How To Invest Your One And Only Life Series

How to Invest Your One and Only Life

Created for Significance. Week 4

CCCAG March 28th, 2021

Scripture: Luke 16:1–13 (reading it as we go through)

Prayer

Anyone who has raised more than one child knows that, because each of them has a unique temperament and motivational style, you often speak differently to one child than to the other.

Anyone who has been part of a group knows that there are times when you speak differently to those inside the group than to those outside the group. In fact, even within a group, because there are often the curious and the casual, as well as the committed, often the way a person talks to the various types inside the group differs.

Know what I’m saying?

Well, over the past three weeks, we’ve been listening to Jesus tell stories to one type of people. In Luke 14 and 15, he’s surrounded by highly trained and highly (but falsely) confident religious types called Pharisees.

In Luke 14 and 15, Jesus has all sorts of stories to tell these people; stories so good they’ve been recorded, read, and learned countless times in the last two thousand years. If you’ve been here the past three weeks, you know that those stories are the stories of the great banquet, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the wayward son.

But while Jesus is telling those stories, he’s aware of another group that’s listening in. A group, not that opposed him, like the Pharisees, but a group supporting him. A group of insiders. A group so committed to him that they had bet the farm that following him was the best decision for their lives and eternities.

So in Jesus’ typical fashion, when he gets through talking with the outsiders, he turns to these close followers, and talks to them awhile. He tells them a very intriguing story about a scoundrel who’d bet the farm on a person he had offended. A person he had mistreated. But because of the character of the mistreated one, the scoundrel won the bet and secured his prosperous future.

That’s the story I want to tell you today.

Like last week, I’m going to pretend that you know virtually nothing about first century Palestinian culture, and give you all sorts of brain candy to chew on so that you can see this story in the way the original hearer saw it.

When he finishes addressing the Pharisees, Jesus turns to his disciples and tells them the story of the shrewd manager.

It’s a story about a rich guy, a nobleman, who finds out that he’s being cheated by one of his employees. He fires the employee, who then does something very creative and unethical to ensure his future. The twist to the story is, instead of being outraged at this, the nobleman praises the manager for being a shrewd operator.

For centuries, this story has confounded logical, right-brained Western thinkers, because, for the life of them, they can’t understand why Jesus or the character that represents God in the story would praise someone for doing something unethical.

They’ve come up with a lot of theories of how this might work or what’s wrong with the story. But all of them miss the mark unless they know something about Middle Eastern culture.

The story of the shrewd manager is a story Jesus tells in four scenes:

1. In the master’s office. This is where the scoundrel gets word that he’s fired

2. On the way to get the books. This is where some huge thinking goes on, revealing what this unscrupulous manager knows to be true about the man he’s been cheating, even though the man has treated him so well.

3. With the books. This is where the manager works the plan he hatched on the way to get the books. And the plan works flawlessly.

4. In the master’s office (again). This is where the climax comes.

Let me walk you through each of these scenes

Scene One: In the master’s office.

In this scene, three characters are introduced, though only two of them are actually in the room.

The first character is the master. He’s a wealthy Middle Eastern landowner. Jesus calls him, “a rich man” and tells us that the people in the area respect him so much that many of them come to him to tell him that his manager is cheating him.

Jesus’ exact words are, “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions” (Luke 16:2). The tense of the verb in the original language indicates that the manager was accused repeatedly of this kind of embezzlement.

So the master asks him about it, calmly and graciously. He doesn’t scold, berate, or threaten. He doesn’t demand repayment or put the manager in jail, which were well within his rights. He’s an impressive landlord.