In Trouble With The Boss

Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.' "The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg- I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.' "So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' "'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. "The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.' "Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?' "'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied. "He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.' "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have/ not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? "No servant can serve two masters. 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." Luke16;1-16 In order to understand this story, we have to look at the context. Immediately before this parable is the story of the Prodigal Son. At the end of this parable, the older brother complains the father was wasting money on his brother. But the father said that they had to celebrate. The redemption of his son was more important than money. The Pharisees loved money more than they loved righteousness. This parable tells us that we should use our worldly goods to further the kingdom of God. We don’t love money—oh, no! We love what money can buy. It is security. It is prestige. It is power. It is even sex appeal. It is the key to everything we do and want. The value of money is not to keeping it, but using it. We should make the best available use of our worldly goods to build the Kingdom of God. Let’s see how this parable ought to be applied. This man was a steward. We have something in common with this man. What we have belongs to God. Our money, our time, our talents, our car, our houses, our power, our prestige, even the clothes on our back belong to Him. One day, God will expect us to return what we have. He gave it; He can take it away. Our fortune is His to decide. This man’s master was about to catch up with him. The boss was closing in. Whatever this man had been doing, he apparently never thought about accountability. He treated his job as if he were always going to have it. Now he was about to lose it, and so he had to think about the future. What would you do? You will some day! Your job will go to someone else. Your fortunes will fall into the hands of your children. Your life will go back to God. You will stand before Him and He will ask, “What have you done with what I have given?” This man was about to face his own personal judgment day. Fortunately, he had time to get ready. He could have done one of two things. He could have hoarded all his money. He could count up carefully what he had left. He could have spent the night going over the books, inventorying, and getting his story straight. He could have used his personal resources to make up for what he had wasted. There was just one problem. He had no personal resources. He was out of money. He could not have made up for his debt, even if he tried. We’re in the same position. We can’t make up for what we owe.“The wages of sin is death.” If we fail our God, then we have sinned. We deserve death. Retrenchment is a natural reaction to the possibility of losing it all. So when we get afraid, we conserve. In moments of panic, we draw in. But this man didn’t panic. He followed another option. Instead of hoarding the money, he became more generous. He called up all the people who had owed his master money, and forgave each one a portion of their debt. This cost the master a lot of money, but he didn’t care. He expected the boss to fire him anyway. When it happened, he’d need a lot of friends. Friends are all that matter when you’re out of a job. We have the same two approaches. We can concentrate on saving what we have, or on building relationships. In the end relationships matter more than money—our relationship to God, and to other people are the most important things we have. If we lose our fortune, we can recover. But if we lose our relationships, we’ve lost everything. When his master found out, he did a curious thing. He commended him for his cleverness. Could it be that this was what he wanted the man to do all along? What pleases God the most—a well-endowed church, or a well-employed church? God doesn’t judge us by how much money we keep but how much money we use. God gave us our stewardship responsibilities to build relationships with people. He wants us to use it in worshipping Him. It is not wasteful to spend a lot of money on churches and worship. He also wants us to use it in helping others. He wants us to give and give more for the benefit of others. He wants us to finance evangelism, missions and social action. He wants us to invest in the Kingdom of God. This way, we make friends with God. As a church, we’ve been entrusted with the Word of God. God has given to us a wealth of knowledge and learning. God did not give us this knowledge to keep to ourselves. He gave it to us to share with others. We’ve also been entrusted with a portion of the world’s wealth. Some of us are afraid of spending money foolishly. All of us have something we can use for God. We’re all rich by the world’s standards. The worldwide measurement