Matt Sturdevant: Let’s pray. Father, as we open up Your Word today, we thank You for it. Thank You that regardless of what we think or what we feel in any given moment, thank You that Your Word is true, and it will stand forever. Thank You that Your Word corrects us when we’re wrong, and it teaches us to do right. Thank You that Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Please open our hearts and our minds. Show us what You want us to see from Your Word today. Please give us the courage to take the next step that You show us. Thank You. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.
Well, today we’re continuing our series called, Parables: Stories to Live By, where each week we’re taking a look at a different parable that Jesus Christ Himself taught while He walked on this planet. These are parables that He used with His disciples and the crowds that followed Him around. Our working definition of a parable is this: It’s using a natural object or a human circumstance to convey a spiritual or moral subject. We’ve also been taking a look at the fact that for many the parables act as a picture, a mirror, or a window. What I mean by that is a picture gives us just that. It gives us a picture of something that we can keep in our minds. So if you see a beautiful sunset, you pull out your phone, and you want to take a picture of that so you can remember it and take it with you. The parables can do that for us.
They also act like mirrors, in that when we stand in front of a mirror the mirror reflects back truth to us. Regardless of what I think I look like, the mirror will show me what reality is and what I really, in fact, look like. Then as a window, when we look out a window, we see something different than what we see in the house. Parables can act like a window in that they give us a new perspective to see the world with. Perhaps they give us a new perspective on God or on ourselves or what He desires or requires from us as a Christ-follower. So, a good question to ask yourself after reading a parable is: “How do I see God or myself differently, and what does He want me to do as a result of that?”
If you’ve missed any of the messages in our parable series, you can always check out hopechurch.com on our media page, or you can check out our YouTube channel or our HopeChurch podcast. We’re going to take a look this week at the dishonest manager. That’s found in Luke chapter 16. Before we get into this week’s parable though, I want to make a few comments. I want to set something up for you so that you’re able to fully understand the parable that we’re going to take a look at. One of the overarching themes, overarching ideas that we see in this particular parable, the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, is the Biblical concept of stewardship or management. A steward is not the owner. A steward is one who cares for and manages something that’s owned by another. So, a good steward or a good manager handles their responsibilities well and therefore, the property or the investment or whatever it is that the owner owns. As the steward manages it faithfully and well, then that thing prospers for the owner.
Now, the opposite is true. For a dishonest manager or a manager who does not manage well, then the owner doesn’t receive the return that they were expecting. They don’t receive the return that they should have if things had been managed differently. When we think about stewardship, stewardship impacts both the person managing and the one who owns whatever the thing is that’s being managed. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the parable. We’re going to look at Luke chapter 16, and we’re going to start in verse 1.
“He also said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and he said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.” And the manager said to himself, “What should I do, since my manager is taking the management away from me? I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.” So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, “How much do you owe my master?” And he said, “100 measures of oil.” And he said to him, “Take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50.” Then said to another, “How much do you owe?” And he said, “100 measures of wheat.” And he said to him, “Take your bill and write 80.” And the master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.’ For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the men of their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourself by the means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they will receive you into its eternal dwellings.’”
Now, what’s going on here in this parable? They’re are a lot of things happening, and we’re going to take a few minutes to look at some lessons we can draw from this parable. Before we get into the lessons, though, let’s admit it’s sort of confusing the way that it ends. That’s one of the things that we find with the parables that Jesus taught. Sometimes they left His own disciples and the crowds with them sort of scratching their heads and saying, “Now, what’s going on here?” This is a good example of there being some confusing things within a parable. It starts out that the manager is going to be fired, and he’s going to be brought into account for all that he’s done. But then near the end in verse eight, we hear that the master is commending this manager. What it is that he’s being commended for is really important here.
He’s being commended for his shrewdness. He’s not being commended for the dishonesty. We’re going to come back to this in a few minutes when we look at one of the lessons specifically, but I wanted to mention that now so that you didn’t get stuck here right at the very beginning saying, “Now, wait. He’s going to be fired but he’s being commended. What’s going on here?” So, let’s take a look at three lessons that we find in the Parable of the Dishonest Manager.
The first lesson is this: Sin snowballs when unchecked. What is sin? Sin is missing God’s mark. Sin is choosing to go our way instead of God’s way, and rather than making Him our Boss and our Master and going His way, we choose to go our own way. We choose to try to be our own boss and do life our own way, so this is the case with this dishonest manager. At some point in the past before we get to the story that we read, at some point in the past this manager decided to go his own way to not manage things in line with what his master wanted. Now, we jump into this story the moment that it’s all caught up with him. The snowball has been moving down the mountain, and it runs into the manager at this moment because the master is calling him into account.
Even before he had been discovered, he had made some choices. Even after he was discovered, he made some more choices. He made some choices to continue in the same path that he had been on. He gets deeper into what he was already in. Let’s take a look at verses five and six again. It says, “So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘100 measures of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50.’” So quickly, the manager asks him to write the bill for less than what the master was owed. He’s making some additional choices. He’s continuing in the path that he was on. He had an opportunity at this point to get the full value for his master. He’s already been found out, so why didn’t he do that? He continues in the path that he’s been on. What he does is reduces the amount that he’s going to bring in.
At this moment, this dishonest manager is taking care of his interests, not his master’s interests. Why would he do that? We’re going to take a look at that in just a moment, but sin when it’s left unchecked begins to snowball. One of the things that we need to do in our own lives is we need to be able to identify any moral shortcuts that we may be tempted to take or maybe we’re taking them without realizing it or certainly without wanting to do that. Here are two quick ways that we can identify if we’re not handling our stewardship correctly.
