Sermon

Click here to print this sermon.

September 30, 2007
C-Pentecost 18
Luke 16:1-13
Pastor Robert Raasch

The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

1. Consider how he managed his opportunities
2. Consider how you manage yours

Can I ask you, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good would you say you are at managing your money?  Are you one that knows where every penny goes?  You have money set aside for short term needs and long term goals?  Or are you the one who has that proverbial hole in your pocket?  “Where did that last paycheck go?  Oops, bounced another check.  What do you mean, my credit card is maxed out?”  One of the questions that I often ask of couples who are planning to get married is, “Okay, who’s going to handle the finances?”  More often than not, the answer is, “He is,” or “she is.”  They realize that one or the other of them as some natural abilities that the other one doesn’t possess. 

And yet, it must be said that fiscal acuity is not merely a trait that we are either born with or not born with.  It’s also a quality that God has the ability to develop in us.  A quality that God expects us to put into practice in our everyday lives.  The fact is, God wants us to be good managers not only of our money, but of a host of other gifts and opportunities he has given to us.  And one of the ways that God teaches us about being a good manager is by means of a parable, a parable that we have as our text for today. Today we turn our attention to what’s been called

The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
We’ll consider (I.) How he managed his opportunities
And (II.) We’ll consider how we manage ours.

Jesus’ parable is fairly straightforward.  He tells of a man who was given the authority to manage his employer’s possessions.  But rather than manage those finances wisely, he wasted them.  Maybe he skimmed off some for himself, or made some really bad investment decisions.  Whatever the case, the time comes for the man to give an accounting of his work—and he knows he’s going to get fired.  His time was very short.  So what does he do?  He calls in all the people who owe his boss money—and he cuts them a deal.  He says, “How much do you owe the boss?  800 gallons of olive oil?  Make it 400.  1000 bushels of wheat?  Quick.  Let’s change it to 800.”  And why does he do this?  What was his motivation for cutting a deal with all these debtors?  Well, he says, (I’ll do it) “so that when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”  In other words, the man says, “I’m going to use what little time I have; I’m going to use what I can still control to set myself up for the future.  I’m going to use this opportunity to do some people some favors, so that after I lose my job, I can count on them to do me some favors.” 

So what does the master say when he finds out what his servant has done?  Does he bawl him out?  No, Jesus says that “the master commended the dishonest manager.”  In other words, he congratulated him for what he did.  What?  The master congratulates this guy for being a dishonest manager?  No, he’s firing him for being dishonest.  What he’s commending him for is for being shrewd.  What does that mean, to be shrewd?  Well, in the original language, the word there refers to one’s brain, or their mind.  You might say that the master commended the man for “using his head.”  He evaluated his situation and then took the things that he had at his disposal and managed them in such a way as to serve his long term interests.  He was, according to Jesus, “acting shrewdly.”

But now, notice the comparison that Jesus makes between that man and Christians in general.  He says, “The people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.”  In other words, you and I as believers can learn something from the world concerning how to handle the opportunities presented to us.  And what can we learn?  Well, Jesus comes right out and says, “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

My friends, do you see the parallels between what this manager did and what Jesus would have us do?  This man used someone else’s worldly wealth to win friends for himself, so that when that wealth was gone, those friends would welcome him into their earthly homes.  Jesus tells us to use that same kind of worldly wealth to win friends for ourselves, so that when the money is gone, those friends will welcome us, not into their earthly homes, but rather into “eternal dwellings.”

Hmmm.  What does that mean?  Who are these people who will be there to welcome us into a heavenly home?  Isn’t Jesus talking about our brothers and sisters in Christ?  He’s talking about those people who during their time of grace here on earth, came to know and believe in Jesus as their Savior from sin.  Those are the people who will be there—along with Jesus and all his angels—to welcome us into the mansions of glory.

But how did those people became believers in the first place?  Or as St. Paul puts it in Romans 10, “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?  And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  And how can they preach unless they are sent?”  In other words, for there to be people in heaven waiting for us to enter, someone has to first tell those people about Jesus.  Somebody has to bring the gospel to them.  Somebody has to train pastors, and send teachers and equip laymen and women to take the saving gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.  And who’s that somebody going to be?  Jesus says that somebody is going to be you and me.  And what are we going to use to pay for that kind of world-wide mission work?  Well, Jesus tells us that too.  He says, “Use worldly wealth.”

In other words, just like the manager in the parable, we are to take the worldly wealth entrusted to us and in the little time we have left, use it in such a way to bring people into the kingdom of God, so that when it’s gone and our lives come to an end, there will be believers waiting to welcome us into heaven by grace through faith in Jesus.  In this parable, Jesus holds us this servant as someone who wisely managed his short-term window of opportunities with a view toward a more important long-term goal.  In so doing, Jesus is encouraging you and me to do the very same thing.