of poverty is one dollar a day. In this country, the poorest family us makes many times that. Yet we are afraid of never having enough. In other nations, we’d be rich beyond imagination. In Russia, the average wage earner makes less than seventy dollars a month. Yet you should see how they give from that money. They understand that a relationship with God and a relationship with others is more important than what we have, or how much we put in the bank. Don’t just use what we have to build up ourselves and our institutions, but to make friends in the world for the Kingdom of God. Give. Be generous. Help the poor. Help the destitute. Invest in the building up of our communities. There will always be those who will point fingers and say we don’t have enough to do this. They will say that we should be taking care of our own first. So what? By giving to our church, we build our relationship to God. By giving to our community, we build our relationship to the world. We create opportunities for the Kingdom of God to progress. There are times when God builds His church. Then there are times when God challenges it. He pulls away the props, and makes depend on Him alone. He tests us to see if we understand the difference between things and relationships. Will we use the things He has given to further our relationships or will we use our relationships as a way of amassing wealth? This is such a time. God is challenging the church in America. Church attendance is declining in America. Twenty-seven million Americans now say that they have no religion. Let’s wake up! We have no time to fight among ourselves, preserving the scraps of influence and money we have. Let’s use the resources we have to further His kingdom by investing in the world. We need to invest in our relationship to God and this world. We need to spread the Word of God. We need to give charity to others, and forgive those who’ve hurt us. We need to change our churches from being fortresses for the faithful into hospitals for the wounded. The final words of this passage are these--“You can’t serve God and money.” Our money must serve God. We need to use our money to invest in the World. In the end, how much we have does not matter, all that matters is our relationships. Are we right with God? Are we right with our neighbors? That is more important than money in the bank.

Spiritual Investing

There is one all important question when we are trying to build something. Whether it be a house, a fortune or a church. That question is one word—“how.” Once, when I was starting a church, I went to see the professor of church growth and evangelism at Erskine Seminary, Dr. Oliver, to ask his advice. He asked me one question--”What’s your vision?” I told him what I wanted the church to look like. He said it sounded pretty good. “All right,” he said “Now how do you plan to get there?” I had no answer. I guess I assumed that you just put up a sign saying “we want to build this kind of church here” His answer was that this was very good, but I had told him nothing about how to build it. We can dream all we want, but if we don’ t know the process, we’re lost. As a church we can wax eloquent on what we want to be. We want to be a witnessing church. We want to be a growing church. We want to be a loving and friendly church, but we often know how to get there. We don’t know the process. We are stuck between what is and what ought to be. We talk about growth, but we don’t grow. We talk about building, yet we don’t build. We talk about witnessing, but we don’t witness. What’s wrong? The problem is not in our heart. The problem is not in our vision. The problem is in the process. We don’t know how to do it. If there is a secret formula to becoming what we ought to be for God, then that formula has a name-- spiritual investment. There is a lot of bad teaching about spiritual investment going around today—two in specific. The first is the prosperity Gospel. Prosperity gospel suggests that God wants everyone to be rich. It suggests that the key to riches is found in giving to God’s work. We give money, we get money. If we give love, we get love. It’s a tempting thought, but it’s wrong. God does not want everyone to be rich. He wants them to be happy in his life, and rich in the next. He will not give us what he does not promise. Fortunately, as Presbyterians, we are not too susceptible to that particular poison. I have often joked about Presbyterians and their conservative view of spending, which probably stems from their mainly Scottish ancestry. It’s easy to see why Scotsmen have the reputation of being thrifty. They had to be, to survive through the hardships of life. This attitude carried over to the Lord’s work as well. We can’t stand the idea of wasting money, either for ourselves or for the Lord. But this isn’t the mindset that Jesus encourages. He does not encourage thrift. He encourages making investments, so that God will openly reward. Spiritual investing is similar to earthly investing, but with a crucial difference. Earthly investing says that if you take what you have and put it to work for you, then that money will produce more money. God says that if we invest in His work, God will reward