Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: When we, disciples of Jesus Christ, make friends here on earth, we are always wanting to make friends for time and for eternity. We always want our friends to know the Savior as we know him and to trust the Savior like we trust him because of his grace and his mercy. That's what we want, isn't it, for all our friends?

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I'm Steve Hiller. Glad you've joined us today. We're in a series where we're taking a look at cash, Christ, and the kingdom. And Jonathan, today you began the the broadcast by talking about friends. So where did they fit in to this picture?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, the passage we're looking at today in Luke 16 is one of the most fascinating and surprising parables of Jesus found anywhere in the New Testament. He tells the story of a man who was working for a a wealthy landowner and was about to lose his own job. And just before he was thrown out the door, this manager decided that he would use the opportunity to make some friends for himself uh for the future, for the time when he faced unemployment, by writing down the debts of some debtors to his master. So the guy behaves in a way that might look pretty crooked, but Jesus says to us, this man did something very shrewd.

He used every opportunity he could to make friends for the future, to invest in relationships. And Jesus wants to teach us a lesson that using our resources now, stewarding them in order to invest in people and relationships is a very shrewd and a very worthwhile thing to do. It's a wonderful parable, fascinating, surprising, and I think we're actually going to enjoy it together in today's program.

Steve Hiller: Well, let's do that. Luke chapter 16 is where we are today. So if you have a Bible handy, I hope you'll join us there as we begin our message, the priority of people. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: Today we come together to what is possibly the strangest and most surprising parable of Jesus found anywhere in the Gospels. The teaching of Jesus here is so perplexing and surprising that many of the commentators seem to trip over themselves in trying to make sense of it. But as we've often said together before, the surprises of Scripture often hold the richest lessons for us as the people of God. If we come to the Bible with the basic assumption that Jesus is always right and we are often wrong, if we approach his word with the disposition and the assumption that we need him to reshape our thinking and correct our errors with his word, then we should actually come in the active anticipation of being surprised, frequently being a little confused, occasionally being shocked altogether.

And here in Luke chapter 16, we are not at all disappointed by Jesus. We are not disappointed for Jesus will surprise us. He will challenge us. He will reshape our thinking if we will but listen to his voice. The story is itself fascinating. The scene as you will have gathered is the home of a rich man, perhaps an estate of some kind. We think of a house, we think of uh some land, we think of a commercial enterprise there, a number of staff, and then other people in the community with whom this rich man has commercial dealings.

This wealthy man has a manager who oversees his day-to-day affairs, who keeps an eye on the business end of things. But it turns out that this manager was a bit of a rogue, a bit of a rotten egg. It came to the rich man's attention that this manager had been mismanaging his assets. Charges were brought. You'll notice it there that he was wasting his possessions. Now this rich man did not get rich by being naive or by being indecisive. No, he knows right away that this guy's got to be dealt with. He's got to go.

He sees the issue. He lands immediately on a course of action. He hauls the manager into his office and he confronts him with the charges and then he wastes no time. He says, hand over the accounts, the record books, all of your files. Bring me your key card and your laptop. You are fired. You're out of here. You can no longer be my manager. Tidy things up and report back to me. Now the crooked manager, he can't have been totally surprised. He doesn't argue. You'll notice that the charges are wrong. He doesn't plead his case.

Presumably, he must have known that the day would come when he would be found out called to account. But he he's standing there in front of the boss's desk and he he's stunned. He's tempted uh to panic, no doubt. But as he sort of hangs his head and shuffles out of the office, his mind starts whirring into action very very quickly. He starts addressing the crisis at hand. Verse three, and the manager said to himself, what shall I do? Since my master is taking the management away from me, I'm not strong enough to dig and I'm ashamed to beg.

He's now working through actively all the options that might be before him. You know, I've never done manual work. It's always been white collar. I've always been in the office. I'm just not built for the hard labor. He he rejects manual labor right off the top. There's always then the option to beg. He could think of that. But this guy, he's been in management and that fall from grace, that humiliation is too much, too much to bear, too much to contemplate. It would be too embarrassing to see former employees under him walk by and drop a coin in his cap.

