The parable Jesus tells about a shrewd but dishonest manager is perplexing to many. Certainly Jesus is not commending dishonesty. But today on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg walks us through this passage of Scripture to help us understand the key to applying such radical teaching in our own lives. Luke chapter 16, we're going to read from the tenth verse. to the fifteenth verse.
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
So, if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you've not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property? of your own. No servant. Can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God. And money The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, You're the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men. But God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men?
is detestable. In God's sight. Amen.
Now, for those of you who are tracking with us in our studies in Luke's Gospel, you will know that Jesus has just told his disciples. This story of the shrewd manager. He is elsewhere referred to as the unjust steward. The central figure in the story finding out that he was to be fired on account of his mismanagement. Seize the opportunity of his final hours of employment to ingratiate himself.
with those who owed money to his master. And by means of a fairly slick plan, He came up with a strategy whereby, although he was about to lose his job, He would provide for himself in the future as a result of the relationships that he was building with these individuals. Jesus then points out that there is a great contrast between the shrewdness, this is verse 8b. the shrewd dealings of the people of the world In comparison to the virtual gormlessness of the people of light. And having said that, in verse 9 he then urges his followers.
to use worldly goods or worldly wealth. Given to them by the Father. To use all of this in such a way that, first of all, it will bring blessing to others. And at the same time, will be conducive to their own eternal welfare. Investing for eternity.
There's hardly a day goes by when most of us are not confronted with some invitation to invest something somewhere. No matter whether you have any money or not, it doesn't seem to matter at all that people will come and suggest that they could relieve you of whatever little bit you have in the prospect of you having a lot later on. And the challenge for them is to convince us that it is worth giving up stuff now so that we are apparently going to have more stuff then. Of course, Jesus in Matthew 6, says to his followers, Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Don't make that the priority of your life, he said, because ultimately those treasures are transient, they disintegrate.
Uh they dissolve, they're ultimately useless. But instead, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, because the treasure that you lay up in heaven, he says, is not subject to the same degenerative processes that that which is laid up on earth. finds itself subject to. And then, of course, he has the punchline. He says, because where your treasure is.
There will your heart be also.
So, in very practical terms, when you take the Wall Street or you take the New York Times.
So the question is, which section do you go to first?
Now some of us go certain places because of our jobs. The question is, are you going immediately to the mutual funds in the stoke pages? And we're going there before I read my Bible. Because after all, Where my uh Treasure is That's where my heart is.
So we'll actually be able to find out a lot about each other's hearts. by viewing our preoccupation with treasure. It's a quite uncomfortable little section I have found. Changes the routine question from. What did she leave behind?
Two What did she send ahead? You see? In the way in which we invest all that has been given to us, time, talent, money, resources, stuff. There is a way to do it. Which of course is the characteristic way of the world whereby we will be able to leave a lot behind.
People say, my, my, my, he did a wonderful job. Look what he left behind. Jesus says, no, I don't want you to ask that question. I want you to ask the question: what did you send ahead? A few weeks ago now, I came home, and there were just a whole slew of boxes sitting outside our garage on the driveway.
And I was there by myself, and I opened the garage and I went in, and eventually my wife came home and I said, What are all those boxes? And then I looked in the front hall, and there was a trunk, and there was a huge bag, like a gigantic sausage, and there was stuff everywhere. And then it dawned on me, I said, She's coming home. Where's our middle child? And this was all the stuff she was sending ahead.
And boy, she had a lot of stuff to send to her. I wish it were all books. But there it was, it was all at the house. Why? Because she was coming.
She's not there yet. She's been gone all of this time. But every time I walked past all of that provision, I said, you know, she's coming. And the reason she sent it ahead is because this is her destination.
Now in the very most basic terms if you imagine the portals of heaven. And you imagine the vaults of earth. The preoccupation of the world is, how well are you doing? How much are you leaving behind? The preoccupation with heaven is, how well are you doing, how much have you sent ahead?
And Jesus says, the way in which we use the stuff we have now. is either in such a way that it sends stuff ahead, Or this, frankly. is all that we have. As soon as the reality of eternity grips our lives, then the way in which we view everything changes. Think about that for a moment.
