<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="65001"%> Riches for God's Work

Riches for God’s Work

By William R. Cunningham
April 22, 2007

Scripture Text

Matthew 6:19-21 (NKJV) -- {19} “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; {20} but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. {21} For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Luke 16:1-13 (NKJV) -- {1} 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. {2} 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.’ {3} “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. {4} I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ {5} “So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ {6} And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ {7} 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.’ {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. {9} “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. {10} 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. {11} Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? {12} And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own? {13} “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.”

Introduction

How do companies persuade you to purchase their products? How do businesses persuade you to spend your money on what they have to offer? You will find that many businesses give to get. That means that they will give you something in order to pull you in so to speak and so that you would be more amenable to purchase whatever it is they have to offer. For example, a company may offer free this or free that and you will say to yourself, “that’s really nice of them to do that.” Of course at the same time the business is just attempting to win you over by giving you something.

Companies pay billions of dollars each year for advertisements, which are designed to get you to purchase whatever it is they have to offer. They use part of their wealth and possessions to appeal to you and make you ultimately a customer.

One of the questions that I ask myself in regards to evangelism is how we can reach people with the gospel. How can we get our foot in the door, so to speak so that the person would listen and we possibly win him or her over to Christ? Some churches practice street evangelism where they go out and knock on doors and give out literature hoping to spawn a conversation with the people or to get people to come to a church service. I have never liked that kind of approach because it seemed impersonal and there is no reason why people would want to listen to you anyway. I imagine you would be likened to any other religious representative hoping to convert them. So what can we do to promote more efficient evangelism?

I have always believed that the most important component for true evangelism is relationship. How do you develop a relationship with someone that you don’t know? How can you get your foot in the door, so to speak and open up an opportunity to present the gospel and hopefully win him or her over to Christ? God has not wired me to be a cold contact type of person. There are people that can just walk up to others and start a conversation, however I have come to believe that even that isn’t necessarily the most efficient way to present the gospel because people will have no reason to listen to you even though they may appear to be. So what methodology can we use to promote the gospel most efficiently and naturally?

It appears that Jesus Christ has given us a method to use to befriend people and open opportunities for presenting the gospel, discussing Christianity in a normal conversational way, and hopefully lead the person to putting their faith in Christ. We are going to examine Luke 16:1-13 and Matthew 6:19-21 and see what Jesus tells us about using what we have for the Kingdom of God to lead people to eternal life.

I should also remind you that this is indeed a parable and we should not look at it allegorically. That is we should not focus much on the details thinking that one component represents something and another component represents something else. We should instead view the parable as a whole and extract the overall meaning or message of it. This parable is considered difficult to interpret, but that is probably because most people attempt to view it allegorically.

The Unjust Steward

During this time a wealthy person would hire someone to manage his estate. This person could be a slave that was born in his household or a hired free person as what appears to be the case in this parable. This steward would have control of the property and have the authority of the property owner to manage the resources of the estate. It was the responsibility of this steward or manager to use the resources of the estate to make more money for the estate.

Apparently there arose accusations that the steward was wasting or squandering the finances of the estate. The master of the estate commanded the steward to give an account of the finances that he was managing. Evidently from the response of the steward he was indeed wasting the funds else the rest of the parable would have been a moot point.

The steward knew he would be fired because he could not give an account of his stewardship and he apparently was already relieved of his duties as steward. He knew that shortly he would be on the street without a job. What would the steward do now?

Luke 16:3-4 (NKJV) -- {3} “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. {4} I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’

This statement summarizes the steward position and his plan of attack so to speak. He knew he would lose his job. He wasn’t suited for manual labor and he was ashamed to beg. He was used to having money and perhaps could not face the fact that he would be as a poor person who had no skills and could only be hired to dig or could only beg for a living. He then came up with a plan so that they would receive him into their homes.

The question is, “who are the ‘They’?” Well consider what happens next in the parable.

Luke 16:5-7 (NKJV) -- {5} “So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ {6} And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ {7} 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 steward effectively reduced the debt of his master’s debtors. He reduced the one debtor’s debt from one hundred measures of oil to fifty measures of oil. The measure of olive oil (100 baths, about 850 gallons) represented the yield of nearly 150 trees and was worth about 1,000 denarii A denarius was equivalent to one day’s wage. This means that 1,000 denarii would be equivalent to a little over three years worth of wages. The measure of wheat (100 cors, about 1,000 bushels) represented the yield of about 100 acres and was worth about 2,500 denarii (almost seven years worth of wages).

The steward had gained the favor for himself. Also, sometimes a master would forgive the debt of his debtors as in order to be seen as being benevolent. The steward’s actions could also be seen as him securing safety for himself as the master would not want to appear to not be benevolent after he had been seen as being benevolent by partially forgiving the debt of his debtors.

Luke 16:8 (NKJV) -- {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.

The rich man (the master) commended the steward for his shrewdness in securing his future even though he was wrong and dishonest. Jesus was not making a point that we should be dishonest to secure our future, but rather that we should be shrewd in our dealings with other in the world.

Now Jesus said something that is very interesting. He said that the sons of this world are shrewder in their generation than the sons of light. In other words, those of the unrighteous are shrewder than the righteous. The world is cleverer than the righteous.

Luke 16:9 (NKJV) -- {9} “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.