No, he's not going to do that. Can't do it. And so now a thought occurs. It dawns on his mind and and a resolve forms in his heart. Verse four, I've decided what to do so that when I am removed from management, people may welcome me into their houses. He knows he's got to act quickly. He he's he's got to use what remains of his time within the house, what remains of his influence to set things up properly now for his future. He's going to take some action, concrete action to carry favor with others so that they might welcome him into their homes when he loses his.

It's a bold decision. It's a wily move, but he's brazen and he 's efficient. Verse five. So summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said the first, how much do you owe my master? What's your debt? He said 100 measures of oil. He said to him, take your bill, sit down quickly, write there 50. Then he said to another, and how much do you owe? He said 100 measures of wheat. He said to him, look, take your bill, write down 80. Do it quick. Now this guy, he's a he's a smooth operator. He's moved really quickly and he's doing something really clever.

He knows he's hours or minutes away from unemployment. Maybe he's lived on site and so he's heading for homelessness as well. There's no welfare system, there's no social housing. He won't be walking away with a good reference. So he is headed for destitution. He knows it. But if he can use these final moments of influence to make some friends who might then welcome him and care for him, the other side of all this, now that is a very good thought. Clever. And so he uses that ever powerful lever of influence, that ever effective key to the affections of others old-fashioned money.

He uses it shamelessly and he uses it effectively. The debtors come in one by one, no doubt with a sense of trepidation. I mean, think of it. May maybe the loan is going to be called in early. This might be very very bad for them. But to their relief and to their surprise, they meet with different news, very different news. Their big debts are about to get a whole lot smaller. The manager tells them to revise their bill. Just scribble the amendment, just write it down. They're only too glad to oblige. Both reductions in debt were very significant.

They were big debts. Estimates of this within the literature uh vary, but both reductions would have amounted to many months of wages at the time. These are these are big write-downs in the loans. The manager stamps the revised bills with the company stamp and off they go. The debtors are happy. Of course they are. In fact, they are so happy that one of them might have even stopped by the office of the boss, the rich man, just to thank him for being in such an incredibly generous mood. And you can imagine the blindsided and bewildered rich man muttering uh you're welcome through gritted teeth and feigning a smile at the news that his manager has done what he has done all the while trying to save face with the debtors.

But as he then gets up from his desk and hustles over to the manager's office, maybe ready to tear a big strip off him, it suddenly occurs to him that this man has been very clever. This man has been very shrewd. And by the time he gets into the end of the corridor and knocks on the manager's door, his anger has actually shifted to acclaim. And we read words that really take us by surprise. Verse six. The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. Whatever his initial thought, whatever his initial reaction, the master sees in the actions of this dishonest manager real shrewdness.

He's impressed. He's still firing him of course. I mean, he's still gone. He's probably all the more convinced of the decision to get rid of this guy. Who knows what other shrewd things this guy might get up to with his money if he stays around. But he wants to give credit where credit is due before he kicks him out the door. Now the whole thing is certainly surprising. I I mean, the rich man's reaction, it just catches us off guard, doesn't it? And we we wonder what to make of it. Is the rich man naive?

Is he foolish or is he wise and is he discerning? Well, now Jesus adds to that comment of the rich man, his own comment. And perhaps to our greater surprise, he reinforces the uh the master's appraisal of this manager. Middle of verse eight. He says, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. The rich man commends the shrewdness of this dishonest manager and Jesus himself recognizes his shrewdness too. Now I don't know about you, but I think it's fair to say that we are surprised.

We wouldn't expect that. How do we make sense of it? What are we to learn here?

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths and a message called The Priority of People, part of our series Cash, Christ, and the Kingdom. And if you ever miss a broadcast in our series, come and listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org. There you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Another way to listen is to get the Encounter the Truth app. That's free. You'll find it at your app store. And that's a great way to listen to Jonathan's teaching on the go whenever it fits your schedule. It's listening on demand. So again, find the Encounter the Truth app at your app store or come and listen online at encounterthetruth.org.

