The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
On Monday, August 24 at about 5 a.m. in the morning, Hurricane Andrew crashed ashore on the coast of Florida with the power of a hundred atomic bombs. Packing winds up to 160 m.p.h., the storm took dead aim at the town of Homestead, which lay directly in its path. In the space of just a couple of hours, Hurricane Andrew caused 20 billion dollars worth of damage and took at least 12 lives. Many were calling it the worst natural disaster in the United States in 100 years.
Houses were ripped apart, boats and automobiles were stacked up like firewood, banks and supermarkets and hotels were gutted. And in the aftermath, the residents of Homestead wandered around in a state of shock. They had lost everything. They had no homes, no jobs to go to, no food to eat, no water to drink, no electricity. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs.
One man sat beside a mound of wreckage which used to be a house. He told how he and his family had just moved into that brand new house three weeks ago. They had saved for years to buy their own home, and finally they had realized their dream. But now, just three weeks later, their dream house was nothing more than a pile of rubble; gone in a few moments of the hurricane’s fury.
What a stunning reminder of just how temporary things are. We scrimp and we save and we devote our energy and our time to acquiring possessions which can be taken away from us in a moment. And in the process, we miss out on true riches.
Jesus told a parable about this in Luke 16. Of the 38 parables that our Lord gave us in the New Testament, 16 of them have to do with money or possessions. That’s because nothing reveals the condition of our hearts more clearly than what we do with our money, or our possessions.
Someone has said that you can tell a lot about a man just by looking at his checkbook. You can tell about his priorities, his values, the things he considers important in life. Most of all, you can tell about his spiritual condition.
Let’s look at this parable in Luke 16 to discover what God wants to teach us about wealth and our relationship to it.
Read Luke 16:1-8
Now this parable has given people a lot of trouble down through the years. It almost seems as though Jesus is commending this servant for being dishonest; for feathering his own nest with his master’s money.
But let’s take a closer look at it. This servant had control over the rich man’s money. It wasn’t his money, it belonged to his master. He was a steward, a manager of it. That was very common in those days.
Now, evidently, the manager had been rather careless with that money, because word came back to the master that he had been wasting it. And the master demanded that he give a final accounting because he was going to be fired.
The servant thought “What do I do now? I’m going to lose my job. Pretty soon, I’m not going to have all this power and influence and money at my disposal. How am I going to make a living? I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m too ashamed to beg. What am I going to do?” He was in a bind, and his problem was urgent.
So Jesus tells us what he did. This fellow may have been wasteful and dishonest, but he wasn’t stupid! Recognizing that he wasn’t going to be manager much longer - his days were numbered - he used the power and authority he still had over his master’s possessions to invest in his own future.
He called in his master’s debtors. And these were people of influence themselves - we know that from the amounts they had borrowed. One of them owed 800 gallons of olive oil. That’s a lot of salad dressing! The servant said “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.” You can hear the urgency in his voice. He knows his time is limited.
Another man owed the master a thousand bushels of wheat. The manager told him, “Take your bill and make it eight hundred.” Why the difference? Why did the first guy get a 50% discount and the second guy only get 20%? Probably because of the relative value of the commodities involved. A bushel of wheat was worth more than a gallon of olive oil. As best we can figure, the manager was saving both of these debtors about 500 denarii, which amounts to 16 months’ wages for an ordinary day laborer.
Now you see what the manager has done? His master is going to fire him. He knows his days are numbered in his present position. Pretty soon he’s going to be standing out on the sidewalk. So he uses the time he has left, and he uses the authority of his present position to win friends for the day when he is out of a job. He uses the rich man’s possessions, which were never his in the first place, to make an investment in his own future.
Now when the rich man finds out about it, all he can do is laugh. He understands immediately what his manager has done. The rich man is a man of the world. He’s seen his share of sharp business deals. And he can’t help but admire the manager’s shrewdness, even though it’s going to cost him money. He knows he’s been taken. He doesn’t commend the manager for his dishonesty; he commends him for being a sharp cookie.
Now the parable ends in the middle of verse 8. And Jesus’ commentary on the parable begins there with the statement “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” When he says “their own kind”, what he basically means is “their stuff.”
What he’s saying is “The people of this world are sharper at dealing with life as they understand it than are the children of the light.” The people of the world have more “street smarts” than Christians do.
The manager figured that, hey, he was going to lose his job. So he’d better do something about his future. He’d better provide for himself. And he knew that he wasn’t going to have the rich man’s money at his disposal for very much longer. So it made eminent good sense to him to use something he was going to lose anyway to gain something he couldn’t lose - namely, friends who would look after him when he was out of a job.
