Bible Text: St Luke 16:1–13 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
I heard this week once again a song that misquoted the Bible (it was some country song this time) and said that money was the root of all evil. The Bible never says that. It says the love of money is the root of all evil. Jesus never says anything bad about money, because money isn’t bad. No more than a car is bad, even though someone can use a car to drive into a crowd of people. Or no more than a gun is bad, because bad people use it for bad things. The saying is guns don’t kill people; people kill people, and it’s true that if you got rid of all the guns in the world, you’d still have people killing people. Nothing – or almost nothing (I don’t want to endorse crack or meth here) – nothing is bad if used with a pure heart. To the pure, all things are pure. And that includes money. If anything, Jesus’ parable of the unrighteous manager is a parable of the good money can do. And when at the end of your Gospel reading, the translation says, “You cannot serve both God and money,” the word isn’t money in Greek. It’s an Aramaic word (that’s the language Jesus grew up speaking) called mammon, you cannot serve both God and mammon. And mammon isn’t dollar bills. It’s Wealth as a god people worship. Money isn’t a god. There is no God but One. But when people love money above all things, and trust in it, and fear losing it, then they make it into Mammon, this false god who doesn’t love you and will end up making your life miserable.
Why focus on money? The entire sixteenth chapter of Luke is devoted to worship of money. It’s our parable for today, and then it’s the rich man and Lazarus. Jesus warns against love of money. And He’s doing what the ten commandments require – He did write them with his own pre-incarnate finger on the stone tablets on Sinai. Of those ten commandments, a full third of them, 3.333 out of ten, speak against love of money. The seventh – you shall not steal, the ninth and tenth, you shall not covet, desire, envy, your neighbor’s stuff, his wealth. And the first, you shall have no other gods, and the chief false god people worship is mammon. Jesus doesn’t harp on this to say we should all be poor or that we should be afraid of money (remember the fellow that hid his talent in the ground and refused to use it – that didn’t turn out well). He does it because He knows what tempts us and what draws our hearts and our imaginations away from trust in Him. And money is at the top. I doubt there is a single person here over the age of say 8 who hasn’t dreamed about having millions and millions of dollars, and what we would do with it, all sorts of things, giving money to our loved ones and family, giving money to the church, to the college, building the entire campus. And this reveals the love of our heart – we love money and we recognize its power and we want it for ourselves.
So Jesus teaches us three things about money in our Gospel for this morning. First he talks of a steward, a manager. What does a manager do? He manages someone else’s stuff. And that is the first thing we need to know. We are managers, stewards, of God’s stuff. Everything we have is on loan from God. You can talk all you want about how you worked hard to get your money and you can compare yourself to the one who squandered his money and didn’t work hard, and you’d be right, you should work hard, and God does bless hard work with money, but even then, who put you in your childhood home, who gave you your parents who raised you right, who gave you your talents, your intelligence, your ambition to work hard and to save and to spend wisely? God did. What do you have that you didn’t receive, St. Paul asks, and the answer is very obvious to any honest person – nothing. Everything I have God gave me. And this changes your outlook completely, if you know that all the money you have, all the stuff, all the influence, God gave it to you, you’re a manager of His stuff, and He wants you to use it all to give honor and glory and praise to Him.
And that gets us to the second point. The manager misused his master’s money. And this charge falls on every one of us. I’m not saying here it’s a sin to use your money for vacations, for nice cars, for enjoyment – it’s not, at all, and don’t let anyone guilt you into thinking that you’re a bad Christian if you spend some of your money to do things you and your family like to do. God is no killjoy. He gave Adam and Eve the garden to enjoy, and He gives you life on this earth to enjoy His blessings, and money can help with that. Obviously. But, you have misused your money, if not in action then in heart. The crisis in the Christian Church today and in the LCMS in particular (because that concerns us), is that churches are shutting down or close to it because they can’t pay a pastor. “Can’t” though is hard to stomach, when you go to the parking lot of these churches and see sixty thousand dollar trucks and SUVs. It’s not that we don’t have a right to have these things. It’s that sustaining the church is more important, infinitely more important. Everyone of us should rather have a rickety old vehicle than have no church to go to. And we should be prepared to lose all our luxuries and conveniences if it means sustaining the preaching of Christ among us, because He is our true treasure.
