Summer Stories - Week 7: The Tale of the Shrewd Steward (Luke 16:1-15)

0:00 So I want to invite you to turn to Luke chapter 16. We're going to be reading the first 15 verses of the chapter. And focusing on an unusual little story. It's an unusual little story because of the fact that Jesus tells it. And that he takes this rather dubious character who's in the story, who's the main character in the story, and he tells his disciples that basically we should be like this guy. So we'll have to see what Jesus is wanting us to learn from it. So verse one says, Jesus told his disciples, there was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, what is this that I hear about you?

0:45 Give an account of your management because you cannot be manager any longer. The manager said to himself, what shall I do now? My master's taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig. 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. So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, how much do you owe my master?

1:11 900 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, and how much do you owe? A thousand bushels of wheat, he replied. He told him, take your bill, make it 800. The master commended the dishonest manager because he'd acted shrewdly. 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's gone, you'll be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

1:54 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've not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth who will trust you with true riches and if you've not been trustworthy with someone else's property he'll give you property of your own no one can serve two masters either you'll hate 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 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 highly is detestable in God's sight. And may God bless his word to us. So it's a rather odd little story, at least an odd little story to find in the Gospels and being told by Jesus, especially since this leading character is held up as some kind of example. Sometimes the story is referred, you may find this if you have a heading in your Bible, at the start of chapter 16, you may find it's referred to as the parable of the dishonest manager, or the parable of the shrewd manager. You'll find variations on that.

3:20 And I noticed that on Ganabi's website, when it was talking about what was happening today and the subject for today's message, whoever wrote it or ever came up with the title was somewhat hedging their bets because it's called the shrewd, hypha or slash, dishonest manager. So whether the person is shrewd or whether they're dishonest, you'll have to make up your mind about that. It seems he's both. So, of course, then, why would Jesus tell a story like this? It's an odd story. Why would he tell a story like this? And what exactly would he want us to learn from such a story? Well, it's part of Jesus' teaching on money and possessions.

4:04 And you probably know that Jesus has a lot to say about money and possessions. Even in the immediate context of these chapters, if you go back to chapter 15, you see the story of the two sons and the younger one, whom we tend to refer to as the prodigal son. We discover that there's something there about how not to handle possessions, because it says he squandered his share of the family inheritance. If you go to the end of Luke chapter 16, so a little bit beyond where we finished our reading, you get the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man who was living in the lap of luxury, and Lazarus the beggar who lived just sitting at his gate and had a very miserable existence. Again, it's a story about wealth and possessions. You might think further back to the story that Jeff preached about from chapter 12 earlier in this series, the story about the rich fool. Or you might go forward to chapter 21, where there's the story about the widow who puts in two little copper coins into the treasury of the temple. And Jesus says, in ways that maybe puzzle us a little bit, he says she's actually given more than everybody else.

5:18 And of course, in turn, there's an even wider context in the Gospels. It includes the Sermon on the Mount, and we sang, Seek Ye First, those words taken from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God rather than storing up treasures on earth or being anxious about material things. And here we have in the midst of all of this, the story about this dubious character teaching Jesus' disciples and us something about how to handle wealth. Looks like he's cooking the books, doesn't it? And before we dig into the story, I want us just to, and the implications of it, I want us just to be clear on the details of it. So there are basically three main characters. The main character who's held up as an example is this manager, or he's a steward.

6:14 Jesus describes him in verse eight as dishonest or unrighteous. So he gets to look after his master's property. That's what a manager does. Gets to look after his property. Evidently, it includes handling some of the debts and some of the payments with clients. In verse one, we discover that he's a bit of a rogue because he's accused of squandering the master's possessions. Squandering, same word that's used about the younger son in chapter 15. Then you've got the master, the person that the manager works for.

6:43 He's a wealthy man, and it's his wealth that is being squandered. And we discover that when he hears what's going on, he decides to act very decisively. Not quickly enough, actually, but he acts very decisively. he's going to fire this guy. He's not going to throw him into prison, but he's going to fire him and signals his intent to terminate his employment. Then you've got the debtors. We meet two of them. Presumably there were others, and these are representatives.

