The Parable of the Dishonest Manager
Download MP3Morning, everybody. My name is Thomas Ritchie, and I'm an elder here at Redeemer. And, I'm not a professional preacher. In fact, I'm a lawyer, which means that you have standing before you the bad guy from all the parables. Preach about a parable that's full of bad guys.
Speaker 1:You won't find a good guy here. In fact, you'll find a lot of confusion and cheaters and scoundrels. But it's a lovely parable that teaches us the gospel of Jesus Christ. So look with me in Luke 16. We'll read the first 13 verses, the parable of the dishonest manager.
Speaker 1:And listen carefully, for these are the words of God. He, Jesus, also said to the disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, what is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management for you can no longer be manager. And the manager said to himself, what what shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me?
Speaker 1:I am not strong enough to dig and I'm ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses. So summoning his master's debtors 1 by 1, he said to the first, how much do you owe my master? He said, a 100 measures of oil. He said to him, take your bill, sit down quickly, and write 50.
Speaker 1:Then he said to another, how much do you owe? He said, a 100 measures of wheat. He said to him, take your bill and write 80. And the master 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 light?
Speaker 1:And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. 1 who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve 2 masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
Speaker 1:You cannot serve God and money. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please pray with me. God our father, would you open this text to us?
Speaker 1:Would you open our eyes to see the glory of Jesus and our great need for him? Would you open our ears to hear very clearly your gospel proclaimed? Lord, would you redeem the words that I have to say for I am just a man and I I can't speak words of life. You alone possess those words And you have given them here in your word. May we treasure this word.
Speaker 1:May we listen carefully to it and sift it. And God would you bless this hearing. In Christ's name, amen. Excuse me. I've got a frog in my throat.
Speaker 1:I think it's all this mask wearing. This is the most difficult, I think, of all the parables. And it's one of the most bizarre stories in the Bible. This is how Jesus teaches Sunday school. Right?
Speaker 1:He's like, okay. I'm gonna teach my disciples something, and I'm gonna come up with a story where everybody's a cheater and the cheaters win. But I wanna start with this notion, that Jesus wrote this story on purpose, and that it's a complicated story because he wants it to be complicated, because He wants us to wrestle with it. We can't just bounce off of this one and find what He wants us to find. We have to dig in.
Speaker 1:We have to think about it. So we're gonna try to do that this morning. But we're somewhat limited in time. I'm gonna try to be done in about 20 minutes. And there's just more here than I have time to talk about.
Speaker 1:And so I wanna encourage you to go on to Redeemer's website and look through the sermon archives. Because if you go back a decade, you will find on February 22, 2010, Joel preached a sermon about this parable. It's a really good sermon. He also got to preach it in an air conditioned room, and so it's 40 minutes long. And he touches on a lot of stuff that I can't get to today.
Speaker 1:It's worth your time to listen to that one too. Goodness knows, I did as I was preparing today. So the central question that I want to try to answer today is why did Jesus put a dishonest manager at the center of this parable? What is it about this guy that Jesus is holding up? Because let me assure you, it's not his good behavior.
Speaker 1:His behavior starts and ends bad and wrong, and we should not emulate it. Consider the complete lack of moral development in the dishonest manager. He starts the story dishonest, and he gets caught and called to account. He admits that he's too lazy to work, but he's still too proud to beg, and so he cheats some more by stealing another person's money to secure his future. And these are not trivial sums of money.
Speaker 1:These measures of wheat and oil in today's dollars would run into the 100 of 1,000 of dollars, Real wealth. And as a result, real theft. His behavior never improves. He starts and ends as a cheater. And he absolutely gets away with it.
Speaker 1:He walks. He skates even. More than that, the master that he stole from commends him. It's unbelievable. In fact, it's so unbelievable that Christians throughout the centuries have added details to this story to try to make it more palatable.
Speaker 1:One commentator suggests that what the manager was giving away was not his own money, or wasn't the master's money, but was just the commission that the manager was due on these outstanding debts. And another commentator suggested that maybe the master was actually evil. The master was charging too much interest. And so the servant was just writing the bills down to what they properly should have been. I mean, you can think about that if it makes you feel better, but it certainly isn't in the story.
