Wake Up! (Part 2)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

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See, I need a jump start. Work is consuming me. The resurrection. I need some encouragement because nobody seems to notice what

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I do. The resurrection. Rewarded by God for obedience?

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That's the key to ministry. John Gershner said, we have an opportunity on earth to do something that you can never do in heaven.

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You currently have an opportunity to lay up treasures in heaven. Be Christian theological capitalists.

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In heaven, you enjoy your treasures, but you cannot add any more to what you have.

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Only on earth. You go for it. Church bulletin board

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I like. Work for the Lord. Pay is not much, but the retirement plan is out of the world.

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Hebrews 6, God is not unjust. He will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.

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I think some of the Corinthians were like the descriptions found in this saying.

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Some folks remind me of blisters. They do not show up until the work is done. I love

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Whitfield's comment when he was asked, what will you do tomorrow? Excuse me. What will you do today?

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If tomorrow Jesus returns, if somehow you could know Jesus is coming back, what would you do today?

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And he took his day timer and said, this is what I would do because he had it all planned out today and that day living in light of the resurrection.

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Robert Frost, on the other hand, said the world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

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Our Savior was a worker. Our Savior was a minister. Our Savior was a server.

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Our Savior did the work that his father gave him to please the father. No wonder 1

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Corinthians 15, the chapter ends, therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. I think on top of the, above the sink, on top of the paper towel rack, there's a

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Bible verse. It's either that one or it's from Hebrews 6 to remind people, yes, there's a, this is all going to count in the most, you know, difficult ministry probably in all the church, the kitchen ministry.

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Why? Because who wants to even clean their own kitchen, let alone a bunch of church people's kitchen stuff. The resurrection is true and this is true as well.

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Revelation 22, Jesus said, behold, I am coming soon. My reward is with me and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.

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Don't you want to get to heaven and have God say, well done, here's this big reward for you?

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Isn't that going to be good? I said the first service. I know Deb's here. I'm not adding this for her.

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I'm saying this because I said at the first service as well, I hope it encourages her. Without getting all psychological on you, my father, as you know, died 1989.

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He really wasn't, you know, a talker. I think I said that last week. How many weeks in a row can I talk about my father?

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I have no idea. Let's quickly get through this. He didn't really say, I'm proud of you.

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So later in ministry, going through rough patches and rough spells and Dave Jeffries with that long arm coming around me.

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When Dave Jeffries comes up to you, hope it's not face to face like this because he's going to confront you about something. Mike, are you sure you want to keep doing that?

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Dave. Dave. He was one of our old elders, but he came up and he put his arm around me and he said, if I were your dad,

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I'd be proud of you. That lasted like a month in my eyes.

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That kept me going. And how about on judgment day? God knows how sinful we are, how foolish we are, how weak we are, how many times we've failed, but we say, you know what,

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God, by your grace, I'm going to try to do gospel work for gospel kingdom purposes by the grace of the gospel of the

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Holy Spirit. And I'm going to do this for you. And then it's like, good job. I don't think the

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Lord's going to say, I'm proud of you, Mike. If I was your dad, I'd be proud of you, but it's going to be better than that.

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First Samuel says the Lord rewards every man for his righteousness and faithfulness. See, this is not, you're not serving.

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What's going on with you? This is, you get to serve and then there's payday. I don't know how you serve

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Satan before you were a Christian, but I bet it was with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I bet you it was 24 -7 with a lot of verve.

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How can we then serve the Lord with some foolish notion? One saved, always saved, and I got my fire insurance, my hell insurance, and now it's just time to coast.

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That wouldn't be good. Then there's a little interlude. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 15, and Paul gives, in the middle of all this, some exhortations, some exhortations to think rightly.

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Corinth wasn't. Maybe you are, but I'll teach you these anyway. Maybe you're thinking properly, but he gives exhortations.

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Don't be deceived, wake up, stop sinning. Far from moralism, these are in the context of a

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Christian service, and a Christian message, and a Christian book preaching Christ Jesus and Him crucified.