7:10 These are the people that the manager goes around to start chatting. He sends word sense for them, starts chatting with them, and says, look, whatever it is you owe, change it. So one person gets to reduce their debt by 50%. The other gets to reduce their debt by 20%. And we discover that it's all part of a strategy. He sat down and he's thought to himself, what am I going to do when I'm out of work? And he has this strategy, what you would call how to win friends and influence people, to borrow a phrase. But he's got these people that are going to owe him a bit of a favor.

7:44 And he reckons that they will look after him when he's in need. Those are the main characters. Now there's also some kind of whistleblower in verse one, or whistleblowers, maybe other servants of the master, they're the ones who go and tell the master how this guy's been squandering his wealth. Now, all that's the basic idea of the story and the basic characters. I should say that the scholars who've studied this throw up various questions around the details along the way. We're not going to dwell on all of these by any means, but one of the areas that they talk about is the area of these discounted bills. And some people say that what he's doing when he says to them to adjust their bill, he's basically saying, you can take off my commission, or we've charged you too much interest, and you can take the interest off. And that would mean that he's certainly unjust in verse one when he's squandering his master's wealth, but he kind of comes out of it a little bit better in verse five to verse seven.

8:42 So if you interpret it like that, that that's what he's doing, that he's given up his own commission or something like that, well, it maybe makes you feel a little bit more kindly disposed towards this manager. I'm not actually convinced that that's the correct interpretation, but I don't think it makes a huge difference to what Jesus wants to draw out of the story. I want to give us three things about what Jesus says about handling wealth. And the first one is the main point that he draws from this story about this manager. And it's that we're to handle our wealth strategically. Now I should say, just before we dig into this point, wealth sounds like people who've got lots and lots of money. So just for the sake of definition and for the sake of not encouraging you to tune out if you earn fewer or less than a certain amount of money each year, wherever you are on the scale of relative wealth, this is how we are to handle our possessions. whether we've got little or whether we've got much.

9:52 We're to handle it strategically. Now you'll notice that the man is commended for his shrewdness. Verse eight, the master commends the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. The master is not commending dishonesty, nor is Jesus in this story commending dishonesty. The commendation is for shrewdness. It's figuring out how to work your way through a tricky situation. Here's a man who's been given what's a very difficult future. His difficulties are self-inflicted because he's brought this on himself, obviously.

10:36 But he's come up with a really creative solution by going around getting these people to reduce their debts and so on. And you can imagine the master allowing himself a wry smile when he discovers what had happened. Because after all, if the master goes around and says, oh, by the way, that guy, he wasn't working for me any longer, so put the amount of money back up again. He's not actually going to win a lot of popularity competitions if he does that. He's kind of trapped the master. And at the same time, this guy has got a few people on his side. He hasn't just sat around feeling sorry for himself. Could have done.

11:13 Now what am I going to do? Starts off like this. What am I going to do? Not strong enough to be able to dig. And well, begging would be beneath me. But instead of sitting there feeling sorry for himself and doing nothing, he decides to act decisively to prepare for this future situation in which he's going to find himself. And Jesus draws on that and he says that the children of this age tend to be more savvy in how they navigate life than the children of light. You'll see that in verse eight.

11:47 The children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. One of the commentators makes this comment about the manager. He says, he is more prudent in planning for the only future he is concerned about than the typical religious person is in planning for his eternal future with God. Quite a contrast, isn't it? So you've got this guy and he's got just one future. What am I gonna do when I don't have this job anymore? And he's more prudent in how he handles that than the typical religious person is in planning for his eternal future with God. And the implication of that as to how we handle our wealth comes in verse nine.

12:33 Jesus says, I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it's gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Like the manager in the story, faced with his future and acting shrewdly, so we are to use our wealth and act shrewdly in how we use it with a view to our future. That's what Jesus is saying. You'll notice that he talks about worldly wealth. It's an interesting expression. You could translate it the mammon of unrighteousness. It's a bit like our expression, filthy looker. Now, there's a balance to be found when we think about the Bible and our possessions, because wealth and possessions can be a blessing from God.

