Shrewd and Honest

Transcript

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[0:00] Time for our sermon, and the sermon reading is from Luke 16, 1 through 13. And just a word of introduction. Most of this is a parable with a little bit of explanation at the end and some other teachings that kind of follow on it.

[0:17] Remember, we've talked about this before. Parables have a very fun function in the Scriptures, I would say, a very interesting function in the Scriptures. They are designed to help us think a little bit more. They're designed to help us sort of search and look for a deeper truth. They're not one-and-done things, you know, like the Ten Commandments. That's kind of straightforward, like don't steal. Okay, I think that's clear, right? That's pretty clear, although you can really, you know, that includes wage theft. That includes not paying your taxes. I mean, you could expand it, right? But it's pretty clear. Parables are asking you to stew with it a little bit, to think about it for a while.

[0:53] We're in Luke. We're in Luke chapter 16. This is after Jesus set his face. Resolutely towards Jerusalem. And so that means that as he gets closer to Jerusalem, the urgency of what he's saying is actually intensifying. And so you might want to ask yourselves, why is this parable here and not somewhere else? Why is this in the midst of a series of urgent things that he wants his disciples to know? What does he really want his followers to hear? And why is it urgent to him that they do hear it? And we'll find out that this is going to be a parable about what your future looks like. So I think it... Jesus... Jesus was thinking about what his future was looking like, and he wanted his disciples to think about what their futures looked like. So that was fairly urgent for that reason. And I'll say, as Victoria alluded to, this is one of the most challenging parables of Jesus. It's the one that's misunderstood the most, perhaps. Isn't that fun? Let's try to crack this one open. I may get it wrong. You know, I might. But let's see what, you know, let's see how we can work on this difficult parable. The reason it's misunderstood is because it seems to commend... bad behavior. So we'll see that. We'll see why is Jesus commending bad behavior?

[2:03] So I'm going to let this... Now I'm going to let the parable speak for itself. That's how parables should do. So let's go to our reading. It's Luke 16, and we'll start with verse 1. Jesus told this story to his disciples.

[2:18] There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. Pardon me. One day a reporter... The report came that the manager was wasting his employer's money. So the employer called him in and said, What's this I hear about you? Get your report in order because you are going to be fired. The manager thought to himself, Now what? My boss has fired me. I don't have the strength to dig ditches, and I'm too proud to beg. I know how to ensure that I'll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I am fired. So... He invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, How much do you owe him? The man replied, I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil. So the manager told him take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons. And how much do you owe my employer? He asked the next man. I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat was the reply. Here... The manager said take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.

[3:29] The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. I like the NLT, rascal. It's kind of funny. The rich man had to admire, other translations have commend. The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light. Here's the lesson. Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home. If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people's things, why should you be trusted with theirs? You will be trusted with things of your own. No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other. You will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. Let's pray.

[4:44] Father, thank you for this word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen. So this parable appears every three years because we do what's called the lectionary. We preach through the lectionary. It's a three-year schedule of readings that repeat. I checked my records. I did not preach on this three years ago. I probably preached on it six years ago.

[5:07] And then that's where I come in and I think, do people remember what happened three years ago? Because I barely do. So I have preached on this six years ago. That's a long time. Some of you weren't even here. I get that. But I just wonder if anyone remembers sort of the punchline of why this isn't as bad as it sounds. But only if you're reading it. You may remember. You may know it. But only if you remember from me saying it. Does anybody remember? Because if you raise your hand, I'll make you stand up and say what... No, I won't. But I just... Nobody? Good. Because I don't want to... I feel bad about preaching the same text and preaching it in the same way. But here's what I find. And I've told you this before. But also you may not remember it, so I'm going to tell you again. Is that it's okay.

[5:51] Because each passage, almost every passage I've seen in the lectionary, has like seven sermons in it. Because that's how rich the scripture is. So I'm not... And I've never, hardly ever, once or twice I've tried, preached a verbatim, a sermon that I've already preached before. It doesn't work. You guys are shaking your head. The spirit's not in it. You can't just pick up an old sermon and just preach it. You have to start over again with your study and you have to think about it. And so that's what I've done with this one today. So I'm going to explain. There's some standard things about why we'll explain why it's not as bad as it sounds. But there's some angles to this that I haven't seen before that I want to share with you today. So I think that's good.