us, whether or not it we gain anything. Imagine a man going into a casino in Vegas. The owner of the casino gives him a large pile of blue chips. He says to you that he wants to check the system. He wants us to gamble with this money he gave him. If he loses or gains, he will pay him to play. This is what God says to His people. God guarantees our investment through His Spirit. In the parable of the talents, none of these men were rewarded for their investment. Non e of them had anything to invest. It all belonged to their master. The master gave them a great reward far out of proportion to what they would have otherwise received. The only one who did not receive was the one who was too timid to take a risk. The point of this parable is not how much the first two made. The point is what happened to the third one. The third investor failed, because he had a mistaken view of his master. He saw his master as a punisher, not a rewarder. He was obsessed at what would happen to him if he made bad investments, so he risked nothing. In the end they got what their risked. Since he risked nothing, he got nothing. Consider that this means to us. We don’t have to be wise, only willing. These men were not rewarded for making wise investments, neither were they rewarded solely by power or money. The fact that they made money was incidental. The point of this story is that they were willing to risk. The man who did not risk was not rewarded. Risk is everything. Now, risk is faith, and faith brings blessing. If we have faith, then we will risk. But if our fear outweighs our faith, we take no chances. God’s blessings come by faith, and not by sight. God rewards faith more than he rewards wisdom. Why do we not give our time, talent, friendship, or energy to God’s work? Because we’re worried that we will lose it. We’ll not risk our future on an unsure opportunity. But suppose there was no risk involved. Suppose God promised to make up your losses Himself. Then you would be a fool not to invest. The reward for our tithing, our serving, and our loving comes from God. What if our tithes go to an unworthy cause? What if we try to serve God and what we do turns out to be a mistake? What if we give love and it returns unrequited? Rewards are not the reason for our giving. They are part of the process that leads to God’s blessing. If our investment turns out to be foolish, God rewards us the same as if we were wise. If our sincere efforts go awry, that doesn’t matter to God. God forgives our mistakes All he cares about is our heart. If we love someone unworthy of love—well, so what? The only thing we can do that will displease God is not to love or try or give. How do we spiritually invest? First, we throw ourselves into our relationship to God. Spiritual investment means investing in the spiritual. How much risk are you willing to take in improving your God connection? William Carey, the great missionary once said that he wanted to do something for God so big that if God is not in it, it is doomed to failure. He was a risk taker, a spiritual investor. he knew that to give his life in service on the foreign mission field was an act of worship to God. This mattered more to him than success. He could give himself to God, and God would bring reward. Are you a risk-taker in your relationship to God? How much time do you spend with Him each day? When was the last time you stepped out of faith and attempted something for God greater than normal? When will you let your “I can’t” be overwhelmed by “I can do all things through Christ”? Second, we give ourselves over to the mercy of God. When you run a race, there is a point where you no longer think of anything else but the finish line. Until that time, you’ve reserves something for the end. Now, the end is in sight and you take all those reserves and put them into crossing. It is a flat-out sprint. You couldn’t keep this up for very long, but you don’t have to. All you have to do is cross that line, and you’ll be done. You give yourself to crossing the line, because you know that you can rest on the other side. Someone will be there to cheer you, when you get there. Third, we invest through percentage giving. Spiritual investing is based upon the proposition that God loves a cheerful giver. The master is coming, and He will reward us in His time. We don’t have to seek a reward ourselves. He will reward us. But we should not simply give everything away, either. Jesus told the rich young ruler to do just that, and there are many people through history who have been called to poverty. But for most of us, it is not what God wants. To give everything away is to surrender our stewardship. Rather, we give away a percentage and invest the rest in living for God. The third man in this parable, the one who was rebuked, refused to manage what was given him. He hid his talent and thought that his master would be pleased if he merely retuned what was given. He was wrong. God expects us to assume the responsibility of work and investments, to keep building on what He gives. Fourth, apply spiritual investment in all areas of our lives. Stewardship is not about money. It is about living. We talk about tithing in this church, but there are