Every Last Word

Guest (Male): Have you ever gone to the store to purchase a friend? I doubt it. But I bet you may have used your money to buy an ice cream cone to impress a cute girl to be your friend. Are you using your money and resources for your personal gain, or are you using your money for spiritual advancement?

Guest (Male): Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today's message is on the parable of the dishonest manager, a story we often find a bit confusing to understand because it seems that Jesus is commending dishonest management. But we'll see that's not the case. Well, Phil, some might believe that in our story today, Jesus is approving of dishonest behavior, but what is he really saying to us?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Well, it's kind of a tricky parable, Mark, because there's a shrewd man who behaves fairly dishonestly here, and Jesus seems to commend him. I don't think he's commending his dishonesty; it's hard to imagine Jesus doing that. But I think he is commending the man, dishonest though he may have been, for being very shrewd and for doing something to his advantage. And really, Jesus will commend us in today's parable to act in our own best and eternal interests.

Guest (Male): In the message today, you talk about using money to make spiritual friends. I've never heard of that concept before. What do you mean by that?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Well, Jesus talks about that here, about using our worldly possessions to make friends. Some have taken this in different ways. Some have taken it as a way of referring to making friends with God himself. But I think Jesus is talking here about using our financial resources and other gifts we have in a strategic way to serve people in need and to befriend them for the sake of Christ. I think that's the kind of thing that Jesus is talking about here. It's a challenge to us to make the wisest and best use of whatever God has given to us.

Guest (Male): All right, thank you, Phil. Let's turn in our Bible now to Luke chapter 16, verses 1 to 13, and listen in to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: You can use your money to make friends, or you can use it to make some enemies. I'm sure you'll agree with me that NBA basketball star Latrell Sprewell wasn't making any friends when, in November of 2004, he demanded a better contract.

Sprewell told the Minnesota Timberwolves that he was disgusted with his one-year, $14.6 million contract. And when a reporter asked him why he didn't just go ahead and help the team win a championship and then worry about how much money they were paying him, he said, "Why would I want to help them win a title? They're not doing anything for me. I'm the one at risk. I've got a lot of risk here. I've got my family to feed."

Well, as you may know, $14.6 million is more than enough money to feed Mr. Sprewell and his family. But you know, when your money becomes your life, you never seem to have enough of it. And rather than using it to do some spiritual good and to make some everlasting friends in the process, you'll probably end up wasting it all on yourself.

What will you do with your money? This is the very practical question that Jesus is pressing upon us at the beginning of Luke chapter 16. Please turn there with me in your Bibles. And here we see very clearly that if we do not master our money by using it for the glory of God, then it will surely master us, and we will end up bankrupt for eternity.

Jesus taught this simple lesson by telling a parable and then applying it to daily life. But the parable is not so simple. Indeed, one commentator remarks that no other parable has caused as much perplexity and has received as many different interpretations as this one. And there are a number of difficulties with this parable of the unjust steward, as it is often called, or the parable of the dishonest manager. But I suppose no difficulty is larger than this: that on a first reading, Jesus seems to be encouraging the unethical practice of business. But obviously, that can't be right. And so we need to go back and study the parable carefully to see what it says and what it doesn't say.

Jesus begins by telling his disciples—not the Pharisees, whom he had been addressing in chapter 15, but now his disciples—about a business relationship gone bad. There was a rich man, we read in verse 1, who had a manager. And charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, "What is this that I hear about you? Turn in your account of your management, for you can no longer be manager."

Anyone in the business world will recognize this kind of situation. Some executive is accused of mismanagement; he's charged with some kind of fiscal wrongdoing. And his superior rightly demands an immediate explanation. If he finds out that the allegation is true, then the man will have to leave the organization. He will be given his notice. He will be told to return company property. In a word, he will be fired.

Now, it would seem that on this particular occasion, the allegations were true. I think we know this because of the way that this manager reacted when the charge was brought, and also because later Jesus describes him as the dishonest manager. That gives you a pretty good clue. He knew that when he handed over the books, his boss would discover that they didn't quite balance.

