just a little bit.
You have, you have to realize that in, in the households of
the rich, the managers, the people who are serving in the
house also lived with the family.
So the, the little Greek word for this is the oikos.
So the oikos was this circle of relationships.
And so in an oikos circle, the household would include, you
know, my, my parents, maybe my wife's parents, the
grandparents, my children, maybe their children, the people who
served in our house, you know, notice how I positioned myself
sort of as the, the rich man. And then there might be those
who are working the lands and they also live there.
And there might also be some people living on the land who
are sort of shareholders who might be working the land and
sort of sharecropping there. I might even have a teacher, a
tutor for the children who lives in the household.
And so this was called an oikamina, which is the Greek
word for economy. And so if you were in an in an
economy, you were part of a, a household.
And so in their mind, little bells would be going off like,
OK, so the rich man is dealing with his manager who lives in
the house and lives in the property and is part of the
family, part of the whole system.
You cannot be my manager any longer.
This is when your pulse picks up.
You're like, I'm not going to lose just my job.
I'm going to lose my household. I'm going to lose my family
here. What am I going to do next?
Slide. So 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, into their economy, into their
orcas, into their orcamina. So he called in each one of the
master's debtors, and he asked the first, how much do you owe
my master? 900 gallons of olive oil, he
replied. The manager told him, take your
bill, sit down quickly and make it 450.
Then he asked the second, how much do you owe 1000 bushels of
wheat? He replied.
He told him, take your bill and make it 800.
The master commended the dishonest manager because he
acted shrewdly. Yo, this is Jesus talking.
This is Jesus's parable. This is Jesus's story.
The Lord commended the dishonest manager because he acted
shrewdly. Tell your neighbor he acted
shrewdly. Shrewdly.
And here's how Jesus explains it.
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 2 masters. Either you will hate the one and
love the other, or you will 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 hearts.
What people value is highly is detestable in God's sight.
Wow, what a parable, right? What a story.
How are we to unpack this and see that the Lord commended the
dishonest manager for his shrewdness?
You might remember that our first sermon in this series.
Go ahead, Pop, for it tried to get us to recognize that there
are two systems operating in the world.
There's the system of Babylon, and then there's the system of
the Kingdom of God in Babylon, which was identified with Rome.
God identifies a power system that's always looking to
dominate people. So Jesus is just finding another
way to identify the two systems at work in the world as he sees
it, that there's the system of the people of this world and
there's the system of the people of the light.
He says, look, the people of this world are more shrewd in
dealing with their own kind than the people of the light.
There's Jesus throwing some shade on the people of the
light. You've got a problem.
You're not shrewd enough, you're not thoughtful enough, you're
not calculating enough in regard to the riches that I've
entrusted to you. There's two kinds of people in
the world. There's two systems in the
world. He goes on to talk about the
people of this world, and he says in the story that there's a
rich man who's a master. There's the manager who's
managing the rich man's wealth, and then there are debtors.
The debtors have a relationship with the master, but it's sort
of mitigated by their relationship with the manager.
Notice how the manager drew them in to the ways of that Kingdom,
the transactional ways of that Kingdom.
When he presents them with the issue of their debt to the
master, what did he do? What did he do in the story?
The lawyers here know what they did.
Where's there's one, you know, the, the, the, the manager
didn't act alone. The manager said here's the
record of your bill, of your debt.
You take it, you cross out what you owed, you write down the new
figure. Wow.
He compromised them right away. He made them participants in the
ruse. Now the whole audience who heard
that? The rich man, a certain rich
man. You know, we desperately want
rich people to be good people because most of us here want to
be rich. Anybody want to be rich?
Do you also want to be good? You're like, can the 2GO
together? And you're like, I hope so, I
hope so. I hope so, I hope so.
But in their eyes, this little phrase that Jesus used in this
story, a certain rich man, automatically they're like, Oh
yeah, we know that kind. We know their kind.
You know, Jesus had told another story of a rich man who walked
past a beggar named Lazarus. And he walked past him every
day, and he ignored the needs of the beggar Lazarus and the
beggar died and went to be in the bosom of Abraham.
He went to be in the the good place of the dead.
No torment, just a resting place.