13:24 But the reality is, with earthly wealth, it's so easily tainted. I know we tend not to use cash. Most of us tend not to use cash nowadays. Maybe you still do. But in the days of cash, when we use it all the time, you know, you go into a shop and you buy something and you hand over a 10-pound note, or in the days when there was such a thing as a five-pound note and anything cost less than five pounds, you hand over, there's a bit of change. Do you ever stop to think where the change had been or what the change had been spent on? And if you would have agreed morally with what the change that you were given was spent on? In fact, someone has said that all money, if it stays in circulation long enough, passes through questionable hands and represents the wealth of this world only.

14:14 It's very easily tainted. It's easy to put money to nefarious purposes. And money also has the power very easily to distract us from our identity as citizens of the kingdom of God, worldly wealth. But Jesus says that we can actually take it and we can put it to good use. In fact, he says, we can make friends with it. And even more than that, we can make friends with it. And when we are eventually welcomed into our eternal dwellings, when we arrive at our eternal dwellings, we will be welcomed by these friends. Now, he's not saying that heaven is a little bit like the elite lounge in an airport.

15:02 You know, we're all going on our holidays, and you turn up at the airport, and the place is bunged, and half the flights are delayed, and there's just far too many people. There's not enough seats and people are sleeping on three seats and all that kind of stuff. And you're thinking, how long are we going to have to sit in this? Oh, is it worth paying that extra little bit of money and we go to the elite lounge? That's not what heaven is like. The point is not that if you've got enough money, you can buy your way to heaven. It's grace that opens that door. And you see that in Luke chapter 15.

15:31 But Jesus is saying how we use our wealth affects the nature of our welcome. He taught us, as we mentioned earlier, he taught us to lay up treasure for ourselves in heaven. And it's worth noticing as well what Paul says in 1 Timothy 6. He says, command those who are rich to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age. Isn't it an amazing thing that how we handle our wealth now will make a difference to our state in the coming age? It doesn't buy heaven, but it makes a difference somehow. Now, Jesus says, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it's gone, you'll be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

16:24 And people debate it and wonder exactly what's going on here. Is the friends, is it another way of describing angels who will eventually welcome us? Is it an even more roundabout way of talking about God? Well, these seem to be friends in verse 9 that we make now with our wealth. And these are the friends who will welcome us into eternal dwellings, which seems to suggest that people whom we benefit in some way with how we use our wealth now, those people will welcome us into our eternal dwellings. So imagine this. Imagine that you arrive in your eternal dwelling and you meet some people and they're from a village in Burkina Faso. And they're keen to speak to you.

17:10 Somehow they've heard that you're on your way and they're keen to speak to you and they greet you as though you're some kind of a hero. And the reason is that they're just so grateful to you because you've given down through the years, you've given to a Christian charity that brought clean water to their village, that provided education for their children that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. And they're grateful because of the way you used your wealth. You've made friends with your worldly wealth. Or here's an individual from Indonesia. And this is a woman who's grown up in a people group who had no copy of the Bible in their own language. But you gave regularly to another Christian mission, and you made it possible for this person and for many others in our community to have scripture in their own language. There's so many ways that we can use our money.

18:04 And Jesus says, use it to make friends so that when you arrive in your eternal dwellings, these people will welcome you. We need to handle our wealth strategically. But secondly, from verse 10 to verse 12, we need to handle our wealth faithfully. Jesus says there, whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. Whoever's dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you've not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you've not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? Something ironic about talking about handling wealth faithfully when we've got a story about somebody who was unjust in the way that he handled wealth.

18:48 He squandered it. But you'll notice in those verses, if you look at them again, just if you have your Bible in front of you, if you look at the verses, you'll see that there are several different kinds of wealth that are listed in pairs. In verse 10, there's little wealth and there's much wealth. In verse 11, there's worldly wealth and there's true riches. In verse 12, there is wealth that is borrowed and wealth that is our own. And what you notice, the thread that runs through it, is that how you handle the first of each of those pairs affects how much of the second of those pairs will be entrusted to you. And the key is faithfulness. So the way you handle a small amount is a pointer to what you're likely to do if you're given a bigger amount.