So rather than trying to defend himself in some way, he immediately starts looking for another position that he can land when this one disappears. Now, needless to say, in those days people didn't get any kind of severance package; there weren't any unemployment benefits. And so the manager said to himself—and you can appreciate his problem—"What shall I do?" verse 3, "since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg."

You see, the man was white-collar all the way. He thought a blue-collar job would just about kill him. Nor did he have any interest in going out on the street and begging. I mean, he had lost his job, but he wasn't going to lose his dignity. And yet he has to do something to maintain his standard of living. What can he possibly do?

"I've got it," he said, suddenly having an idea. "I have decided what to do," verse 4, "so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses." He knew there wasn't a moment to lose. And so, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, "How much do you owe my master?" He said, "A hundred measures of oil." He said to him, "Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty."

Then he said to another, "And how much do you owe?" He said, "A hundred measures of wheat." And he said to him, "Take your bill and write eighty." Now, that way of doing things may not have been very honest, and we'll come to that in a moment, but it was certainly shrewd. You see, while he still had control of the books, he would call in the people who owed his master money, and he would write off some of their debts. Not entirely, but enough to save them a lot of money.

The amounts involved here are substantial: nearly a thousand gallons of oil, more than a thousand bushels of wheat, more than a full year's wages for the average earner. And what a brilliant scheme it was. Apparently, these debtors had no reason to suspect that the manager was acting dishonestly. I mean, he was the personal representative; he was legally authorized to make this kind of transaction. If he wanted to reduce their debt, that was his business; they were just grateful for it. So grateful, the manager hoped, that they would be indebted to him personally. He was making friends with this money. Then later, when he was out of a job and needed somewhere to stay, he could ask them to return the favor.

Now, I think I'm right in saying that the Securities and Exchange Commission would take a dim view of this kind of transaction. They would probably convict this man for financial fraud. And I should say in that context that there are some commentators who have tried to defend the man's actions. They have speculated that perhaps he was simply giving up his own commission in these transactions. Or perhaps he had been overcharging people all along and had now decided to stop pocketing the difference. It wasn't coming at his master's expense but at his own.

And yet other commentators have pointed out that that kind of money, that kind of financial dealing, wouldn't have been written into contracts the way that is described here. It would have been under the table, and so that perhaps is not the best explanation. Others have said that he was canceling the interest part of a loan. His master had made some kind of loan, but he knew from the Old Testament law that he couldn't extract interest from it. You can read about that in Deuteronomy. But perhaps you could make an arrangement where you were receiving what would be the interest in goods: in oil, in wheat, that kind of thing.

And yet, of course, even that truly was unlawful. But I think the man's actions pretty much speak for themselves. He is doing something very quickly and rapidly, and it's an underhanded way of dealing. And even if his actions do not speak for themselves, you do have that identification of him in verse 8, where Jesus calls him a dishonest manager. And surely that makes what the master says even more surprising.

See what it says in verse 8: "The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness." Now, wouldn't we expect the manager to be angry about this? And he may well have been. I mean, these new notes had been legally executed; there was no way for him to recover his losses. And yet, as he thought about what his former manager had done, he couldn't help but admire how resourceful he had been in planning for his unemployment.

He couldn't commend him for his honesty or his integrity, and you'll notice that's not what he commends him for. But when it came to being shrewd, he had to give the man his due. I think you can appreciate that there would be a moral difference between saying, "I commend that clever steward because he acted dishonestly," and saying, "I commend that dishonest steward because he acted cleverly." There's a moral difference there. It's not his dishonesty that's being commended; it's his cleverness, his shrewdness, his astuteness.

This is the key, I think, to understanding the parable. Jesus is not saying here that dishonesty is the best policy. But he is giving an example of how clever worldly people can be when they need to act in their own best interest. And he uses that parable to give some very practical advice about how to use your money for spiritual gain. I see three principles in the parable, and not so much in the parable as in the explanation that follows in verses 9 through 13. First, use your worldly wealth to make everlasting friends. That's what we see in verse 9. Second, be faithful with what you have so that you can receive something better. And we'll see that in verses 10 through 12. And then thirdly, don't make money your master. And perhaps that is the principle that is at the heart of all of this.

