Well, we're about to wind up our missions month, the month of November, where our primary emphasis is upon two things. Number one, worldwide evangelization, or what we generally call missions. And number two, financial stewardship, the gifts of God's people that enable missionaries to go to the ends of the earth. And we've been looking at texts which deal with these themes, and today we come to Luke chapter 16, the parable of the unjust steward, as it's often called. And this text is obviously about financial stewardship, but unnoticed by some, it is also about worldwide evangelization, or at least about evangelism, and they're both combined together in this parable as we understand it in the way that Christ gave it to his disciples. It is usually called the parable of the unjust steward, or the unrighteous steward, the dishonest manager, as one commentator put it, but another commentator called this the parable of the prudent steward. And that sounds like the exact opposite of the unjust or unrighteous steward, but actually both of these thoughts are combined in this parable. He was indeed unrighteous, but he was also wise in a certain worldly wise manner of speaking. This parable has always intrigued me.
It has always instructed me. But in some cases, some parts of it have ever puzzled me and raised several questions that need to be examined carefully if we're going to understand correctly what our Lord has for us here. Questions like who commended the unjust steward? Was it Christ or someone else?
And another question, why was he commended, since we know he was dishonest, but that too needs to be understood. And so there are some other questions that make this an intriguing portion of God's word, so without further ado, let's jump in and see if we can understand what the Lord has for us here. And we'll move through this account in six parts, each one with one word to identify it. Number one, background. Number two, situation. Three, solution. Four, commendation. Five, exhortation. And six, applications.
Number one, background. Luke 16 one begins by these words, he also said to his disciples. And this causes us to wonder about the exact historical setting for this particular statement of the public ministry of Christ.
And if you want to understand who he was speaking to, you really have to look back through a couple of pages in Luke to the very beginning of this discourse because it doesn't begin in chapter 16. It began along the road as Jesus was traveling and great multitudes were following him and listening to him. We go back to chapter 14 and we see in verse 25, now it reads, great multitudes went with him and he turned and said to them.
And then follows words like this, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life, also he cannot be my disciple. And so a great multitude, a mixed multitude were following Christ as he was traveling and his first words were spoken to this mixed multitude. And he placed upon them the demands of discipleship. Don't think you can become a follower of Jesus Christ without counting the cost.
Don't think that you can become a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ unless you are willing to embrace him above all others, even leaving if necessary your father and mother and brothers and sisters in order to follow Christ. The demands of discipleship. But moving along, we come to chapter 15 in verse 1 and we read, then all the tax collectors and sinners drew near to him to hear him. Now they're part of this mixed multitude but they are a particular part that the Holy Spirit wants us to be aware of. These are the notorious sinners in Jewish society. Two categories in particular were particularly disdained. Number one, tax collectors because they represented the Roman government and its odorous rule in the lives of the Jews and their hateful requirement to pay taxes to Caesar, another king, not their own king, not the Davidic line of kingship which they wanted to rule over them.
And so tax collectors who were viewed as those who had compromised with this oppressive foreign government were especially hated. And sinners, that's usually a code word for prostitutes. And so here are two particular categories of sinners who are also following Jesus and listening to his every words.
And what does Jesus say to them? Well that follows, what follows that introduction in chapter 15 are the three parables of the three lost things or some people view this as one parable in three parts of three lost things. The lost sheep in which the shepherd went out and found that one lost sheep.
The lost coin in which the woman searched diligently until she found her coin. And then finally the parable of the lost son, that prodigal who went out from his father and then came back in repentance and in a broken spirit. And so beyond the multitudes and the demands of discipleship if they want to know what it really means to be a disciple of Christ. Christ spoke to these particularly odious sinners and what was his message to them? Jesus is a friend of sinners. Jesus is seeking and searching for sinners. Jesus is going out to find the lost sheep. Jesus is searching diligently for the lost coin.
