Summer In The Parables - [Luke 16:1-13]

Does anyone know who said that? Got it. And as he was reading the parable that we're going to study today, he came up with that quote that has gone down in history and probably motivated many a missionary and many a pastor and so forth.

Well, let's open in prayer before we dive into the parable of the dishonest manager.

Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your goodness to us, Lord, that you have given us new life in you, that we rely on your

Son, Jesus Christ, on our behalf. Father, we are grateful for that, and we thank you for this body of believers that we can come together and hear your word preached.

I pray that you would bless my words as I've been in this parable, Lord, that you would bless your word as it goes forth, and pray that we would be people that listen and apply and learn, and we thank you.

In Jesus' name, amen. So life is a stewardship from God, and all of our earthly possessions are to be used in the light of eternity.

That's the main point of this parable, and I'm not going to get into what a parable is because I think you guys have heard enough of that over the last several weeks as we've been in the parables this summer.

Now, this parable specifically is one of the most struggled -with parables, and I didn't realize that until after I picked it.

I'm sure Steve was probably laughing at me. I said, I want to do the dishonest manager, and there's 36 different interpretations for this parable.

Now, I'm only going to give you one, and I think this one's right, but there are multiple ways that people have kind of looked at this, and even

Jim Elliott had some kind of ways that he looked at it that I don't necessarily agree with.

But I do like his quote, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

So a little bit of context here. We've got the prodigal son following up to this parable, and they both address wealth and riches, and both main characters in both of the parables are nearly destroyed by riches.

Prodigal son wastes his inheritance, and in this parable we see a dishonest manager, a manager who's incompetent, who doesn't know how to manage his master's estate.

I was hoping to get a couple volunteers to help me with the readings. Could I have like three or four people who could help me read through this parable?

Eric, Chuck, David, one other.

That should be good. Let's split up this parable starting in Luke chapter 16, verse 1.

Eric, if you could read 1 through 5. David, if you could read 5 through 10.

And then Chuck, if you could read 10 through 13. Thank you.

So let's back up to the beginning there. Clearly, I believe the most probable cultural setting here is that the manager had authority to carry out business for his master.

And the clients were most likely renters who were paying for use of the land, and the steward was probably no doubt getting some extras under the table, and he was most likely a salaried manager of the estate.

So verse 1 and 2, there's two main figures. There's a wealthy man and there's his steward. And right off the bat, we don't know the reason why, but we know that this manager is incompetent.

He's not managing the estate in a trustworthy manner. The first true or false question on your handout is the steward is fired for some type of fraud.

True or false? We don't really know.

But I can say it's probably not fraud because there would have been charges brought up right in the beginning, and we don't see that happen.

We actually see a little bit of time between when the master says,

Manager, show me your books. I know you're not doing something right.

And the whole context of this really leads us to believe that this manager was incompetent. He was wasting his owner's possessions.

A bad employee. There's a difference between being fired and being laid off. When you're fired, you're fired because, in most cases, you're incompetent.

You're not doing your job correctly. You're wasting your time. And that seems to be the case here.

And the manager remains silent when he's accused of this. He doesn't come back with a quick retort and say,

Actually, no, it's not. How many of you, I remember being little and getting in trouble. I threw snowballs at cars once with my good friend growing up.

And, you know, I knew it was wrong, right? But we actually had a police officer come, and we, like, ran down the slope and hid under something, and our footprints were leading right under to where we were.

And the police officer comes by, and we see his feet, you know, because we're underneath this, like, truck cap.

And we were silent. I mean, we knew we got busted. We knew we were in trouble. Likewise, this manager knew he was busted.

He realizes the terrible predicament he's in. This is an important part to start getting a grasp of because this is going to tie in with the end.

He realizes this predicament he's in, and his mind just starts spinning. How am I going to get out of this position

I'm in? I have to figure something out, and I have to figure something out really quickly. If I get fired now,

I might not have a job. I might have to go beg. I might have to go work with my hands, which leads us to the second true or false.

I'm not strong enough to dig meant the laid -off steward was literally not able to dig.

How many of you guys think that's true or false? Workman's comp, come on.

This guy can't dig. Disability insurance. Now, I don't have an issue with disability insurance.

I think it's a great thing to have. But this guy was brought up in the white -collar world.

He didn't want to go down to the level of digging with his hands or begging. I'm too ashamed to beg.

He had too much dignity and self -respect to get out there and beg for money. So, again, this is all tying in.