As soon as the reality of eternity grips our lives, then it changes the way in which we view everything. The passage of time. Our age. The prospect of our death. The use of our resources.
the disbursement of our funds. The way in which we determine to use the minutes of our days. When we live only with our focus on the immediacy of things, then that determines the way in which we use all of this material. But when eternity, when even just a glimpse of eternity, even if God would just pull back the curtain, as it were, just a very tiny glimpse, and let all of that light shine through. Suddenly in that moment of realization, It begins to change the way in which we view Not least of all.
Our money.
Now, I want to belabor this this morning because the more I study these verses, the more convinced I became that the key to their radical application to our lives. is to be found in living in the now in light of the then. Living now in light of then. And I asked myself the question as I studied and re-studied this passage and went back to the shrewd manager and went forward to the rich man and Lazarus, for the whole thing is ultimately a unity. I said to myself, why is it that although I understand this, Although I actually believe in its importance, I find it so jolly difficult to do.
I mean, those of you who are involved in pensions and investments. You know that part of your responsibility is to convince the average young person. of the importance of delayed gratification. of making a sacrifice in the now. simply because of what they may get in the then.
And pragmatically it's possible to do. Otherwise there would be no pension funds and no one would be able to sell these various annuities and life assurance policies and so on.
So we all know that from a very pragmatic point of view, we can organize our money, we can apportion our goods, we can do certain things on the basis of just a cerebro functional understanding of the wisdom of it. But Jesus is not doing that here, you see. Jesus is actually calling us to a very different perspective. He's not arguing on the basis of the pragmatic value of the repayment to us in the now of how we'll be better off, you see, by the time we reach such and such an age and we'll be able to fold this up and put that there and move there and still have enough for this and still have two of those and still be able to give stuff to our children. That's not what Jesus is on about.
Jesus says, What I want you to do is, I want you to view everything that you have in the now. in light of the then. Because everything that is now is passing away. Only what is then is going to last forever.
Now, instead of being snared by guilt then, We find ourselves summoned by glory. There's a tremendous sense of diffidence about dealing with the money matters from the Bible. Churches get themselves in all kinds of knots. Pastors are frightened to say anything. They think that people got angles on them or they want to do something, and so it's often skipped over.
And of course, you may be a visitor this morning. You say, Well, I came to church once in the last six months, and the guy was talking about money. Say, well, yes, that's exactly true. The answer to that, of course, is not that I shouldn't talk about money, but it is that you should have been here for the previous six months. And then you would have realized that the only reason we're here is because this is the section we're in.
There's no embarrassment on the part of Jesus. You read these verses. You can't serve two masters. You'll hate one, you'll love the other. You can't serve both God and money.
You find yourself just moving a little in your seat, just rearranging your seat. Mmm, that's a funny feeling. Because you know what your checkbook says. You know where your checkbook is. You know what you've already disbursed.
And it would be possible for the teacher. In this case, me. By the pain of guilt to induce you to temporarily rearrange your priorities. And that, in my experience, is mostly what happens in relationship to the money matters discussion within the framework of churches. We are made to feel guilty by the disparity that exists between where we are and where the Bible says we ought to be.
And so we tolerate the guilt long enough to assuage it by doing something.
So we give or we change something, and as soon as we've managed to do that for once or twice or however long, simply to get that pain to go away again. Then we're able to settle down to mediocrity all over again. Waiting for the next dreadful time when somebody turns up the guilt meter, and oh, we're gonna have to do something about that again. What happens here is not.
Now, the pain of guilt is used to induce the temporary rearrangement of priorities, but if you look carefully, it is that the prospect of glory. Invites me to permanently realign my passions.
Now here's the question, loved ones. If you want to go the sort of short burst, get it off your back way. then allow the study of Luke 16. to so annoy you that you temporarily rearrange your priorities. If you want to go God's way, then allow the prospect of glory.
to induce you to permanently Realign your passions. For what a man or woman is passionate. passionate about will determine the use of resources. That is why we will prepare to get up early in the morning because we're passionate about exercise. That is why we stay late into the night with just a lamp burning, because we're passionate about knowledge and about reading.
Nobody has to induce guilt within us. It is a passion. Nobody had to make me read. You know, if you don't read, then you won't know this and you won't know that. I didn't read because I was afraid of what I wouldn't know.
I read because I had a passion to read. I still do.
Now when eternity says Jesus looms large across the horizon of my follower. Then it's going to radically change. the way in which they live. in the now. Let me illustrate it just from two places.
To reinforce this, because I really believe that this is the key to getting to terms with this. If you take Paul, for example, in 2 Corinthians 4. You can find it if you just turn to it briefly. I'll only give you a couple of places to turn. 2 Corinthians 4.
