Main Thing Podcast
This podcast encourages others to love God and people by leading them to know and follow Jesus’ truth.
Main Thing Podcast
Money, Manipulation, and Ministry
Jesus challenges disciples about wealth management through the parable of the shrewd manager, highlighting the spiritual impossibility of serving both God and money while emphasizing that true stewardship demands integrity in all areas of life.
• Exploring the meaning of "shrewd" in Luke 16:1-13
• Contrasting worldly business practices with kingdom ethics
• Examining how compartmentalizing our ethics dishonors God
• Protecting yourself from worldly influences through biblical knowledge
The bottom line teaching of this parable is that God does not honor the mishandling of what He gives us to steward.
Amen, reminder for us to recall in today's divisive and dark culture, from foundational truths and scripture to the hot topics of today's culture. Allow this podcast to inspire and motivate you on your faith journey. All right, well, good morning, pastor, steve. Good morning, glad that you're here again today, glad to be here, excited to be with you. Just a quick note for those who are watching and listening. We have been doing this now for a while and we appreciate all of those who have commented and who continue to listen and watch each week. We appreciate you guys and hope that it's a blessing to you. So we're going to be in Luke, chapter 16, today for episode 23,. Luke 16, 1 through 13. I'm going to go ahead and read and then we'll dive right in Now.
Speaker 1:He was also saying to the disciples there was a rich man who had a manager, and We'll dive right in do, since my master is taking the management away from me. I'm not strong enough to dig, I'm ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that when I'm removed from the management, people will welcome me into their homes. And he summoned each one of his master's debtors and he began saying to the first how much do you owe my master? And he said a hundred measures. Measures of oil. And he said to him take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50. Then he said to another how much do you owe? And he said a hundred measures of wheat. He said to him take your bill and write 80.
Speaker 1:And his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. And I say to you make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings. He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much, and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. Therefore, if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?
Speaker 1:And if you have not been faithful in the use of 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 else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. All right, pastor. So there's a lot of differing views out there about this passage, but I'm confident that today you can help us shed some light on that Scripture. The first thing I'd like to say is what does shrewd mean in this text?
Speaker 2:Well, in my understanding, to put it in our language, it's streetwise, smart in business.
Speaker 1:And so that can mean either shrewd in a biblical way or shrewd in an unbiblical way. Would you say that is correct? I think an unbiblical way.
Speaker 2:What's being said about this man is if you think about it, he's a wheeler dealer. He's about to lose his job. He knows he's losing his job, so he begins to make sweetheart deals with the vendors that do business with his master. And what he's doing in my humble opinion, I've seen it a thousand times in the real world he's making friends with his master's money so that he can survive. After the fact, one of these old boys is going to give me a job, somebody's going to help me down the road, because I'm giving them sweetheart deals now.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, so this would be the reason you typically don't let someone know that you're letting them go before you let them go.
Speaker 2:That would be one of the many reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in this passage it almost seems like this shrewd manager is being praised, but obviously he's not.
Speaker 2:He is and he's not. He's being praised for his ability to think on his feet and to make shrewd business decisions, but if you look at the end of those verses, he's not being praised for what he's done. I mean, we see people every day that are shrewd business people. That doesn't mean they're necessarily moral people or godly people. They're just good business people. One of the statements I've heard throughout my lifetime that makes me cringe is when you hear a Christian say well, I had to do it, it's just business right.
Speaker 2:So I think we do a lot of questionable things in the name of business sometimes, and I think that's a very dangerous place. When you're a believer, a child of God, your code of ethics, your morality, can't change when you clock in at work, and so this guy had an integrity problem. He's already stealing from his master, and so when he's caught he steals even more from his master Right, trying to fix himself up as he's going out the door. And so he's praised for being shrewd. He's thinking on his feet, we're going to fix this situation, but he's not being praised. Notice what's not in the passage. He's not being rewarded. He's not being praised for being moral or godly or honoring to his master in any way, and so it's important to also note what's not said in that passage, and so it's important to also note what's not said in that passage.
