This Sunday we look at one of the most misunderstood stories Jesus ever told. He explains that Christians can learn from non-Christians who at times do a better job dealing with reality.
Christians can be prone to over-spiritualizing, masking problems with language that sounds spiritual, avoiding realities and being too passive in the face of difficulty. If this dishonest manager had the courage to face his problem head-on by relying on the character and the generosity of his master, how much more can we face anything, confident that our gracious and merciful God can be trusted?
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Full Sermon Script
Hi, I’m Matt VanCleave, Teaching Pastor at Blue Oaks.
Today we’re going to look at an interesting story Jesus told about problem solving.
Jesus was the wisest teacher who ever lived, and he wanted truth to be available to everyone; he wanted his way of living to be fully accessible.
So at the heart of his teachings, he told stories.
We’re devoting ourselves to these stories so that we can understand what it is that Jesus wanted so badly for us to know.
So this is the story from Luke 16:
Jesus told his disciples: There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, “What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.”
The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg—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 one of his master’s debtors. 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.”
Then he asked the second, “And how much do you owe?” “A thousand bushels of wheat,” he replied. He told him, “Take your bill and make it eight hundred.”
The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.
I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Now, I have to say from the start that this story is almost universally acknowledged to be one of the most difficult stories to understand of all the stories Jesus told.
It’s a story of a manager who gets fired for taking advantage of his position and stealing money from his boss.
And he responds by sneaking behind his boss’ back, not letting anyone know he was fired, and illegally reducing the debt others owed his boss to make himself look good. And he gets commended.
Now, how in the world are we supposed to understand that?
Well, I hope it becomes clear as we study it, so let’s look back over it.
As the story begins, the boss finds out one of his managers has been wasting his money. Maybe he’s embezzling, maybe it’s just incompetence. Jesus doesn’t say.
So he confronts this guy and says: “What is this I hear about you?”
So the boss is obviously hearing things about this manager that are not good.
As Jesus, the master storyteller, tells this story, the manager has to wonder, “How much does my boss know?”
Does this ever happen to you? Your boss or your spouse or parent asks you about something you’ve been doing that you had no idea they knew about.
You’re quiet right? You wonder how much they know.
He doesn’t want to give himself away, so he doesn’t say anything in response to this question, kind of like when kids are playing in the other room and you hear something shatter, some expensive-sounding breakage, and you ask, “What’s going on in there?”
All kids give the same one-word answer: “Nothing.”
Why? Because kids aren’t dumb.
That’s acting shrewdly. That’s what’s going on in this story.
This manager doesn’t answer the question. He’s not dumb, as we’ll see.
Maybe this manager is thinking he’ll bluff his way out of this.
But then he hears those dreaded words: “You’re fired.”
And then this boss goes on to say, “And I want a complete audit of your books.”
At this point the manager is in deep weeds. If he doesn’t do something quick, he’s toast. So he asks the question, “What will I do now that my master is taking the position away?”
He realizes things are not going to work out with his boss, so he doesn’t waste time making excuses. A lot of us would make excuses. And a lot of Jesus’ listeners probably expected that.
But this guy deals with the reality; he’s fired.
When word of this gets around, he’s not going to get another management position.
He knows he’s not going to get a good reference out of this deal, so he thinks about other options. He says in verse 3:
“What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg—
So he keeps thinking until it comes to him. The way Jesus tells the story, the implication is that the idea comes to him at this point. He says, “I know what I’ll do…”
Now, as a great storyteller, Jesus doesn’t tell us at this point what the guy’s going to do. The guy says, “I’ve got a plan.” We’ve got to keep listening to find out what the plan is.
Something we need to understand about this story at this point is, no one else knows he’s been fired yet. Everyone except the master thinks he’s still the manager, so he’s got a very narrow window of opportunity, and he formulates a plan.
He’ll go to the people who owe the master and cancel a large portion of their debt. That way, they’ll be so grateful that, when he’s out of a job, they’ll hire him. They’ll, more than likely, be willing to help him out. That’s the statement, “when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”
He no sooner thinks of this plan than he begins to execute it, and we see it unfold. In verse 5, Jesus tells us:
So he called in each one of his master’s debtors.
Why does Jesus say he called them in one at a time?
He probably doesn’t want any of them to be talking to each other. This is a high-stakes game. One wrong question or another employee stumbling into the room at the wrong moment, and he gets discovered.