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And Paul says, in light of all this, don't be deceived. If anybody ever says that to you, especially

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Paul, do you know what's true? It's easy to be deceived. Didn't he say this once before, 1

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Corinthians 6, don't be deceived. Fornicators, homosexuals, and the list goes on, will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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It's easy to be deceived because maybe that's your sister, maybe that's your friend, maybe that's your kid, and you go, well, they did say

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Jesus was the Lord when they were a kid, and now they do this. It's easy to be deceived. And it's easy to be deceived about this, bad company ruins good morals.

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I thought that was a parenting verse. It is, but it's in the context of what?

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Resurrection. It is by implication. If you hang out with people who don't believe the resurrection, they will corrupt you because they live for today, and you live for today and for tomorrow.

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The context here has everything to do with it. Resurrection is the key.

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Bad company, people that deny the resurrection, will corrupt your good morals. Sometimes people will say,

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Mike, you know, I only want the Bible. Stop quoting Luther, stop quoting John MacArthur, stop quoting

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Spurgeon. Don't quote anything but the Bible. Well, then you should probably tell

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Paul here not to quote a secular poet because he does it, and it's true. This is a proverb found in a poem in meander.

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Maybe it's Euripides. Wrong company, that is, people that deny resurrection, will influence you.

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Resurrection folks, on the other hand, will influence you positively. Say, if you hang out with people who swear, you're going to start swearing.

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Well, I do know Proverbs 13 .20 says, he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the compassion of fools will suffer harm.

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That's true. But the context is, if you hang out with people, it's like the guy that says, well, I think

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I'm going to start, I'm a Christian. I think I'll start dating an unbeliever. Well, you're denying the resurrection by that statement.

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It's one thing if you're already married to an unbeliever, then you have your own set of challenges that you can get through by the grace of God.

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But now it's, well, I think I'll just date an unbeliever. Bad company corrupts good morals.

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This person believes that evolution is true and that they're from,

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I was going to say goo, that's not going to, that they've come from monkeys. And nobody thinks it's a moral problem when monkeys kill other monkeys.

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So they don't think it's a problem either. Just don't get caught. Deviant doctrine comes from bad theology, no resurrection.

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That's why Paul quoted this proverb, eschatology matters. I think

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I'll push the envelope right now and say this. If Christians would think about resurrection eschatology and be mesit, they'd be a lot better off than if they fight over pre -trib, pre -mill, post -trib, om -mill, pre -wrath, mid -trib, post -trib.

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Which one are you? Well, I think it's fair to be something because the Bible teaches something about a millennium.

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But here, this is real eschatology. You've got one life to live and you should be ministering.

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And if you're not ministering, if you're not living in light of the resurrection, then let me repeat what

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I said earlier. Wake up. Look at verse 34. Wake up from your drunken stupor.

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How many people here hit the snooze alarm this morning? Would anybody admit it? I usually don't.

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I had no snooze alarm to hit because I have an iPhone, but I went and I scrolled down the Sunday morning 15 minutes later.

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Didn't work because five minutes after that, my wife walked in and said, honey, aren't you going to be getting up today? She said,

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I'm waiting to have a dream about what I should say in my sermon. Don't bother me. Do you know,

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I'll live full bore for the Lord. Five minutes. I'll really go all out.

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And here Paul is saying, wake up. Wake up.

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You don't do these things because that saves you, but you are saved and God says you've got a reward for it.

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Now, once I pay off all my bills, then I'll serve the Lord. Once I get all this, I'll serve the

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Lord. Paul says, snap out of it. Now you see on the shows, you know, some Western, all the guys with the black hats.

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They're like, you know, they're all drunk. And what's the first thing they try to do is give him some coffee to wake up some black coffee around the fire.

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Here's some black coffee. Christians wake up. It's like you're drunk. Paul says, come to your senses, man.

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Wake up in light of you're going to stand before God on reward day. It's like you're drunk.

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You can't think clearly. I'm not for drunkenness, but when people

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I see are drunk, I make sure I show the kids. Look at that. Look at that. Look at these people here.

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You don't want to act like that. You're acting like you're drunk with evolution.

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There's a danger to this. Paul says, stop sinning. Think rightly.

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What does the text say? For some have no knowledge of God. What a boxing jab to the chin to the

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Corinthians who kept saying, we have knowledge. We have knowledge. We have knowledge. We know. We know. We know.

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Uppercut. Roundhouse. Wake up. These people are resurrection agnostics.

