1.
Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus
Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word today comes from
the Gospel reading for from Luke 16.
Here our Lord Jesus calls us as His disciples to be shrewd (wise) in the
use of money (vv. 1–9). Jesus wants us
to be faithful in the use of money, recognize its value (vv. 10–12) and not to
overestimate its value (v. 13). It’s
entitled, “Be Good Managers of God’s
Earthly Gifts,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Maybe
some of you remember the old radio and television comic Jack Benny, who
cultivated a reputation for greediness. In one of his skits, a robber holds
Benny up, puts a pistol in his face, and demands, “Your money or your life!” For the longest time, Benny says nothing
but looks extremely pained. Finally, the robber demands, “Hurry up!” To which the comedian responds, “Don’t rush me. I’m thinking it over!”
3.
“Your money or your life!” Of course, the
skit is funny because nobody would choose money instead of life, but if we
change the words to read, “Your money is your life!” none of us is
laughing anymore. That’s precisely the way a lot of people live—as if life was
all and only about money. And maybe that’s true of us too. We devote an
enormous amount of our time, our talents, and our energy to acquiring money—and
not only acquiring it, but also saving it, investing it, and, yes, worrying
about it.
4.
Our text for
today reminds us that money must never be the end or goal of our lives,
however much we’re tempted, since as Christians we know that, Jesus Christ, not
money, is the source of our life. At the
same time, though, our text today from Luke 16 also teaches us that the
disciples of Jesus must be diligent and clever in their use of money. Maybe that doesn’t seem all that difficult,
because, after all. We live in a world
that’s extremely diligent and clever about money.
5.
And we should all
recognize that it’s a real blessing of the Lord to live in a society that knows
how to make money! Even in bad times,
our modern economic system produces the necessities of life in abundance, and
most of us have more than enough to satisfy both our wants and many of our
desires. And in good times, well, the
sky’s the limit—the stock market roars, housing value soars, and “everybody” seems to have money for what
they want out of life.
6.
But it doesn’t
happen by accident—and one of the advantages of living in a free enterprise
system is that human beings are free to devote themselves to making money. So,
boy, do we ever! We do devote ourselves
to making money, and we’re good at it, very clever. Just like the shrewd manager in our text (vv
1–7). Very clever indeed! Only at the extremes of childhood and old age
are we not heavily engaged in earning a living; but even in old age, we still
pay a lot of attention to investments, taxes, Social Security, retirement
plans, and so on. We continue to be concerned about money. As far as children are concerned, much of our
educational system is designed to prepare them for making money—providing the
skills, knowledge, attitudes, and habits for being successful in the workplace.
Adults, too, are often encouraged to go back to school to enhance their
abilities for work and earning a living.
Even our politics often revolve around money. Politicians vie with one
another to demonstrate their “cleverness”
in economic matters by presenting to the voters their plans for prosperity.
7.
Of course, not
everybody is clever enough, not even in America, to make money all the time. The politicians’ plans don’t always work;
many businesses fail and workers lose jobs; and some who think they are really
clever, so clever that they can break the law to make money, get caught and pay
the price even if they’re wearing designer suits—again, just like the manager
in our text. If you think about it, no
one is really ever clever enough—for the single-minded pursuit of money or
devotion to the things that money can buy can’t solve the human dilemma that life
leads only to death. On the
contrary, the person who devotes himself to the acquisition of money, no matter
how successfully, has turned away from the one who is the source of all
blessing, including money. Jesus warns in our text in Luke 16:13, 13No servant can serve two
masters, for 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 God and money.”
8.
On account of the
sinfulness that is the natural inheritance of all of us, we’re always looking
for substitutes for the true God, and for many of us—poor as well as rich—that
substitute is money. Forgetting God, the giver of all good things, we devote
ourselves to wealth—getting it, spending it, and worrying about it when it’s
gone. But to what end? Jesus tells us in the Parable of the
rich fool, Luke 12:16–21, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17and
he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’
18And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build
larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And
I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years;
relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20But God said to him, ‘Fool! This
night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose
will they be?’ 21So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and
is not rich toward God.” Ironically, worldly cleverness with money
turns out to be the height of foolishness, for money doesn’t conquer death,
doesn’t forgive sin, doesn’t reconcile us with God. In fact, by dependence on
money, we run the risk of spending eternity cut off from all blessings—that’s
death in hell.
9.
To really
live—both in this money-clever world and in the one to come—is the generous
gift of Christ! Today’s Epistle reminds
us that, “God our Savior . . . wants all
men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God
and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as
a ransom for all men” (1 Tim 2:3–6).
By paying the price for us—not with money but with his holy, precious
blood and with his innocent suffering and death—Jesus, Son of God and Son of
Man, freed us from sin and death and liberated us from the idolatries of life,
including our enslavement to money. With
the love of God guaranteed and the promise of heaven and resurrection certain,
we need nothing more for ourselves either here or in eternity.
10.
But God has given
us more, much more. He has given us time, talents, opportunities, and, yes,
money. Everywhere we look there are
needs to respond to with God’s gifts. The church and her agencies are crying
out for the resources to help, but often they’re stymied by the lack of funds. Today’s parable teaches us that God wants us
to be as clever with our resources for his purposes as ever we were in accomplishing
the world’s. Jesus says in Luke 16:8-9, 8The master commended the
dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more
shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. 9And
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.” Like the Good Samaritan, then, who stopped to
help a stranger in need, even at the cost of his time, his safety, and his
money, we, too, should respond to opportunities to show love toward our
neighbor by helping him in every need, temporal and spiritual. In this way, we
use what God has first given us to carry out God’s work in God’s way for God’s
people. And we’re no poorer for the
giving, because we still have the one who gave it to us in the first place—to
say nothing of a treasure in heaven beyond our wildest dreams.
11.
Because we’re
still sinners, this Word of Jesus about serving God and not worldly wealth may
strike us as difficult, maybe even impossible, to obey. And it is—on our own. But
we aren’t on our own. Ransomed by Jesus, we belong forever to him—and so does
our money. We have life, eternal life, which is infinitely richer than what
even our most clever financial schemes and diligent labors can earn. And we
didn’t earn it; we were given it, freely, by the forgiving death and
resurrection of Jesus. So as forgiven sinners, we can respond to this
Word of our Lord not with dread but with joy, because Jesus—and nothing else,
not even money—is the source of our life.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment