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Hi, this is Pastor Tom, I want to welcome you to week four of our look through
the book of Luke. We're going through chapter 16 to 20 this week in our survey
of Luke and Acts. We're going a chapter a week and we're looking at this awesome
story of the life of Jesus.

Just a simple story, a birth, we've already looked at it, a beginning, a
ministry, His ministry in Galilee, the northern part of Israel. And now we're on
a journey, a journey toward Jerusalem, a journey towards the cross. And on this
journey as we've walked through, we've seen Jesus talking to His disciples and
His followers about priorities of life.

We've seen Him talking to those who struggle with following Him about the
barriers in life. And these chapters, the focus of these chapters as we head
toward the triumphal entry into Jerusalem is on stewardship. Stewardship is a
word that means management, management of the things that God has given to us.

Jesus is about to leave and knowing that, He knows that these disciples will
have much to manage in the new church that's going to begin. And He talks to
them about things. Jesus knows that those who follow Him cannot be entrapped by
things.

We can't live for possessions if we're living for Him. He's going to tell us in
these chapters that they're mutually exclusive. But He also knows that His
followers can't be afraid of things.

We can't run away from possessions as if they're not in the world or as if
they're somehow evil in and of themselves. The possessions aren't evil. It's
what we do with them.

In fact, Jesus teaches us instead that we have to be a steward of things. We
have to use possessions. And so that's why in these chapters about possessions
on His journey towards Jerusalem, Jesus starts with a surprising story to get
His disciples' attention, to get our attention.

It's a story about a manager who was going to lose his job. And because he was
going to lose his job, well, let's pick up in the middle of the story. Here's
what he does beginning in verse 4 of this chapter.

The manager says, "I know what I'll do so that when I lose my job here, people
will welcome me into their houses. " So he called in each of his master's
debtors. And he asked the first, "How much do you owe my master?

" "Eight hundred gallons of olive oil," he replied. The manager told him, "Take
your bill. Sit down quickly and make it four hundred.

" Skipping down to verse 8, when the master found out this had happened, the
master commended the dishonest manager because he'd acted shrewdly. "For," Jesus
said, "the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind
than the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for
yourselves, so that when it's gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

" Now, Jesus isn't saying here that you use worldly wealth in order to get
saved. He's saying you use worldly wealth to invest in people so that when you
get to heaven, they can say, "Thanks for investing in me. Thanks for investing
in eternity.

" This is a parable, by the way, of what some people call negative comparison.
Jesus is not telling us to act like this dishonest manager. He's saying that if
a dishonest manager is smart enough to use things to his advantage, we as
believers, as followers of Jesus, we should be wise enough to use things, to use
possessions for God's good.

As we go through these chapters, then Jesus in this chapter, chapter 16, gives
us some principles of stewardship, of how you and I are to manage the things
that he has given. A couple of very powerful principles. Let me just read them
straight from the words of Jesus.

The first is beginning in verse 10. Here's Jesus' principle. Whoever can be
trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.

And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
Jesus goes on to say in verse 11, "So if you have not been trustworthy in
handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have
not been trustworthy with somebody else's property, who will give you property
of your own?

" Powerful principle about possessions. Jesus says possessions, far from being
meaningless. Jesus says you can see from how someone handles possessions how
they're going to handle more important things in their lives, things like
relationships and even their character.

If you handle possessions selfishly, you're going to handle relationships
selfishly. And Jesus says if you can't be trusted with possessions, how could
you be trusted with more? In a world where people were acting like possessions
are meaningless or it doesn't matter how I treat them, Jesus is saying, "No,
they're at the bottom rung of the ladder.

If you can't get that one right, how are you going to get the rest right? "
That's how important how we manage things. And that's why God has given us
things to manage so that we get to grow in our faith.

It's one of the great ways we grow in faith. Jesus trusts us with things so that
we can entrust them to him. There's a second powerful principle of possessions
in this chapter and it begins in verse 13.

Jesus says this, "No servant can serve two masters. 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 both God and money.

" That's about as clear as you could get. Jesus says you can't do it. You cannot
serve both God and money.