Jesus is ready and willing to embrace the prodigal son who comes home. But there was another category, subgroup you might say in the multitude that followed him. And that's Luke 15 too. The Pharisees and the scribes complained saying this man receives sinners and eats with them.
Shame, shame, shame that he would do such a thing as that. And so he spoke this parable to them saying and they're now included in the parable that gave such comfort to the notorious sinners that Christ is a friend of sinners. But the third one in particular, the parable of the prodigal son also was the parable of the self-righteous brother, wasn't it? The one who would not forgive, the one who would not receive, the one who wanted nothing to do with notorious sinners and Jesus spoke that parable to them.
Your attitude is wrong. You are hypocrites. You are as sinful in your self-righteousness as are these notoriously sinful people in their public sinfulness. But that's not the end of who Jesus was speaking to. After speaking to all of these categories of people, we read in Luke 16 one, he also said to his disciples. And this is an interesting observation that a number of times in the gospel accounts you find Jesus speaking to a great multitude of mixed people and he starts singling out different categories and saying, I have this to say to you if you think it's easy to follow me. I have this to say to you if you are afraid that Jesus will not receive you. I have this to say to you, you who are self-righteous in your pride and in your supposed goodness, which is not goodness at all, but is even greater wickedness. And I have this to say to you who are already my disciples.
And the parable of the unjust steward fits into that category, doesn't it? He spoke to them. He also said to his disciples, in addition to these things, he said to the other categories, he also had a special word just for his disciples. But because of the setting in which this is found, there were other people who were listening to what he said to the disciples as well. In fact, that becomes very clear in verse 14, which I didn't read earlier. When Christ concluded his word to the disciples, we read verse 14, now the Pharisees who were lovers of money, Jesus had talked to them about mammon, about money. And the Pharisees who were lovers of money also heard all these things and they derided him. They were listening in, but it was not directed specifically to them. So by way of background, the historical setting is the public ministry of Christ, but the targeted audience is the disciples of Christ. And that includes not only the disciples of that day, but the disciples of this day. Everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ, everyone who believes savingly in the Lord Jesus Christ, everyone here today who believes yourself to be a Christian, this is for you. Listen up.
It is especially for you, the background. Now, what's the situation? Well, Jesus tells a story and he sets the details, the opening details of the story before them in verses one, two and three so that we can get an idea of where he's going with this. 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. The situation, the situation unfolds in three parts. First of all, the story begins by telling us who's involved. And then secondly, the crisis unfolds that brings about the actions that follow in this parable. And thirdly, the problem is revealed. Why the unjust steward did what he did.
It's because he was solving a problem, a very great crisis that came up in his life. And so as the story begins, we are told about a certain rich man, unnamed, because this is a parable. And in the parables, the characters generally do not have names because they are not to be thought of as real people.
Although sometimes these characters are probably describing real people and real situations that Jesus knew. But he's not necessarily calling attention to any one particular person. In fact, in some cases, like any good storyteller, he may be drawing elements from this person in this situation and from another person in that situation and putting them together into an instructive story. But this is a certain rich man and as the story unfolds, it sounds very much like he is probably an absentee landlord. He owns property, rather sizable property, and he seems to be away, not paying close attention, not closely involved in what's going on in his operation, his farming operation. So, as was customary in that situation, he appointed a steward to manage the estate, to manage the farm, a sizable farm we would take it. And what is a steward?
He is a manager. What is a steward? He is a servant. Where it is a steward, therefore, putting those two things together, he's a high-level servant. There are different levels of servants. There are household servants who clean the house and take care of domestic matters. There are other servants who do menial tasks. But there are some servants who themselves are given a great deal of authority over others, and this is one of those, a high-level servant, a manager.
And it becomes clear, we haven't got to this part yet, but I'll insert it at this point, it becomes clear that what Jesus is saying is, you, my disciples, are like a steward. You are like a manager. In other words, you are servants.
