Living with Wisdom in a Complicated World – The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

Let’s open with prayer. Lord, it’s with grateful hearts that we come to you today, understanding that you’ve given us another day, another week, another year to live for you. We’d ask that our lives be measured not by things that are just in this world, things that count for eternity. That’s really our goal and we expressly ask that of you today as you work through your word in our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Be seated. A couple of housekeeping matters different than our typical housekeeping matters. In your bulletin, we try to stay away from announcements here, although I’m kind of a wild card. In your bulletin, there’s a Valentine’s breakfast advertised in the last page and it’s really a great time this coming Saturday. It’s going to be MC’d by our people and with games and great food, but it says February 10th.

That’s not right. It’s February the 8th on Saturday. I believe there’ll be a sign up out there in the foyer and so you want to sign up for that and plan on a great time next Saturday. This is really an exciting time of year. It’s not just cold.

It’s really exciting, particularly in the sports world because we’re heading up to Super Bowl and a couple of things about that. First of all, I’m told that it’s a green light for all of you to wear your own favorite sports team jerseys next Sunday. There’s no code violation, dress code violation for that. It doesn’t have to be football. It can be any sport, any team that you follow.

A couple on the beavers that I’ll be doing as well. Speaking of which, I’m publicly expressing my disappointment that Oregon did not win the National Championship this year. I’m for both Oregon and Oregon State and I had this great response because I was going to teach the Sunday after they won the National Championship. It would go something like this. We want to congratulate Oregon on winning the National Championship.

It’s a great accomplishment and now they have A National Trophy in Eugene and we from Corvallis who have two are congratulating them. But who’s counting? But anyway, it’s two to zero, not two to one, but we hope next year will be better. The sports theme of course extends into the NFL and as you know, there’s a lot of activity going on. A couple of the teams that we follow, Steve’s Raiders, which he’s trying to shed off of his allegiance, but we’re not letting him and my

Cowboys both have new coaches and I don’t know what you heard, but the NFL has addressed a problem that’s been long term in the NFL and it was that by chance, the Super Bowl who’s scheduled for an arena years in advance, by chance there is a possibility that if that team for that city is in the Super Bowl, they kind of have a home court advantage and they finally resolve that by determining that every year the Super Bowl will be in Texas Stadium.

I don’t like that, but we suffer along. Some of us are faithful in our allegiances, Steve. You might want to rethink that. We’re into a series called Face to Face and in that we are asking and answering the question, what would Jesus do in the circumstances I find myself? And it’s been a great time.

I’m thoroughly enjoying it. And when people thank me for participating in the preaching schedule, I regularly tell them I’m the first benefactor because I have to study and work it through my own heart and application before I talk to you about it. And that’s really, really our goal. I know it’s Rob’s goal as well. And we last week were in a parable that Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldo Emerson both said was the greatest short story ever written, the prodigal son, the lost son.

And we talked about it and the theme and message of it. And I’m resisting the urge to go back and spend another Sunday today on it because we want to move to the next parable. But it’s a remarkable parable. And even in the casual first reading of the prodigal, you find the message of a boy that squandered his estate given inheritance from his father. And he ran into circumstances where he was desperate and said, I no longer have a right to be a son.

I’ll come back and just be a servant. And he had that all rehearsed. And as he came back, his father found him and embraced him. And we find that for that young man, there was no restitution required. His standing went back to the son of of the father and the father said, bring the robe, kill the fatted calf.

And in a first reading on that, just in human relationships alone, we learned that when we have family and friends that wander and go astray from what we believe and know to be the right way, we keep that prodigal road open for them to come back. We measure that by a commitment to forgiveness and restoration. And we certainly have the older son in that first casual reading of that parable who was Mr. Bregrudgen. He had stayed around at least closer to his father.

And in activity had been active with his father in the village. He hadn’t run off like the younger brother. And when he heard about the celebration going on with the younger brother, he was upset. And we found last week that he had the disrespect to actually say to his father, look, what is the deal? I stuck around.

I didn’t squander the estate. And the father’s response to that ungrateful older son was, he was dead. Now he’s alive. He was lost and now he’s found. And that first casual reading of the parable brings great encouragement to us, just in human relationships, relationships, but.