Speaker 2:I think the overall meaning of the passage is that God will not honor the mismanaging of his money. As believers, we're all entrusted, whether it's our personal income, our business income, whatever it is. We're all entrusted. It's not ours and this is the biggest flaw a lot of believers have. This is my money, I made this money, I own this money. Uh, but I think because it ends saying what? No man can serve two masters. What's going to be God in your life? So what made him make the decisions he made? Money was driving him. He was in love with money. He was not in love with the master.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I think it holds true for all of us. There's not room in your soul to be in love with Jesus and be in love with the world. It's just not possible.
Speaker 1:And this guy was in love with the world and there's good business practices and there's bad business practices, and I think even in the church world there's a temptation to bring in the business practices that reap the most reward, and I think we have to be careful. Just like you said, we're a steward of what God has given us, and so, as the church I mean Jesus is. Obviously, it seems here he's almost trying to reach Judas when he's saying this because of the temptations in Judas's life. But there's also those temptations in our lives as well, the audience for this parable is the disciples.
Speaker 2:He's been talking to the Pharisees Right, and then he turns to the disciples. And so who is he entrusting the gospel with? The disciples? Right, they've got to be good managers, good stewards of what he's leaving them in charge of. You know, and look, it's such a fine line. You want to have good business practices in the church also, but you have to be very careful. Just because it's a good business practice doesn't mean that it's honoring to God. I'll give you an example. My generation loves Zig Ziglar. I had high respect for Zig Ziglar, but I also had some checks and my spirit was Zig Ziglar, because here's his testimony I was selling pots and pans and I was starving to death Because I'd present my product to a housewife.
Speaker 2:I knew she wanted those pots and pans. I could see it. She'd even tell me I want these pots and pans but I can't afford them and I'd feel sorry for her and I'd walk away. She didn't get the pots and pans she really wanted and I didn't make any money. We both lost and I came to realize that all I was really doing was giving her what she really wanted. Therefore, I was helping her. Now I know people would argue with me about this, and that's okay, but that's manipulation okay. And so, whatever business practices we use in our daily lives as Christians or in the church as we serve the Lord, we have to be careful we're not calling it business and using or manipulating people, because the one thing I'm pretty clear about is Jesus was never happy when people were used or manipulated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yes. And that brings up what he says here in verse. Let's see if I can find it quick. Verse 10, he who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much. And he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. So the idea is, once you begin those unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. So. The idea is, you know, once you begin those unrighteous practices, it builds on one another and it becomes more and more unrighteousness.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's such a huge truth for every facet of our lives. I think that applies to whatever you're doing. You know I remember starting out in the ministry, my first church. I started first Sunday with seven people. I drove two and a half hours one way. I did that for four years, okay, and I tried to be faithful as best I understood what that meant.
Speaker 2:And each church I've served along the way I've tried to be faithful and ironically believe it or not I've never put out a resume, Never. I've been asked for resumes, but I've never given a resume unsolicited to anybody, because I believe if you're faithful, then God puts you where he wants you, where he would have you serve. And this is one of the things that concerns me about a lot of young ministers coming out of seminary these days. They want to start here at Covenant Church, Okay, and I've even gone over there in the past and interviewed young ministers to serve some of our mission churches and I've had them say things to me like I think God has more for me than that or God would have me do something bigger than that. Well, how do you know that you hadn't done anything small yet?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, if you're not willing to do the little things that God affords you the opportunity to do, he may never allow you to do anything else. I can't speak for him. That's all in his sovereignty. And I just think sometimes we think worldly, we think promotion. If I'm faithful here at this church running 125, god will give me a church running 300. But that may not be in God's plan for you. You may be just what he wants in that place. So his reward for you being faithful may be something other than a bigger church.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, and so I think that's one of the greatest truths in Scripture. I think that's one of the greatest truths in Scripture, and there are so many that are not willing to be faithful where they are, but they're mad they hadn't been blessed with more, and so I would advise anybody if you're not where you think you ought to be.