You are, in fact, my bond slaves, but you are high-level servants who have entrusted to you a great deal of responsibility and latitude. And that's who this man was, a steward. The general manager of the estate, responsible for the operation and profitability of this farm, this large ranch, we might say, in order to turn a profit for the owner. The steward was responsible to make sure that there were sufficient workers and hire new ones if they were needed. The steward was responsible to make the assignments as to who was going to do what, and make sure that they were carrying out their assignments properly. The steward was responsible for purchasing the needed equipment, and more equipment if more was needed, and purchasing the supplies, the seed to be sown, and the other things needed for this operation to succeed. The steward was responsible for the decisions that would make the farming operation profitable, sowing the seed at the proper time, cultivating at the proper time, bringing in the harvest at the proper time, and so forth. The steward was responsible for the marketing of the produce when the harvest came in to make sure that it was sold in the most profitable way possible for the benefit of the owner.
This is indeed a high level manager. He has a lot of responsibility, and the report came to the owner that he was not carrying out his responsibility properly. Accusation was made that he was wasting his, that is the owner's, goods. The truth of the matter is, and again we're getting a little bit ahead of the story here, but the truth of the matter is that the steward would have profited more by doing a good job because he would have been rewarded with a percentage of what he had produced for the owner. He would have prospered far more being diligent, carrying out his job as he was supposed to do it, than he was in pilfering, which is apparently what he was doing from his master.
The report came that he was wasting his master's goods. Who brought this report to the owner? We don't know, since we don't know.
I guess my guess is as good as yours. My guess is it was an adjacent landowner, another farmer who was good friends with the owner, and he said, you need to know what's going on down here. I'm living right next door. I can see what's going on.
You're far away. You don't know what's going on, but your steward is wasting, apparently, pilfering for himself those goods as if they belonged to him rather than to someone else. And so he was reported either for lack of diligence, but more likely for his misappropriation of the property that had been entrusted to him, and living as if it belonged to him, when in fact it did not. It had been entrusted to him to manage for another.
And so a crisis unfolds. The master called to himself the steward. He must have come home to check up on the situation. And when he comes home, he says, come in here.
We've got to talk. And when he confronted the steward, he said, get the books ready for an audit. Get the books ready so that I can hand them on to the next steward because it's not going to be you anymore. I am dismissing you, and now we're going to have a final audit to know exactly what you have been doing. Now again, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the owner, who was probably a fairly prudent man, but he made a misstep right here, in that he dismissed the owner before the audit was accomplished, before it was completed.
Looking backwards, and hindsight's always better than foresight, what he should have done was said, we're going to conduct an audit to see if you've been managing this well. I've got this report, but I don't know. Is that an honest report? Is it correct report? Is it gossip?
Is it misinformation? So we will now conduct an audit and find out the validity of this report, but he'd already made his own conclusion ahead of the audit. And he said, bang, you're fired, but take a few more days and get things in order before you are put out of doors.
It would have been wiser to have waited for the results of the audit, and what this misstep did was allow the steward a few more days to take care of the crisis which his own mismanagement had created. And the problem, therefore, is revealed in verse 3. What shall I do? My master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig. I am ashamed to beg.
What can I do? I've already lost my job, but at my age it's going to be hard to find another one. You know how employers don't like to hire older people, maybe even in that day.
I'm too old to dig. I can't do that anymore. If I'm out of a job, I don't know what I'm going to do to keep going, to earn a living. And I have been a high-level manager, a boss man, in my community, and now I'm going to go out and start begging?
I can't do that. He had a physical problem. He was too old to dig. He had a, we might call it a psychological problem. He had a pride problem, like we all do.
He was too proud to go out and beg among the people that he had been such a high-class big shot before in all of his time. And so that brings us, thirdly, to the solution. He suddenly came upon a solution in verses 4 through 7.
I am 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 masters 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, sit down quickly, 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. The language of verse 4 indicates that the steward had a sudden inspiration. He was muddling, he was at ill at ease, he was depressed, no doubt. He was trying to figure out what in the world he was going to do in this situation. And then, suddenly, the light came on. Ah, I know what I can do. A sudden inspiration came to him.