So examine your heart along with your finances. God gave you your wealth first and foremost to exercise your heart, so that out of your heart comes the sincere and happy desire to spend that money to help those in need and to support the work of bringing the Gospel to poor sinners. It is not enough to give either. God doesn’t need your money. It’s already His. If He can raise children of Abraham from the stones, He can also make money grow on trees. He doesn’t need you for that. But He wants your heart directed to what matters. Most of us don’t have much money, but it’s just as important for the poorest of us to give from the heart because we love the Gospel, as it is for the more well off among us to give. Obviously the wealthy can give more, but Jesus looked at the rich putting gobs of money into the collection plate, and He pointed to the one widow who put a couple pennies in and commended her, because she gave from her heart. That’s what God cares about. So every week or every month, when you sit down to decide where your money’s going, make that your heart’s desire. Pray about it. Dear God, give me a passion for your Son, whose passion on the cross has won me a poor sinner to be your own dear child, and let me give of what You have given me to glorify your name on this earth, until You take me to the true riches of heaven. Amen.
The third thing Jesus stresses is that we will all give an account. The manager has to give an account of what he did to his master. We have to give an account to God of how we lived here on this earth, and that includes our use of money. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to go to heaven because you gave ten percent of your income to the church. You don’t go to heaven, you don’t become a child of God, by what you do, but by what God has done for you on the cross and gives to you here in the body and blood of Jesus. But our works do reflect what is in our heart. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I say I love my wife. But if my actions don’t show it, if I ignore her when she’s talking to me, if I never say I love you or never show her affection or never comfort her when she’s sad or always bark at her and order her around, then it shows what is in my heart. That’s the way it goes with faith and works. You trust in Christ your Savior. You love Him because He has first loved you, because He spent His life for you, because He is your life. He’s your priceless treasure. And therefore, therefore, you give of what He has given you.
Then Jesus finally applies this all to us. He says, “I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous mammon, that when it fails, they may receive you into the everlasting homes.” “When it fails,” he says. Not if. When. Because it will. Money’s going to fail you. That’s certain. And that tells you how ridiculous it is for you to put your trust in money. It’s going to fail. You won’t take it with you when you die. And more than that, even in this life, it’s going to fail you, because it won’t give you what you need. Money will never tell you, I love you. It will never forgive you when you’ve done wrong. It will never give you a clean conscience. It will never bring you closer to God and it won’t save you from death. It simply can’t meet your deepest needs. Because it’s not God. So don’t dream about what money can do. See and know what your God does do. See how the Father gave His dearest treasure to you. See that He didn’t spare His own Son, but sent Him to be your brother on this sinful earth. Hear your dear Jesus call you His friend and lay down His life for you. See Him conquer the death you fear, and rise triumphant from the grave. See Him give His life not just for you but to you, in His body and His blood, so that you will live forever with God and without sin or pain or any evil. See Him take all your sin and put in on Himself and suffer its punishment, because He loves you. Hear the Father call you His beloved son in your Baptism, call you forgiven and righteous and holy, because you’re clothed in the innocence of His Son.
Jesus will never fail you. He is your treasure. He’s what forms your heart and your outlook on everything. So don’t let guilt or obligation move your heart to give. Let God giving Himself to you fill your heart with generosity. Jesus says something startling here. He says make Christian friends by means of unrighteous wealth, by means of money. He means, give your money for the support of preaching the Gospel, because that’s what you care about, and that Gospel will give you Christian friends, who, even if they aren’t your best friends here on this earth, will be your eternal friends, and you’ll see them in heaven, from every tribe and nation and generation, and it will be a beautiful reunion of the family of God, and they’ll welcome you into your eternal home, and they’ll be there because they trusted the same Jesus you trust, because He was there treasure here in this life as He is your treasure now, and with them you will live forever with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.