Now, we have seen how shrewd this manager was. And Jesus goes on to say, at the end of verse 8, that this is typical of the way that unbelievers operate. "The sons of this world," he said, "are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light." To be a son of something is to belong to something. So the sons of this world are people who belong to this world. They have not yet received the free gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ; they are worldly people, not spiritual people.

And usually such people are very skillful in doing things for their own advantage. Unburdened by the claims of a moral conscience, they can pour all of their energy into getting ahead in life. And furthermore, they know how unbelievers operate. They understand the ways of this world in worldly terms, and they can use that for their own earthly advantage. Christians aren't always as shrewd when it comes to worldly matters. In fact, sometimes we're so naive that people can easily take advantage of us.

But you know, worldly matters are not the matters that really matter. The important thing is getting ready for eternity. And if only people would give as much attention to their eternal souls as they give to their earthly business. I reflect on this sometimes when I'm out, for example, at an airport and hear people talking about the business that they're conducting on the trip. And it's so earnest and so much effort that they are pouring into the thing. If only they would give that kind of energy to their spiritual condition and think about things in eternal terms.

Well, I think that's the advice that Jesus is giving in verse 9. "I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings." In other words, and this is the first principle here, use your worldly wealth to make everlasting friends.

Now, I need to point out that it's possible here that Jesus is speaking ironically, in which case he would mean something like this: Go ahead and do what that dishonest manager did. Use your money to make as many friends as you can for as long as you can, and then just see if they will be able to save you when the time comes. If that's the way he's speaking, then the implication, of course, is that they will not be able to save you at all when the time comes; they will have no eternal lodgings in which they are able to receive you.

But I think it is better here to see what Jesus is saying as a straightforward affirmation of the way to get ready for the life to come. He is at this point speaking to his disciples. He's saying, "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves." He's taking the parable, and now he's applying the lesson, making an analogy between the way that this manager prepared for his unemployment and the way that we ought to prepare for eternity. And he's not saying it's exactly the same, but there's a point of connection there and a contrast, and Jesus is using that to help us understand how we should make use of our worldly wealth.

Time is running out for us, just as it was running out for this manager. But of course, what we will lose is not just a job, but it is life itself. It's interesting when Jesus says in verse 9, "When it fails," that he's not referring there to unrighteous wealth, but literally, "When you fail," I think referring to our own inevitable demise. And we should ask ourselves, "Am I ready for that eventuality? Am I prepared to leave it all behind?" I know that I must; I've seen other people die. But am I ready to do that myself? And in the meantime, am I using my money in a way that shows that I have the right eternal priorities?

And Jesus is saying to us, as he applies the parable, that if we're not doing that, we ought to be willing to act decisively in our spiritual interests the way that this manager acted in his financial interests, so that we will be prepared. Here is how Augustine explained the parable. He asked the question, "Why did the Lord Jesus Christ present this parable to us?" I mean, he was mystified by it as well. He surely did not approve of that cheat of a servant who cheated his master, stole from him, and did not make it up from his own pocket. So why did the Lord set this before us? And Augustine answered his own question. He said, "It is not because the servant cheated, but because he exercised foresight for the future. He was insuring himself for a life that was going to end."

And then Augustine pressed the point home by asking a practical question: "Would you not insure yourself for eternal life?" Now, the point is not that you can somehow buy your way into heaven. No, the Bible's very clear on that. Heaven's only entrance is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that's paid the price by dying on the cross for our sins. And the way that we now gain entrance is simply by trusting in him. Jesus has opened the door to God by rising from the dead and now opening the way for our entrance into glory.

But you know, the Bible does also speak of the blessedness that is the right and proper reward for the obedience of our faith. We are called to obey God in the godly use of our wealth, among many other areas of obedience. Here's how J.C. Ryle summarized the point of what Jesus is saying here. He said, "A right use of our money in this world, from right motives, will be for our benefit in the world to come. It will not justify us; it will not bear the severity of God's judgment any more than any other good works will do. But it shall be an evidence of our grace, which shall befriend our souls."