And I hope that you’re picking up that as Rob and I go through various sections of scripture, we’re trying to encourage you to use the context of the passages we’re looking at to help us understand the meaning and interpretation. Let’s see your vitals. Because we’re going to talk about context today. I see some phones. Yeah, you win an electronic.

But in either paper or electronic form, this is really the third of three parables in Luke 15 of which the first is the finding of a lost sheep, the second, the finding of a lost coin, the third, the restoration of a lost son. And in the first, the finding of the sheep, the text tells us there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent. Again, picking up the preparatory theme of not only redemption for those of us that have believed in Jesus, but the Pharisees. You say, I don’t need that. In fact, the passage has started off with the Pharisees muttering the text tells us in verse two, this man welcomes sinners and even eats with them.

How dare him. And the second parable is the parable of the lost coin. And the same message, again, we’re talking interpretation now. How do these tie together? The second to lost coin, the text is rejoice with me.

And I found my lost coin in the same way I tell you there’s rejoicing the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents, one sheep who was found, one sinner who repents. And then third in our parable from last week of the lost son, the father says, rejoice with me, celebrate because the brother of yours was dead and he’s now alive. He was lost and now found. So the theme has a deeper, the parable last week has a deeper meaning just human family relationships. It’s talking about the kingdom of God and the joy, the rejoicing, the celebration in heaven as those who have been lost are found.

And the imagery is not only then of the younger son who’s restored to his father, but you and me, though we were broken, we believe the message Jesus gave Nicodemus. You must be born again. And that wonderful parable is a parable that talks about grace and it talks about Israel. You know, if I were a father with sons who acted the way Israel did in the Old Testament, I long ago would say, your history, you’re detached from me. I don’t want to think, well, I don’t know what I would, but I’d be inclined to think, I don’t want anything more to do with you.

But God who chose the Jew, and you remember I talked to you a few weeks ago about why do we pray for Israel because that’s the landing pad for Jesus to come back. Israel has to exist. It has to be in the land for the book of Revelation, for the prophecies of Ezekiel and Isaiah and Daniel to be finalized. And in that, someone would say, how odd of God to choose the Jew, and it was, but he did. He said, he tied his name to Abraham and he said, “Brajanim will be like the stars of the sky.”

And through David and through Rahab and through Mary and Joseph, the son was born. And Israel became, again, the recipient of the coming of the Messiah. So Israel is strategically a player in this. And yet amazingly, with the history of the Old Testament and the rejection of the grace of God through the prophets, you have to be reminded that as Jesus came into the last week of his earthly life, do you remember what he said? He said about Israel, how often I’ve wept over you.

How often I’ve grieved for your departure from me. And he said, if you even only had known on this day what would have been better peace, but now it’s hidden from you ever, the days will come again when your enemies will build an embankment against you. And encircle you and hem you in on every side. They’ll dash you to the ground. You and your children within your walk, they will not leave one stone on another.

So Israel and its rejection is a nation of Jesus. Jesus set the stage for the church. And that’s the third thing the prodigal son does as a parable. It shows us the coming potential predictive of the church. It was Israel as the older son who was still in the embrace of the father and the younger son who are the non Jew, the Gentiles, and it became the precursor by which in the book of Acts we find the start of the church itself.

And then it ends in odd, awkward sort of way where the father and older son are kind of in a standoff. And the father says he was lost and is found. And I suggested to you last week that it ends that way because the Pharisees haven’t had their last say of Jesus and the father who represents the kingdom of God. And so the breach was full and final, at least in terms of the purposes of God through the nation of Israel as it rejected Jesus. That’s the first awkward ending to the parable of the lost son.

The second one has to do with the parable of the shrewd manger. And that’s where we are. The parable of the shrewd manger. And while the parable of the lost son, the prodigal is maybe the best known parable in the Bible. The parable of the shrewd manger is one of the least known parables.

And it follows right on the heels of the message of forgiveness and restoration and wise living. There was a celebration on a ship. In fact, it was a parable. Party, if you had the eyes to see. And it was a table set out with a banquet and the captain of the ship and some of the high mates of the ship were giving praises and speeches in there.

It was all focused on an old man at the end of that table, 70 years old, who though he was being lavish with praise and accolades seemed a little embarrassed. And so at one point, the ship and the climax of the evening came where the old man was asked to speak to a word or two concerning the reasons this ship’s crew was so thrilled with him. And the reason is because earlier in the day, there was a young woman that had fallen over the side of the ship. And before you knew it, that old man, that 70 year old man was in the water beside her and she was rescued. And so this man was a hero.

