Bible Text: Luke 16:1-9 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 9 | Jesus isn’t against money. He’s not against people making it or having lots of it. He does say, “How difficult it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” He says it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God. But he follows this immediately by saying, “With man this is impossible. But with God all things are possible.” And God has brought many a rich man to heaven. Abraham, Job, David, the Bible is full of examples of rich men who love God more than their money. Job is the perfect example. He loses it all and says, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. So we should never look at having money as a bad thing. Vying in competition for the most misquoted Bible verse of all time is 1 Timothy 6:10. I just heard it quoted in the country song, “Buy me a boat,” where a man rightly sings that while money can’t buy you love, it can buy you a boat, and a truck, and a cooler full of Coors Light. You got to love country. But then he tries to quote 1 Timothy 6:10 and says, “money is the root of all evil.” And I’ve heard this too many times to count. Money is the root of all evil. No. The Bible never says that. It says, “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Money isn’t the root of any evil. The human heart is. The human heart’s love of money is. Love of money will cause husbands and wives to fight and hate and burn with anger. It’ll cause brothers to sue brothers. It’ll cause people to buy all sorts of expensive things they don’t need while giving nothing or next to nothing to their neighbor in need or their church with a leaky roof. Love of money means loving the stuff money can buy more than you love people, more than you love Jesus, more than you love peace with God and a good conscience. A rich man can enter into the kingdom of heaven. But not the lover of money, rich or poor. Jesus means it when he says, “You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money.”
My counsel and encouragement to you as your pastor, to whom God has given the care of your eternal soul, if you are not giving regularly to the church, start now. Give of the first fruits, like Abel. Put your money where your heart is. Take care of yourself and your family and your church. Not because you can buy heaven, you can’t, Jesus bought it for you with things far more precious than gold or silver, but because your flesh’s love for money must die and the Spirit of God who lives in you will rejoice with joy no money can buy when you support the preaching of the Gospel.
Money isn’t bad. It’s quite the opposite. People are bad. Or people are good. Good trees bear good fruit and bad trees bear bad fruit. Jesus makes people good. He doesn’t just forgive sins. He gives of Himself, and He is pure goodness. Do you think that Jesus could put His body and blood in your mouth, the body and blood that defeated death and hell, the body and blood of God, and this would not change you, transform you, who trust in Him? No, Jesus changes us when He gives Himself to us. He changes us when He gives us His Spirit. We learn to love what He loves. We learn to hate what he hates. He becomes our priceless treasure, and all other treasures we use for Him. So, when Jesus makes people good, they do good. And that includes doing good with their money.
It’s beautiful that Jesus represents God as a rich man in our Gospel lesson. “There was a certain rich man.” God is rich. He possesses everything. Before creation, He possessed everything, because the Father had His Son, the Son had His Father, the Spirit proceeded from their love. God possesses everything. And when He created all things, He possessed what His love begot, the world, man and woman, the mountains, the sky, the forests and lakes, the animals, everything. It’s His. And what does He do with all His riches? He uses it for us. He gives every tree good for eating to the man and his wife. He subjugates all creation to us and makes us His stewards, his managers. He models what you do with riches. You pour it out for the glory of God and the help of your neighbor. That’s what God did. Be imitators of God. And God does this not simply with the stuff He created, He does it with Himself, who is riches itself. The Son takes on our flesh and our poverty, He empties Himself and makes Himself of no reputation, He who is rich becomes poor for our sake, to make us rich in Himself. He who is life itself, dies to restore life to us. He to whom the forests bow hangs on a tree. He gives Himself, He spends His honor and His love and His glory on us, all His riches. And He does it because we are His priceless treasure. Because He loves us. So, in the same act He saves us and gives us the path to walk in. And it is a beautiful path.
The rich man commends the unrighteous steward for using money wisely. That means he used money with an eye toward the future. He used money to provide for his future home on earth. But the path God gives us is to do as He does. To use our riches to provide for others, with an eye toward their happiness with God, here on earth and forever in eternity.
Look at where Jesus directs us, to make friends by means of our money so that we see these friends in heaven. “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous money, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” Now that’s a wonderful thing. I absolutely love this parable. Because it doesn’t ignore the use of money. It acknowledges money’s power. It’s not some naïve, I don’t need any money. Of course, you do. It’s how God takes care of you. Think of it. Without money I can’t take care of my children or my wife, without money I can’t give to the church’s upkeep or help pay for the teachers and the school. Jesus isn’t condemning money here. That’s like condemning alcohol because people misuse it. No, God is saying you use what the world uses for unrighteousness, you use it to make friends who will join you in heaven. Put your money where your heart is. Buying a new car, upgrading in housing, taking care for more and more pleasure and ease in your life, keeping up with the Joneses, that has to be secondary at the very least. Supporting the preaching of the Gospel is primary. I don’t just support my kids with food and a roof over their heads because I want them to live healthy and long on this earth, I support them so they have a place to be fed with God’s word and see it’s the most important thing in the world for them and for their mother and me. I don’t just support this church because I get paid from this church, or because we have a budget to meet, but because the money given here goes to making sure that the Christian faith is created in that font, and Christian faith is strengthened at that altar. I don’t just support the school because it’s a good education for my children, but because it’s a godly one, a Christian one, for all the children, and I want to see them in heaven. That’s what all of this means. Your money when it is given for the teaching of the Gospel, supports the very thing that makes friends of God whom you will see in heaven. It’s an amazing thing.
When you by God’s grace enter into your eternal dwelling, when you see your truest Friend, your Lord Jesus Christ, who spent His life on you to buy you an eternal home and gave it to you freely without any cost to you, when the chorus of angels greets you in heavenly joy, the friends you made by unrighteous money will welcome you into your eternal home. Your money in the end will fail you. Your body, on which you’ve spent so much money, it will fail you too. You’ll go down to the grave and you’ll take nothing with you. But the Gospel you support, it won’t fail you and it won’t fail your friends; it’s the power of God for salvation to all who believe. Jesus won’t fail you. He’s died for you. He’s risen. He’s sought you out and made you His. He won’t fail you. That’s the reality. He will do what no money could do for your body. He’ll raise it from the dead, perfect, beautiful, without sin or pain forever. He’ll do what no money could buy for your soul, and fill it with a love for Him and for one another that is never stained again by greed or pride or lust or any such thing. And the ridiculous honor he gives us here on earth is that we can use our money to support His work now on this earth.
Money is called unrighteous because, among other things, it doesn’t last forever. It will be destroyed with everything else that it buys on this sinful earth. Righteousness does though. It lasts forever. The Righteousness of Christ, His innocence, the robe of purity that will cover you through eternity, it lasts forever. And Christ Himself gives it to you today in His body and blood. He gives you riches beyond measure. So set your mind on things of heaven, where Christ your Lord dwells, and look forward to the great reunion of friends in Christ, from every generation, in your eternal dwelling. Amen.