19:37 The way you handle worldly wealth is a pointer to what you're likely to do if you're given true riches. The way you handle what's entrusted to you, what you borrow, is a pointer to whether you're capable of having something of your own. So we need to be strategic, but we also need to be faithful. What we do with what we have, even if it seems not to be very much, is a proving ground or a testing ground for whether we can be trusted with more. Think of the story in Luke 19. I don't know if it comes up in this series later in the month, but it's this story where you've got 10 servants, and each of them is given the equivalent of 100 days' wages, one mina, quite a lot of money to get at one go. And when eventually they're called to account, the person who has managed to gain 10 is given responsibility for 10 towns, and the person who's gained five is given responsibility for five towns. they've proved themselves with what was entrusted to them and they're then given something more

20:46 so what how you handle what you have is preparation for what may yet be entrusted to you it's a testing ground for your faithfulness and that means we need to stop for a moment we need to ask ourselves a question how are you doing with what god has entrusted to you thus far How are you doing with it? Are you proving yourself trustworthy with what he's given to you? Some of you are young and you may say, well, hey, you know, I don't really have very much, so this doesn't really apply to me. Well, it actually does apply to you very much because this is a testing ground. And the season that you go through where you have maybe not a lot is a testing ground that will help to shape how you're able to handle the day that comes that may come when God entrusts more to you. Some of you maybe have plenty. You're fairly comfortable. How's it going?

21:52 Are you being strategic with it? Are you being faithful with what you've been entrusted? Or are you squandering it, like verse one talks about. What we have at the moment is a testing ground. And I think beyond wealth, there's a principle here that I think goes wider than this, goes beyond our money and our possessions. What do you do with your talents and your abilities? And you may say, well, I don't really have that many abilities. Certainly not like other people that I know.

22:25 What do you do with the opportunities that maybe God gives you to serve? And again, you might say, well, I don't really do anything. is terribly significant. I certainly would never be asked to be on a platform and would never be given anything terribly grand. Okay, but what are you doing with what you've been given? Because what we have, even if it seems little, is a proving ground for our faithfulness and our suitability for being given more. I recently read an excellent new book, particularly for those of you who are involved in any kind of leadership, it's called The Cruciform Leader. It's written by Alan Emerson.

23:03 Some of you will know Alan. You'll know his name. He leads a church in Portadown. So he's the one who's written this book. And he tells a little story in there, somewhat against himself, but he talks about when he was young. I think he's still young, but he was even younger. And he was a young, developing leader and a bit impatient because he recognized that he had leadership gifts and leadership abilities, and he really wanted the opportunity to do more than he was doing. So he went to have a little conversation with his uncle, his uncle Phil Emerson, whom some of you will know.

23:38 And Phil has very fruitfully led a church in Lurgan over a number of years. So he went to talk to his uncle, and he said, you know, I really want opportunities to be able to lead more. What can I do about this passion for leadership that I have. And Phil kind of shrugged his shoulders and he said, I don't really know what to tell you. Because he said, I've never actually set out to lead anything. All I've ever wanted to do is to serve God. Now he wasn't saying that as a kind of cut down of his young, enthusiastic nephew. But it's a very powerful lesson, isn't it?

24:21 That what we do with what we have at the moment has value. And what we do with what we have at the moment is a testing ground. And we need to be careful as we live our lives that we're not saying, well, I'll wait until I've got such and such an amount of money, and then I'll start to take my stewardship more seriously. Or I'll wait until I've got such a degree of opportunity or use of my gifts or opportunities to lead or whatever it might be. Then I'll take it seriously. But what I have now isn't worth it. We're to be faithful as well as strategic. And the third thing, the final thing in verse 13, we need to handle our wealth carefully.

25:13 Vigilant might be a better word. vigilantly sounds a little bit awkward. It doesn't quite run as easily from, you know, when you're trying to say it. But I'm trying to capture what Jesus says in verse 13. He says, no one can serve two masters. Either you'll hate one, the one, and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Now, there are various reasons given in the Bible why serving wealth is a bad idea.

25:47 For one thing, it's fickle. It can also be very fragile. It can be elusive. And it can be a very hard taskmaster, always demanding more. But there's also this for the followers of Jesus. He says you cannot serve both God and money. If you try it, you'll find that one demands the exclusion of the other. Now, that doesn't mean that there cannot be wealthy Christians.

26:19 But it does mean that if you are a wealthy Christian and you want to be vibrant in your faith, you're going to need to be very careful about the place that you allow wealth to have in your heart. Now, you'll notice in verse 14 that the Pharisees are listening. They sneer at Jesus. They think this is nonsense. They're trying to laugh it off because as Luke notes, they were lovers of money. This was cutting too deeply into their hearts. They justified their love of money to other people, tried to make it look as though it was an admirable quality. But Jesus says, actually, God knows your hearts.