And so as he stood up from his chair and went to the microphone, he gave probably the shortest hero speech ever recorded. He said, I just want to know one thing, who pushed me? Sometimes our accomplishments in life are intentional. Sometimes they’re not. Let’s talk about an intentional accomplishment in life.

Luke chapter 16 and verse one. Jesus told his disciples, the rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him to him and asked, what does this I hear about you? Give an account of your management because you cannot be manager any longer. Effectively, this was his termination.

He was history in terms of the work for this rich man. The manager knew that and the text says, said to himself, what shall I do now? He’s taking away my job. He didn’t deny that he mismanaged the master’s the rich man’s money. He said, 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, which was a foregone conclusion, people will welcome me into their houses. In other words, he’s thinking not short term, he’s thinking long term. So he called to each one of his manager’s debtors. He said to the first, how much do you owe my master? 800 gallons of oil, he replied.

The manager said, take your bill, sit down quickly and make it 400. Then he asked the second. And how much do you owe? And the second said, a thousand bushels of wheat. He said, take your bill and make it 800 and essentially, impliedly resolve that debt between the rich man and these debtors.

Well, the master heard about that. And you would think he either said you didn’t have the authority to do that. I’m getting the short shrift in terms of my debtors, but it was just the opposite. The master commended the dishonest manager. The text doesn’t back away from the fact that this was an inappropriate behavior.

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. The truth, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself. So when it’s gone, you’ll be welcomed into your eternal dwellings. Little weird, little hard to understand. It seemed like the master commended a dishonest, unauthorized resolution of debt.

And he said, good job. He said, good job because you’re looking into the future. And standing yourself as people of the light. What’s going on? We have another verse coupled with this parable that I think, though it also surprises when we first read it, it also explains the parable.

It’s in Matthew, chapter 10. Matthew chapter 10, verse 16. Jesus is in the early commissioning of his disciples. He says things like, don’t take any gold and silver. Garments.

Go back and understand that in fact, you are to go into towns. And if you received graciously and with positive with good reception, then give them blessings. And if a town rejects you, then shake your dust off your feet. And then he comes to this verse, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be a shrewd as snakes and as innocent as does.

This is from Jesus. And it says three things. It says the world that we live in as Christians is not easy. If we have the identification of one who is a Jesus follower, you’re going to be among wolves. Do I use this?

I will. I send out a weekly blog not only to a lot of people in the vineyard, but to people in my own office building. And I happened to comment, the blog went out on the day of some recent political events. And I said, I’m encouraged. That’s all I said.

And one of the attorneys responding back and said, don’t send those out, John. Because she said, I hate what’s going on. And we’ve had a good resolution. We’re talking about that. And I’m going to back off a bit.

But the point of that is, we live in a hostile world. And if you are for truth and grace and good things happening and resolutions in a way that bring honesty and integrity to yourself and those around you, you’re not going to be met with a good reception. You’re going to be among wolves, people who have different agendas, who have purposes that suit their own needs instead of the kingdom of God. And Jesus said, in that wolf environment, be a shrewd as snakes. What does that mean?

Well, our minds go back to Genesis 3, but that’s not where this Jesus goes back. Jesus isn’t using the devil in Genesis 3 to give an illustration of acting like him. He’s simply saying, one characteristic positively you can see about snakes is they’re sneaky. They’re shrewd. They have a way of getting from point A to point B unnoticed.

And he said, there’s a place for that. There’s a place for you to live with wisdom. That’s the point in the context of reception and hostility that you have around you and as innocent as doves. In other words, as these disciples went out as the first of the followers of Jesus, they are to act with courtesy, with wisdom, and yet understanding the gentleness of the message of the kingdom of God. And we see that in Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew chapter 12, where again, a quotation out of the book of Isaiah, Jesus said, here is my servant, whom I’m chosen, the one I love and whom I delight. I’ll put my spirit in him and he’ll proclaim justice to the nations. He’ll not quarrel or cry out. No one will hear him, his voice in the streets, and that passage was on to say, he’ll not bruise a read. In other words, when Jesus was confronted by the wolves and the hostility of the world around him, he didn’t retaliate.