[6:30] So we know... We'll go back to this idea of a parable. We know it's a parable because it's a story Jesus tells to his disciples and it begins in a certain way. Something like, there once was, right? There once was this employer. And we might put it like, once upon a time. Do you see that sort of formulaic beginning of a story? It sort of starts like that, right? So we know that it's a parable or a story. And we remember that parables teach in the Bible. They teach indirectly. They require the listener to sit with it for a while. And the meaning isn't always told at the end. Now there's some variety here in scriptures, okay? Sometimes the meaning of the parable is told immediately after the parable is done. And the most famous parable I think that comes with an explanation is the parable of the different kinds of soils. You know, the weeds. Some soil is hard and some soil the weeds come in. And that's a great parable. And I don't think it actually needed an explanation. But instantly Jesus explains exactly what all parts of it mean, which is fine. That's great. So that's one that has an instant explanation, right? So then you don't have to maybe sit with it as long. There's other things you can get from it.

[7:36] Sometimes there's no explanation at all, especially the shorter ones. Jesus doesn't explain the shorter ones. So there's a one-verse parable from Matthew 13 that we've preached on before. It goes like this. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again. And his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Period. That's it. That's the parable. No explanation afterwards. But that alone is worth an hour of contemplation. It's amazing. Okay? So sometimes they're explained and sometimes they're not.

[8:11] Once a poet read a poem to a room full of students. And at the end, one of the students asked, what does your poem mean? I don't think poets like that question. So then the poet paused for a moment. And then he read the poem to them again.

[8:30] That's what it means. You have to listen to it. You have to enter into it. You have to go into it. Right? Now, was that a parable? What I just told you about the poet? Kind of. But I think it also actually happened. I just can't remember the name of the poet. I read it. I read it in a magazine. I can't find it again.

[8:45] Well, this parable that we're about to kind of take apart a bit. And that's the other thing. If you take apart a parable too much, then you kind of lose it. You kind of ruin it. Sometimes you kind of have to let it do its own work. You don't have to dissect every part of it. But we are going to take it apart a little bit. This parable has an explanation, but not a thoroughgoing explanation. But it has some follow-on teaching. So there's a bit of things to think about here. But let's look at the parable and the explanation that Jesus gives. There's some dots we're going to connect at the end. So simply put, here's the parable. There's a manager of a man's estate in our text here. In our text, he's called the employer, right? The employer and the employee. There's a manager of a man's estate, and he's suspected of fraud. And the owner asks him about it, and it seems he was guilty. And he was worried what would happen to him because he knew he'd never get another managerial job. And he didn't want to do any heavy labor or beg, right? So he was in a bind. The owner told him, make a final accounting of all my assets that you've mismanaged, including all the debts that are owed to me. That's not written there, but that's kind of implied with the final report.

[9:54] All my assets. Because a debt owed to you is an asset, right? Anybody who's done any accounting gets that, right? So the manager falsifies the record with the help of the people who owed the owner money. It's a little bit of collusion with people. Theft, basically.

[10:11] And I'm assuming in that time that that written record was binding somehow. I don't think somehow, like, the owner couldn't go back to them. He said the owner didn't know. They trusted somebody else to do this, right? But the owner didn't know. The owner figured it out anyways, right?

[10:26] Maybe he just didn't know how much money he had lost. So the owner found out that the manager had falsified some records and reduced the debts of several people that owed him. You could say money, but it was really commodities, right? Now here's the challenging part. The owner seems to commend or admire the dishonest manager, right?

[10:50] One of the things we do with parables is we try to assign who the different people are in the parable. If you have a parable about an owner who has employees and that owner has a large estate and you ask the employees to take care of things, you're not going to be too far off if you think that that's probably God. You all get that, right? That's probably God. It is in several other parables that are like it. The parable of the vineyard, the one who owns the vineyard is God, right? And so I think that's fair. And the manager is someone who's appointed to steward the things that God has put them in charge of, right? So that could be someone. It could be a human being, a human being, and theoretically somebody who has a relationship with God, whom God has given responsibility to, to manage God's affairs, manage God's assets. And I think that's pretty close to right. But the problem is, of course, then that God seems to commend the dishonesty of the manager, right? The owner commends the rascal, right? Does God commend his children? Does God commend his children when they're dishonest, right? And that's where we need to look a little bit more closely because it does seem that way at first, unless you kind of pull it apart a little bit more.

[12:02] The dishonesty is not what's being commended. Okay, so that's, I'm going to say that part again. The manager is not commending the dishonesty. And God can't commend dishonesty. God can't do that because God's too honest for that, right? He doesn't want us to be dishonest. And he could, he would, I don't think he would never commend or admire dishonesty for its own sake. Here's what it is. It's the shrewdness that's being commended, right? It's the shrewdness of the manager that's being commended. And specifically, it's the shrewdness of securing his future.