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No knowledge of God. Agnostic. Knowledge. No. Put an

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A in front of it. They don't know. They don't know that there's a resurrection. And if they do, they're not acting like it. Stop it.

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Well, but you don't really understand my situation. Stop it. Sometime you need to pull up Bob Newhart on YouTube and somebody's in a bad situation.

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And his advice to them is stop it. Stop it.

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See what happened? Boy, you just love to preach a sermon like this every once in a while, right?

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Just wake up. The people that have no knowledge of God, 1 Thessalonians 4, are the

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Gentiles who do not know God. Turn with me if you would.

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We're going to wrap it up here at Luke 16. Luke 16. This is something that's tied to the resurrection.

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Luke 16 is a parable from Jesus, and it's about wealth and material things and money and how to be good stewards of those.

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And I think this will help us in light of the resurrection. Everything you have is a gift from God.

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And you need to use those things like there's going to be a reward day. We cling on to things too carefully.

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We need to be more like Luther who said there are four slits in your hands for a reason so money and people can slide through them quickly.

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Money positively, the people negatively. Think like there's a resurrection.

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Maybe the wildest parable in all the Bible. Luke 16 follows what particular chapter?

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Luke 15. Very good. It's getting super hot in here. It follows

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Luke 15. What happened in Luke 15? Lost, found, rejoiced.

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Lost, found, rejoiced. Lost, found. People were mad. They should have been rejoicing. Parable of the prodigal sons.

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And that one prodigal son, he squandered things, didn't he? He wasted them. Let's talk about waste.

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Verse 1 of chapter 16. How could this even be in the Bible? This is crazy.

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He also said to his disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager. Of course rich people have managers because they need to go make more money.

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Why manage? Because it doesn't make money. It just contains the money. You go make other money doing something else.

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So you hire a manager. Maybe it was a slave. Maybe it was a friend. It's a steward of what you have.

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And charges were brought to him that this man, the manager, was wasting his, the rich man's, possessions.

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So what do you do? Today you call HR. What do you do back in those days?

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You are fired. And he called him and said, what is this

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I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, or lack thereof, for you can no longer be manager.

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We today have financial planners. They take care of those things for us. You find out your financial planner is putting your money in all the stocks that have a lot of charges built in that he would get instead of worrying about your money and return on investment.

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You fire the person. The manager is to be fired. He had an office of trust and confidence, and he has broken that.

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And he squandered your possessions. He wasted them. Think Luke 15. Resources are valuable.

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Wasted resources. It wasn't like he was ignorant. He did it on purpose. He was a bad man.

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Called him and said, you're done. Give an accounting. Render the books.

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I want an explanation. There's a day of reckoning. Verse three. Manager said to himself, what shall

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I do? If you've ever been fired or let go or downsized, and they're saying the words where there's,

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I remember being there. There's no longer a position for you. Do you know what I was thinking out loud? I mean, in my mind, but not out loud.

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What shall I do? What am I going to do? Actually, what I was told was we have a position where there's no longer position for you.

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We need your company car, and we have psychologists waiting on standby to talk to you afterwards.

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Okay. I don't need psychologists until I tell stories about my dad 40 years later.

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What shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me?

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This is how I make my money number one by what the boss gives me.

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And then I'm cutting stuff off the top for me. I got double money. Both are gone. I'm not strong enough to dig.

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Blue collar workers is what they had back then. No computer programmers. No white collar workers.

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And I'm ashamed to beg. You either work or beg back in those days. That's it. I have decided what to do.

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And for the pop culture people, this was a grinch of an idea. So that when

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I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses. I'll get them indebted to me.

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I'm going to decrease their debts to the boss. And I'm going to increase their debt to me.

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I know what I'll do. I'm going to act wisely, cleverly, shrewdly, calculatingly.

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Reduce debts by increasing the debt. Reduce the debts of my master to increase the debts to myself.

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This is what the old generation called feathering your nest. So verse five, summoning his master's debtors one by one.

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How many there were, we don't know. They're lined up, it seems. We only hear from two or about two.

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He said to the first, how much do you owe my master? I'm still employed, by the way. It's my master. You know,

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I know I'm fired, but still, it's my master. So he's still being conniving. A hundred measures of oil.