You see, Jesus is advising us to use our worldly wealth for spiritual gain, to be a friend to our souls in that sense, to spend it wisely while we have the opportunity, before we have to leave it all behind. And how contrary that advice is to every impulse of our consumer culture. If you look around you, I think you will see that when people know they are running out of time, they spend more on themselves, not less. Just look at the way that people plan for and then use their retirement.

So many people, I think, are like young Calvin in one of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. Calvin and Hobbes have made one of their snowmen, and as they look at it, Hobbes observes that it's a rather sad-looking snowman. And Calvin says, "He's not happy. He knows it's just a matter of time before he melts. The sun ignores his existence; he feels his existence is meaningless." You know, kind of the Ecclesiastes view of snowmen. And Hobbes responds by asking a question. He says, "Is it?" In other words, is it all meaningless? "Nope," Calvin says, "he's about to buy a big-screen TV."

Now, that is, in so many ways, the attitude of our culture. That when from time to time you begin to sense the meaninglessness of your existence, all you need to do is go out and buy something that will make you feel better. You see, this is the way people use their worldly wealth. And Jesus is saying here, you need to make a better investment than that. He's telling us to use our money to make friends that will last forever.

And here you see the contrast: this dishonest manager hoping to make a few friends that will welcome him in after he's unemployed. But we are hoping to be welcomed into everlasting glory. And if we have used our money wisely, there will be friends waiting there to receive us. What friends do you think Jesus has in mind when he says in verse 9, "Make friends for yourselves"? Possibly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with all their angels. But more likely, I think, simply the fellow human beings we have befriended by helping them in time of need.

Think of the people that will be waiting there in gratitude. Never having had the opportunity in this life, perhaps, to say how grateful they are for the help that they have received from brothers and sisters. People who have been helped, for example, in some time of natural disaster that we have offered emergency relief. Members of distant tribes who heard the gospel through a missionary that we have supported or through a Bible translation that we have helped to fund. People trapped in the bondage of addictive sin, saved through a ministry that we helped to start. People who have come to Christ through some radio broadcast, perhaps, or simply people who have been converted through the preaching of the gospel in a local church that we have helped to support by our regular tithes and offerings.

Let me ask you, are these the kinds of friends that you are making with your worldly wealth? People who will call you a friend on the day of Jesus Christ? Or are you spending most of your money, as so many people do, on yourself? Understand the only investment that you can make that will give you the joy of everlasting friendship is an investment in the kingdom of God.

Now, sometimes Christians say that they would make that kind of investment; they would give more to help the poor and to spread the gospel if only they had more to give. "I really don't have that much money right now," they will say, "but you know, if I had a million dollars, I would give this to help the church do that, or I would support this particular ministry that I appreciate." Well, of course, that kind of talk can always be cheap. But there's an easy way to find out if it's really true. The way to see what you would do with more is to see what you are doing with what you already have.

That's what Jesus is saying in verse 10. He says, "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." And then he goes on to say, "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?" And here, I think, is a second principle for your money and your life. And that is, be faithful with what you have so that you can gain something even better.

Now, this principle of little and much has many real-life applications. I think generally speaking, you'll find it to be the case that people who are trustworthy in carrying out some smaller responsibility then could also be trusted to do something bigger. But as much as that may be true in any human enterprise, it surely is true when it comes to ministry.

I can remember, by way of example, a time when I was aware of some acute pastoral need in the church, a church member who was having real trouble in various areas of life. And as I began to think about which elders and deacons might be best suited to help, I discovered, in the course of doing a little investigation, that one of our pastoral interns was already giving most of the care that was really needed and that he had been doing it on his own initiative, and he had been doing it faithfully for quite some time. Well, I can tell you that told me almost everything I needed to know about that intern's readiness for pastoral ministry. I mean, show me somebody who's faithful in that kind of context, just doing it on their own initiative, I will show you somebody who, when the time is right, will be entrusted with much more for the sake of the kingdom of God.