Here's my options. Okay, I've got, if I get fired, this is where I'm going to end up. Holy cow,

I have to figure something out, and I have to figure it out fast. So the expression,

I am not able, is actually idiomatic of people who don't like their prospects. He didn't like the idea of having to dig.

Again, he had a white -collar job and menial labor, and Judaism was a much less honorable title.

So he didn't want to go there. So all of a sudden we hear him saying, you know, I've got it. Okay, I think

I have a solution here. And you can see him just kind of putting all the pieces together. He's thinking about his master and how he's going to respond.

He's thinking about his clients and how they're going to respond. And he's thinking about his future, which, again, his future, we're going to tie back.

Jesus actually uses the way that this master is actually thinking. Although he's wrong and he's crooked,

Jesus actually uses this example of how he thinks towards the future. Because, again, the main point of this parable is that we are to use our earthly possessions in light of eternity.

When we think about this life, we should be thinking about the life to come. So the steward has an aha moment where he says,

I think I've got a solution here. I think this thing might actually work. And this plan is devised not only based on what he knows about his master, because he knows his master is merciful, but it's also based on how these clients are going to respond.

And so kind of in a midnight madness, he's going to make some quick friends. In effect, he's going to disarm those enemies, those potential enemies, because if he got fired in the current position he's at, nobody's going to hire him.

Everybody's going to look at him and know he's a crook. But he's going to make quick friends with these people so that he can have future prospects with them and future job opportunities.

It's amazing to think he thought all this through so quickly. In the nick of time, this was his last chance.

It may or may not work. This leads us to the third true or false. The steward wisely plans ahead for his future interests and prospects in light of himself being fired.

True or false? Absolutely. He was looking out for number one.

He was making sure he was going to get taken care of in the future. The steward's plan recognizes what his future entails, so he prepares himself for the difficulties of unemployment.

He acts in a way appropriate to a steward wrapping up his affairs. He recognizes his long -term interests lie outside his current home and job.

So again, this guy planned out this scheme to make his renters personally indebted to him.

Quickly, he did this very quickly because he was afraid of being discovered. He didn't want to get found out because if he did, he'd be in a worse position.

And again, he relied on the mercy of his master because he knew that his master would – he's known his master long enough.

He knew how his master would respond to this, so he even took that into consideration. True or false?

Four. As we're getting into the scheme and how he's pitching it to those debtors, the debtors probably did not realize that the manager was dishonest.

True or false? What do you think?

Yeah, that's a valid point. There are – I'm going to go ahead and say that they didn't think he was being dishonest, but they could have potentially had some kind of hint that he was doing something.

I mean, this kind of last Midnight Madness meeting. Hey, guys, come on. Let's get together.

What was your debt? Okay. Cut that in half. Pay us this. Okay, you?

Yeah. I mean, this was all like really fast, but from what I can see,

I don't think that the debtors – this wasn't actually uncommon in that time frame to have that error in this kind of setup where you have the masters and you have the debtors renting land that you would actually get a discount for something based on the seasons, based on the produce.

So it was not uncommon for a master to actually give you some kind of break or give you a discount on what your rent is.

So if we look at – I just want to get into the text here again so we know where we're at. We're at – so he said, you know, 100 measures of oil.

He said to them, take your bill, sit down quickly, and write 50. And then he said to another, how much do you owe? He said, 100 measures.

Okay, sit down quickly. Write one for 80. And then we get into verse 8, and the master finds out about this.

And the master praises this steward. Now, does he praise him for his honesty, true or false question number 5?

Absolutely not. That's a pretty easy one. But he praises him for his cleverness. It's more of like, you clever little rascal.

You just figured out an amazing plan that actually put me in this predicament that I'm forced to comply with.

And I think I put an example in here. How many of you guys have heard of Frank Abagnale?

If you've ever seen the movie Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale in the 60s was a very clever theft.

He heisted over $2 .6 million in 26 different countries with forgery.

And that was when it was hard to forge a check where you didn't have all the technology they had today.

You had to get a $2 million machine to print out your check. So this guy was clever.

But we look at him even now today, and we say, that guy was pretty smart.

And we don't say that he was doing the right thing, but we say, man, that guy was pretty clever.

And we can probably look at some other crooks throughout history that we say, they really figured this thing out, and they knew how to deceive.

They knew how to feather their nests. So we see the manager more, or rather the master, saying of this steward, you clever little rascal.

