The manager in this parable has been unfaithful. He’s squandered his master’s wealth. When confronted, he has nothing to say. He is guilty of being entrusted with a great responsibility, which has brought him great honor, and he wasted it.  As a result of his unfaithfulness, he is being removed from his position.

The manager then goes to some of the debtors and lowers what they owe. When the master discovers what the manager has done, it leaves him in a bind.  He can reverse the decision of lowering the amount due, but that will make him cruel toward his debtors and bring to question whether he really is a generous and merciful lord.  If he lets the adjustments stand, he has further secured the good will of his debtors, but he has allowed someone else to dictate the terms. Notice here that the master commends the dishonest manager for his acting shrewdly. He is not agreeing with his actions, but admiring his resourcefulness in having done such a clever thing – a thing that rests upon the graciousness of the master.

There’s a direct application here to us who are here today when we realize how blessed we are to be children of God.  We have received countless blessing from God in abundance and we are often guilty of squandering what has been entrusted to us. We owe a debt that we can never repay. Sin brings a debt far too great for us to even start. We deserve to imprisoned for eternity, yet God is merciful and chooses to be gracious to us and grants us forgiveness.  While that forgiveness is freely given to us, it was not free for God. In the parable, the debtors received the benefit of the master’s mercy and forgiveness of their debt.  In our lives, God was willing to make the sacrifice of His Son upon the cross that our debt might not be reduced, but completely forgiven.   This forgiveness means that we are no longer accountable for the sins we’ve committed, for bad management of God’s gifts. We are free in the Gospel with the assurance of eternal life.

With this freedom comes great privilege. We are placed in this world and entrusted with gifts and blessings from God. Yet all too often we fall into the same materialistic trap as people who do not know Christ.  We often are more concerned about our security for ourselves than being faithful to God. We take what doesn’t belong to us, what belongs to God, we use it for selfish and sinful purposes. And God still forgives! And God still gives! 

Jesus’ says, “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.” This directs our attention to the very purpose of our earthly blessings. Jesus encourages us to imitate the manager, but not by being unrighteous. The sons of this present age are more prudent in worldly matters because they know how to be unrighteous – how to bend the rules, to play the game, to beat the system – in order to accomplish their goals. But Jesus wants His disciples to be ignorant in such things because they have no lasting value and is harmful for those whose hope is in the age to come. We are to be prudent by focusing upon God’s mercy given to us and to the world in Christ.  The manager in the parable used worldly possessions shrewdly to obtain a physical place to dwell.  Jesus turns this idea around and tells us to use these things to obtain eternal dwellings. That’s being faithful! What’s the purpose of receiving abundance from God if not to use it to extend His kingdom?

Jesus is not saying that earthly wealth is evil. He is saying that we cannot serve two masters. In our service of Christ, then, we recognize that God is the master and we are the managers. In other words, all that we have belongs to God, and He has entrusted material goods for our use. The question then becomes how to use God’s gracious gifts.  The focus here is to use earthly wealth, which is of value only here in this sinful world, in a shrewd manner so as to be received into eternal dwellings.  We are to practice stewardship in such a way as to use that which has been entrusted to us by God in this life to extend the kingdom of God into the lives of other people, whereby they would have eternal dwellings.

Zion, how do we invest in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to people? How do we invest in extending the kingdom of God, both in your personal lives as well as in in your communal life as the Church? God always gives infinitely more than we pay for, and it moves us to do business of this life with His blessings so that others might share in His grace. God has placed you here in this world, in this time and in this place to be a reflection of His grace and mercy.

This is why we pass the plate each week.  We gather our tithes and our offerings for the work of the kingdom of God.  Just to be clear, a tithe is 10% of our income, our offering is that above and beyond.  We do it for the work of the church, so that the Gospel may be proclaimed both inside these walls and into our community. As Christians we have an obligation to keep up our church building and our properties for this and the next generation. We have an obligation to our Lord and to our brothers and sisters in Christ to not pass down our debt, or the consequences of our bad stewardship, to our children. Rather, we are to pass down the Word of Christ, His mercy, His forgiveness, and a generous heart. We have an obligation to teach our children the ways the Lord, through Bible study, church attendance, our school, and our daycare. If we have proven to be unworthy in our use of temporal things, the things of this world, how can we expect to be faithful in the use of eternal things?

Ultimately, though, it comes down to this.  Being faithful with what the Lord has given.  The wealth of the Church that matters is doctrinal integrity, Scriptural unity, and attendance.  Where these remain, the finances are will endure.  Without them, no amount of money can rescue a lost church (Pr. Larry Peters). But, as we heard last week, the Lord searches out the lost. And He has found you and brought you here. He doesn’t need your money or your possessions, they are already His. He wants you, for He desires all to be saved and come the knowledge of the truth – that Christ has been crucified for the forgiveness of sins and He provides all that is needed for this life and for eternity.