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.