He act not in order to get even, but to continue to represent the grace of God, just as the father with the young son had done. So the message of this parable, first of all, is in acting shrewdly, we are going to be people who act with with wisdom, who act with good judgment, and yet at the same time understand that we don’t retaliate. We don’t take it out on those around us. Maybe it’s well illustrated also in the book of Acts in Acts chapter 16. Paul said to the officers, when he was confronted with giving the gospel message, they beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens and threw us into prison, and now do they want to get rid of us quietly, not let them come themselves and escort us out.

In other words, three times in the book of Acts, Paul, the Apostle Paul says, I’m a Roman citizen. You can’t do that to Roman citizens. That’s part of acting shrewdly. As Christians, we can assert those things that are our rights in the country that we have. There’s nothing wrong with that.

There’s nothing wrong with saying, wait a minute. That goes beyond the pale of the Constitution or goes beyond the pale of the kind of rights I have as an American citizen. Paul did it three times, and yet he didn’t defend himself physically and ended up both in prison and ultimately dying for the faith. So the purpose of this parable, first of all, in its first section is that the manager says act shrewdly, the way this dishonest servant did, looking to the future. Second section of the parable, back to Luke 16.

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 been trustworthy or in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with your riches? And if you have been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? In other words, the second section of this parable that Jesus is teaching his disciples is, one, live with wisdom. Live gently, but live with wisdom.

Two, live in a way that’s honorable, that’s trustworthy. And when you’re trusted with the property, the relationships of others, you handle it well, and then God gives you more as a result. If you’re not trustworthy, then in fact, even what you have will be taken from you. So as Jesus instructs his disciples to live with wisdom and to live with gentleness, he’s also saying live with integrity. Live in a way that’s trustworthy in some way that whether you’re measured in public, or in private, it comes out that in fact, you’ve made good decisions.

Young man once asked an older man, what’s the secret of your success? The older man said, good decisions. The young man then said, well, how do you learn to make good decisions? And the older man said, my experience. And the younger man said, well, what do you do with these things?

Where do you get the experience that you have? And the older man said, from bad decisions. In other words, we are the sum total, and this is where we’re gonna end up the day this morning, not of the bad decisions we’ve made, nor of the poor starts we’ve had in life, nor the strikes that are against us, but we are people who need to live with integrity with what we now have in a way that’s honorable and meets the needs of those around us. The third section of the parable. Jesus teaches, no servant can serve two masters.

Either he will hate the one and love the other or he’ll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. So it sets up a crossroads for these disciples to say, as you’re going down life, you’re gonna be tempted to either do things that prepare and insulate yourself against the vicissitudes of life, the unfortunate things of the future. Are you gonna take that other fork that says, I’m not gonna pursue money, I’m not gonna make it my surety, my security, I’m going to commit myself to God’s purposes. And then to further illustrate it, the Pharisees, the text said, who loved money, heard all this, and we’re sneering at Jesus.

In other words, so not only have they been in the beginning of chapter 15, mocking him and muttering about Jesus, now at the end of chapter 16, they’re sneering at Jesus. And Adam and Jesus turns and said, you’re the ones who justify yourself in the eyes of men. But God knows your heart, what is highly valued among men is detestable to God. I’ve worked all week in my mind on how to best illustrate this crossroads and intuitively we understand it. We come to a crossroads, we come to life circumstances and we say, I can choose to insulate and financially build myself up to the disregard of values of the kingdom, that would be living for money.

Or I can live in a way that says, I’m gonna commit my purposes to what the Bible says are God’s way of using the resources that I have and we’ll get there in a minute. And that becomes intuitive to us because as George Bernard Shaw says, it’s not the love of money that’s the root of all the root of all evil, it’s the lack of money, that’s the root of all evil. And we intuitively know that if we are concerned about the paying of our obligations, for me the thing that weighs on me are my payroll on a regular basis. If there’s things that cause you to be distracted and change your values, then you’re at that crossroads moving toward loving money more than loving God. The Pharisees became the illustration of that.

So what does it say to us about making right choices? It says that unlike the Pharisees who love money, we’re people who live with a regard for what we have we keep with an open hand. Ray and Claire lost their beloved dog about four months ago. So they put the dog bed in the attic. And it wasn’t long till they learned that Steve Miller had a dog who was sleeping on a blanket on the floor.