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He said to him, verse six, take your bill. Sit down quickly before the guy shows back up again and write 50.

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Now, what's happening here? The details don't really matter, but I think it's probably this.

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I think this bad conniving steward charged the

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Jews interest when you're not supposed to charge the Jew interest. And now he's going to say, just take off that interest.

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That's one of the options. Or the other option is he's just saying, you owe my master a hundred of something.

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I'll write down 50. It's my master's land. You're renting it. And what you pay my master is part of the crop.

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Regardless, let's cut it in half. Okay. Said to another one, verse seven, how much do you owe?

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He said, a hundred measures of wheat. He said to him, take your bill and write 80.

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It doesn't even seem like the accounting books are there because the bad steward would probably say, you owe me 80.

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Let's cut it to 40. You owe me a hundred. Let's cut it to 50. He, the bad steward is now asking the debtors.

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Take your bill and write 80. Boy, that seems like a really good deal. And if you're a debtor, you think, boy, that's nice of the manager, but especially nice of the boss.

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Boy, he's a good guy. This is actually going to make people think well of the owner and create a debt to the shrewd steward.

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Take your bill, write 80. Well, what do you think is going to happen next?

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Let's hear from Jesus. We don't hear the people in the village praising both master and steward, although they probably did.

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We don't hear that this probably benefited the master because he was so good and gracious and generous.

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But what do we hear? Let's hear verse 8, criminal minds.

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The master commended, wait, the master commended, the master commended the dishonest manager, not for his sin, not for his dishonesty, not for his cutting corners.

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He 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 life, sons of light, excuse me.

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Do you know unbelievers plan ahead better than Christians do sometimes? They plan ahead for temporal reasons, for maybe bad reasons, maybe not the best motives.

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Here, he didn't have any of those good motives, but he planned ahead. He lived like there was going to be a later. And Jesus is saying,

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Christian, if unbelieving bad stewards plan for later, ought you not to be planning for later with what you owe?

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No, make good use of your opportunity now while you can. Thinking about the resurrection, live in light of the resurrection, plan ahead.

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What else did Jesus say? Verse 9. Well, this person is winning people for the kingdom.

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Is that what he says? Are we to win people for the kingdom with money? Verse 9,

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I tell you, it's a good time to pay attention. Make friends, believers, for yourselves.

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So far, so good. Be friendly. Isn't that good advice? Be friendly to everybody.

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Oh, that's nice. It's nice to be nice. It's nice to make friends. Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

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Take money and material things that you have and invest it in people.

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Use it to bring salvation to others. You can take all this and say this is theological shorthand.

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And it is. If I unpack it is, give your money to gospel -oriented ministries who will then preach the counsel of God, specifically the gospel of God.

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Save through the preaching of God ministered by the Holy Spirit. And you're using your money for investments that one day you'll be rewarded for in heaven.

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Money isn't your owner. You're to make it your slave. Make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth.

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So I'd really like to have those neighbors down the street who are unbelievers come to my house, but they've got like six kids.

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They're going to eat me out of house and home. That's a good way to use filthy lucre.

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Don't you love that word? If you got a little extra filthy lucre laying around, why don't you say no to something that you're going to do on earth that you easily could do?

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It's fine to do. But I'm going to go spend it on unbelievers and befriend them.

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That would be a good application of this very thing. And then after you befriend them, you preach the gospel of them.

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I guess I'm not really for friendship evangelism unless you buy them first. Use money to get friends.

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Throw your money around to get friends, and then you preach the gospel of them. Or give your money to places that preach the gospel.

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Use your wealth because it's going to be gone. Buy earthly friends with money because it's not your money.

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It's the master's. And if you don't buy earthly friends with money or invest in gospel things, you are the bad manager.

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You're trying to use that money to increase the debt that people have towards you instead of another. Verse 10, he who is faithful in a very little thing, money of all things, very little thing, money is faithful also in much.

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And he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.

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Verse 11, if then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you true riches?

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And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, all that you have including finances, who will give you that which is your own?

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No servant can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

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You cannot serve God and if you have a hard time with your finances and resources and your giving, the answer to your problem is the resurrection.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a

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Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

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We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org

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or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.