26:57 I know that you remember the story of the rich young ruler who asked Jesus what he would have to do to get eternal life. It's in each of the first three gospels. And apparently he kept all the commandments. That's what he said. At least the commandments that Jesus asked him about. I don't think Jesus asked him about coveting, which is interesting. But when it came to the bit and Jesus said, I want you now to go and sell everything that you have and give it to the poor. When it came to that, Jesus had put his finger on something that was just too precious to this young man.

27:27 And he refused to do it. And he went away sad because he had many possessions. And I suspect his problem wasn't simply that he had many possessions. His problem was that his possessions had him. They had his heart. And you cannot love both God and money. And that's why Jesus says, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Now, he's not talking about a gate in Jerusalem that is called the eye of the needle.

28:01 He's not talking about that. He's painting a ridiculous picture of a needle, the eye of a needle, and trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle. That's the challenge for a rich person to enter the kingdom. And someone has written that self-justification of one's attachment to material possessions continues to trouble those in every age of human history. So we always want to justify it. So what do we do? How do we handle it carefully? Let me tell you about a man, just as we come towards the end, let me tell you about a man called Sir John Lang.

28:45 Some of you will recognize the name Lang Construction, a remarkable business which Sir John Lang developed and which was continued by his family. He was an entrepreneur, lived 100 years ago. Entrepreneur, innovator, was one of the first employers to come up with quite a number of different benefits for his workers. And his name has come down in the construction company, but it's also come down in terms of the generosity that's associated with him. Apparently, he discovered after they had died, he discovered that his parents had a practice of giving 75% of the family income to the Lord. You know how we get into those debates about, should we tithe? Is that Christians tithing, or is that an Old Testament thing?

29:37 And we get into all this debate about 10% or what. These people gave 75% of their income to the Lord. And that generosity obviously affected Sir John Lang. So in 1922, he handed over almost half of the shares of his company to a charitable trust. And down through the years, there have been other family trusts that have the Lang name that have grown up. And they've supported a whole range of projects from evangelism and discipleship, building and building houses and food banks, education and healthcare. Only eternity will ever show what has been done by the investment of this man's wealth. You kind of wonder how many people have welcomed him into his eternal dwelling because he certainly handled his wealth strategically.

30:36 But he made a comment that I think helps to tie some of these things together. When you've got wealth, and yet you want to be careful with your heart, he said, business has a tendency to make a man mercenary, which the service of giving counteracts. So it's kind of when you go back to the beginning again, isn't it? The strategic giving and the willingness to do that and the willingness to be generous, that seems to be the way that we can guard our hearts if God has blessed us with a great deal of wealth. I finish with a verse from 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and it's verse 9. This is taken from a passage that's one of the best known sections of the New Testament that talks about Christian giving. And it says this, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. Let's bow together.

31:52 Just have a moment of reflection to consider what God is going to be saying to us Through this teaching of the Lord Jesus. Strategic. Faithful. Careful. Some of you are young as we've said. And maybe there's an opportunity for you to do a little bit of thinking. And to say well.

32:18 Do you know I want to get some clear foundation set. In my life. But how I handle money. I'm going to start when I don't have very much. So that when eventually I have more. and maybe one day I'll have a lot. I'm using it strategically for the kingdom of God, using it strategically to make friends. Some of you are further on, and you've maybe already got quite a lot, and there's maybe a challenge.

32:46 Just to reevaluate the place that it has in your heart. Do you have your wealth, or does your wealth have you? What does it mean for you to use your wealth strategically? Some of you might be saying, well, you know, at the moment it's kind of a tough time. And there are people, there are many people who go through those seasons. And maybe you just want to talk to the Lord about that and remind him of his promise and remind your own heart to trust him.

33:29 Lord we thank you for your word we thank you for the way that this all speaks just very directly into our own lives and so we pray that we'll not just allow it to wash over us but that you would search our hearts Lord that we would not attempt to serve both God and money but that we would worship God and use the wealth that's given to us. Lord, help us to be good stewards. In Jesus' name, amen.