He doesn’t want to risk blowing his cover. If they find out about him, he’s finished.
So you could imagine, he’s in a big hurry. He doesn’t even have time for greetings. He doesn’t address these people as sir or friend. Jesus has him say to the first guy: “How much do you owe my master?”
No small talk or anything. He cuts right to the chase. The guy says:
”Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,” he replied. The manager told him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.”
Why quickly?
Before the boss finds out what I’m doing. So within a couple seconds, he saves this guy hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And the same for the next guy, who pays in wheat, and probably for many more.
The amazing thing about this is, it works. The master finds out about what he did, and Jesus says:
The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.
This is kind of interesting, isn’t it?
What’s going on here? It seems like Jesus is advocating dishonest business practices.
Now, it’s important that we understand this is not an allegory, where everything stands for something. If it were an allegory, you would ask:
Who does the steward represent?
Who does the master stand for?
What does the olive oil stand for?
The stories Jesus told are generally about one primary point.
What Jesus is doing here is using a rabbinic technique that was called “from light to heavy.” Usually it involves the phrase, “How much more…”
Rabbis would tell a story, it might be kind of comic, extract one essential principle from it, and then apply it in a substantial way.
I’ll give you an example.
One time Jesus tells a story of a widow who persists with a corrupt and stingy judge until the judge finally gives her what she wants.
The point of that story is not that God is corrupt and stingy. Jesus doesn’t say God is stingy like the judge.
Jesus’ point is, if this widow can persist with a stingy, unjust judge, “how much more” should we persist with God, who longs to give us good gifts. “How much more” should we persist with our loving, honest, and generous Heavenly Father?
He goes from a light example, almost comic, kind of shady characters, to the substantial reality, to the substance, light to heavy.
He’s doing that here with the manager.
This manager had what might be called a dedication to reality. This is about the need to face reality, to face a crisis, to face a problem or opportunity.
Alright, in just a moment we’re going to look at four key takeaways from this story.
Announcement
Alright, now let’s look at what the manager did.
He’s in a crisis, and there are four key things I want you to carry away from this story.
First of all, the manager has a problem, and instead of denying it, he looks it square in the face.
The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job.
That’s a key statement.
So the first thing I’d like you to carry away from this story is:
He acknowledged the problem.
How many of us have problems we don’t acknowledge?
Maybe you’re failing one of your classes and you haven’t acknowledged you have a problem yet.
Maybe you’re failing in your marriage and you haven’t acknowledged that problem yet.
Maybe you’re stuck in a lie and you think, “It’s no big deal. It’ll pass.” You’re not acknowledging your problem.
Maybe you’re headed down the road toward some destructive pattern of sin in your life and you haven’t acknowledged you have a problem.
This guy acknowledges his problem, “I’ve lost my job.”
But then he didn’t get paralyzed by this. He doesn’t say he’s just going to give up or wait for someone to come along and help him.
So the second thing he does is:
He took responsibility.
“What am I going to do?” this shrewd guy says. In other words, “I will take responsibility.”
Next thing, instead of simply thinking, “Everything is going to be okay.”
He forms a plan.
And not only does he have a plan, but it’s going to take a lot of courage and nerve to pull it off.
Then instead of procrastinating, he takes action immediately. Jesus said, “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors.”
So the fourth thing is:
He took action.
This guy says:
I have a problem.
I will take responsibility.
I will form a plan.
I will take action.
Now, if you take these four points away with you, you will have learned a great truth in life when it comes to overcoming problems.
That’s why I think Jesus praises this guy: because he understood this truth, not because he was dishonest.
So why does Jesus praise this guy’s willingness to face his problems?
I think it’s because he knows how few people actually do it.
Jesus knows all about:
How we tend to deny our problems instead of facing them.
How we wait for help instead of owning up to responsibility.
How we have unrealistic dreams about things instead of making concrete plans.
And how we procrastinate rather than doing something and taking action.
Jesus knows about how easy it is to respond in those ways.
Jesus is saying, “Your problems are not going to just go away. They need to be faced. Will you face reality?”
A friend was telling me that his brother put tape over the gas light in his car so he didn’t have to stress out about getting gas.
That’s a guy who doesn’t want to face reality.
Your problems aren’t just going to go away.