The question is, how well are we heeding Jesus’ advice?  Or to put it another way, now that we’ve considered how one man managed his opportunities, II. Let’s consider how we’re managing ours.

Tell me, do you see any parallels between the manager here in our text and you and me as Christians?  Couldn’t it be said that just as the master put his wealth into the hands of this manager, God has done the same thing for you and me?  Think about it.  Everything in the world belongs to God.  The psalmist says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”  And yet, what has God done?  Rather than hoarding up all the wealth in the world, he has doled it out to individuals to manage.  He says, “Here’s some for you.  Here’s some for you.  And here’s some for you.  Now, mind you, that’s not yours to keep.  It’s yours to manage.”  Don’t we do the same with our money?  I mean, you don’t have all your money stuffed in a sock under your bed, do you?  I expect that you’ve given some of it to the bank to manage.  Maybe you’ve invested some in a mutual fund.  Does that mean that money belongs to them?  No, they’re just managing it for you. 

Isn’t that exactly what God has done with us?  He’s given us his money and asked us to take care of it, to use it in ways that are pleasing to him.  Unfortunately, just like the dishonest manager here in our text, what have we done with our master’s money?  We’ve wasted a good chunk of it.  By wasting it, I don’t mean merely spending it on ourselves.  It’s not wrong to use God’s money to provide for our needs and the needs of our families.  What does Scripture say? “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim 5:8).  No, the wasting occurs when we start mixing up “needs” and “wants.”  When I start setting my sights on what I want because everyone else has one, or because I can afford it, or because—well, even if I can’t afford it, I still want it—that’s when we’re guilty of mismanaging God’s money.  When we take Gods’ money and ignore our own spiritual needs, and more importantly, the spiritual and eternal needs of others, when we take God’s money and spend it on our earthly desires and cravings, that’s not only fiscal mismanagement, it’s idolatry.  It’s allowing something other than God and his will for our lives, to become the #1 love in our lives.  And that’s a sin that separates us from God.

So what has God done about our sins of fiscal mismanagement?  Well, he’s not handed down the punishment we deserve.  Instead he’s punished someone else in our place.  He’s taken all our bounced checks, all our misplaced dollars, all our covetous thoughts and desires—and laid them all on Jesus.  And when Jesus died on the cross, so did our guilt.

Do you realize what that means?  It means that for Jesus’ sake, our Heavenly Father is not holding our past record against us.  In fact, in God’s eyes, we have become 5 star money managers.  And just to prove it, what does God do?  He says, “Here.  Here’s some more of my money.  I’m still going to trust you with it.  Have you ever thought about it that way?  I mean, to think that every paycheck we receive is another act of trust on God’s part.  It’s God’s way of saying, “I’m not going to fire you for mismanagement.  I’m going to reinstate you.  I’m going to treat you as one of my most trusted financial managers.”

The question is, what am I going to do with this new found trust from God?  How am I going to manage the funds God has entrusted into my hands?  First, I’m going to check my watch.  What does that mean?  It means that I’ve got time, but I don’t know how much.  The clock is ticking on my life and the lives of millions of others.  I’m going to have to act fast.  Jesus says “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.”  Here in our text, the manager had to act quickly—while there was still time.  So must we.

Secondly, I’m going to rethink how I use the money God has given me.  Rather than thinking about what my money can do for me, I need to think in terms of what it can do for the eternal welfare of others.  When I hear about African villages pleading with us to send them another missionary…when I think about the mission efforts we have had to curtail due to lack of funding, I’m thinking, “What am I going to say to God when on the last day, he asks me to give an accounting of the money he’s given me.  As I look at all the stuff I’ve accumulated in life, I’m going to say to God, “Sorry, I couldn’t afford to give any more?”

Which leads me to the third thing that I learn from this parable, and that’s the fact that there are certain things that I do control.  I don’t control how the Synod spends its money.  I don’t control how Mount Olive spends its money.  But I do control how I spend my money.  God has given me the authority and the reason to take more of his money and direct it towards things that will impact lives for eternity.  God gives me the authority to sit down and write my estate plan in such a way so that even after I’m gone, my dollars can support the work that God has given his church to do.

And why will I do these things?  Is it because someone is strong-arming me?  Or because I just felt so guilty that I had to do something?  No, I do it because I know that God loves me and has washed away all of my guilt.  But even more importantly, I do it because God has put his trust in me—and I don’t want to let him down.