Speaker 1:And if we start adding these details to make the story more acceptable, we will join in a long line of people who've been trying to fix what they view as problems with Jesus. It goes all the way back to the Pharisees. In fact, if you read down in, chapter 16 of Luke, you'll see the Pharisees heard this story, and they were outraged by it. We should not be trying to make Jesus more acceptable. We should listen to him and the story that he is trying to tell us because that's where the lesson is.
Speaker 1:Let's not try to fix him, let's let him fix us. And I think it's unavoidable that this dishonest manager is a crook. I mean, consider the details of the story. He gets caught and called to account. If he were innocent, he would say, Oh, no, no.
Speaker 1:I can explain everything. Here it is. I didn't steal anything. No. His reaction is to run to the debtors and say, quick quick, sit down, change the bill, and after this we're good.
Speaker 1:Right? You're gonna take care of me? He's a crook. So what do we do with that? What is Jesus holding up about this crook that we should emulate?
Speaker 1:It's not his behavior. I think it is this: The primary lesson we learn from the dishonest manager is that the dishonest manager does not sugarcoat his situation. He knows that he's in a real pickle. He's a lazy crook, and his access to wealth is over. He's being called to account, and he has no defense.
Speaker 1:It's not time for him to become a better manager. He's fixing to get fired. It's time for him to start thinking about the future. He's not going to measure up and so he spends his last day as manager, not trying to improve as a manager, not trying to fix his past, but trying to secure his future. Jesus wants us to identify with this manager.
Speaker 1:It's something that shouldn't be news to us that we are all sinners. Do you notice how the story starts in the middle, after the manager has already been cheating and after he's already being called to an account? That's us. We woke up this morning, sinners. And if we weren't, we may have, spoiled our status already today, trying to get ready and get to church.
Speaker 1:We know that we have not lived up to God's standard. The bible says it. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Bible tells us that the wages of that sin is death. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we don't seem to learn that lesson.
Speaker 1:We don't seem to believe that we are actually people under a sentence of death. We act like everything is fine. The dishonest manager was wise enough to know that not everything is fine. He understood his predicament. We would do well-to-do likewise.
Speaker 1:God says the wages of sin is death and we make it sound like the wages of sin is I need to try a little bit harder next time. We continue under the mistaken belief that maybe tomorrow we will do right what we have failed to do for everyday of our entire life up to this point. Maybe we think that we'll get graded on a curve. Maybe we think we're better than some people, and that that will be good enough for a holy and righteous God. Maybe we think that God's rules don't apply to us, that we're above them in some way.
Speaker 1:Maybe, like God warns in Isaiah 57, that we have come to mistake God's gracious patience with us as his weakness or as somehow a proof that he will never judge. But whatever illusion it is that we harbor, Jesus is setting forth to shatter it through this parable. He wants us to realize that we're in a desperate situation, because he knows that desperation gives rise to shrewdness. We are shrewd when it's urgent. We are shrewd when there's something that we think is important for us to get done, and we've got to find a way.
Speaker 1:We need to see that we are dishonest managers being called to an account. And then we will become desperate to find a friend who will take care of us. If we are not shrewd in things of faith, if we are content to be passive, it's probably because we don't realize our true state apart from the gospel. Shrewd about money. In fact, Jesus makes a snide comment about it.
Speaker 1:You know, he says that, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. As if he's calling us all soft, saying, God, what would I give for a few, like, scoundrel Christians, It's very easy for us to be soft, to not show cleverness and determination. Not because we don't have it or because we lack the capacity for it, but just because we don't think that it's important enough for us to use it. When it comes to money, we're very shrewd. We don't accept no for an answer.
Speaker 1:We hustle. We grind. We come up with things like Wall Street. We track our progress. We don't take no for an answer.
Speaker 1:If there's not a way, we make one. If the door is closed, we kick it down. We find a way through. We climb through a window. We do something.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to the eternal treasures of heaven, we might stop and pick up a penny that we find on the street if we're not in too big of a hurry. We serve God when it's easy or when it's convenient or when it's safe and when it's not too expensive. And again, the spiritual laziness isn't from a lack of shrewdness. It's from a lack of perceived need to be shrewd. So I propose that we apply this test to ourselves.