So he realizes, of course, that the renters and the people of the village in general are already celebrating.

They're praising the master and the manager. They're pulling off a celebration.

I mean, they just got a huge discount on their land for the year. And so if the owner should now tell these people what really happened and should change the figures back to where they were originally, his reputation would go down to zero.

So he must have said to himself, again, you clever crook. You thought about me and how

I would respond. You thought about the clients and how they would respond. You thought about your future, and you feathered your nest. You've basically given yourself a comfortable life after I fire you.

You're going to have an easy time getting a job with somebody else in this town.

He did a pretty good job of schmoozing, I would say. I mean, he figured it out. Now, there's some controversy here on question six.

True or false, master refers to our Lord Jesus Christ. How many think that's true?

How many think that's false? All the trues, please raise your hand.

False. Yeah. If we look back to the

Greek word kurios, which occurs in verse 3 and verse 5, there's two cases in verse 5 and one case in verse 3.

They all refer to a human owner. So there's really no reason to assume that this is our

Lord Jesus Christ. And there's a lot. That's the big divide, I think, on this scripture versus is this

Jesus or is it Jesus using this example? Could someone read the second part of verse 8 and verse 9?

So the point here being made is that in worldly matters, worldly people are often more astute and shrewd than God's own children in matters of thinking about their future, thinking about, as a

Christian, we should be thinking about eternal prospects. But the world so readily and so well plans their future ahead.

I mean, just think about these people planning for retirements. I was talking to Chuck, I think, about a friend of his.

He's working in three different government jobs, and he's going to have all those retirements kicking in in a couple of years.

And it's just that planning, you know, that had to start pretty early. Actually, I think

I was talking to Steve about that. So really, again,

Jesus is using this example to imply that the world gives more foresight into their future and is more shrewd in their dealings than God's own children.

So this leads us to number 8, true or false, we should think of eternity when it comes to money in this life.

Absolutely. Luke introduces with,

I say to you to stress the application and importance. It's an

Aramaic term for wealth and possessions is not to be used selfishly, but to be used to make friends.

Yeah, Pam. Absolutely.

Thank you. And I think that the first time I came across unrighteous mammon,

I was kind of like, well, money's not bad, right? I mean, it's not like we need to have money, right?

We need to provide for our families. We need to provide for our children, provide for the future. We need to, in some ways, think about our earthly future, right?

It's not necessarily wrong, but we are not to be lovers of money. Big difference there.

And as we're going to get to, you can't be a lover of God and the things of God and a lover of money.

The reference to unrighteous is most likely used because the pursuit of it can make people selfish, cause them to take advantage of each other and be unfaithful to God.

I mean, how many circumstances have you seen in the church or in your family when money is involved?

Don't you see things get just nasty? I actually have an example of this on the other side of my family.

They have a large family, and things are just, I mean, they got along before this whole inheritance thing happened.

But now that it's happened, I mean, it has caused daggers to start flying. And you just see the greed and all of the ugly things that come out.

You just see those dollar signs light up in people's eyes when you see an inheritance come out, or you really see what the heart is saying when that happens.

So easily, wealth, being attached to the world, tends to reduce worldly responses, keeping one's focus on this age and on self, not on the age to come and God.

Mammon is what one trusts in. And if we're not careful as Christians, it can become a god to us, it can become an idol.

We should be relying on it and putting it, we should be putting it to beneficial use, use money in a way that pleases

God and that serves Him. And then verse 9, make friends for eternity.

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

Though the world, this is a quote by Ellison that I really like, though the world idolizes wealth as a god, believers should harness and utilize it as a servant of God, as a god, it is deceptive and unstable, and it will fail for everyone at death.

But riches can be used as an effective tool to fulfill God's purpose. I mean, we need money in the church, right?

We need to send missionaries around the globe. We need to support our pastors. So money is a tool for a

Christian. We are stewards of that money that we have. I mean, when we think of what

God has given us, we think of new life, we think of being adopted into His family, and we think we didn't deserve anything.

I think of children who are adopted in Africa, and I mean, what are the chances that they're going to get picked out?

There are so many of them. And in a similar way, we've been picked out by God, and we are

His. And so when we think of our money, we should think of it in terms of we're

God, so whatever we have, Father, I have an open hand towards you. This is yours. This isn't mine.

I've been bought at a price. I've been given new life. So we can use our money for missionaries, the church body, those in need, our families.

