Bible Text: Luke 16:1-13 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 2022 | Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous money, so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal homes.
Jesus is provoking us with this parable. He points to the zeal and the shrewdness of the heathen, what they will do, how they will use money, to reach their goals, and asks why do you My disciples lag behind? Yes, it’s true that the sons of this world are more shrewd in this generation than the sons of light, but why? Hasn’t Jesus given us a very clear goal? Are we not running a far more important race, a race that ends in eternity? Is it not the goal of our life, the one we think of every single day, that presses on us, to finish this race, to fight the good fight of faith, and to stand victorious on the Last Day before God Almighty? And yet Jesus saw that the heathen, the unbelievers, those with purely earthly goals in mind, were pursuing their goals with more fervency, more zeal, more urgency than Jesus’ own disciples. So He tells this parable to them and it applies just as much to us. The unrighteous manager has a very single-minded goal – to live comfortably once he loses his job. And he uses all his intelligence and all his power and all his access to money to win friends for himself, so that he can accomplish this goal. So Jesus provokes us to action – are you going to let unbelievers outdo you in this? Is the man who competes for a perishable crown going to outdo you who run for an imperishable crown?
It does happen. The heathen of today will spend outrageous amounts of money and time and planning to achieve their goals. Bill and Melinda Gates have given more than 3 billion dollars to Planned Parenthood to ensure that women will be able to kill their unborn children. It’s a horrible goal, but they have it, and they pursue it with single-minded abandon. The legalization of so-called homosexual marriage was accompanied by the same zeal and the same outpouring of funds and the same single-minded tenacity. They had their goal in mind, they knew it, and they sought it with everything they had. Look at them, Jesus says, look at them, and learn at least this, that you should have 10,000 times the tenacity and zeal and urgency to reach the heavenly goal as they do to reach their evil earthly goals.
Jesus calls money unrighteous not because it’s bad in itself. It isn’t. It is, like any creature of God, a good thing so long as people use it well, just like a gun is a good thing if used well and a knife is a good thing if used well and wine is a good thing if used well. They become evil only when used by evil people. But Jesus does call money unrighteous, not only because it’s used for unrighteous goals, but because Jesus wants to diminish it in our eyes. So He also calls it a very little thing – he who is faithful in very little, he says, talking about money. Because He wants to put everything in perspective. Wealth is very little. My house almost burned down Wednesday night. I was at Bible camp in Lander and so didn’t even hear about it until Thursday. But my wife and kids got evacuated as a fire raged in the prairie behind our house. And when Lisa told me about it and what she tried to save from the house as she left and thought she’d never see the house again, I had a hard time caring about the stuff. I couldn’t get my heart or my mind around it at all. I only cared that my children were safe and my wife and the baby inside her were safe. Everything else was very little. And this is even more obvious when we compare money with the Kingdom of God. Money will fail, Jesus says. He says, “when it fails,” not “if it fails.” It’s a guarantee. We brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we will take nothing out. But the Kingdom of God will never fail. It stands forever. And it is and it gives what money cannot buy, what has been bought instead by the blood of our Savior, who gives us open access to God in the forgiveness of our sins. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, Jesus says. The wealth of all the world cannot compare to this great wonder, that by faith in Jesus Christ you will stand before God unashamed, clothed in the perfect righteousness of your Savior, and see with your own eyes the unveiled beauty of His glory. O how my heart yearns within me, Job cries! And the heart of every pious Christian joins him.
But this is not to say money is worthless. That’s not Jesus’ point at all. It is little, very little, in comparison with the heavenly riches, but God wants us to use it and everything else in life for the goal set before us. He is the God who works through means. He brings new life into the world through the means of a mommy and daddy. He defends you from danger by means of good government. He saves your house from fire by means of firefighters. He gives you forgiveness by means of His Word spoken to you and righteousness by means of His body and blood given and shed for you. He works through means, even through very little things like money. So it is God working when you spend money to buy food and feed yourself or your family, God working when you give your money to help the poor and to further the mission of His Church and make eternal friends for yourself. Hold these two things in tension – you are to look down on money in comparison with God’s Word and with the virtue of keeping His commandments. It is insignificant, minor, very little. But you are to use this little, insignificant thing to do great things, for God’s glory.