And he said, I can ingratiate myself to the Lord's debtors in sufficient measure that they will extend to me hospitality, hopefully, for the rest of my life. It's got to be big, if this is going to work. No little measures will do here. It's got to be big. But if I can ingratiate enough people sufficiently that this one is willing to take care of me for a few months, and when he gets tired of me and kicks me out, the next guy will feel obligated to take care of me for a few months or years, and then he kicks me out and so forth. Maybe I can make this thing stretch to the end of my life. Let's give it a try.
Here goes. And so he puts into effect this scheme, which suddenly came to him, in how he could ingratiate himself to his Lord's debtors in sufficient measure to expect extended hospitality in return, because he still has the authority that had been given to him as a steward. Stewards have a great deal of authority. Stewards have a great deal of responsibility.
Stewards have a great deal of latitude to make decisions on behalf of others, but they are the ones who are making the decisions. And though he saw that that was going to be taken from him, it hadn't been taken yet. He'd been given a little bit of time to put the books in order. He still had the master's seal. He still had the master's authority.
As far as other people were concerned, he was still the steward. So quick, quick, quick. All you debtors come in.
I want to talk to you. And he's planning to call them in one by one and reduce the debt of each one so that they will feel grateful to him. So the first one comes in. How much do you owe, he said. A hundred measures of oil. We're not talking about petroleum. We're talking about olive oil. This is the produce of this operation, this farming operation. A hundred measures of oil, which commentators tell us, amounted to somewhere between 800 and 1,000 gallons of olive oil.
How much is that worth? It's hard to equate these things to American economy today, but again, commentators tell us that this amounted to about 1,000 denarii. And you know that a denarius in that day was the average wage for one day's work for a working man.
A Roman foot soldier earned a denarius a day. Day laborers who were hired in the morning to go work in fields were generally paid a denarius a day. So for a common working man, the kind of person who would dig if he was able to dig, would earn about a denarius a day, so trying to make some kind of equation out of this between their economy and ours, 1,000 denarii is more than three years salary for a common working man if he worked all 365 days a year, which of course he didn't.
He didn't work on the Sabbath day in Jewish society. But if he worked every day of the year, he would earn just slightly over 1,000 denarii, three years salary for a common working man. Now let's translate that into a general rough figure of dollars in American economy. Wouldn't you say that that probably should be the equivalent to somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 in our day?
A working man making 30-some thousand dollars a year for three years. Now we're getting into some big money, aren't we? How much do you owe, my lord?
About $100,000 worth of olive oil. Take your bill and sit down quickly, quickly, I've got a whole line of people to do this for and I don't want to get caught. Take your bill, sit down quickly and let's write 50 measures. Let's cut your debt in half. Let's reduce your bill by 50%. Now suddenly you only owe $50,000 instead of $100,000. Now that's a pretty sizable bonus, isn't it? A pretty sizable windfall. I think that'll make that man happy to help the steward out when his time comes. Okay, you're done.
Next guy, you come in. How much do you owe, my master? Well, he owes him, we're told, 100 measures of wheat. Again, commentators tell us that that's equivalent to about 1,000 bushels of wheat. But, they also tell us that this would amount to about 2,500 denarii, now two and a half times the amount of the first one. This would now amount to something 6, 7, 8 years salary for a common working man. We're talking about something that probably would be the equivalent of around $250,000 in American economy today. That's a pretty sizable amount. Okay, sit down quickly, and on your bill, write 80, not 100, and he discounts him by 20%.
And 20% of that amount also turns out to be right around $50,000. So the first guy gets a $50,000 discount, the second guy gets a $50,000 discount, and he continues that on through, we don't know how many debtors, 10, 15, 20, 30. Who were these debtors, by the way? They could have been tenants on the farm.