Again, this is one of those stories that goes from light to heavy.
The deal is this:
Jesus is saying, “In this story this guy is resolute and creative and bold, even though he was only dealing with material gain, that’s all that was at stake here, just material gain. And he doesn’t even have an honest character.
“So if this guy with only material gain at stake and a dishonest character could be resolute, creative and bold, “how much more” should we as people of the light, those who have the help of God available, face any reality with courage and determination?
“How much more?” Jesus is asking.
And what’s amazing is, we don’t.
The remarkable part of this story is in the second half of verse 8. Jesus tells the story, he’s wrapping it up and commending the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly. Then Jesus says one of the more remarkable statements in the Bible:
The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.
What’s Jesus doing here?
He’s challenging the community of faith.
He’s saying, people outside the church often face their problems with greater determination than those inside the church, than Christians do.
Think about who Jesus is talking to. He’s talking to his followers. It’s always important to look at who Jesus is talking to in order to understand the meaning of the story. He’s talking to his disciples.
Jesus is saying, “I want you to learn to be street smart. I want you to be able to face your problems.”
He uses the same word in verse 8 that he uses in Matthew 10:16. He sends the disciples out on a mission there, and he commands them:
Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
Serpents were known as crafty animals.
An interesting thing is, there were two words in Jesus day for wisdom: Sophia, which was kind of a spiritual wisdom; and Phronomos, which meant street smarts.
Phronomos is the word Jesus used in Matthew 10:16; “I want you to show some street smarts, some shrewdness.”
It’s the same word he uses in this story: as innocent as doves, as shrewd as serpents.
This is interesting, because, of course, that’s the way Jesus was. That’s the way he lived.
We often see pictures of Jesus looking innocent as a dove, like a dreamer. And people often confuse being spiritual with being naive or gullible or timid.
There was nothing naive about Jesus. He was utterly realistic without a trace of cynicism, and he was utterly innocent without a trace of naïveté.
It’s part of what was so remarkable about him. There had never been that combination before.
He was shrewd as a serpent and innocent as a dove, and he wants his followers to be the same.
But he says, “You’re not. You don’t even measure up to the children of this world on this one.”
Why is that?
I think for people in faith communities, we often suffer from something. There’s no technical term for it, but there’s a word that occasionally gets used that I want to use today. I think we’re often guilty of something that might be called
over-spiritualizing.
I’ll give you a definition of it.
By over-spiritualizing, I’m talking about the tendency to seek to avoid reality and deny problems by covering them over with a veneer of language that sounds spiritual; but, in fact, is nonsense or is not realistic, and glosses over reality.
It’s an attempt to avoid reality and deny problems by just glossing over them with language that sounds spiritual, but when you get right down to it, it’s avoiding reality.
It’s kind of an abuse of spiritual language to not have to face life.
In the moments that we have left, I want to talk through some areas where we tend to do this; and give you some examples of “over-spiritualizing.”
But before we do I’d like you to hear story.
Testimony
Alright, in the time we have left I want to give you some examples of “over-spiritualizing.”
These are times when we tend NOT to do what Jesus praises this man for in this story.
One area has to do with your
Character
Let me give you an example.
And as we look at these examples, think about your life and think about where you need to face your problems. Maybe there have been problems you’re avoiding, where you need to say:
I have a problem.
I will take responsibility.
I will form a plan.
I will take action.
For example, there will be someone in the church who’s a negative person, constantly complaining, always sees themselves as a victim: “poor me. Everything bad always happens to me.” And most people end up avoiding this person.
If this is you, you may notice other people always keep you at arm’s length, they don’t want to get close to you.
The over-spiritualizing response is to avoid taking responsibility by saying, “The enemy is ruining all my relationships at church. The enemy is attacking me.”
Or you might say, “This is a church, where people should love each other, but everyone rejects me. What’s wrong with these people?”
In this situation, it’s everyone else’s fault.
It’s a game where people are able to avoid looking at a hard truth about themselves, which is: “I relate to people in a way that’s guaranteed to push them away.”
There may be a lot of issues that have to do with someone’s character:
Maybe you’re just a negative person.
Maybe you lie a lot.
Maybe you’re worried all the time.
Maybe you use people.
Maybe you talk to much and never listen.
Maybe you’ve got a character issue, and you’ve been over-spiritualizing it, making it every one else’s problem. So, today, the question for you is, will you be honest and say, “I have a problem.”