Speaker 2:Take a step back, take stock in yourself and do some personal evaluation and ask yourself am I being faithful Because that's all God calls us to be? Yes, it's faithful. He don't call us to a certain size church or to a certain huge ministry somewhere. He calls us to be faithful, right, and it's in his discretion where that happens. Amen, you know Amen, so yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you remember this or not, but years ago, before I left here the first time well, the first and last time I left here, you mentioned it'd be good if you pastored a small church, and I remember saying out loud to you I don't think so. And lo and behold, I did and I am so grateful for that. And you're right. You almost miss out. If you're not willing to be faithful where you are or where God has called you to be, You're missing out on the blessings that he has for you in that space.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely my first church. Jan and I were both in college, right, those people just country people. They loved on us. It's credit to them. I'm still in the ministry today because my first church was an incredibly loving church, incredibly forgiving church. And, look, they learned how to do it too. They survived off student pastors, All right. I served in a community where, the four years we were there, nobody even moved a house trailer in. I mean, it was a farming community and all the land was landlocked. And you know, when somebody did finally get old enough to get married, mom and daddy gave them an acre out in the cornfield somewhere and they built a house, but that didn't happen a lot because it wasn't a big community, right.
Speaker 2:But we still that's halfway between here and where we grew up and we still from time to time get off that exit and still visit what was once young families in that church.
Speaker 2:They're still living in that same community and we'll sometimes spend three or four hours, you know, just visiting because they still love us and we still love them. So that little church was an anchoring point for me and a blessing beyond anything I could even begin to imagine at the time I was there. I've joked about it, but it's true. You know, I got a couple of those junk boxes in my attic with the high school memorabilia and a few things from ministry over the years and I got a few of those cassette tapes of sermons and it's good every now and then to pull one of those out and listen to it and just remember how bad you were.
Speaker 2:And they'd walk out and hug your neck and tell you that was a fine sermon. They had the gift of encouragement and so, yeah, that church is the reason I'm still doing this today, because I had a couple of bad ones after that, horrible situations, but I knew that wasn't what they all were, because I'd had a good one Amen, you know, yeah, amen.
Speaker 1:So when we're talking about shrewdness, obviously in this text being shrewd is in the worldly sense, but there's also this idea of being prudent in the kingdom and there's a contrast here. This manager is being shrewd in a negative sense because of the way he's acting with his manager's stuff possessions In the kingdom of God. In what ways can just a normal average layperson believer be prudent in the kingdom?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I say this all the time You've got to get in the Word. You've got to understand what God teaches is prudent. What he teaches is wisdom, is discernment, and you get that up in you, so to speak, and you don't even have to go look it up. You just know when you see, when it's not wise, when it's not prudent. So I think we have a responsibility to be good stewards of everything God entrusts us with. I deal with that all the time with. I deal with that all the time.
Speaker 2:In American culture, everybody that starts a ministry, doesn't matter what it is. They think the church ought to pay for it. Yeah, that's right. So I'm approached on a regular basis by some organization or somebody that believes we ought to pay their bills. Okay, so what is wisdom in that? We have so much money we're responsible for. We got to do ministry here, also right, we got to pay these bills. We have to meet this payroll. We have to take care of things here.
Speaker 2:So I've learned over the years we support a limited number of things here. So I've learned over the years we support a limited number of things, and this is what we do. So when somebody comes to me and says we'd love for you to support us in this, I have no problem saying I think that's great what you're doing, but we're dedicated to these areas right now and we're just not where we can take on anymore. And so for us we just had to reach a place where, as pastor, I felt comfortable saying we're doing all we can do, you know, because you cannot reasonably support everybody.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness no.
Speaker 2:And everybody will come to you, okay, and they'll put the guilt trip on you. Oh yeah, you're a church. You ought to be gracious in your giving. You ought to. Well. It's like I told a guy one time. He told me God had told him he was supposed to go to work for us here and my response was well, as soon as he tells me.
Speaker 1:I'll let you know.
Speaker 2:So just because somebody tells me that God said that we're supposed to support them doesn't mean that we have to do that. And there's a lot of manipulation in American Christianity today that these ministries use to get you to send them your money. We've had some speakers come in here over the years and they have these side gigs. One I can think of and it's a wonderful thing he's got a children's home all right, in another country. It's a great ministry. But we invited him to do a revival.