It could have been subdivided and put out to sharecroppers who owed these amounts. Or, it could have been merchants who bought this harvest. It could have been an olive oil merchant who bought olive oil on credit so that when he sold it, he could pay off the debt. And another merchant who dealt in wheat, who bought the wheat on credit, and when he sold it, he was able to pay off the debt. But at any rate, these men were discounted handsomely, and would no doubt feel not only a desire, but a responsibility to return something to the man who had given them this huge discount.
The man is clever. The alterations that were made to the notes of debt were untraceable to him because, did you notice, he didn't write this. He said to them, you take your bill and write 50, you take your bill and write 80. It was in their handwriting, not his. And again, we surmise that probably, as each of these men purchased their commodities, that probably they were required to write out a promissory note. I owe Mr. Landowner the price of 100 gallons, or 100 measures of oil, 1000 gallons of oil, and signed his name. I owe Mr. Landowner 100, what is it, 100 measures of wheat, 1000 bushels of wheat.
And I will repay that by such and such a date, and signed it with his name. So it was probably in their handwriting to begin with. So if it was altered in their handwriting, it wouldn't look so suspicious. And furthermore, if the discounts were random, it wouldn't look quite so suspicious. 50% to this one, 20% to that one, who knows, 30% to the next one, 10% to the other one. The shrewd steward sizing up each person to try to figure out how much discount will it take to make this man ingratiated to me.
They were all different, different personalities, and he had them all sized up, and so he knew exactly how much to offer in each case. Untraceable alterations and random discounts so that they would also be more difficult to trace. If everybody, when they did this audit later on, which was coming very quickly, if everybody suddenly had a 50% discount, that would look mighty suspicious.
But 50, 20, 10, 15, not quite so suspicious. Maybe there were valid reasons for this. And so he went through the entire list of debtors in this way. Now we come to the commendation, which is where some of the puzzling elements of this parable introduce themselves. And what we actually have are two commendations, both in verse 8, but we have to be able to distinguish between them. Verse 8, 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.
Two commendations. Who is speaking the words in the beginning of verse 8? Who is speaking the words in the last part of verse 8?
Well the first part, I think there's no question, are the words of the landowner himself. The word that describes him is master. The master commended the unjust steward, and that's a general term. Koryos in the Greek, it's translated generally Lord in our Bible. And is a term that is consistently applied to the Lord Jesus Christ or sometimes to God the Father. But it's also used for any slave owner, any person that hires people.
It's a rather general term, and so I don't think we can possibly understand this story for the Christ. This is the landowner, that master. And what does he say? He says, you are, in my words, you are one clever rascal.
He commended him, not because he was righteous, he wasn't. He'd been unrighteous all along, and now he's even demonstrating that more in this final act of unrighteousness. But you are one shrewd guy, you are one clever fellow, I don't think I would have thought of that. I have to admire your shrewdness, even if I don't appreciate your dishonesty, that's what he's saying. The master was impressed with his cleverness. He was mighty clever in the ways of the world.
The master of the parable was probably also an unconverted man. He was one who dealt in the ways of the world. It wouldn't have been above him to do something similar given the same circumstances. He knew that, and he said, wow, this guy has demonstrated unusual shrewdness, even at my expense. But I'm having to acknowledge that he dealt shrewdly. He dealt wisely.
I'll have to tip my hat to him even as I call for the sheriff to put him in jail. He was a clever fellow, wasn't he? But then the last part of verse 8 is Christ's commendation. The picture changes right in the middle of verse 8. When we pick up the second sentence to read for, this is the explanation, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. That would not be the language of this unconverted landowner, but that's the language of the Lord who's teaching this to his disciples.
And it's a general observation. The sons of this world, that is unconverted people, those who belong to this world, those who belong to this age, are often more shrewd among their own people, among the unconverted people around them, the people that they're most familiar with. They're more shrewd in earthly matters than are the sons of light, those who are saved. Well, that ought to cause us to stop and think. What are you saying, Jesus?