Speaker 1:If you wanna find out what you love, what's important to you, What do you, use your cleverness for? What do you work hard at? What are you shrewd about? This is where the catchy line in verse 13 comes in. Jesus says, we can't serve both God and money.
Speaker 1:The word for money there is this great ancient word, mammon, which means money and the rest of your stuff too. So all of our stuff, Jesus says, wants to make us, its slave. It wants to be the master, and we will be its slave. This is a truth that I think we all know, but it's very subtle. We want to buy and own things.
Speaker 1:We wanna have money because we think that we will own them and derive benefit from them. Very quickly, we find out that they own us. Think of a house. You work hard. You buy a house.
Speaker 1:You like your house. You're happy with your house. You live in your house. But now you have to worry about it. You have to take care of it.
Speaker 1:You have to insulate it. You've gotta clean the yard, and you've gotta paint it, and you have to insure it. Now you're tempted to start to view your neighbors not just as people, but as factors that affect the value of your house. If that person moves in, is it gonna hurt my home value? Is it gonna be easier for me to sell?
Speaker 1:Or maybe they become the competition. Their house looks better than my house, or their house makes mine look bad. These things built of wood and stone have begun to speak to us, and they give us a value system, and they they demand our obedience and our attention. They're old testament gods that demand our worship. We turn them into idols.
Speaker 1:And let me clarify a point here. The the problem that we have is not because houses are evil. The problem's not with the stuff. It comes out of our own hearts. There's nothing wrong with a house, even your dream house.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with a car, even a nice car. Nothing wrong with that job, that recognition, that relationship, or that family that you dream about. But friends, there is a desperate evil in your heart that wants to bow down and worship those things. God made them good, and our desire for them is evil. God makes gold, and we make a golden calf.
Speaker 1:Because the love of wealth and stuff is at war with the love of God. Most of us, I think, are probably like me, we aspire to have both God and money. But Jesus says very plainly, as even I can understand, that I can't serve both. And he illustrates that truth in this story because I'm sure that this dishonest manager attempted to justify his actions something like this, I'm not taking any more than I'm entitled to. I can help advance the cause of the master and feather my own nest at the same time.
Speaker 1:Besides, the master has more than enough. Everyone in this world is a little bit of a cheater. And so I'll just take what I need, but I believe in my heart about myself that I can serve my self and the master. I'm not a bad guy. And all of that illusion falls away as soon as he's called in for judgment.
Speaker 1:As soon as he has to give an account, we find out what he truly loves. And he jettisons any pretense of loyalty to the master, and he saves his own skin by stealing from the master. He loved the one himself and hated the other, his master. His actions, under pressure, revealed what he truly loved. We need to think about love and hate as verbs.
Speaker 1:They describe what we do when it matters. They're not the way that we feel when everything is easy. They're what we do when it matters. And the reason that the love of money is such a bad thing is that money is of no use to us in the things that truly matter. Money will fail us.
Speaker 1:This is a parable about ultimate judgment, which is to say it's a parable about death. Riches are of no value whatsoever when we come to the end of our lives. However rich we are now, we will walk over the threshold of eternity with nothing in our pockets. Jesus promises this. He says, towards the end of the parable, he says, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails not if it fails when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings.
Speaker 1:That day of your wealth failing is coming. In fact, there, is a haunting reminder of this in the last words of, Queen Elizabeth, oh so many years ago. One of the wealthiest and most powerful people in her age. She'd spent a lifetime taxing a kingdom, and building a kingdom, and defeating the Spanish Armada, and doing all of this other stuff. And she comes to her deathbed, and with her last words she says, all my possessions for a moment of time.
Speaker 1:She would give everything that she had amassed, All the power, all the money, everything she possessed for just one more minute of suffering here on the deathbed. And yet, all of that could buy her nothing. Her wealth failed her in the end, and it will fail all of us too. Perhaps this is the time I should bring up, the most helpful commentary that I've read about this parable. Most of the commentaries are not very helpful.