But then the rich man died and he went into torment in the
place of the dead, getting what they deserved, so to speak.
So they had it in mind that that the rich generally got there by
creating immense debt in the lives of others, really riding
them for everything they could squeeze out of them.
To squeeze 900 barrels of olive oil, that's a lot.
Do you know how many olives it takes to squeeze out olive oil
in just a little bottle? It's a lot.
It's a lot of work. And so this rich man was putting
the squeeze on the debtors. But the manager was shrewd.
He invited them in. He knew he was about to get the
boot and kicked out of the rich man's house.
So what was his plan? I'll in debt myself with some
others and maybe they'll welcome me into their homes.
This is the game that's being played by the people of this
world, and Jesus didn't judge that.
Right here in this moment, he's actually highlighting this
unlikely character, the manager, and said he's being shrewd.
He wanted to make sure he still had a place in this world to
call home. Jesus doesn't seem to be judging
him for that, but he is judging the people of the light because
they're not shrewd enough. This is how we make sense of
this parable, is that God is the master of all things.
We've been singing about it in our worship that God is above
all, Jesus is above all, that Jesus reigns above all, that he
owns it all, and that our relationship to Jesus now is to
be a steward, a manager of all that God gives to us because
we've been brought into the Kingdom of light.
His light has shown in our hearts and we've been changed.
We've been transformed. We've been moved from the
Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light.
So we're now people of light, not just people of this world,
we're people of light. And so then our relationship to
others isn't to make them debtors, but it's to turn them
into friends. This is the new relationship of
people of light in the Kingdom of Jesus in regard to others.
It's to treat them as friends. And what would you do with a
friend? Would you try to squeeze them
for everything you could get out of them?
Is it just transactional or is it transformational?
This is a transformational relationship, and the people of
light are to be the kind of people who transform
relationships everywhere so that they can become part of our
Oykas, part of Jesus Oykamina, so that they could become part
of a new economy. And when we die and we are
welcomed into an eternal home, there's friends to greet us.
They're like, hey, look, there's a quo.
Wow, it's so good to see her. And they welcome you into an
eternal party. It's so different.
Like, look, look at this. I mean, does this get you
excited? It gets me really excited that
this, this parable that seems so strange is something you can
move forward, something that Jesus is using to transform our
relationship with the stuff of earth, to transform our
relationship with money. Look, let's read it together.
What does he say? I tell you, use worldly wealth
to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it's gone you will
be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Years ago there was a little line about people of the light,
Christians preparing for retirement and beyond
retirement. And the idea is that on the day
you die, you bounce your last check.
Now, some of you don't even know what a writing a check is, so it
doesn't mean anything. But on the day you die that you
draw your account down to 0 because you've expended it,
you've used it in the life and work of the Kingdom of God.
And Jesus says, look, when it's gone, when all the money's gone,
he's actually, when does Jesus know that that that this little
trade tool called money is going to be gone?
It's when the Kingdom of God is fully realized.
It's like there's going to be a day when the Kingdom of God for
you is fully realized and money is not going to matter.
Money will not matter in the new creation than Q Kingdom and
frankly, some of us are going to enter into that sooner than
others when we die because I don't care that if when I die
somebody throws in a lot of cash, it's not very helpful to
me. My debt in life has been settled
with Jesus, and Jesus has always got me.
And so I don't need anyone to burn money for me for life in
the next Kingdom because Jesus has got me covered.
Jesus is enough. But in the meantime, Jesus is
commending the dishonest manager because of his shrewdness, and
he's commending it to us in such a way that if we say I've got
wealth, I want to manage my wealth, steward the wealth that
Jesus has entrusted me so that I win friends for the Kingdom of
heaven. I want to help people get to
know Jesus. I want to help people have the
quality of life and situation of life that they can open their
hearts and meet God. I want to be the kind of manager
who leverages wealth so that other people get to meet Jesus.
I want to make sure that there are people who receive the word
of God. And so there are all kinds of
Christians with immense wealth who are actually leveraging
their wealth these days to see that the last 3000 languages
that don't have the Bible in their language, they get it in
the next 5 years. AI is speeding the translation
process and there's people dedicating themselves to that so
that the word of God is there and that there can be new
friends in the Kingdom of God. So are you that kind of manager?