And so Ray and Claire took that dog bed and gave it to Steve. And now they’re the first to show you a picture of Steve’s dog laying on that dog bed. You say that may be a small thing, no that’s a big thing. And Steve said he loves it, that’s wonderful. It’s taking what we have and holding him with an open hand.

We have a movement going on in this church which we’ve called the Get Ready boxes. It started with Rick and Glenn and it spread over to the women with Bonnie and it basically is getting these Get Ready boxes with the things that homeless people need to be able to survive the winter. And it involves everything from some food cards to some deodorant and different things that people socks, things people need. And you know that’s God moving among us in a way that says I want to stay open to the things that care for others more than just caring for myself. It’s a good illustration as seen in 1 Timothy chapter 6.

We’ve been there before and we will be there again because it’s kind of the capsule of the instruction to believers in terms of how to live. And it says after instruction it says that there’s no instructions about the discipline of living with contentment, food and covering, with that will be content, Paul writes, command those to be rich in his present world, not to be arrogant or to put their hope and wealth but to do three things. Put their hope in God who richly provides us with everything and then enjoy what God has given us. That’s really the measure of life for us as Christians. It’s not that we can’t enjoy the benefits of life that come.

They come through either hard work or through other kinds of reasons. They come through the sharing of what we have with those that don’t have. But it also recognizes that we’re living in a way that’s working, that’s building up our treasure in heaven rather than on earth. The early church understood that. And in fact in the foundation in Acts chapter 2 the text says they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.

To fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miracle signs were done among the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes and together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of the people. And God was adding to their number. This afternoon in primetime you’ll hear about the depth and length and breadth of the ministries of grace point. And I can tell you with enthusiasm that this is one of the first ministries that I support financially committed to the kind of good things that are happening where the leadership in this church are using resources that we have with integrity and reaching out internationally around the world with the God gospel. But it’s certainly something that’s true also in terms of our personal relationships.

As we get to know others and we hear about a need and we say I could grasp that, I could hold on to that. You never can tell when I might need it or I could say no. No. The measure of my neighbor from the Good Samaritan is if there’s a need I see and a need I can meet then in fact I will meet that need. Someone wrote a poem about wisdom and said the following, “When I reached to break my wings against the faultiness of things and learn that compromises wait behind each open gate, when I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth and taken in exchange my youth.”

That’s the exchange that’s going on in your life and mine as we live the days that God has given us. We’re learning in calculated form with wisdom, with shrewdness, with integrity to use the time and possessions and money and relationships that we have in a way that counts for eternity. That’s the way, that’s the way that you count in the kingdom of God. It certainly was true from the message of the prodigal. It’s certainly true in terms of the parable of the shrewd manager.

It’s really not how you start, it’s how you finish. Say John, you didn’t have the crummy family I did, really? I did, kind of. Single parent, bless her heart. You didn’t have the lack of financial resources that I had, really?

As a boy who did the grocery shopping for my family, I found it pretty quickly that a 10 pound bag of potatoes, for which they all were the same price, I could weigh them and find the bag that had 10 and a half pounds, and that’s the one I chose. But John, I didn’t have the opportunities for education, I didn’t have the kind of experiences from which I can make my life a success. Listen to this. John, with infantile paralysis, and he becomes Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Burn him so severely in a schoolhouse fire that the doctors say he’ll never walk again, and you have a glen Cunningham. You set the world’s record in 1934 for running a mile in four minutes and six seconds. Defen, a genius composer, and you have Ludwig van Beethoven. And her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have Booker Washington. George Washington Carver.

Martin Luther King. Making the first child to survive a poor Italian family of 18 children, and you end up with Enrico Caruso. Having been born to parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp, paralyzed from the waist down when he was four, and you have the incomparable Isaac Perot. And you have Albert Einstein. It’s not how you start.

It’s not your background. It’s not the good or bad decisions that you made in life. It’s that you live for a God who says, that road is open. You don’t need to provide restitution. Grace is yours, and through me, you can be out there.

You can be men and women who love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Let’s pray. Father, we’re thankful for your word. We’re thankful for its instruction in our life and the work of the Holy Spirit to provide for us direction, encouragement, and things that count for eternity. We would ask Lord that you would give us the courage and the wisdom to be people that are known as followers of Jesus, who don’t shrink back in a world that’s hostile to him, but live rather with wisdom and yet gentleness reflecting on him who is our Savior.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,470 words.