Speaker 1:In fact, they tend to just speed through this parable, be like, man, this is really difficult, and move on to the next one. I I wasn't given that luxury. I'll stop here real quick. So, last year, I had to preach about casting pearls before swine, and this year, I get the parable of the dishonest manager. I'm sorry to think Joel doesn't like me very much.
Speaker 1:Anyway, the the best commentary on the parable of the dishonest manager, was written by someone who wasn't even trying to write a commentary. It was written by a college student, on October 28, 1949, in his devotional journals, as he was reflecting on this parable. The guy's name was Jim Elliott, and it went on to be, a missionary. But his words are these, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. He's no fool to give up what he can't keep to gain what he can't lose.
Speaker 1:You see, the steward's wealth was passing out of his hand. There was nothing he could do to keep it. The master was going to take it away from him, and so he used it to secure a friend in, an eternal dwelling. And we should do the same, not to amass treasure in this life that can't really help us. It's passing through our hands.
Speaker 1:We are just stewards too. We have to find a way to use what we have now temporarily to gain that which lasts eternally. Or as I heard John Piper say one time, we should be shrewd in how we invest our money, but we need to make sure that it is still paying us interest in a 100000 years, long after we are dead. So how do we do this? How do we trade what we can't keep for what we can't lose?
Speaker 1:How do we put wealth where no thieves will steal it and no rust destroy? And if I knew, I'm afraid that I wouldn't be able to tell you. I don't know, and I don't want to be a hypocrite to tell you this is exactly what you should do. But even if I did know, even if I had a really great idea about exactly what we were supposed to do, isn't the point of this parable that we should feel the need and be shrewd on our own? Jesus is asking us the question, what do you love?
Speaker 1:What do you think is important to do? And how can you be shrewd to accomplish it? I don't wanna give you just one idea because the holy spirit in this congregation will produce a 1,000 good ideas, more than I could ever come up with. Things that I would have no idea what to say. Things that your neighbor would have no idea what to say.
Speaker 1:Things that Joel or, you know, whatever professional Christians are out there wouldn't know. The spirit in you will work a great thing if you feel like you have to because you're shrewd every day about the things that matter to you. As living a life of faith and obedience to Christ grows in importance as it becomes a thing that you're desperate for, your shrewdness will follow. In an eternal kingdom, and not in a temporary one. The most direct and best way to do this is that we would direct our lives, and our money, and our stuff towards taking care of the poor, the needy, the outcast, the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, the immigrant.
Speaker 1:For Jesus says, whatever we have done for the least of these, we have done to him. It is the most direct way that we can invest our money with Jesus, invest our time with Jesus, is to give and to serve those who the world has beaten down. That might look like giving $20 to a guy who's sleeping under an overpass, It can mean a 1000000 different things. Be creative about another lens that we can use to, to use to to see how we can give our money and invest our money with God is to think about seeking the welfare of the city. That might look like starting a business here.
Speaker 1:It might look like taking a chance on an employee that no one else is willing to take a chance on. Maybe taking a second chance on that person, or a 3rd, or a 4th. It might look like something as simple as shopping locally. It might look like, heaven forbid, getting involved in politics, advocating for policy change. Again, my goal here is not to limit, but to show that the entire world, even just doing your job faithfully, doing your job well as unto the Lord, is a way to seek the welfare of the city.
Speaker 1:In fact, I think that that's how we should view everything that we do. It's not about what you do it for. It's about who you do it for. Jesus has that subtle shift in what he says in this parable. He says, again, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails you, they may receive you.
Speaker 1:He says, take wealth, a thing, your stuff, your money, your time, your job, your education, take that stuff and direct it towards somebody, and that somebody is Jesus. We should direct our stuff Godward. That's not the way that we normally make decisions, especially financial decisions. We tend to think about a couple of we make these decisions a couple of different ways. Number 1, how much do I want something?
Speaker 1:If I want it enough or I want it for long enough, I'll get it. It'll be time for me to get it. The second way that we do it is we compare things. We say, should I go to this school or that school? Should I buy this house or that house?