You're going to end up serving one or the other. And if you try to serve both
God and money, you're going to end up serving money. Why?

Because it's the lesser value. And in many ways, lesser values, we tend to slide
into them more easily because they don't take quite as much energy. They don't
take quite as much heart.

They don't take quite as much character. That's what everybody else is doing.
And so you just slide into the lesser value of living your life for tasks or
living your life for money.

Jesus says don't try to do it. I'm telling you, the principle is this. You
cannot serve two masters.

So you decide, my leader, my master, the manager of my life is going to be Jesus
Christ. And based on that, I'm going to follow him and how I manage my things.
And whatever he says about things, that's what I'm going to do.

Jesus says we should tithe. He commended the habit of tithing, talking to the
Pharisees once. He said, yes, you should tithe.

You should give 10% of whatever God's given you back to his ministries, to his
church. Jesus said it. I may not feel like doing it.

I may not understand it. But he's the master of my life. He's the one who leads
my life.

All right, Lord, I'll do it. Jesus says to give to the poor. And I may have
questions about that.

I may wonder about that and what that means and how to do that. But beside the
practicality of it, Jesus says to do it. So I should do it because he's the
leader and guide of my life.

Now if you struggle with this, you're a normal human being because we all
struggle with how we manage our money. It's so close to us. It's so close to our
hearts.

Jesus gets you into an argument right away with the Pharisees about these
principles about money. In verse 14 and 15, here's what happened. The Pharisees
who loved money heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.

He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men,
but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in
God's sight. " That's very powerful stuff.

They were sneering at Jesus. They were sneering at this truth, but Jesus says it
really reveals your heart. You want the things for yourself.

You feel like the more things you have, the more important you look. You're
measuring with the wrong measure. What's highly valued among men is detestable
in God's sight.

God doesn't measure by the amount of things that we have. We can use them in
good ways, but we should never use them as a measure in our lives. In fact,
Jesus is so pointed about this, he ends this chapter with a long story about the
rich man and Lazarus, a man who was rich and a man who was poor, and how one
thought his riches would buy his way into the kingdom of God, would buy his way
into God's good graces, or would at least at the end buy his way into a drink of
water or into telling his friends.

This story about the poor man, Lazarus, who is taken into the kingdom of God, at
the end is pointed very strongly at the Pharisees. Jesus says at the end of this
story, he said to them, "If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they
will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. " Jesus is telling
them the future here.

They wouldn't listen to the prophets and what they had to say about Jesus, so
when Jesus is resurrected, in a few chapters, they're not going to listen then
either. Now let's go back before we close to you and I. These leaders, these
religious leaders, because they loved money so much, they were justifying
themselves.

The question is, where am I justifying myself? The question in this chapter is,
am I being trustworthy with what God has given, or am I acting like it's just
all for me somehow? The question in this chapter is, have I allowed myself to
begin serving money?

It's easy to slip into. Have I allowed myself to begin serving money, either
because of my debt or because of my desire for more? That's what's leading the
way.

If so, you feel like justifying yourself right now. That's what the Pharisees
did, and Jesus said, "Wait a minute. Look at it from God's perspective.

I want to show you a different way to live. Let's take a minute to pray
together. Lord, help us to see our things from your perspective.

We need that, because we're so surrounded by things. It's so easy to get caught
up in things, to think that they're overly important. Help us to see that you
have given things not to be afraid of, but not to be overly impressed by, but
instead, Lord, to use, to use for your glory.

Whether it's feeding our family or feeding the poor. Whether it's meeting a need
in our own household, or it's meeting a need in a way that's going to advance
the kingdom of God. Lord, I pray that you help us to see that the things you put
into our hands are put there as a trust from you.

As we look at it that way, help us to begin to see things in a whole new way.
Not, Lord, as something to measure ourselves by, our importance. Not, Lord, as
something to be afraid of, as if it could spoil our spirituality.

But instead, to see those things as a way to glorify you. Help us to use things
for your glory. In your name we pray, Jesus.

Amen. Tomorrow, Jesus is going to talk to us about faith as small as a mustard
seed.