But on the other hand, people who fail to follow through even on small commitments will not somehow rise to the occasion when they are given something more important to do. That's not what will happen. On the contrary, they'll be just as faithless then, only it'll have much more devastating consequences because more people are counting on them.

As I was thinking about that principle this week, I recalled the time that one of my basketball teammates at Oxford tried to get me to cover up a small accident that we had had with the bus that we had rented. And this was a Rhodes Scholar, someone who aspired to public office. And yet when the time came, he said, "Now, Phil, before we tell them what happened—I mean, let's just think about what we want to say." Well, I knew right then this was nobody that I would vote for for public office. I mean, if you can't be trusted with a minibus, how can you run a country? That's the principle here; it's a principle of little and much. You find it running all the way through life, that your character is built by the little choices you make.

Let me ask you, are you keeping your commitments? Or are you cutting corners in life, willing to make whatever small compromise in your own integrity? Jesus is calling us to be faithful in the little things. I was thinking about the little things, and I was probably thinking about basketball because I've already used a couple of basketball illustrations this morning, but I couldn't help but think of the way that the famous basketball coach John Wooden used to begin basketball practice every season at UCLA. He began by showing the players how to put on their socks. Not one pair, but two, with the crease in the sock lined up with your toe so as to prevent any blisters.

Now, I can tell you, this man won 10 NCAA championships. And he did it in part because he knew about how to be faithful in the little things, and that's the lesson that his players learned. You need to learn how to be faithful in the little things, and then you can go on to the bigger things. And that principle applies in every area of our spiritual lives. Be faithful in doing whatever it is that God has called you to do, even if what you're doing for the Lord right now may seem very insignificant. Do it in an excellent way. Work as hard when people aren't watching as you do when they are watching. Work as hard as you think that you would work if you were given something more significant to do. Be faithful in the scriptures, in prayer, in dependence upon the Lord for his blessing. Take good spiritual care of the people who are right next to you. Don't give in to even little temptations that will erode the purity of your holiness. Keep your promises, fulfill your commitments, finish what you start.

And nowhere is that kind of faithfulness more important than in the use we make of our material possessions. And I say that because what we do with our money always reveals what is really in our hearts. And Jesus speaks here in verses 11 and 12 about faithfulness with material possessions and how that relates to the true riches. I think he's referring here to the treasures of heaven. And the point is that if you're unfaithful with something as insignificant as earthly money, then how will God be able to trust you to be faithful with what he has in heaven? Where the scriptures say that his people will rule over angels and kingdoms. Be faithful with what you have here and now so that you can receive something even better when the time comes. And do it while you still have the opportunity. Understand you are using borrowed goods while you are living on borrowed time.

As Martin Luther thought about that, he compared it to somebody traveling on a journey and seeking some place of overnight lodging, an inn in the country perhaps. And he said it's a little bit like that situation: while you're there, you have the opportunity to eat something and to have a place to sleep at night. But you don't claim that what the owner of the inn has belongs to you; you realize you're just borrowing it by the way. And Luther said, just so should we also treat our temporal possessions, as if they were not ours, and enjoy only so much of them as we need to nourish the body and then help our neighbors with the balance.

Well, you'll never be able to exercise that kind of good stewardship unless you have mastered your money instead of being mastered by it. And so Jesus took all that he had been saying about the faithful use of our possessions and he summarized it in these famous words, as we see them in verse 13: "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 God and money."

And here is a third principle for your money and your life: don't make money your master, but bring yourself and everything you have under the mastery of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in giving us this counsel, Jesus surely knows the spiritual power of our possessions. He speaks here about money; he uses the Greek word for mammon. It refers really to everything we own, everything you have that you're not going to be able to take with you. That's what he is speaking about here when he talks about serving God and serving money. And you see, we can use what we have for the glory of God, but we can also use it to serve almost any idol that we choose. I mean, you can do all different kinds of things with money. And therefore, money has the power to dominate our hearts.

And we need to ask ourselves the question, seeing that we cannot serve both God and money, am I enslaved to material things? To buying and selling them? To holding on to them? To taking all the trouble it takes to look after them? Or am I using them in the service of God? And this is one of the best ways to test our true spiritual condition because, understand this, every time you reach into your pocketbook, you are really pulling something out of your heart.

