SHREWD STEWARDSHIP
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 28, 2021 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: April 28, 2021 from Luke 16:1-13
Theme: It’s wise to use the temporary resources God has given us to advance God’s eternal kingdom while we can.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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This morning, we come to a parable of our Lord that has confused and surprised many. It almost seems—at first glance—as if Jesus was commending someone for their treachery. But if we examine His parable carefully, we find that our Lord is not calling us to imitate crooked behavior, but rather to learn to be forward-thinking to the good of our own souls.
In Luke 16:1-13, we find these words:
He also said to His disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ Then the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:1-13).
There are two parts to this passage. The first part is the Lord’s parable itself—what we often call ‘the parable of the unjust steward’. That part of the passage goes from verse 1 to verse 8. The second part contains the lessons our Lord gives us from this parable. They begin in verse 9 with the words, “And I say to you …”
And it’s very important that we pay careful attention to the lessons that Jesus taught from this parable; because they help us to rightly interpret the parable itself. Clearly, our Lord was not teaching us to be conniving and crooked in order to make gains for ourselves through the earthly possessions of others. Rather, He is teaching us to be wise in using the present resources God has entrusted to us in order to gain eternal blessings.
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As I studied this passage, I kept thinking back to the story of Nehemiah. He was a man that God used powerfully to rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem. After explaining many of his doings and dealings with his people—and sometimes even with the enemies of God’s people—he would repeatedly pray, “Remember me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done …” I find this specific type of prayer repeated four times in the Book of Nehemiah (5:19; 13:14, 22; 31). He prayed for God to look upon the faithfulness of his present actions in using the resources He gave him, and trusted God to reward him later on at the time when he would give an accounting on the day of judgment.
And I wonder, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; do we do the same thing? When Jesus used a ‘steward’ or ‘a household manager’ in His parable, He was reminding us that that’s what we really are. The things of this world that we have—that we think are our own—are not really our own. Our wealth, our home, our possessions, our resources, our bodies, and our health—they all ultimately belong to God; and they are entrusted to us, during a brief time, for our use in the advancement of His cause and His concerns. Just like the steward in the story, our time of stewardship will come to an end. And yet, just think of how rarely we use those things that we presently possess in order to serve God’s eternal concerns. How often we use them instead to advance our own temporal kingdom in the present. We should be more like Nehemiah; who wisely fulfilled the responsibilities that God gave Him, and who prudently used the resources God had entrusted to Him—and looked ahead with the prayer, “Remember me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done …”
Do we serve ourselves with the things that God has given us? Or do we serve God with them? Will we end up losing out when our stewardship ends and those temporal things fail? Or will we end up entering into eternal blessing because we used them, while we had them, to prepare for an eternal dwelling? We have the opportunity now to use what God has given us in order to advance eternal things to His glory. We should be good stewards right now—with an eye to eternal purposes—while we can.
That’s the lesson that the Lord is teaching us from this parable.
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Now; it’s important that we pay careful attention to who it was that the parable was spoken to. In the previous three parables that are in Chapter 15—the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal son—we found that they were all being directed to the Pharisees and scribes—who scoffed at the idea of repentance from sin. But now, we find that this parable was spoken to Jesus’ disciples. This is made clear to us in verse 1 where it says, “He also said to His disciples …” He also refers to them as “sons of light” in verse 8. The Pharisees end up listening to this parable also—as is made clear to us in verse 14. But the words of the parable before us were not meant for everyone. They were particularly meant for Jesus’ disciples.
And so; let’s look first at …
1. THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD (vv. 1-8).
Jesus said; “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods” (v. 1). This steward was basically a household manager. He was a hired man who was entrusted with the responsibility of using his master’s resources to maintain the home and keep the supplies well- stocked. And his master found fault with him. In verse 8, he called him an “unjust” or “unrighteous” steward. He did not fulfill his master’s expectations, and failed to fulfill his responsibilities. He proved untrustworthy in some way; and perhaps was a crooked man. And so, in verse 2, we’re told that his master fired him. Jesus said, “So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ That illustrates our situation in at least this respect: our ‘stewardship’ of the things God has given us on earth is also only for a time, and our stewardship of them will come to an end.