[12:39] Even by dishonest means, that is praised. Okay, so I'm going to say that a bit differently. And so this is what we might call in a parable what's called a sort of a negative comparison. And you might pose it like this. If an earthly master would commend the shrewdness of a dishonest manager, how much more will the heavenly Father commend the shrewdness of an honest steward of God's gifts? That's kind of all big mouthful there, so I'm actually going to say it again, right? But that's the comparison. If an earthly master would commend the shrewdness of a dishonest manager, how much more will the heavenly Father commend the shrewdness of an honest steward of his gifts? How much more will the heavenly Father commend the shrewdness of God's gifts? Right? So even an earthly owner can see shrewdness and commend it. But heavenly Father can see shrewdness and honesty and commend that all the more. Okay? So if we read further, Jesus does not want anyone to doubt that God wants his people to be honest, right? That's why he says you have to be faithful and honest in small things before you'll be entrusted with larger things. So people actually wants to commend people who, commend someone who is both shrewd and honest.

[13:54] And these are two things that we want to hold sort of side by side. There's the shrewdness which is good, but the dishonesty which is bad of the employee or the manager. But Jesus is saying, you guys need to be both shrewd and honest. And then how much more will God the Father reward you and commend you, right? So what do we mean by shrewd here? I think we need to kind of decide what shrewd is. What shrewd here means. In the parable, it's using what's available to secure the manager's future. And it sounds so, I don't know, like, not selfish but just weak. It's like, I don't, I can't dig ditches. Like he's too good for it. He says he's not strong enough, but I think he thinks he's too good for it, you know? And he's too proud to beg. Like he's very honest about himself. He's dishonest with his manager, but he's very honest about himself. I don't like digging ditches and I don't like begging. I don't want to do any of that stuff. So that's what he's saying. So basically, I'm going to couch surf with all these people that I falsely canceled debts for, right? So he's securing his future. But to interpret the parable, shrewdness means to really understand that we need to secure our future. I'm talking about our future now, right?

[15:07] So how do we kind of apply this parable to our lives? And then you can ask yourselves, what future is that? And the future is the ultimate reward. Jesus is going to the cross. He's thinking about his future at the cross and probably beyond, but we're really focused on the cross right now. But he's wanting his apostles to be thinking about not just that future, but the future beyond. And the future is the ultimate reward, which is life after this life in the presence of God. To go to that place where Jesus promises to the thief hanging next to him, I tell you the truth, today you'll be with me in paradise, right? This is this beautiful vision that we have as Christians of the reward. The resurrection of the body after death and being raised up and being in a bodily form with God, praising him at a heavenly feast and singing. You know? And it's just, I don't know even, that's about all I know about heaven. You know? That's about, I don't think we're going to have wings and, you know, because you're going to have a new body, a better body.

[16:11] And you're going to have a voice and you're going to use it to praise God. And there's going to be a banquet and it's paradise. As Jesus says, it's paradise. So, you may say, and this is, there's a critique of this, which is Christians who only think, that's securing your future. You want to get to that place. I mean, you really want to get to that place. You want to get to that place. I do. I hope you do. But there's a really well thought out critique, I think, of Christians who say, all I need to do is get to that place.

[16:43] That's all I really need to do in this life. Is get to that place. And once I've gotten to that place, whether it's by praying a prayer, you know, and accepting Jesus into my heart or being baptized into the church as an infant or an adult, I'm done. I've got my reward already. It's in the bank.

[17:02] And I don't need to take care of anyone else in this world. I don't need to bring justice for the poor. I don't need to do any of that. Right? And so, that's a good critique. Because there are, I think. And I don't, I haven't met them exactly. But I can imagine that there are some Christians who are like, this whole place is going to burn. So, all I care is about the next one. I'm not going to invest much energy or time in this world. I'm only looking to the next.

[17:31] So, that's kind of, and actually I would say that's kind of an American or individualist view of heaven. Right? This world is really just a stepping stone to heaven. And we have to endure our time here. What happens here doesn't matter as much as what happens later. And so, if that's how people think, then I think the critique is valued. And we should listen to that. But that's why this parable is so good. Because I think this parable can kind of challenge that understanding that heaven is all we need. And if once we get this promise of heaven, we can give up and on the rest. Because Jesus is saying, you should be concerned about your future. That's important. You should be concerned about your future. The manager was commended for securing his future even by dishonest means. Right? But how much more will we be commended for stewarding this life that we've been given by honest means? Right? So, you remember the parable of the talents? If you don't know it, I can show it to you some other time. But there's the parable of the talents. The different servants are giving different amounts of money. The master goes away. He comes back and hears a report of what they've done with this wealth that he's entrusted to them.