Speaker 2:I didn't invite him to get us into another thing that we're going to support and I've seen him a few times over the years and he didn't have much to say to me because I told him we wouldn't support his children's home. Right, we had another family here who supports a children's home it's named after them in another country and they wanted the church to officially support it. Well, we already support a children's home in Monroe. We already support mission work in different countries. We support our missionaries through the convention that are working around the world. It's not that we're not supporting, it's that we're choosing where we believe God would have us to support.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, the same people that go around asking churches over and over again for money are the same people, and the ones that I've encountered don't realize that most churches only have eight% to 10% of people that regularly give, and so you're functioning off of a small fraction of the people you actually pastor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Brent can tell you we've watched this over the years. If I get up Sunday and say we're going to take a special offering for John Doe, who's doing mission work at a certain place, Now I don't need you to give your tithe to this, we need your tithe to operate. But if you feel God leading you to give over and beyond, you can watch the giving for the church go down and John Doe's giving go up, Because what they do the average person that does give brings an amount of money and where you want it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not. I'll give here and here, where you want this, $20. That's where I'm going to give it, and so you know. Yeah, they, they don't understand what we deal with. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:In the world standards there's even in the world and in the kingdom. It seems like so many people are naive or maybe they're just acting like they're naive to the manipulative practices of the world, and I've seen that come into the church over and over again. I mean, I talk to people and have meetings with people constantly that are trying to manipulate me into being part of something that they think I should be a part of, and when I see that, I see that that's like a business sales practice. It reminds me of when I go car shopping or when I go shopping for furniture or whatever. It's those same kind of practices that seep on into the church.
Speaker 2:It does, because here's what happens, here's what the world does. I've experienced it. Many decades ago I was at a very small church and had to have a real job, you know, and I was selling insurance. So when I'm going through the training, one of the questions they ask how many people do you go to church with? How many folks you know at church right when I was in college, my Sunday school teacher tried to get me into Amway right.
Speaker 2:And one of the things he said to me man, you pastor, you know how much influence you have over people, you know how many people you can bring into the business Because Amway's multi-level marketing right, and so they literally not only teach that you should pay attention to who you go to church with, they teach you to make the church a target, and I've been unpopular with some people over the years because I've just had to tell them we don't do that here, we don't do that here.
Speaker 2:If you come to me and you got a ministry idea, it's always cloaked in ministry. You've got a ministry idea, but the bottom line is it results in you making money. We're not interested, we're not here for that. And as far as me as a pastor getting involved in those kind of ventures, I just have to tell them I do church, that's what God called me to do. That's all I do.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, right Right yeah Right.
Speaker 2:So how do we last question, how do we guard ourselves as believers against this worldly shrewdness? The Word of God, the Word of God. You've got to know what the Word of God teaches.
Speaker 2:Our Lord taught, I think, if I remember right about a third of his parables dealt with money, and so you know what the Word of God teaches. What does it teach us? That our own heart will deceive us, right. So the problem and it lines up perfectly with this parable is that when we say it, you hear it all the time follow your heart, follow your heart. Well, that'll run you in a ditch somewhere. That's what that'll do, Because in our culture, in America, we are materialistic, we love money, we chase money, Okay, we chase money, okay. So you've got to get into the Word and you've got to guard your heart.
Speaker 2:You know and make sure how you think about material things how you think about money, these sort of things, you've got to ask yourself is this honoring of the Lord? And look, the mind is a masterful thing. We can convince ourselves we're doing an honorable thing when in fact we're not, and so I think that's why it's so important to be in the Word.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah, it's funny you say that I was just talking to someone the other day that when they were out doing drugs, their drug dealer when you talk about how powerful the mind is, their drug dealer who's high on drugs would open up their Bible and say the Lord called me to sell drugs so I can share the word with you. I mean it sounds ridiculous talking about that here, but to them in their crazy evil, twisted mind in that time thought that that was a prudent thing to do.
Speaker 2:Doesn't surprise me at all. We had a teenager in our youth group come to me some years ago because another teenager in our youth group was trying to get him to smoke marijuana with him, and his line was when I smoke marijuana, I'm just drawn in so much closer to the Lord during that experience, and so I'm telling you this is how you get close to Jesus. Wow, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can get drawn in. I don't know about the Jesus. Wow, yeah, you can get drawn in. I don't know about the Jesus, but absolutely. Well, that's all I got. Pastor Steve, you got anything else, or you? Good, I'm good.
Speaker 2:Just be mindful that the bottom line teaching of this parable is that God does not honor the mishandling of our stewardship.
Speaker 1:Amen, amen. Appreciate you, brother, thank you. Thank you for watching and listening, guys. See you on the next one.