Now; the steward was in a real jam. He was out of a job. Verse 3 says that he said within himself, “What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg.” He wasn’t built for manual labor; and he was too proud to sit on a street corner with a tin can. But then he came upon an idea. “I have resolved what to do,” he says in verse 4, “that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.” It’s important for us to grasp this great idea of the steward; because this steers us toward the point of this parable. The point is not how the steward went about doing what he did; but rather the fact that he used what he had—while he had the chance—to prepare for the future.
He still had time. The actual work of the stewardship had not yet been taken from him. He had to organize the books and turn them over to his former master. And so, look at what he did. We’re told, “So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty” (vv. 5-6). In other words, he brought himself into favor with the master’s debtor by cutting down the bill. It may be that he told the man to ‘sit down quickly’ and revise the contract because he knew that he didn’t have much time. And he did this with another debtor. “Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty’” (v. 7). He quickly contacted all of his master’s debtors, revised their contracts (which was something that was within his authority to do), and brought himself into favor with all of them. And now, they all owed him a favor; which—because of the situation of need that he was about to be in—he knew that he could draw upon in the future.
In verse 8, the Lord Jesus said, “So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly.” The steward was not being praised for his character (because he is called ‘unjust’), nor was he being praised because of his method (because his method ended up causing his master to suffer loss). Rather, he was being praised for his shrewdness. He had assessed his situation correctly, and used the resources that he had in order to prepare for the future while he had the chance. You may think, “Couldn’t Jesus have used a more honorable example?” But no. It was this very example that best served the point that Jesus made in the later half of verse 8: “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.” What He meant by that was that the unbelieving people of this world are more like that shrewd rascal of a steward with regard to their temporal situation than those who are believers are toward their eternal prospects. Unbelieving people make use of what they have in order to set things up for a temporal future; while believing people often fail to use what they have to prepare for an eternal and far more glorious future.
And this leads us to …
2. THE LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM THE PARABLE (vv. 9-13).
I find at least three lessons that the Lord would have us learn.
The first would be that we should use temporal things, while we have them, for eternal purposes. That’s what the unjust steward illustrated to us. He knew that he was about to be thrown out into the streets. The temporal things that had been entrusted to him, and that he had the opportunity to make use of, were about to be taken from him. And so, while he had the chance, he quickly put them to use with an eye to the future. And that’s what we’re also to do. Jesus used a Hebrew name for ‘wealth’ and ‘riches’—mammon—and said, in verse 9, “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail [or as some translations have it, “when they fail], they may receive you into an everlasting home.”
This sounds very much like something that Jesus said elsewhere in His teaching. In Matthew 6—in the Sermon on The Mount—He said;
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
Using the resources that God has entrusted to us in order to store up for ourselves a treasure on earth that will eventually be lost to us is a very bad policy. Instead, we should use those temporal things—unrighteous mammon—to build up a treasure in heaven that cannot be lost to us.
Now; how can we do that? Jesus goes on to say, in a second lesson, that we should be faithful with what God has entrusted to us. We should see ourselves as God’s steward; and view whatever we have as something that God has entrusted to us as a stewardship to manage for Him. You and I will be held accountable for what we have done with what God has given us. In verses 10-12, Jesus said; “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?”
The apostle Paul also stressed this teaching; and urged Pastor Timothy to teach it in the church. In 1 Timothy 6, he wrote;
Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life (1 Timothy 6:17-19).
And in all of this, Jesus taught us to keep our service to God as the top priority. He warned that we are to bring the goods that God entrusts to us to the service of our Master—and not let ourselves become mastered by those goods. In verse 13, He warned, “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Jesus spoke these same words in the Sermon on The Mount. And before He spoke them, He said—in Matthew 6:22-23;
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23).
When we serve two masters, our eye is divided; and we can’t keep our focus on the light. We must keep our service to our Lord in the use of our things—and not serve our things.
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In the next verse—in verse 14—we find that the Pharisees heard this teaching from our Lord and ridiculed Him for it. They mocked Him because they “were lovers of money”. It would be safe to say that—with that frame of mind—they did nothing to use what God had given them to prepare for the future.
Let’s not let a love of temporal things rob us of using them now—while we can—for a future that will not fail.
EA