Talking about his journey through life and all the challenges of life, and not least of all the physical harm into which he's come. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 16. He says, Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly We are wasting away. That's the now.
Yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. in prospect of the then. For our light and momentary troubles, that's the now. Are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. That's the then.
So, he says, We fix our eyes not on what is seen as the now. But in what is unseen, that's the then. For what is seen, the now, is temporary. But what is unseen But then Is eternal?
Now do you understand what I'm saying? Why this is so difficult to get to? The average person gives their resources I think Induced by the same mechanisms that are employed to encourage people to invest in annuities and in pension plans. Especially because there is a narcissistic element to it. It pays you back.
Don't you want to have all this? Don't you want a prayer that pray the prayer of Jabaz? And you can have the house you didn't know you could have. You can have the girl you didn't know you could marry. You can have the income you didn't know you could find.
Where did we get that from? Jesus says no. I'm not seeking to induce you. to deal with your stuff. In a way that is eternal.
so that it will pay you back in time. I'm telling you, he says. that if you do not use stuff With the prospect of the then, while you live in the now, when you get to the then, there'll be no then. Because, how can somebody look forward to eternal riches? who is unprepared to let go of worldly goods.
You cannot serve God. And Money. Oh, yes, I can, says somebody, I've been doing it for years. We'll come to that. First Corinthians 13, the great chapter on love, you get the same distinction.
Verse 11: When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child.
Some of us are having a discussion this week about why it is that the summer holidays were so long when you were small. And now they're so short.
Somebody said, summers lasted a lot longer when I was a boy at school. I said, no, they didn't. They lasted the same length of time. No, no, no, he said, no, no, no. Summers were much longer when I was small.
I say, well, the future comes in at the rate of 60 seconds a minute. That hasn't changed. It was the same length of time. Oh, I couldn't convince him. No, when he was small, summers lasted forever.
Well, we understand that. How many of us have said today, goodness, can you believe it's the first of July? How did we get so quickly from Memorial Day to the 1st of July? And then we did one of those quantum leapfrogs and we said, you know what? The summer's almost over.
The buses will be here before we know where we are. School's back. And the children are saying, oh no, no, there's an eternity yet before that happens. When I was a child. I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Now, We see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then We will see face to face.
Now I know in part Then I shall fully know even as I am fully known.
Now he says the challenge is that we don't have the clarity that one day we will have in the then. But when the then invades the now of my earthly pilgrimage. then it will change the way in which I view Today. You see, if you think about heaven this afternoon. And the fact that you're going to live in heaven as a believer, and you're going to fall down before the throne of God, and you are going to worship the Lamb for eternity.
I suggest that that will make a difference about the way in which you view the prospect of our evening communion service. Than if you view the balance of this day simply in terms Of now. Once you introduce then to the now. Then now is affected. And what I found as I read this passage is that I am an unbeliever.
I don't believe in the then. If I really believed in the then, Then why am I like this? In the now.
So what are you going to do for me? Induce guilt?
So that I can rearrange my priorities momentarily? No. We're going to ask God to show the wonder of them.
So that my passions are realigned.
Well, don't be surprised that your pastor said he's an unbeliever. Lord, I believe. Help me. with my unbelief stuff. Because I can't tell my kids I really believe this.
If this is how I am in the now. Lord Jesus, you've got to help me to live in the now in light of the then. Jesus says, read the parable again. Listen. To what I'm saying.
You get the same emphasis and I won't take you to it. But in 2 Peter chapter 1, He says in verse 10, he says, You know, you're looking forward to a rich welcome into the kingdom of heaven. And that's then. And he says, it is by his divine power, verse 3. that we have come to this epignosis, which means the intimate, personal, acquainted knowledge of God.
By His divine power, we've come to know who God is. He has given us His great and precious promises.
So that by this knowledge we might escape from the corruption in this world. Which presses on us by the evil desires, and that we may then look forward to a rich welcome.
So it goes like this: divine power, precious promises, great escape, rich welcome. Divine power, precious promises, great escape, rich welcome. And that is Alastair Begg encouraging us how to live today in light of the promise of eternity. Listening to Truth for Life, we'll hear more tomorrow.
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Thanks for studying God's Word with us today. I hope you can join us for the conclusion of today's message tomorrow when we'll learn about the many ways God helps us let go of earthly treasures and lay hold of eternal riches. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
