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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.