Well, if you did join us late, we're in Luke chapter 16 looking at the first 13 verses. Back to our message, here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: Middle of verse eight. He says, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. The rich man commends the shrewdness of this dishonest manager and Jesus himself recognizes his shrewdness too. Now I don't know about you, but I think it's fair to say that we are surprised. We wouldn't expect that. How do we make sense of it? What are we to learn here? Now it's worth saying fairly quickly that there are a number of uh different suggestions out there of different ways to interpret what it is that the manager actually did.

The simplest and the one that I think is probably correct is simply that the man was behaving crookedly, really in line with what we learn about him at the outset of the passage. Remember he was being fired for mismanaging the money. This guy was was not trustworthy from the get-go. He he wrote down the debt of the debtors. He caused his boss a lot of money and he made a few friends for himself. That seems like the most natural way to read this. Now others suggest that maybe well, he canceled some interest charges on the debt.

Maybe some interest had been added to the debt and that wasn't really allowed in Israel anyway. So what all he did was just revert the debt to the original amount and waive the interest. Others said, well, as manager, maybe he was entitled to some kind commission on the debt collection and he was just waving his commission. Now I don't know if those ideas add up very well. Opinions thoroughly divided among the commentators. I I sort of feel that those alternative options are actually an attempt to tidy up the shock of this story and the surprise of it.

And I'm not sure it's necessary to do that. I think the story is meant to be surprising and I think it's meant to catch us off guard. In any case, the bigger point is this. The manager uses the financial resources he has at his disposal from the master for those remaining minutes of his employment to do this, to make friends for himself, to invest in relationships that will be of lasting value to him. That's the clever thing he does. That's the shrewd thing he does. We we know he's dishonest. We know he's not a model to us in everything that he does here, far from it.

But in his shrewdness, he's got something to teach us. Well, what are the lessons we're to take from this and where does Jesus direct us from here? Having told the story, Jesus proceeds to lay out three lessons for us concerning wealth and priorities, all of which relate in some way to the dishonest manager. And I want to walk through these together. But as we do that, we do need to recognize that in a parable like this one, Jesus isn't going to draw out and develop every detail as containing instruction for us. So he's not taking the whole life and the whole character of this dishonest manager and presenting him to us as a comprehensive model of Christian discipleship.

Jesus isn't doing that. No, not at all. He's focusing really on one thing and one thing to emulate, one alone. Jesus is able to do that without suggesting that the man's dishonesty is in itself a good thing. And we need to see that selectivity in Jesus in his teaching as we open up the lessons here. Three lessons about wealth and priorities flowing from this intriguing story. And the first one is this, prioritize people. With your wealth, prioritize people. The dishonest manager in his shrewdness saw something that believers might miss. And in this sense, Jesus says the sons of the world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

Guys like him, worldly people. They demonstrate a shrewdness with money and people, their own people, their own generation that we as Christians, the people of light, we can easily miss and not get this right. And that's the prioritization of people with wealth. See it there in verse nine. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings. I remember when I was a kid, I was with a a school friend and his family. They were delightful people, not Christian believers. And we were we were talking.

I don't remember the whole conversation, but I I remember we were talking about doing some special activity. It might have been a sporting activity. I I don't remember all the details, but it was something that was going to be worthwhile but quite expensive. And I I remember his dad saying, you know, money is just a tool. Money is just a tool to enable you to do the things you want to do, the things you've chosen to do. And his point was, you know, don't get too head up about the money for the sake of the money.

Money is a tool that is there to be used. You know, I've often thought back to that comment. It was just it was a throwaway comment, but it stuck with me. The man he he wasn't a believer, but his basic point was very wise. Money needs to be viewed as a tool to accomplish the things that you believe are important to accomplish. And of course, as believers, we want to ensure that our priorities are God's priorities and we want to be good stewards within that. But money itself is a tool. It is a resource that is there to be used.

Now this dishonest manager, he saw that. What was his objective in the use of the money? It was to build relationships that would be important for the long term future. He needed to do that. And money, his master's money of which he was a steward, it became the tool for getting that thing done. And Jesus says to you and he says to me, use this worldly thing, unrighteous wealth. Not meaning that wealth in itself is bad, but just that it's something that belongs to this present world. Use it to make friends for yourself. Use it to invest in relationships, use money to make friends.

