In an article way back in the summer of 2000, The New York Times reported:
J. P. Morgan & Company, a bank worth $21 billion, was disconnected from the Internet on June 13, 2000 for failure to pay a $35 bill. The venerable Wall Street firm found itself without a Web site or an e-mail connection to the outside world because it had failed to renew the registration of www.jpmorgan.com, the domain name that serves as its address on the World Wide Web. Throughout the day, clients were unable to visit the Web site or exchange e-mail messages with the firm’s bankers and traders. All that frustration could have been averted if Morgan had sent a check for $35 for the annual registration fee to Network Solutions, a domain-name registrar in Herndon, Virginia. It pulled the plug on Morgan six weeks after Morgan’s bill came due and after sending the firm at least three bills, said Chris Clough, vice president for corporate communications at Network Solutions.[1]
It makes one wonder: if J. P. Morgan can’t take care of a $35 bill, what other important things are they letting fall through the cracks? And, did anyone at J. P. Morgan get sacked for failing to pay that $35 bill?
Jesus once told a story about a manager who slipped up and lost his job because of it. It is a story, like so many of Jesus’ stories, that has great relevance to us today. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 16:1-13…
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
The key to understanding this seemingly strange parable that Jesus told is to know who the rich man and the manager represent. I think Tom Wright gives the best answer to that question:
If we were faced with a first-century Jewish story we’d never seen before, about a master and a steward, we should know at once what it was most likely about. The master is God; the steward is Israel. Israel is supposed to be God’s property-manager, the light of God’s world, responsible to God and set over his possessions. But Israel—as we’ve seen in so much of this gospel—has failed in the task, and is under threat of imminent dismissal. What then ought Israel to do?
The answer of the Pharisees to this question was to focus on purity, to try to make Israel more holy by a strict observance of rabbinic rules. Remember last week, how we saw at the beginning of Luke 15…
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him [that is Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
To the Pharisees’ way of thinking, the way one maintains purity is by having table fellowship with the right people and excluding the wrong people.
According to N. T. Wright, Jesus’ answer to the question about how Israel should live in his time was that they should…
…throw caution to the winds, to forget the extra bits and pieces of law which the Pharisees have heaped up, and to make friends as and where they can. That’s what ‘the children of this world’ would do, and ‘the children of light’—that is, the Israelites—ought to do so as well, learning from the cunning people of the world how to cope in the crisis that was coming upon their generation.
Thus, instead of hoarding money and land, Jesus’ advice was to use it, as far as one could, to make friends. A crisis was coming, in which alternative homes, homes that would last…would be needed.
So, what is the application of this story to us today? I believe Jesus gives us at least four applications…
First, the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.
The manager in Jesus’ story made friends with his master’s debtors by deducting the interest from what they owed his master. And how could the master object after the manager had already done this? Israelites were not supposed to charge their fellow Israelites any interest! So the dishonest manager did something very clever that ingratiated him to his master’s debtors.
But what does this parable mean for us today? William Barclay answers…
That means that, if only the Christian was as eager and ingenious in his attempt to attain goodness as the man of the world is in his attempt to attain money and comfort, he would be a much better man.
Do we pay as much attention to matters of the soul as we do to material matters, accumulating wealth, and pleasure? Our relationship with God will begin to grow when we start paying at least as much attention to spiritual things as we do to material things.
Or, if that seems like a stretch to you, then why not begin by committing just a little more time and money and effort to your spiritual growth than you have in the past?
Do you spend time reading the Bible? If so, why not increase that commitment? If you don’t do it at all, why not begin today?
Or worship, how often do you come to church? If you come once a month, what might your spiritual life look like if you came two, three, or four times per month?
This all may sound selfish in a way. Someone said to me recently, something to the effect of: “You are being selfish by focusing on your relationship with God.” I think what they meant was, “You are being selfish by focusing on your relationship with God instead of helping other people.”
The thing is, it doesn’t work that way. God wants us to have a relationship with him through his Son Jesus Christ. And if we focus on growing in that relationship, we will inevitably grow in our relationship with others too. If you get filled up with Jesus (his joy, his peace, his love) then all of that will naturally overflow into the lives of others.