other things we should tithe as well. Tithe friendships. For every nine friends you have because you like. You should have one who is just as close because they need a friend, not because you do. Tithe time. Give a tenth of your time to prayer, worship, and service to God. Tithe dreams. For every nine minutes you spend dreaming about what you want, spend a minute dreaming about what you can do for others, and so on through your life. These moments will be spiritual investments that God will reward. Fifth, conserve your own expenses, so you can risk more for God. Don’t allow yourself to be caught up in desire for this world. Many Christians today are like a salesman on an expense account. This salesman went out on a sales trip. His expenses were paid by the company. He was a successful salesman, but the company found his expense account was outdistancing his orders. He stayed in the fanciest hotels, ate the best food, paid for movies, plays and ball games out of his account. When the end of the month came, what do you think the boss did with this servant? God is the same way. Don’t expect to hear “well done” from God if our spending on ourselves outdistances our giving. What we say that we as individuals we must all admit is true for the church. As we look at the expenditures of time, talent and money in God’s house, how much of it goes to the upkeep of the building and the edification of the members, and how much goes to saving the lost, feeding the poor, and easing the pains of the sick? If we expect the individuals of the church to follow God’s plan of investment, so must the church. We must have a vision for ministry. We must not be satisfied with reaching the same old people in the same old ways. We must not play it safe. That would be like burying our money in the back yard. The work of the Lord requires an investment from all of us.

Parables of the Kingdom

Jesus could be frustrating to His audiences. He spoke in parables, and often did not explain them. If you wanted to know what He was talking about, you had to come to the after-meeting, where Jesus explained what He was saying. Jesus’ sermons were not an explanation--they were an invitation. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” He did not reveal His truth to everyone, but only those who were looking for the truth. The same principle is true today. The truth of the Kingdom is still hidden to those who are not seeking. Matthew 13 is a collection of eight parables. We already talked about two of them. What interests us today are the other six parables. They are not given at random, but together compose a single message about the kingdom of God. Those are in verses 31-52. They comprise a single message that our Lord wants us to hear and receive. All six use the same phrase “The Kingdom of Heaven”. Anything surrendered to God is the Kingdom of Heaven. On earth the Kingdom of God is the true church, where God’s people are surrendered to Him. Our church is a part of the Kingdom. Therefore, these six parables contain a message for our church. Our church is part of the Kingdom of Heaven. What does Jesus say to us? He gives us three principles. First, He promises that the church will grow. Look at verses 31-33: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches." He told them still another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." These two parables belong together. In both we have something small—a mustard seed, a bit of yeast. But the small things grow. A mustard seed grows to the largest plant in the field. A bit of yeast leavens the whole lump of dough, and causes it to grow very large. That growth is essentially effortless. When God’s church is God’s church, it will experience as a byproduct numerical and spiritual growth. It can’t help but grow. It’s like a seed, given the right conditions. It will germinate and blossom, no matter what. It grows because God wants it to. God has a purpose for the church to grow, so it will grow. When the church becomes stagnant, then it is not accomplishing the will of the Father. Why does it make any difference if a church is big or small? God desires for His church to grow. If we are following His will, we cannot help but grow. It will occur naturally, if we live obediently in the Kingdom of God. However, there is a catch. God expects something of us, if we are to see the kingdom of Heaven grow. We see this in our next set of parables. The Church will grow, if we are willing to pay the price. Look at verses 44-46: The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” There is a condition upon the growth of the church. We must be willing to pay the price. Jesus again uses two parallel parables. Both parables have one common phrase—he sold everything. The man with the treasure in the field sold everything else for it. The merchant who found the pearl sold everything for it, too. They sold everything, because they knew the value of it. They knew that if they could buy that thing of great price, they could double, even triple what they had. If they could have that one thing, they could have everything else. Suppose the merchant who wanted the pearl did not sell everything. Suppose he decided there were some things he