Speaker 1:This car or that car? We're deciding between things as if there were a right thing and a wrong thing, but there's not. The Bible isn't gonna tell you which house to buy. It's not gonna tell you you can spend this much money on a car, but no more. It's not going to say that you have to live, you know, within this many miles of the city center, or that the suburbs are always right or always wrong, or that you have to send your kid to a Christian school, or that you have to send your kid to a public school.
Speaker 1:Instead, we're left in these really ambiguous circumstances with a radically different set of gifts, and radically different set of of assets that we bring to the table, different piles of mammon that we've amassed. And God says, follow me. Direct your decisions towards me. This is funny thing that happens. Our money takes a little bit of our heart with it when it goes.
Speaker 1:We would like to think that we spend our money on the things that we love, but it actually works a little different than that. Jesus says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Where your treasure is, your heart will follow. If we want to be intentional about seeking the kingdom of God with our money, fine. We should direct our decision making process to how can I serve the Lord?
Speaker 1:How does this house score allow me to live out the gospel and the life that God has given me? Am I making a decision out of faith, or I'm making a decision out of just trying to obtain something like success, or approval? Because the problem, again, isn't with any particular house or any particular car. The problem is in your own heart. I wanna close with this.
Speaker 1:We should not be too outraged at the story of the dishonest manager. We should not think him too much a scoundrel. For in his story, every Christian will find his or her own. He did not get what his bad actions deserved, but neither do we. His long term future was not secured by his own wealth, but rather by wealth that belonged to another.
Speaker 1:The same is true of every believer. He was unrighteous, and yet was spared. Friends, we are unrighteous, and yet will be spared. If this story offends your sense of Justice, look at your own heart. I think Jesus is almost daring us.
Speaker 1:He's shocking us, but he is daring us to say, point a finger at him and see if it is not also pointing back at you. If it is unfair for him to escape, isn't it unfair for you to escape judgment too? If you're looking for justice, don't look in the parable. Look to the man who tells the parable. Look to Jesus.
Speaker 1:In fact, apply this test of shrewdness to Jesus. If you want to see what Jesus loves, look what he planned shrewdly to accomplish. Because it was important to him to spare us, and he hatched a crazy plan to accomplish it. It looked like this. He would leave perfection to live in humility and brokenness.
Speaker 1:He would leave strength for weakness. He would leave acceptance for rejection. He would leave wealth for poverty. He would leave respect for shame. He would give up a crown of gold, and he would put up on his own head a crown of thorns.
Speaker 1:He would climb off the throne of glory to be hung on a cross of shame between 2 thieves. That was his plan. That's what he left heaven to accomplish, trying to find a way that he could put his own flesh between us and the judgment that we richly deserve. If you ever doubt his love for you, look for the plan that he hatched to save you. Jesus's death is not the end because he rose.
Speaker 1:And if he is gone from us for a while in the flahe, he is that friend who receives us into eternal dwellings. He is the one who look to me to satisfy. Look to me. Live your life towards me. Hear these words from John 14.
Speaker 1:In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also, and you know the way to where I'm going. And Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?
Speaker 1:Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. Please pray with me. God, thank you for the great truth of your gospel. Thank you that you made a way for us, a way in your own flesh. Now thank you for loving us and demonstrating that love by sending your son to die for us.
Speaker 1:God, might we be filled with the knowledge of the gospel, A knowledge that brings us low. It says that we are cheaters or scoundrels. We are deserving of judgment, But also a knowledge that lifts us up, saying that though our need and guilt was great, that your love for us was greater, and that your grace exceeds the measure of our sin. That we will not be judged according to our righteousness, but according to the righteousness of Christ who gave himself up for us. And for our sake, you made him who knew no sin to be sin, this knowledge of our great need and this knowledge of your great love for us, and that it would force us out to live shrewdly in the world, not for our own gain, but to follow after your example.
Speaker 1:God, might we serve with shrewdness, love relentlessly, creatively, bringing to bear all that we have, not holding any back? How could you give us wisdom that we might, have creativity to do this? Might you hold us accountable, among one another to do this. God, might you fill us with great love, that just as you loved us, that we can love the world around us selflessly, sacrificially, heedless to our own safety. God, extravagantly, would you accomplish this through your son Christ, who is our only hope, and in whose name we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.