Those are good things to be using our money towards. So the

Dale Carney book, Win Friends and Influence People by Buying Their Friendship, is that what this means? No.

Now the steward did use his money to make friends with these clients that are probably going to give him future prospects when he gets fired, but Jesus did not mean here to buy friends to the kingdom.

We use our earthly resources to bring the lost the gospel. I mean, can you imagine getting to heaven one day and thinking that the missionaries that you supported, you've got people coming up to you from all around the globe, people saying,

I don't know how it's going to look in heaven, but your money being used for future kingdom, for gospel ministry.

Matthew 6 .20, Store up your treasures in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.

I just think we can be, I think this is, as we think about money and we look at the

Bible, I think that we cannot be reminded of this enough because we swim in a world of materialism and we swim in a world that says, give me more, give me better.

And we just need to always remember that our treasure is not here where moth and rust destroy.

I mean, all of the things that we heap up here, we can't take any of it with us when we die.

It's all going to, we came into this world naked and we're going to leave with nothing. Number nine, true or false.

Does anyone have any questions or any thoughts on this? Anything to add?

Number nine, true or false. If one is unfaithful in the small things, one will handle large things in the same way.

These were pretty easy true or false questions, weren't they? Selfishness in the little things reveals one's character and can indicate how bigger things will be handled.

I mean, just think about your jobs. When you start off in work, you're given little responsibilities and as you're faithful in those, you're given bigger ones.

You're given more, you're given more money to do what you do and you're given greater responsibilities.

Verse 11 and 12 points to, your faithfulness with money points to your faithfulness in the greater matters, the true things, those spiritual future prospects.

So whether we have a little bit here or whether we have a lot, we're to be faithful with that and that's going to be an indication of future eternal responsibility.

Thank you. Yeah, if one cannot care for, in this life, for what

God has given him, what do you expect to have something later on?

If you can't be a good steward of what God has given you, even if it's a little bit, even if you don't have very much, we're just to be faithful, consistent.

That last couple of verses there with faithfulness indicates a complete faithfulness.

Hendrickson on faithfulness, if you have not been trustworthy in the use of material wealth, which after all is not really yours, but belongs to someone else, namely to God who will entrust you the true heavenly riches, your own possession, the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

So we are merely stewards again of what we have. Second Corinthians 418, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is not seen for what is seen is temporary, but what is not seen is everlasting.

True or false number 10, it's a balancing act, but both God and money can be served.

It's a hate -love relationship. It's a rhetorical contrast. The thing loved has priority over the thing that's hated.

It is impossible to serve both God and mammon. Money is the litmus test for that, and I think you begin to see that in an example like an inheritance or where money is out there and you see nice, friendly people, and then all of a sudden you see the heart.

And I have 1 Timothy 6 through 10 here. Why don't we open that up?

Does anyone have that and want to read it? We brought nothing into this world.

We bring nothing out. We have food and clothing. We're to be content. It's that desire, that dollar sign in your eye, that kind of love for money, that's the wrong way to look at money.

Getting back into it, it's psychologically impossible for anyone to give his wholehearted devotion to two masters.

His objective to devotion will be either to God or mammon. We see examples of this throughout the

Bible. We see Judas. He was led to deliver

Jesus Christ up because of money. We see his true heart come out.

Does anyone have any thoughts on just thinking? I mean this, I think, really hits home because money is an emotional issue a lot of times.

It's an issue that brings a lot of thoughts with it. How many of you have maybe some examples of how you use money or you think of money in light of eternity, in light of your future prospects in preparing for eternity?

What are maybe some of the ways that you have thought about that? Yeah. But just about how, in today's society, they don't know ends without an end.

Good question. Yeah, and I think probably it's part of the reason why this passage is, this parable for a lot of people is like, this is just odd that it's here in the parable of the prodigal son makes sense, and this one people just get a little confused with.

But again, Jesus is using this example of this steward who, although he's a crook, he really did some thinking.

I mean this guy planned this thing out and probably was thinking about it even before it happened.

You see how his whole, he was planning for his future.

He really had this thing down pat, and Jesus uses that example.

And for us, we should be thinking about future heaven, future gospel ministry.

What are we going to do now? I mean this earth, what are we going to be thinking about in a hundred years? Are we going to be thinking about that new car we wanted or that 2 ,500 square foot house or whatever?

That's not going to matter at all in a hundred years. How about in a thousand years or a million years? What are we going to be thinking about then?