[18:37] And that's a parable about God and the gifts that we have in this life and what are we going to show for it at the end. That's very much about this life. It's not about the next life. Do you get that? The parable of the talents, this parable is about the future and the now. The parable about the talents is about the now. What are you doing now with what God has given you? Right? So, to the ones who are faithful to the master, before he returned, he said this. He said, when he came back and they had done the right thing, right? He said, well done, good and faithful servants.

[19:11] Enter into the joy of the Lord. Enter into the joy of your master. So, that is about the future. Enter into the joy of your master. And I think about some of the funerals that we've had here in the last year. And there's too many, honestly, too many. But I think each person that we've laid to rest in this church in the last year, when they wake up, and I don't know how that exactly happens. Don't ask me. You know, nobody knows. God knows. But they're going to wake up and they're going to meet God.

[19:43] And they're going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. And there's just going to be this gesturing. Enter into the joy. The joy. Enter into the joy of your master. And I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it, you know? And that's waiting for us, too. Praise God. But that's not all there is, right?

[20:01] Because between these two parables, I think we can connect the dots, right? We should care about our future with God. It's important. And if time operates in a similar way in heaven, then we're going to be in heaven longer than we are here. So it is kind of like from a time point of view, it's much more important than here. But the here is important, too, right? Because before the master returns, we're to be honest and faithful and good stewards of what he has given us. And so what are those things? What are these things that we need to be honest with? What are these things that we need to be good stewards of that this employee was a poor steward of that he had mismanaged, right? For us, I mean, for the employee, it was just basically the ledger. It was just sort of what the master owed or owned and what was owed to him. But for us, what are the things that God has put into our hands to steward?

[20:52] And one of the first things is the world. This is from Genesis, where God gives the world to Adam and Eve not as a possession, but as a field to work. This is still mine. You guys have to steward it well. Take care of it. There's only one, right? So there's only one earth. There's only one planet. So we have to steward this world well. I'm not necessarily talking about environmentalism. I'm talking about the whole world, the people in this world, not just the resources of this world, right?

[21:23] That's one thing that God gives us to steward. But the other is he gives us the gifts, the particular gifts that he has given us. And that could be talents and abilities. It could be your artistic ability. It could be your ability to write well. It could be your ability to do any number of things that God says, I want to redeem the world through you.

[21:42] And I want you to use those gifts to do it. So those are talents and abilities. Or they could be resources of other kinds that God gives us. It could be wealth, but I'm not necessarily think that's the biggest gift that he actually gives us. But there's resources that can make more resources, gifts that can bring more gifts in, seeds that can die so that 100 seeds can come up, right? That's what we're being steward of. The world is still a field. The world is still there for us. And God wants us to steward wealth. And I think the third thing, one of the most important stewardship opportunities we have is the relationships in our lives. Those are gifts from God. The people that God puts into your way and into your life, those relationships need to be steward well with honesty, right? Because they're also opportunities to help God redeem the world. And as we see, just from the last few weeks and from the last few years and from the last, five millennia or more, the world needs redeeming. And God has a plan for it, but it's done through us. God wants to do it through us.

[22:53] Now, I don't want you to hear me say that you have to steward all these things well to secure your future, because you're going to mess up, right? We're all going to mess up. We're not perfect stewards. None of us are. We're still going to hear good and faithful servant enter and enjoy your master. But we could actually be bad at all those things, and we could do a few things. We could do a fairly poor job at all of them. But if we believe, God will save us anyways. He will save us despite our flaws, despite our errors, despite our poor stewardship of his gifts.