Then will you take responsibility? Will you not assume someone else is going to help you, or other people ought to love you anyway?
Will you form a plan?
Maybe you need to tell people in your small group. Odds are, they already know anyway.
If you’re not in a small group, this is a good reason to get into one. It’s part of why you’ve got to be in community, so that you can see the truth about your life and character.
Maybe if it’s a real deeply rooted thing, you need to be willing to see a professional counselor about it.
Maybe you need to memorize a verse of Scripture that deals specifically with the problem.
The writer of Psalms says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
The plan is, you have a passage of Scripture memorized so it effects your behavior.
Or maybe something else you need to do is ask people to pray for you. You can submit a prayer request online and our prayer team will pray for you.
For some of you, the truth about you is there are deep-rooted issues in your character, and you’ve just been glossing over it.
This story Jesus tells is for you. Today’s your day. Will you be honest, take responsibility, form a concrete plan, and take action?
Another area where you may over-spiritualize things is in your
Relational Life
A lot of people over-spiritualize things in their relational lives.
I’ll give you a classic example of this.
I’ve heard people who are in bad relationships say, “God is just not calling me out of this relationship yet.”
Maybe you’re dating someone you know you shouldn’t be dating, and you over-spiritualize it when the truth is, because of fear or loneliness or whatever, you just haven’t had the courage to cut it off.
Maybe you have unresolved conflict in a relationship. There’s bitterness inside of you, and it’s just eating you up inside.
Maybe you have a friend or family member who needs to be confronted. There are patterns you see that need to be addressed and you, as a close friend or family member, need to take the leadership role and do it.
Will you be honest? Will you face reality the way the guy in Jesus’ story does?
Then will you own responsibility, stop waiting for someone to bail you out?
Will you form a concrete plan; not an unrealistic dream, but a wise plan? This sometimes takes time and hard work.
Then will you take action?
Another area where you may be over-spiritualizing things is your
Future
I talked to a guy who was looking for a new job.
Here’s what he said about it: “I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m not going to look. I’m not going to talk to anyone about it. I’m not going to fill out any applications. I’m not going to do anything. That way, if I get a job, I know it will be God and not me.”
That’s what a lot of people think.
People get confused and over-spiritualize things. The assumption is that by being passive I will get God’s will for my life.
That’s like saying I won’t buy any groceries or fix any food, and that way I’ll know if any food makes its way into my body, it’ll be God doing it, not me.
I think you’ll find out God’s will is that you would be hungry.
Over-spiritualizing, a lot of times, is an attempt to avoid hard work. And God’s will for us is not that we would be passive in life. God’s will is that we learn to take initiative, to exercise judgment, to accept responsibility, to make the best decisions we can and humbly learn from the consequences.
Okay, last thing: there’s an aspect of this story that would have been apparent to Jesus’ listeners that I want to make sure we take away.
Because of all this debt that was reduced, there would have been a party that erupted in the village. The debtors would have been celebrating because that’s just the way things worked in that society.
So the owner finds out. He’s already fired the manager, but the manager goes and cheats him out of even more money. And so the owner now has two options.
One option is he could call all of those debtors in and tell them it was all a mistake. The manager had already been fired, the debts are not reduced at all, party’s over, no more celebrating. He could have done that.
Or the owner could have seen the joy in these people and decided to be amazingly generous and pay the price himself.
The master, who, of course is a clever guy, reflects on these options, and he commends the manager for his shrewdness.
Here’s what’s going on underneath the story:
The manager knew the owner’s character. He knew that he was dealing with a generous and gracious man, and he bet everything on the character of the owner; and he won.
The owner did the generous thing.
Even here Jesus’ story is so rich. Notice, the owner doesn’t rehire the manager. He doesn’t say, “Okay, I’m bringing you back on board.”
Jesus is careful not to commend dishonesty. This is not about abusing grace.
Jesus is saying, if this dishonest manager had the courage to face his problem head-on by relying on the character, the generosity and mercy of his master, how much more can you face anything, any reality, confident that our gracious and merciful God can be trusted?
Jesus is saying: you can face reality fearlessly; and take responsibility boldly; and plan wisely; and move into action decisively, because you have a gracious God and he will not let you go.
Alright let me say a prayer for you.