What you're saying is this. Christians are often unwise with the things of this world. The need is to not be sinfully shrewd like the unjust steward, but the need is to be wise and righteous.
And unconverted people are often shrewd in the sinful sense and not righteous, but God's people sometimes are trying to be righteous and they turn out being rather stupid, rather dumb in their handling of the things of this world. And Jesus is saying you need to learn to be both wise and righteous in the way you deal with the things of this world. Believers, Jesus is saying, should be as wise with spiritual realities as unbelievers often are with earthly realities. We know more than they do. We understand, or supposed to, we understand how things operate in this world, but we also understand a better, a higher dimension, the things that belong to the spirit world, the spiritual world, which these people don't understand, the things that belong to eternity and life after death, which these people don't understand at all. We have a much greater understanding, a much bigger perspective, and with that we ought to be able to make wise decisions with the things that pertain to this world. But alas, unfortunately, sometimes we don't.
So learn to. That's what Jesus is saying. Which brings us number five to the exhortation in verse nine. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by, or by the means of, unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. To Christians, I say to you, my disciples, Jesus is saying this to his disciples, Jesus is saying that to you if you are a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ, he's exhorting a particular class of people, namely Christians, and he's exhorting us about money, about mammon, about unrighteous mammon, as it's often called. And what he says to us is make friends for yourself like the steward did.
Right? He made friends using the mammon of unrighteousness. He used worldly goods in order to, if we want to use the word, by himself, friends.
Jesus said, you do that too. You make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, by means of, another phrase that we use that's similar is, filthy lucre. Use it for good purposes, that unrighteous mammon, that filthy lucre, as it's often thought of, because in the hands of unsaved people, it is inevitably utilized sinfully. They don't know the Lord, so however they manage this money, it's always with sinful motives, selfish motives, evil motives. No wonder it's properly called the mammon of unrighteousness.
No wonder we think of it as filthy lucre. But Jesus said, I'm saying to you, this is a commodity that belongs to this world. You are in this world for the time being.
You won't be here forever. But you need to learn to use it too, but not for unrighteous purposes, but for righteous purposes. You understand more than they do.
You should be wiser than they are. And so the money that is often, I would say, inevitably used sinfully by unconverted people can be and ought to be sanctified by the people of God for godly purposes. Take that unrighteous mammon and launder it. Laundered money. Take that filthy lucre and scrub it up and use it for righteous purposes by making to yourselves friends by means of unrighteous mammon that when you fail, or maybe a better translation would be, when it fails, when you don't have the use of this money anymore, and that day is coming for all of us, isn't it?
Right. The day you die, you have no more way to utilize the money of this world, or the material possessions of this world, for good or for bad. That opportunity is gone forever. So as long as you are in this world, as long as you are given days upon the earth, then you ought to be a wise steward managing this money that doesn't belong to you anyway. It belongs to the Lord, but it's been entrusted into your care with a great deal of liberty and latitude for you to manage in the way you think is best, but you ought to make sure that the way you think is best lines up with what God says in his word is best.
Try not to do that. Be wise. Make to yourselves friends that, and this is the most interesting part, I think, in many ways, that they, the friends you make, may receive you into an everlasting home. Like the steward made friends that would receive him into their homes, but friends that will receive you into an everlasting home that is into heaven. The friends, we'd be more inclined to say the souls, but we had a part in reaching for Christ in whatever way we were allowed to do that. We'll welcome us into heaven someday.
Some of them are actually going to get there before we do, and so when we die, they're going to say, oh, I'm so glad to see you. It was your words that brought me to Christ that God the Holy Spirit used to bring you to Christ, bring me to Christ. It was your giving that sent that missionary to where I lived to tell me about Christ. You had a part in that. I'm so glad to see you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad to see you. I love you.
I appreciate you. You are my dearest friend because you had a part in bringing me to Christ. And these friends that we make by use of the unrighteous mammon will welcome us into heaven, and they will become undeniable evidence of our good stewardship. Now, the question is, in the way you are managing your stewardship, how many friends are going to welcome you into heaven? A lot? A few?