What Jesus says here is very interesting. He actually tells us to make friends using money. The word mammon comes from an old Aramaic word that means wealth, possessions, or money. This appears to be an astounding saying; however we can see it working in Jesus’ ministry. We can and should use our possessions to befriend others to open an opportunity to lead them to Christ. However, I believe that it extends beyond mere possessions because of what Jesus did in his ministry.

Jesus befriended people who were called sinners by the religious leaders. He ate with them and taught them. He mingled with the sinners and at the same time brought them the kingdom of God. The principle is clear even from Jesus’ ministry. We should strive to win people to Christ. We should do what we can with the resources that we have to get people to be reconciled to God. We should do all that we can to do what God is doing, namely to call people to salvation and an eternal relationship with him.

Luke 16:11-12 (NKJV) -- {11} Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? {12} And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?

If we cannot be faithful with what we have now, which we are only stewards, then how can we be expected to be faithful with true riches, which are heavenly. If God cannot trust us with earthly stewardship then why would you expect him to trust you with heavenly stewardship?

We have to remember that the steward did not own what he was managing. The master (the rich man) was the owner of the finances that the steward was managing. We too are only stewards of what we have because everything belongs to God.

The Link To Divine Providence

We saw in an earlier lesson that the providence of God is active in normal everyday events and situations. The fact that we go to work, make a pay, and purchase goods and services is the same as God providing for us. Therefore, what we have is merely what God has provided to use for the things that we want and need.

Now God’s providence works in our lives to provide for us and we become a part of God’s providence when we use what we have, which belongs to God, to help others. We are stewards of God’s possessions and we should do our best to be a most effective steward.

Luke 16:13 (NKJV) -- {13} “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 only serve God or money. You cannot serve both. Both money and other resource are used by you to accomplish what God wants or you server money to get more of it and do whatever it takes to get more. The two are mutually exclusive, namely serving one is the opposite, if you will of serving the other.

This brings me to a statement that Jesus said in regards to our priority in life.

Jesus said here that we should not amass a treasure on earth, which is temporal. We should instead amass a treasure in heaven, which is eternal. How do you amass treasures in heaven? Good question. We have a clue from something that Jesus told a rich young ruler at one time. Matthew

19:21 (NKJV) -- {21} Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

Using what he had for others instead of himself exclusively would have given him treasures in heaven. This is the same point that Jesus is making in our discussion. Using what we have to build relationships with others (befriend them) and to help them is what God wants us to do with the resources that we have in our possession, which are his anyway.

The moral of our story today is that we should use our possessions to fulfill what God is doing within the human race. God is calling people to salvation and we should use what we have to be consistent with that. Heavenly treasures should be our priority, but instead we have been duped into securing earthly treasures.

Earthly Treasures Deception

We have been taught so long that we should amass a wealth of possessions and even our success is measured by the amount of possessions that we have. We have come to believe that our objective is to be blessed when we should really be a blessing. We have been taught by the world and even by so called ministers that the mark of a true child of God is the accumulation of material goods. For example, we are told that we know that God has blessed us when we have a nice car, a nice house, expensive clothes and the like. This philosophy is far from the truth revealed to us in scripture.

We should not be motivated to accumulate more and more things. Instead we should be motivated to do more and more for others and therefore for the Lord. We should do all that we can and use what we have to help others come to Christ. This means that we meet their needs and to befriend them just as Jesus did during his ministry. We can then build a relationship with the people and hopefully lead them to Christ.

We have become materialistic instead of being spiritually minded or heavenly minded. We have been trained to think of self instead of others and God’s purposes. We need to abandon selfishness and join ourselves to serving others. We need to be part of what God is doing and that means using our resources, finances, time, energy, and whatever to be a part of what God is doing.

I am not suggesting that we all go out and give all that we have to a church. I am suggesting that we change the way that we think and begin to incorporate what Jesus taught us in the parable of the unjust steward in our normal everyday lives. Only then can that methodology be incorporated into a church environment. The church cannot do what the individuals are not.

Changing Kingdoms

However, making this change or transformation is very difficult.

Romans 12:2 (NKJV) -- {2} And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

We have to change the way we think in order to change the way that we act. We also have to change the motivation of the heart in order to change the way that we think (See Matthew 12:34).

We are in effect addicted to the selfish way. We have to go through much change if we are to begin to forsake self and pursue serving others. This doesn’t mean that we neglect ourselves. It does mean that our whole attitude about life changes. Life isn’t about accumulating things for our own enjoyment, but instead we learn that true enjoyment comes from obeying God. True fulfillment comes when we are a part of what God is doing.

We have to begin to consider others. What can we do to help someone else with the destination in mind being presenting the gospel? We present the gospel not in a preaching manner, but rather in a regular discussion. We talk to people instead of preaching at them. We respect people instead of treating them as another potential salvation that we can add to our list of victories.

What to Do next

Let us individually be conscious of opportunities to help others and to show them Jesus. Let us begin to gradually use what we have to help others and to talk to them about the kingdom of God. Let us not pursue self all of the time, but rather consider others.

We have spent far too much time investing in a world that will be destroyed one day. We have put too much emphasis in something that is temporary. We should instead invest in something that is eternal and has much more meaning than anything that exists on the earth today. The relationship of humans with God is of utmost importance and we need to strive to be a part of getting people to be reconciled to God. Let’s begin to change the way we think and the way that we are so that we could indeed be righteous and effective stewards of God.