[23:27] And when we come in, he'll say that, you know, well done, good and faithful servant. But I think he might turn the volume down a little bit. Well done, good and faithful servant. You just barely made it. But you're in. You know, it's like binary. It's either 0 or 1. Like, you're in. If you're in, you're in. OK? So you can still, you can still, there's no halfway to heaven. And we don't believe in purgatory. So that's because we're saved by grace, through faith, and not by our works. And that's central to our Protestant understanding of scripture. We are saved by grace through faith, not by our own, not by keeping the law, not by our own works. They don't earn us anything. But God has put his gifts into our lives. And Jesus is asking us in this parable, to be honest and faithful stewards of these gifts. The parable of the talents says that that is a good future. There's a good future that comes from that. And Jesus says that in this parable, too. So and I think what we need to remember, then, is that when we come to faith, it's not just words. But it's a surrender of our whole self. And it's taking on the spirit and the work of God. That's what happens when we come to faith. So I don't think you can come to faith

[24:40] and not be moved. I don't think you can come to faith and not be energized by the work of the Spirit to actually be a good steward and honest steward of what God has given us. OK? So let's wrap up, because we're doing all right. We're doing all right. We're going to wrap up, though. So your future, one thing is your future is important. If you're unsure, if you're not sure you're going to heaven or not, that's important. That's important to me. And I want to talk to you. We can talk privately.

[25:05] I remember when I was a kid, my pastor, the Lutheran pastor I grew up with, he said, everybody here who's going to heaven raise their hand. I'm not going to do it here. And only half the people raised his hand. And I think they were like some Norwegian and Swedish Lutherans in the room. And they knew they were going to heaven, but they didn't want to raise their hand because it would seem a little boastful to them. And they're like, I don't want to trot this about. I don't want to toot my own horn. But the pastor's like, what? You're all supposed to raise your hands. I think he didn't realize. He was German, you know? And all the Norwegians and Swedes were like, you're asking us to be too proud. I don't want to do that. And the Germans were like, oh, we all are going to heaven. Yeah. So I think he learned something that day. But he's like, holy cow, some of you don't think you're going to heaven? What have I been doing all this time?

[25:50] If you believe in Jesus, you're going to heaven. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands, OK? But it's important. Your future is important. If you're not sure you're going to heaven, let's talk. Because I want you to have that assurance. It's important that you will have a new life after this life. It's important. But you know what? Your present is important. Your future is important. But your present is, I think, just as important. And as believers, we're always wanting to be transformed by God into the people who are honest, faithful stewards of the gifts that God has put in our lives. So there's growth. Even though we know we're going to heaven, we can still grow. We can still keep being transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives, right? So if we do both those things, we may start small. And God, you know, we know the future is there, so we can actually do it. We can actually be at peace. We don't have to spend energy worrying about that future because it's secure. That gives us time and energy to focus on the present. And what Jesus tells us in this parable, as sort of the follow-on teaching of the terrible, is parable. I just said terrible.

[26:58] It's not terrible. It's a parable. It's a wonderful, not terrible parable. Oh, my goodness. A not terrible parable. Jesus is like, how do you like the parable? Not terrible. Not terrible. Pretty good. It's a pretty good parable. So if we do those things, we may start small. And God will progressively give us larger work to do in the kingdom, which if I was a kid, you know, I used to mow lawns and deliver newspapers. And if somebody had said, you know, if you deliver your newspapers really well, they're going to give you a bigger newspaper route, I would have been like, I don't want that.

[27:33] This is just right. This was what I got. I thought it was a lot of money. I was getting $60 a month to deliver 35 newspapers every day. And I figured out I was making $2 an hour, which I thought was awesome for a 13-year-old kid. And it was. And then once I was making that money, my dad says, oh, now we don't have to pay you your allowance anymore. And I'm like, what? He's like, no, you got your own money. You don't need allowance. It's like, what a rep.

[28:01] And I'm thinking about that. Would I ever do that to my kids? Would I stop giving them allowance if they got a job? And the answer is, I don't give them allowance now, so it's not a problem. I'm just kidding. Ha ha. No, just kidding. But do you want that?

[28:14] If you're faithful with small things, do you want God to give you more things? You might not. That doesn't matter. God may put it in your lap. And if you're faithful with that, he may give you more things. And I think that's good. I think that's a challenge. I think that's what we need. I think that's what God designed us for, is to take greater and greater challenges all our lives. And the people that you know who are just really, really beautiful believers have had a trajectory like that in their life, where they've taken on more and more and more and done more and more and more, because they've been faithful each step of the way, faithful and honest stewards. And they're going to hear at the end. If we do all those things, or even if we don't, but even we do them poorly or we do them well at the end, we're going to hear these words, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the master. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word.

[29:14] Father, put more and more work in our path. I know that's a strange prayer, but we ask it fervently, that we would be trustworthy more and more, and that you would entrust things to us, work to us, to redeem this world more and more, because it needs it now more than ever. Amen.