None? Be wise. Be wise.
Be wise. Remember the line from the song we sang every other Sunday in November, except this one, which said, some for whose souls we pray will share our joy that day. Some for whose souls we pray, some to whose ears we gave the gospel, some to whom we sent missionaries, some for whom we were involved in bringing them to Christ will someday share our joy and welcome us into heaven where we will celebrate. We will rejoice together forever and forever and forever and forever and forever because we had a part in the most important thing in all eternity in their lives.
We are here saved by the grace of God when we should be in hell, and all of these people are here saved by the grace of God, and we had a part in that or could have if we did and shame on us if we neglected that. Because in far too many cases, the people of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. The people of this world know how to use their money for their advantage as they understand it, their future as they understand it. This guy was using it to take care of his future as he understood it. He just didn't understand it big enough, long enough, far enough.
He only stood it as far as to the grave. We understand it forever and forever and forever, all men. We understand what's beyond the grave, which is so much more important than what is on this side of the grave. But do we live that way, as if we really believe that? Do we act that way, as if we really believe that? Do we give that way, as if we actually believe that?
And that, therefore, concludes with a list of applications. Verse 10, be faithful with your opportunities. He who is faithful in what is least, little things, as they might be thought of by the world, is considered and will be faithful also in much. And he who is unjust, unrighteous, in what is least is unjust also in much.
General principle. Be faithful with your opportunities. Number two, verse 11, be wise with your money. Therefore, if you have not been faithful in, now not little things, but more specifically, have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, there's that phrase again, money, who will commit to your trust the true riches? Ponder that one. Number three, be diligent with your stewardship. Verse 13. I'm ahead of myself here.
No. Verse 12, be diligent with your stewardship. And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, where it's clear you're just managing for somebody else, who will give you what is your own? This can involve work that we do for Christ under the management of someone else who's been given an overseeing responsibility.
This can refer ultimately to heaven and the fact that Christ is the ultimate one who is in charge of all things. But if you've not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own? And then finally, verse 13, be committed to the cause of Christ. 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. You can't serve God and the things of this world at the same time.
In other words, as Christians, get the mindset, always, every day, that you are living as a steward, not an owner. You don't own anything. It may look like it. You may have a lot. Other people say, well, look what he has.
Look what she has. And sometimes we get to thinking, yeah, that's mine. Look what I did, like Nebuchadnezzar. Look at, I'm the mighty Nebuchadnezzar. Look what I made.
Wrong. You're a steward. You're doing all this for God. You're either doing it righteously or unrighteously.
You're either managing it well for the one who really owns it, or you are ignoring the one who really owns it. But we need to learn to live every day as stewards, not as owners, because you will either become a servant to the Lord Jesus Christ or you will become a servant to things. Now we ought to be utilizing things for the glory of Christ. We don't disdain them. We don't refuse to manage them. We don't refuse to use them. We take them as God gives them to us, and we take care of our responsibilities to ourselves and to our families. That's part of what God tells us to do with it.
Some of it we are able to enjoy extra things because he gives us richly all things to enjoy. But if we're wise, we're going to be finding ways to invest increasingly more and more and more year by year into a heavenly bank account. Because one day I'm going to fail. The day is coming, I don't know when, when many of you will probably gather in what I presume will be in this auditorium, and you'll be looking at my casket right down here. And I'll be with the Lord. My days on earth are over.
My stewardship is over. But the same thing is going to happen to you. Your casket may be there with my preaching over it before you get to see me and my casket. But the fact of the matter is we're all going to end our earthly sojourn and our ability to use anything for eternity. So let's be sure that we're taking the things of this world and sanctifying them for the glory of God and using them for eternity. If we do that, we'll be wiser than the children of this generation. If we don't do that, we are mighty dumb children of light, but acting pretty stupid. Shall we pray? Father, help us to understand these things and to put them into practice in our lives for the honor and glory of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