And Jesus says there's no middle ground here. We would prefer to do the very thing that Jesus tells us we can't do. We would rather be able to say that we can serve God and money. If only we could serve God with some of our money and then serve ourselves with the rest of it, or maybe the other way around: if only we could use most of it for ourselves and then serve God with whatever we have left. But Jesus says we have to choose. He is really pointing us here to the fact that we can only have one dominating love. This is the way that we are designed: we only have capacity for one mastering affection, and that is what we will serve.

The word Jesus uses here for "serve" is the kind of servitude a slave would offer to a master. And that's what money wants to do: it wants to master us, it wants to enslave us. And the best way to destroy its spiritual power is to give it over to God and then to use it all for his glory. Well, that doesn't mean you can never spend anything on yourself or on the people you love. I mean, your own needs and the needs of the people you're responsible to care for are part of what God is doing in the world. Nor does it mean that Christians can never be wealthy. Money can be used to accomplish spiritual good. In fact, Jesus is pointing us to that in his explanation of the parable. There are certain instances where God gives people the capacity to generate wealth so that they can finance kingdom work.

But what this principle does mean is that we must first surrender everything we have to God so that he then can use what we have the way that he wants to use it. Let me just ask you a few questions about your own use of possessions. Let me ask you first of all, are you tithing to Christian work? And when I say tithe, I mean in the biblical sense of the word, of giving one-tenth of your gross income to Christian work. Imagine how much spiritual good the church could do, both our own congregation and the church nationally, if Christians gave a full ten percent instead of the barely two percent that average evangelicals give today in America. I doubt we would have any kind of deficit in our finances as a church, either at this point or at any point, if all of us were giving a full biblical tithe.

Well, let me just say, don't stop there if you've reached that point in your giving. Challenge yourself to give a higher and higher percentage as you grow in the grace of sacrificial giving. Giving, you'll remember, to the Savior who gave his own life for your sins. But then what about the rest of what you own? It too belongs to God. And if we are using it wisely, then our expenditures will be able to pass some very simple tests. I say simple because they're simple to say, not because they're simple to pass.

Are you ready for these questions? Does this purchase reflect my ultimate spiritual priorities? Does it take adequate account of the world's great need for the gospel? Is it the best use of my money, or is there someone somewhere in the world who needs it more than I do? Is this the way I would spend my money if Jesus were right here with me right now, as in fact he is? Is this an expense that will seem like a good investment from the vantage point of eternity?

I wonder how much of our spending is able to pass even those simple tests. And Jesus is saying, don't let your money master you, but bring yourself and everything you have under the mastery of his own grace. Remember how many riches he left behind to come and to become your Savior. Remember his own great expense in giving his blood for your sins on the cross. And believe that Jesus really has your best interest at heart when he tells you not to waste your money or your life. He's not trying to rob you of your joy; he's trying to give you more joy by giving you more of himself as you seek to use what you have for his glory.

And so be wise. Follow the financial and spiritual advice that Jesus is giving you here, and that I think is well-summarized on the tombstone of Thomas Lowes in the ruins of Edinburgh's Holyrood Abbey. His inscription reads: "One instance among thousands of the uncertainty of human life and the instability of earthly possessions and enjoyments. Born to ample property, this man for several years experienced a distressing reverse of fortune, and no sooner was he restored to his former affluence than it pleased Divine Providence to withdraw this together with his life."

And then this tombstone gives this practical lesson, which I pray you will take to heart: "Be thou taught by this to seek those riches which can never fail, and those pleasures which are at God's right hand forevermore." The gracious gift of God, to be enjoyed through faith in Jesus Christ, our Savior.

Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus as our Savior and also, therefore, our Lord, who has the right to govern who we are and what we have. And Father, we confess that we are not always wise stewards, but that we spend our lives and our substance on things which will not truly satisfy, which will not befriend our souls in eternity. And so we pray that you would forgive us for these sins, and also that by your Holy Spirit, you would create in us a more sacrificial living and a more sacrificial giving for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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