You have a goal in life that is far greater than any earthly goal. Your goal is secure. You can’t spend any money to get it. The blood of God had to be spilt to earn it. And that blood has been spilt and it is finished, the goal is set before your eyes as a reality that you live now and will enjoy perfectly in the resurrection. But let him who stands take heed lest he fall. Keep your eye on the goal and you will know exactly how to use your money and your time and your energy. You will outstrip the heathen. You will put them to shame. Their goals are petty, temporal, very often devilish. Your goal is perfect, beautiful, it is God’s own goal, the goal of all history: that you and all who hear the good news of Jesus will live before the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit forever in pure joy and perfect love for God and one another, with the devil trampled under your feet, death’s sting lost, sin’s guilt gone, forever.
But we cannot be naïve. Jesus hasn’t called us to stupidity. Yes, He doesn’t need money, not yours, not anyone’s. But He has for at least six thousand years used the money of his faithful to further His Kingdom. And He does this solely for our sake, because He loves us so much. He knows what temptations we face. He knows the inclination of our sinful flesh. He knows that of the temptations that would lead us astray the love of money and the focus on the pleasures of the body it can give us are at the forefront. This is the temptation that brought down His people Israel in the wilderness. And these things were written for our learning. And the way He leads us out of this temptation, makes the way of escape, is by putting the goal of seeing Jesus’ glorious face before us every single day. Your goal is this. Everything else is secondary. How much is in your retirement, how much in your savings account, how big your house is, how nice your car, all of it is secondary, all of it will matter very little in a short fifty years or less compared to your heavenly goal. Obsess over this goal. Think of it daily. Read the Gospels, a chapter a day or more, and hear your dear Savior speak, and then speak to Him in prayer. And when He is your goal, when you long to see His face, when you seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, His Spirit will fill you with a zeal to spend your unrighteous money on the righteous.
They will welcome you into eternal homes. These are the homes, the mansions, Jesus has prepared for you. It is the ridiculous privilege we have in this generation to give our money so that our generation and the generations to come will hear the voice of their Savior and so join us in heaven. Those who have gone before us to heaven, who heard the Word of the Savior in this church because we gave our money to make sure it happened, they will welcome us. I have sat by many of them as they lay dying, some young, some old, but none who cared one bit about money when they died. Their only care in that hour was the Gospel of Jesus and their only goal was to see His face in righteousness. And so we should think of our money. It is a very little thing, but if we can give it to further the kingdom of heaven, what grace our God has entrusted to us, what great things He gives to us!
Our Lord provokes us to action by the example of the heathen. He wants us to outdo them. But He provokes us to thanksgiving by showing us what we can never outdo, what we can never thank Him enough for. God Himself spent all for us. He considered us His great goal. Why, I cannot imagine, because we are such sinners and we have grieved our God with so many evil thoughts and words and actions. But He was single-minded and insistent, and He lacked no zeal. He saw us as a pearl of great price, beautiful and precious, for which He would give anything. So the Father gave His Son. The Son insisted on it. He took on our flesh and made our glory His pain. He bore our sins and suffered our punishment. He gave all and suffered all and with greater zeal, and more insistence than mortal man can ever imagine. He faced hell itself to win us for His own. There has never been a goal more firmly sought, more zealously pursued, more perfectly carried out than God’s to win us. God sent God to live and die for us. He bought us with better things than gold or silver. It is too much, too gracious, but He doesn’t stop, His determination will not find a rival. He seeks us out, He makes His happiness ours and ours His. He puts His name on us and gathers us as His children and speaks to us and teaches us and gives us His Spirit and sends His angels to guard and protect us. He wants us not only to be saved from death and sin, but to enjoy with Him everything good and beautiful now and forever.
And so He is our goal. Beyond everything else, He is our goal. And we will show Him, not because we have a thing to earn – how could we think unrighteous mammon could add a thing to the righteous blood and love of God? – but because we love the Lord who has so loved us. We will show Him that nothing is more pressing, nothing more wonderful to our hearts than that we and ours see His precious face by faith here on this earth and by sight in the eternal dwellings.
When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”
Do not hide Your face from me;
Do not turn Your servant away in anger;
You have been my help;
Do not leave me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation.
When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then the Lord will take care of me.
Teach me Your way, O Lord,
And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.
Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;
For false witnesses have risen against me,
And such as breathe out violence.
I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.
Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord!
Amen.