wanted to keep. Or suppose his bed had a sentimental value, so he did not want to sell it. Or suppose he was attached to his house, and couldn’t bear to part with it. His sentiment would be worth more than the pearl of great price to him. He has a right to make that choice, but he can’t have the house and have the pearl. If this is true of him, it’s also true of us. We must choose between comfort and the Kingdom. We can’t have both. We must only have one. If the church is destined to grow and God desires for the church to grow then why is ours not growing? We will not sell everything. There are too many ideas, possessions, and comforts that we will not sell, not even for the Kingdom. Suppose you have a heart condition. You’re willing to give up cheeseburgers, because if you don’t, you’ll die. After all, what is a cheeseburger when compared to your life? You give up the habits of a lifetime for the sake of your life. Maybe the church doesn’t grow, because it's on the wrong diet. If we truly put the kingdom of God and His righteousness above all, there is no limit to how great the church can grow. We’ve starved the church of finances, by forsaking the tithe. We starve the church of innovation, by insisting that everything stay the same. We starve the church of our best time and energy, which it deserves, by elevating everything in our lives above the work of the Lord. Then we wonder why a church doesn’t grow. The church will grow, if we dedicate everything to the Kingdom. Now, see the third principle of growth. The church will grow, if we use all available means. Look at verses 47-52: "Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. "Have you understood all these things?" Jesus asked. "Yes," they replied. He said to them, "Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old." Jesus compares the kingdom to net fishing. You can separate the good fish from the junk fish later, but at first, you get everyone in. The secret of growing the kingdom of God is to be unparticular about who you catch. You target various people, but you go where the fish are. Someone said to D. L. Moody once that he did not like his way of doing evangelism. Moody replied that he was willing to learn, and would he please tell him how he preferred to do evangelism. The man replied, “Sir, I do not do evangelism at all.” Mood said, “Then I like my way of doing it more than your way of not doing it. The kingdom of God doesn’t exist on this earth for saint. It exists on this earth for sinners. We are on earth because we are the part of God’s kingdom that is currently involved in changing the world. We cannot say that it is not our responsibility. And as long as we are on this earth, we must be willing to use any available means to bring people into the kingdom. God will sort them out later. Our job is to bring them in. Dr. Manfred Gutzke was an evangelist and pastor in Atlanta. He was also an avid fisherman. He’d go to a lake with several rods. Some would be on the bottom with worms, others on the top with minnows, some in the middle with crickets. Whenever one would start to produce results, then he would set them all the same way. His method of fishing was determined by the preference of the fish, not his own. If we are serious about doing God’s will, we must also be flexible enough to do what is necessary to bring people to Christ. It may not be our preferred method of fishing, but if it produces results, then that is what we should do. The second parable in this group teaches the same message in a different way. When you live in a house for many years, you collect junk in your attic—pictures, lamps, etc. You may not think of them, until you move into a new house. Then you find that some of the decorations you now have in your house don’t work any more. You may go out and shop for other decorations. You also find that some of the junk you stored in the attic now works, even if it didn’t before. When we look at the methods for building the Kingdom of God, it’s the same. Sometimes, new ideas work. There is no real preference between old and new methods. The only thing that is important is if our methods bring results. Are we advancing the kingdom of heaven? If we get stuck on saying that ideas are better because they are new, or if we say that ideas are better because they are old, then we will miss the point. The point is that ideas work because they fit. If we are sold out to the kingdom, then we will be flexible and open to both new ideas and old. Let me summarize what we’ve been saying. The Kingdom of Heaven, that is the church, will grow. It is God’s will that it do so. The kingdom of Heaven, that is, the church, will grow, if we give everything to see it grow. The Kingdom of Heaven will grow, if we are willing to use any available means. If we hold on to means that don’t work, then the church may not grow. If we are willing to truly serve God, and to do whatever it takes to serve God, then God will honor us by bringing good things through us. Are you part of the kingdom of God? Have you given yourselves over to the building of the Kingdom of God? If you fully surrender to God, then you will see what wonderful things that God can do for you and through you.