Now that sounds so pragmatic. It almost sounds crass, doesn't it? Why Jesus? Why should we do that? Why would we do that? Well, he says, do do that in order that when money fails you, and it will fail you when you die because you cannot take it with you, do so in order that when the money fails you, the friends you've made with it may welcome you into eternal dwellings. Make friends now with your money, which cannot last by the way. Make friends so that when you arrive in heaven, there will be a welcome party for you.

The money won't last. It's not going to be of any use to you, but the friendships can last and they will be of value to you. And notice here the obvious thing in what Jesus is saying. These friends are able to welcome you to eternal dwellings, to heaven. That's a key insight. They are able to welcome you to eternal dwellings because they themselves have made it there. They themselves are now in heaven. Well, just think about that. When we, disciples of Jesus Christ, make friends here on earth, we are always wanting to make friends for time and for eternity.

Isn't that right? We always want our friends to know the Savior as we know him as the one who died in our place at Calvary and opened the gates to life eternal to unworthy sinners like us. We want our friends to know the Savior like we know him and to trust the Savior like we trust him. And so join us in the eternal kingdom because of his grace and his mercy. That's what we want, isn't it, for all our friends? What's the point? Use wealth to make friends for eternity. Use wealth to invest in people in such a way that they will be friends in the Lord and therefore friends forever.

Let me read again the principle, the advice, the admonition from Jesus himself. Verse nine, just notice it again. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings. That's the principle. Well, how do we do that in practical terms? What it what does it look like to be shrewd in this way? Now I think we we're we need to think creatively and the sky is the limit here. You know, we can think of giving to the work of missions, to the work of the gospel as we're committed to do as believers.

And and you know, we give and the word goes out. And through that, what are we doing? We are inviting other people to join us in heaven. Isn't that what we're doing? We may never meet the people here on earth who benefit from our giving. But just imagine this. Imagine you and I give sacrificially to support a missions project on the other side of the world in a place that we've never gone to and never will go to. And when we depart this life as we will and we arrive in the heavenly Zion, there's a little cluster of unfamiliar people who who meet us.

And they say welcome home. And they say thank you for what you did on earth. Thank you for your generosity that enabled me to hear the good news, to respond, to find eternal life. Thank you for what you did. Now that's perhaps the most obvious and the most simple application. But friends, I don't know about you, but I find that idea tremendously moving actually as I've reflected on it, that that our generosity to the work of the gospel might make friends for us in eternity. You see, that makes it also tangible, doesn't it? It makes it also meaningful and it makes whatever sacrifices are involved in this seem well altogether worthwhile.

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths here on Encounter the Truth with a message entitled The Priority of People. Uh we're going to pause here, but we'll continue next time. So hope you make it a point to tune in. Well, Encounter the Truth is listener supported and we depend on your generosity to continue to bring you Jonathan's teaching each day. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a book called Gentle and Lowly. It's written by Dane Ortlund. And Jonathan, who is this book for?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, Steve, this book is for anyone who feels that God is frowning down upon them from heaven, anyone who feels that God is disappointed with them for their failures in the Christian life, for anyone who feels that they need to prove themselves to God or or in their way into his favor. Gentle and Lowly is a beautiful reminder that God loves us, that he's given his son for our redemption, that he reaches out to us in mercy and grace through the gospel, that he is compassionate toward us, and that the Lord Jesus Christ is indeed gentle and lowly of heart.

And and I think hearing these things, even if we know that they're true, even if we've read them before in the Scriptures, being reminded in such a helpful way as Dane Ortlund reminds us in such a helpful way, will do our heart and soul good. And I think for the one who is fearful and imagining that God is indeed frowning upon them, this will be such a help and such an encouragement. And I hope you can take hold of it.

Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you a copy of this book Gentle and Lowly as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. Give online at encounterthetruth.org or when you call 1-833-99truth. That's 1-833-998-7884 or encounterthetruth.org. You can also write us at Encounter the Truth, PO Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario K2C 3M1. Or in the US at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois 60004. For producer Mark Branna and our Bible teacher Jonathan Griffiths, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.