Today I'm not telling you to give. The number one conversation that is happening right now in our city and country has to do with money.
We wouldn't be helpful to you if we weren't talking about money because all of us are having a money conversation all day long and that conversation is often ill formed. How we think and act with money is a direct reflection of how we think about and act with Jesus. I promise you that you are going to hear things today that you have never heard before. I'm not trying to set your expectations too high on so,etching I can't deliver on but I'm learning some new things and I'm excited to share some of that stuff with you.
Luke 16:1-13
“There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. 2 And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ 3 And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ 7 Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ 8 The 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. 9 And 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.
This teaching will be impossible for the moralist to understand. The person who reads the Bible to just find out what is right and what is wrong. What is holy and what is unholy. What is OK and what is banned. This type of person will never be able to get past the apparent approval that Jesus has toward someone who has out stepped his authority for personal gain.
To start discernment process we need to challenge some of the assumptions we have about Jesus. There is no question that Jesus was born into the working poor. His parents couldn’t get a room for the birth. If you have money, options normally present themselves. Then he blanked it being “wrapped in swaddling cloths”.... strips of cloth. They can’t afford an entire blanket. Then placed in a “manger”... a feeding trough.
Money is Essential
Never invest in a business you cannot understand. Warren Buffet
JESUS AS A MAN WITH MONEY AND ALWAYS THE SMARTEST IN THE ROOM
HOW DID JESUS DO HIS MINISTRY?
Money is Replicable
Jesus was always the smartest person in the room.
Carpenter --> Builder
He have great catches, he confounds scholars in the synagogues and so on. Of course he would have observed and figured out how to grow and replicate money. He found out how to grow a crowd and how to grow disciples, growing money is simple by comparison.
Other scholars notice that Jesus was a well-educated rabbi. It appears that his parents “occupied a prominent place in the community” and were sufficiently well-off “to have had property in Capernaum as well as Nazareth.” They also were able to go to Jerusalem every year for Passover (Luke 2: 41), something most families could not afford. Stark, Rodney In The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion
PART OF HOW MONEY IS REPLICABLE IS THAT IT IS PREDICTABLE
Luke 16:10-12
One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?
"IM NOT A DISCIPLINE PERSON" You don't say, "I'm not a marriage person."
The material conditions needed for capitalism existed in many civilizations in various eras, including China, Islam, India, Byzantium, and probably ancient Rome and Greece as well. But none of these societies broke through and developed capitalism, as none evolved ethical visions compatible with this dynamic economic system. Instead, leading religions outside the West called for asceticism and denounced profits, while wealth was exacted from peasants and merchants by rapacious elites dedicated to display and consumption. 10 Why did things turn out differently in Europe? Because of the Christian commitment to rational theology. Stark, Rodney The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.
Traditional societies celebrate consumption while holding work in contempt. This is true not only of the privileged elite but even of those whose days are spent in toil. Notions such as the dignity of labor or the idea that work is a virtuous activity were incomprehensible in ancient Rome or in any other precapitalist society. Rather, just as spending is the purpose of wealth, the preferred approach to work is to have someone else do it and, failing that, to do as little as possible. In China the Mandarins grew their fingernails as long as they could (even wearing silver sheaths to protect them from breaking) in order to make it evident that they did no labor.
As many of the great Christian monastic orders continued to maximize profits and to lend money at whatever rate of interest the market would bear, they were increasingly subjected to a barrage of condemnations from more traditional clergy, who accused them of the sin of avarice.
Luke 14:28-30
or which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
JESUS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PREDICTABLE PATTERNS FOR ECONOMY
Luke 12:38
Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and
from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.
Jesus was a progressive economist/investment bamker. He described money as a resource to be invested for a return, charity as a tired tradition, and a coming Kingdom full of industry and innovation that would turn the world on it’s head. He said money holds unique and incredible power--to cripple and consume you, or to set you free.
MY PERSONAL ROI LIST
Matt 13:12
For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an
abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be
taken away.
Jesus is the smartest and most progressive economist the world has ever seen and the stuff He said about money no one has said before or since. It is the stuff economies...
Deut 15:6
For the Lord your God will bless you, as he promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.
Money is Delusional
Luke 16:13
No 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.”
Financial Capitalist: Money is the main thing. Give your life to it.
We don't have an endowment here and for strategic reason we will never have an endowment. That always makes you lazy. In fact, one of the reasons that the church in Europe is dead is that the pastors have no incentive to work hard, to be innovative and to take risks. It doesn't matter. There is a reason why universities are not wanting to tenure new professors. It isn't just that they are trying to save money and maybe not honoring to the teachers but also a recognition that many will crank back on their work
Financial Fatalist: Money is a mysterious thing. Give in to its wims.
Financial Idealist: Money shouldn’t matter. Everyone should should have communal possessions and just enough money to live on with everything else going to the poor.
RICH PEOPLE...
Have Multiple Houses
Pay other people to help them figure out money financial advisor
Throw out food because they have so much it has gone bad
Build houses for inatimate objects. They are called garages.
Have so many things that they have enough money to pay someone to do nothing unless they lose some of their things.
Look at a closet full of clothes and say things like, “I have nothing to wear.”
small devices that give and receive messages instantaneously to get and give any info possible.
Rich people have shoes to match different outfits. They have shoes to walk in, run in, go to work in, lounge around the house in, wear blue pants with, black pants with, etc, 40% I'd the world doesn't have a single pair of shoes.
Another such thing is money. Today the average person vilifies someone who has more money than us. We assume they are soul-less or selfish or the accidental recipient of good fortune. You can be soulless if you have money or poverty. You can be selfish if you are wealthy and have resources or if you are in poverty and desire resources. Unless you, are the child of someone who made your money for you and set you up with trust accounts your money isn’t an accidental occurrence.
You can have both God and money but you can't serve both God and money. And, the more money you have the more you have to work to invest your efforts in God.