Are you the kind of manager who says I want to manage, steward
this wealth that God has given to me so that others meet Jesus?
Some of you live in $1,000,000 homes and they're not yours.
You're a renter, but you are so blessed to have a great space.
Do you manage your space so that people can become friends and
meet Jesus? Leverage worldly wealth for an
eternal welcome party? That sounds great.
Second thing that Jesus presses into us is that trust and
faithfulness are meant to shine in the character of Jesus,
people of light. He talks a lot here about
faithfulness and entrusting as a being trustworthy as part of the
character of a person. So let's read what he says.
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with
much. How many of you feel like all
you have today is just a little? Some of you must be really
wealthy. You have a little bit of money.
You have a little bit of wealth. You're in a great spot because
the one who shows herself to be trustworthy with a little will
be given more. The trustworthy steward will be
given more, not just more earthly treasures, but also
heavenly treasures. Notice what Jesus says.
He identifies here that there are three aspects of character
development. There's the small things,
there's the true riches and there are the tests.
We don't like tests. Do you like tests?
Some of you love to have a test 'cause you're like, I'm going to
show how faithful I have been with all the small details in my
economy class or my anatomy class or my chemistry class and
you're like, or your coding class, You're so excited.
I'm some of us dread those things.
We dread the test because we haven't been faithful with all
the small details. But Jesus says character
development comes by being trustworthy in the small things.
Mother Teresa said it this way. She said do small acts that
become great acts of love, love in the smallest way.
And it's a great thing. Jesus says 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. Ask your neighbor, can I trust
you with a little? What kind of steward are you?
What kind of manager are you? Can you be trusted with small
things? Do you despise these days of
small things? Or do you say this is the ground
from which I grow? I grow by being entrusted with a
small thing. It's the truth.
This is the way of Jesus. It's the way of great parenting.
It's the Gray of way of great managing.
Even if you're running a company you entrust with small things,
you entrust more to those who have proven themselves Jesus put
it this way. If you've not been trustworthy
and handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
And here's the overlap in the Venn diagram Gram between the
the Kingdom of the world and the Kingdom of light is that we're
all operating with the stuff of earth.
But Jesus wants to entrust true riches to you.
So how are you doing with not just the true riches that God
has given you, but also the small stuff?
The small things, It's building the character from which God
will shine as if you can be trusted with small things.
He's like, I'll see that. I see that small act that no one
else sees. Jesus saw the widow who went
into the temple and gave 2 pennies and he says, I tell you
she has given more than everybody else.
And the disciples were like, wow, Jesus's economy is a messed
up place. What?
How can that be? He said she has given
everything. She's given it all, She's laid
it all out here. She's trusting God with
everything. And so that's the the reverse
engineering of when God entrusts stuff to us, we give it back to
it. I'm trusting all of this to you,
Lord. It's yours.
I know it. I'm just a manager.
And that's the test. If you've not been trustworthy
with someone else's property, who will give you property of
your own, God wants to entrust you.
Jesus wants to entrust his disciples with more.
Remember we talked about that last week More.
He wants to. This is a really challenging
process for us because we get drawn into a different kind of
game. We get drawn into the Game of
Thrones, and Jesus knows it. In the Game of Thrones, we seek
to justify ourselves in the eyes of people instead of living the
justified life in front of God. There's immense competition in
the Game of Thrones of who's going to be the boss, who's
going to have more, who's going to dominate others, who's going
to rule this segment of the economy.
And that game is actually a game for losers.
Jesus paints it so differently, but he's confronted here with
the Pharisees, who everyone knew.
They also loved money. They were hoping desperately
that being rich and being godly had to go together.
They wanted it. And so they sneered at Jesus.
And he said to them, you are the ones who justify yourselves in
the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts.
What people value highly is detestable in God's sight.
He's like, what you're valuing highly in front of the eyes of
people isn't going to survive the test.
It's not going to survive the fire of judgement.
It's just going to become dust. It's just going to become vapor.
And so the question is, are you committing your life to just
things that are vapor or to that which will last for eternity?
Be a steward of God's grace in your lives in all its various
forms. When I'm a steward of Jesus,
this is what Jesus knows to be true in our lives.