The second application Jesus gives us is this: make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
This may sound like the strangest statement in this whole passage. But again, Barclay helpfully explains: “material possessions should be used to cement the friendships wherein the real and permanent value of life lies.”
The Rabbis had a saying, “The rich help the poor in this world, but the poor help the rich in the world to come.” In other words, charity given to poor people will stand to a person’s credit in heaven. A person’s true wealth consists not in what he or she keeps, but in what he or she gives away.
Think about it this way: will any of us meet someone in heaven who is there because we used our resources to introduce them to Jesus Christ?
Money can’t buy heaven, but it can support a missionary who is communicating the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed to people who desperately need to hear it and experience it.
The third application Jesus offers us is summed up in the sentence: whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.
Most parents practice this principle with their children all the time. We know that if we teach our children and expect our children to do little jobs around the house it will prepare them to be good workers at bigger jobs later on in life. Making your bed in the morning really does matter!
The bottom line for us is this: all that we have belongs to God and has been entrusted to us for a time. God is like the rich man in the story. We are like the steward. How are we using our resources for God and God’s kingdom purposes?
This is not just a parable about money and how we use it. It is a parable about all the resources God entrusts to us: relationships, knowledge, property, money, wealth of all kinds. How do we use it all?
The fourth application Jesus gives us is this: No slave can serve two masters; You cannot serve God and wealth.
The difference between us and the steward in the story is that we have a choice about who we are going to serve. We can choose to serve God or not. And if we choose not to serve God, what is going to take first priority in our lives?
The problem with anything other than God taking top priority is that we as human beings were not made to function with anything other than God as our top priority. It’s like trying to run an automobile that was made to run on gasoline on something else; it just won’t work.
The more I grow in my relationship with God the more I have come to believe that there is only one question I need to ask in any situation. And that is: God, what do you want me to do? Instead of asking, “How can I make more money?” or “How can I make this person happy or that person happy, or how can I make myself happy?” We should be asking, “How can I make God happy?”
I believe the most important thing in our lives is not work, nor is it family, nor is it even ourselves. The most important thing is not a thing, but a person: God. In the end, what really matters is simply this: have we been faithful to Him.
You may well ask: but how do we know what God wants us to do in any given situation? After all, God is not whispering in our ear all the time.
That is true. I have seldom, if ever, had God whisper in my ear. But God has given me the Bible, a record of many people’s experience with God over hundreds of years. I believe that the more I soak myself in the Scriptures and let the Scriptures steep in me like a tea bag in hot water, the more I will be infused with God’s way of thinking.
Another thing God has given me is even better, for it is not a thing. It is the person of Jesus to whom the Bible points.
As Christians, we believe that God took on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. If we really want to know what God is like, how God thinks, and how God wants us to act, then we need look no further than Jesus. And following a person, though it is in some ways harder than following a rule book, is really so much better, so much more personal.
Do you remember the craze a few years ago, where so many people were wearing bracelets with the letters: WWJD? Those letters stand for the question, “What would Jesus do?”
Christians have been asking that question for centuries. However, the question gained a whole new level of interest following the publication, in 1896, of a book entitled “In His Steps” by Charles Sheldon. The book has sold over 50 million copies to date.
The book began as a Sunday night sermon series. Sheldon shared a chapter of the story each week, all about various people asking the question, “What would Jesus do?” in their everyday lives. Soon, Sheldon was preaching to a packed house.
When the sermon series was over, the Chicago Advance published one chapter of the book per week in their newspaper. Then, when that proved popular, the Advance decided to publish a 10-cent paperback copy of the entire book. It sold 100,000 copies in a matter of weeks.
In His Steps takes place in the railroad town of Raymond. The main character is the Rev. Henry Maxwell, pastor of the First Church of Raymond, who challenges his congregation to not do anything for a whole year without first asking: “What Would Jesus Do?” Other characters include Ed Norman, senior editor of the Raymond Daily Newspaper, Rachel Winslow, a talented singer, and Virginia Page, an heiress, just to name a few.
I won’t give away any more of the plot, just in case you decide to read the book for yourself. But the whole story does make me wonder: how would our lives look different, how would our church look different, how would our town look different, how would our world look different, if we didn’t do anything for a whole year, or even a day, without first asking, “What would Jesus do?”
There’s only one way to find out the answer to that question…
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