The first one is reading God’s Word. God has given us His Word, and it speaks to us. It corrects us; it guides us. It helps us stay on track, and then if we find that we have drifted off track, His Word can help us get back on track. The first way is simply by reading God’s Word, spending time with Him. The next way is to be open and honest with the people around you. We need to have friends in our life. God made us for relationships. We need to have people in our life that we can share our ideas and our thoughts and our fears and our concerns with. People who can speak into our lives and tell us the truth when we need to hear truth…
In the last few weeks, I’ve had a few conversations with a pastor friend of mine in another state. I was telling him some things I was working on, some things I was thinking about , and then I opened myself up to him. I said, “What do you think? Does that sound right? Am I off track anywhere? Is my perspective wrong? Do I need to be corrected?” Now, fortunately in this instance, what he reflected back to me after I shared with him was no, it seemed that I was on track with the issues that we were talking about. He’s the kind of friend who would tell me the truth if I needed to hear it. In fact, he is the kind of friend who has told me the truth when I have needed to hear it.
Several years ago when I was working on finishing up my seminary degree, there were just a lot of things going on in life. Circumstances were getting very difficult, and I was questioning whether or not to finish it at that time. I talked to this friend of mine, and I told him about the situation that I was in and what I was thinking. He very graciously listened to me, and then after listening, he reflected the truth back to me. He helped correct my perspective; he helped me see where my thinking was wrong. I was getting caught up in some temporary circumstances that were very difficult, but I was going to be making a decision that would impact much further and longer than those circumstances would be that way. So, he reflected the truth back to me and helped me to get myself back on track and continue and finish the degree.
Now if you want to know more about the need to have people in our lives who can help us, we looked at a series earlier this spring about standing strong when things go wrong. In the last two messages of the series, we specifically looked at the importance of God’s Word in our lives and being connected with people who can encourage us and help us. If you’d like to go further with this, I’d invite you to check out the last two messages in that series. We’ve linked to it in the handout. The first lesson that we can take from this parable is that sin snowballs when it’s unchecked.
The next lesson comes from verse eight, which I mentioned earlier is one of the confusing, probably the most confusing, statements that we find in this parable. So, verse eight again says, “The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the men of their own generation than the sons of light.” Now remember here, he was being commended for his shrewdness; he was not being commended for the dishonesty. Shrewd is an interesting word; it’s not a word that I used everyday in my vocabulary, and we don’t typically think about it like this, but what it means is to be astute, to be sharp in practical matters. In other words, someone who is shrewd has the ability to read a situation and act accordingly to get what their desired goals are.
So, what’s going on here is this dishonest manager is about to lose his job. He’s been found out, and he’s about to lose his job. He’s now thinking about his future. He’s thinking about “I might need some help. I might need some friends when in just a little while I don’t have a job anymore.” So, he thinks of what he can. Maybe if he helps these people, now they might be in a position to help him in the future when he needs some help because he’s no longer going to be employed. There’s also another interesting phrase that’s used in verse eight. It talks about the “sons of the world” and the “sons of light.” The sons of the world are those that are caught up in the things of the world, the tangible things that they’re going after. The sons of light are those who are the followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus is making this comparison between the sons of the world and the sons of light, and he says, “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the men of their own generation than the sons of light.”
Basically, what it’s saying here is that the world is more shrewd in getting what they want and accomplishing their agenda than followers of Christ are in accomplishing the mission and goals of Jesus. The lesson for us here is to be shrewd in relating to our generation. As followers of Christ, we need to be sharp. We need to be astute. We need to develop the ability to read and act when it comes to advancing God’s Kingdom, urgently thinking about how we can invite people to discover and experience God’s ways just like the sons of this world are urgently thinking about how to advance their own agendas. A good question for us to consider is this: How can we who are Christ-followers use the opportunities throughout our day and throughout our week to make Christ and HIs Kingdom attractive to people and point them to eternal things.
This leads us to the third lesson from this parable, which is: Today’s faithfulness prepares me for tomorrow’s opportunity. Let’s take a look at verses 10 through 13. “The one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for 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.” Being faithful and trustworthy and doing something as simple and seemingly mundane as just doing what you said you would do, just keeping your word in the smallest thing, is actually really important.
It’s in the everyday, mundane tasks of life that we actually are in the proving ground for greater opportunity. This is especially important when you’re younger. It’s really easy to just blow things off, especially when you think this is insignificant; this is not very important. I’d rather be doing great things...things that have a huge impact. Some things may feel beneath you even, but it’s in those very things...those things that may feel beneath you...that your leaders or your bosses or the ones over you that have the authority and who have the power to give you greater assignments, the ones you really want. It’s in those small, insignificant things that they're actually watching to see how you’ll handle them. Today’s faithfulness prepares me for tomorrow's opportunities.
For all of us, we have stewardships. God has given us things that He has placed on our plate, things for us to be responsible for. For just a moment, I want you to think through your own stewardships. Think through the small responsibilities. What is a small responsibility that you need to take care of this week? Maybe it’s something that you’ve been putting off for awhile, something that you just even don’t want to do. You just need to do it. What types of small responsibilities do you need to watch out for so that you can take action on? Maybe you’ve developed some bad habits or some bad patterns to prevent you from dealing with certain types of things. Maybe those are the things that you need to work on. As we go about our daily lives, the way that we handle the stuff on our plate actually really matters. As we are faithful with the little things, we are preparing for the larger, for the bigger, for the greater stewardships that God could bring us down the road.
Would you join me in prayer? Father, thank You that You have given us Your Word to learn from and how to relate to You and others. Thank You for the stewardships and responsibilities that You’ve given each one of us to manage, big or small. Please help us to handle our stewardships rightly. Help us to be faithful in whatever it is You have put on our plate for us to be responsible for today. I ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