We know an God knows that he's the owner.
Psalm 24 says the earth is the Lord and everything in it and
all who live in it. So God is the owner.
I am the steward. Paul expressed this in
Colossians. He says whatever you do, work at
it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for
human masters, since you know that you will receive an
inheritance from the Lord as a reward.
It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
So I am a steward. I know this.
It's my identity. I am a steward.
And then finally, faithfulness always matters, faithfulness to
Jesus. This is where we feel the
conflict of values at times and we feel like we we've not been
rescued from having to make a decision.
We have to make decisions. And there feels like there's
trade-offs in it. But I'm always seeking to be
faithful to Jesus in whatever He has entrusted to me.
Now it is required of those who have been given a trust, they
must prove faithful. I care very little if I'm judged
by you or judged by any human court.
Indeed, I do not even judge myself.
My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.
It is the Lord who judges me. I think a lot of us have a fear
of being judged on the front end of saying something.
We might say, I'm going to tell you something, but don't judge
me. Don't judge me.
And we're like, oh, I've said something.
I see those judgy eyes, that side eye, you know, going.
We have a fear of being judged. But the steward who's operating
for Jesus knows that the world system is going to judge them,
but they have to settle in their hearts.
And you have to settle in your heart.
Who are you living for? God is the owner.
I am the steward, and my faithfulness to Him matters
more. It matters more.
This is where the peace and purpose of Jesus is really
found. Because Jesus is the justifier.
Not the crowd of people, not the clients that you might serve,
not the owners that you might have to relate to in your work.
Jesus is the justifier through and through, Paul says.
Look, I know I'm not innocent. I know I've got mixed motives,
but I'm really seeking to be faithful to Jesus in my work and
in my life and in ministry. And so if you will be faithful
these days in establishing this identity in your life, God is
going to elevate you. Sometimes it may feel like I'm,
I'm really taking something low for myself in serving others, in
being their servant. But God sees you and he's
elevating you. I listened to an interview of
someone who's managing a company that now has made billions.
And he was asked, how did you become so great and the CEO of
this company you've worked there for all of your working life now
for 40 years. And he said every day I would go
to the boss at the end of the day and say, I've done all my
work. Is there anything else you'd
like done today? And he said he started to think
I was actually essential to the place.
He says, I, I don't know how it happened except that I was just
serving and just doing whatever God gave me to put my hands to.
David Greene owns a company that now makes $8 billion a year.
I can't wrap my mind around it. It's so much money.
He's 84 years old. He helped found the company.
He says I don't need a paycheck anymore so I don't take one.
They have 42,000 employees and he's still going to work and
he's not getting paid. It's called Hobby Lobby, it has
over 1000 sites in the United States.
And all along the way it's been their intention and journey to
actually give themselves to Jesus and to be faithful.
And early in the life of their company, they established they
would give half of their profits to the Lord's work.
And for whatever reason, God has continued to bless them.
And he says, look, we're not building a life for vapor, we're
building a life for eternity. What kind of steward are you
going to be? What kind of steward are you
today? These are the days in which God
will form your character for a lifetime of service to him, a
lifetime of building new friends.
And if it wasn't for the justification with Jesus,
there'd be no peace in this. It would just be an activist
kind of purpose, but with Jesus, this becomes the kind of purpose
that can reshape your whole life and transform relationships
everywhere. But you have to give yourself to
him. You have to surrender yourself
to him and say I'll be your steward.
You are the master, I am a steward.
Let's stand together. I'm going to invite our worship
team to come on up and we're going to celebrate our Lord's
Supper because Jesus gave himself fully to make a welcome
party in heaven to create friends.
Jesus gave himself to create friends in heaven.
Are you a heavenly friend? Raise your hand, heavenly
friends. Jesus gave himself.
It says he became poor that you might become rich, that you
might enjoy all the riches of relationship, peace and purpose
with Him. He gave his body, which we
remember with the bread He poured out his life, His blood,
which we remember with the juice and the cup.
Until as we serve one another in this moment, let's recall that
Jesus gave himself to make us friends and stewards.
It becomes a dual role that we are friends and we are stewards
to each other and his Kingdom of light.