And I think that's why I love thinking about money in this way, and I have to be constantly reminded of it, and I think it's good for us to be constantly reminded of it because, again, we swim in this culture of give me more, and it's all about now, and it's all about pleasure now, and preparing for my future and a great retirement, and everybody should be able to retire at 60 and go live on the beach and do nothing for the rest of their life and collect shells.

But this takes us back to what's really important. Life is a stewardship from God.

Earthly possessions should be used in the light of eternity. So you're serving either God or you're serving money.

You can't serve both. And when you demonstrate faithfulness in the small insignificant things,

God will give you greater responsibility here in the world and the life to come. I just think of faithful ministers in this church and people who just faithfully do those little things that you say, who's washing the dishes in there or who's serving in the nursery.

I mean, those are the kind of things that I admire, and those are the things that we're to be faithful in those things.

Any other thoughts on this? How many of you or maybe some of the more seasoned saints here have thought about wealth and kind of look back on your life and think about you're qualified?

Yeah, it's never enough. They always want more. When John D. Rockefeller was asked, Mr. Rockefeller, how much is enough?

Just a little bit more is what his response was, and I think that's the response of most people in this world today.

It's never enough. It never satisfies. But we have the riches of Christ Jesus, and we can't be reminded of that more often.

When we think of our wealth again, I say we think of what Christ has done for us.

His love for us as we're being adopted into his family. And so what we have isn't ours.

It's a tool, and we're to be good stewards of it. Our wealth is in heaven.

This guy in the midnight just says,

I do it or I'm dead. So I'm here for the kingdom, and I need to be wise about how

I actually execute. They could have been content.

Yeah, I think that's a great example or thought of how are we to use that example that Jesus says, hey, this guy was thinking about his future.

And likewise, sons of light, you children of God, how much more should you be thinking about eternal prospects?

And I guess I'd go back to, he is no fool who gives what he cannot take to give what he cannot lose, to gain what he cannot.

I just messed that quote up. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

I mean, not long after Jim Elliot wrote that, he flew over to Africa and preached the gospel and was martyred for his faith.

I mean, not all of us can go over to Africa and be martyred for our faith, but that was his calling.

That was his, and he lived it fully. And I guess just as much, someone here, we need to fund missionaries.

We need to have people that are giving to the cause of missions through the church body, supporting that.

I guess we should think of this verse and be challenged by the fact that this guy really thought about his future.

This guy really thought about his own earthly life, and we should be maybe struggling more to think about how we are going to use our life.

I mean, daily thinking about what has God gifted me with and how should I be using these gifts to bring

God glory, to further His kingdom. I mean, we all have things that we do well, that God has gifted us with, whether those things are what you might call, you might think maybe are little things.

God has gifted you with those things for a specific purpose, and you are to be faithful in those things and shrewd in those things even.

And thinking about, okay, I've got this much that God has given me, and I just want to find out the way to use it to God's greatest glory.

I think we get confused in this culture even as Christians, because it's like, well,

I expect to be some, you know, you have to do the big things in order to make an effect for the kingdom.

But it's just the daily faithfulness, and I guess we can also become complacent when we think, hey, it's just the daily faithfulness, and I'm just going to go around and be daily faithful.

But also add to that the thinking that goes behind this steward that's praised by his master for the way that he thought about his future.

And so we should be not just kind of robots going around saying, hey, I'm going to be faithful in this, but even thinking further and trying to devise even greater ways to further the kingdom and to serve the

Lord and to give him more with what we have. Are there any last -minute comments here?

We're going to close in a few minutes. Yeah, good point, that we are also to use our gifts to serve the church body, whether that's serving dinner or taking care of the saints when we're sick.

That's a great thing about the church body and trying to be involved with it, because that's where we serve out our giftings.

Charlie? Excellent point.

Absolutely, thank you.

That's an excellent point. All right, we're going to close in prayer. Father, we thank you for your word.

Thank you for these parables that we can struggle with and learn from.

We thank you for all your teachings on money and future eternal prospects.

Lord, we thank you that you've given us much in Christ and you've given us much in wealth, being in this country that we have so much abundance in.

We don't realize it often enough. Lord, help us to see that you have given us everything, and everything we have is yours, and so we would have open hands to you in all that we do in our giftings and all the money that you have entrusted to us in this short sojourn on this planet, in this life.

Lord, we just pray that we would do everything to your glory and help us to think rightly about money and the future.

We pray that you would bless the rest of this morning worship service as we hear your word preached.