You see what Jesus is saying here in spiritual terms? He’s saying “Hey, you Christians are living like this world is all there is. Your living like you’re going to be here forever. You hoard your possessions and you hoard your money like you intend on keeping it. You can’t keep it. It’s not even yours in the first place! You’re just managers of it.
And the days of your management tenure are short. The time is soon coming when you’re going to have to give an accounting. It’s all going to be taken away from you. Then what are you going to have? Will you have used those resources to gain things which are of eternal value?
There are three major spiritual lessons which come out of this parable:
1. Use your money to invest in eternity.
Luke 16:9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Once upon a time, a wealthy Christian woman died and went to heaven. The angels showed her to the place where she would live. It was a very tiny, plain cottage, with no curtains on the windows, and no carpets on the floors. She was quite put out, and complained “Who lives in that beautiful mansion over there?”
“Oh that belongs to your gardener” one of the angels replied.
“How is it that he has a house so much better than mine?” the lady asked.
“Well, that’s because the houses here in heaven are prepared from the materials that are sent up ahead of you.” the angel replied. “We do not choose the materials. You do — by the way you serve God while you’re on earth.”
A few weeks ago, Carolyn and I went up to Montreal to attend the twenty year reunion of a youth group we had been a part of while we were teenagers. It was a unique youth group. We had a tremendous spirit of enthusiasm and excitement about the Lord. Many people went out of that group into full-time Christian service as pastors and missionaries.
People came from all over the continent to attend that reunion. We hadn’t seen each other in 20 years. But when you walked in, there were hugs and handshakes and lots of laughter and greetings. Someone said that it was a foretaste of what heaven will be like. A grand reunion where you are met by friends.
Tell me what’s going to happen to you when you walk through the gates of heaven? Are there going to be friends waiting for you there because of the way that you spent your money? Are there going to be people who are going to wrap their arms around you and welcome you and say “Hey, I’m here because you gave your money so that Lynbrook Baptist Church could have programs like Sonshine Street.”
Or “I’m here because you gave so that Rich and Sally Johnson could minister to the people in Hong Kong, or Andy and Linda Brucato could share the Gospel with the people in Bologna, or Dan and Pam Clancy could take the Good News to Turkey. I’m here because you gave. Your gift was an investment in me!”
When you walk through the gates of heaven, you’re not going to be greeted by houses or boats or cars. There’s going to be no furniture or electronic equipment come rushing up to you and say “Oh we’re so glad that you purchased us!” No, all that junk gets left behind, doesn’t it. It’s all temporary.
The only things in heaven are going to be people, because people are eternal. So Jesus says “invest your money so that people will get there. Then you’ll have friends who will greet you when you walk in the door.” You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead!
2. When it comes to being a manager, the way you handle the little things indicates the way you’ll handle the big.
Luke 16:10 “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. 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 someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?
There is one fundamental lesson that we all tend to forget. And that is that we do not own our possessions; we are simply managers of them. There’s a big difference between being an owner and being a manager: that difference is accountability.
We are accountable to God for the money and the possessions that we have. They belong to him. He has put them under our care so that we can use them for his glory.
Now what Jesus is saying here in verses 10-12 is this: Don’t expect God to entrust you with spiritual things if you’re not being a faithful manager in the way that you handle material things.
Most people think that Jesus is saying “Look, if you are faithful with a little money, I will give you a lot of money.” But that’s not what he is saying. The “little” that Jesus refers to here is our material possessions, whatever the amount. And the “much” that he refers to is spiritual possessions - things like being able to understand the truth of the Word, being able to communicate that truth, seeing people saved, having an impact for God; making a difference spiritually in people’s lives. That’s spiritual wealth.
What Jesus is saying is this: You will never gain true spiritual riches; you’ll never really be effective in the Christian life, until you learn to be a faithful manager of your material possessions.
You know, I’ve met Christians who want to grow spiritually. Some of them even want
to get into full-time ministry. But their personal finances are a mess. They’re in debt up to their eyeballs. They’re not giving biblically to the Lord’s work. They may borrow money and not return it. They can’t even balance their checkbook. Do you think that God is going to entrust people like that with spiritual riches when they aren’t being faithful with their worldly possessions?
This is why Jesus spent so much time talking about how we handle our material possessions. 16 parables he told about it. Because the way we handle material things is a utterly reliable barometer of the way we will handle spiritual things.
Luke 16:11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
3. You’ll either love God and use money, or you’ll love money and use God.
Luke 16:13 “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.”
Over the past few years, we’ve seen the spectacle of TV preachers who professed to love God, but what they really loved was money. And because they loved money more than they loved God, they brought the name of God into deep reproach. THey made God and Christianity a laughingstock.
If you love money, you’ll end up using God. You’ll use God to trying to get him to give you more money. There can only be one master: it’ll either be God or it’ll be money.
Money makes a very harsh master. John D. Rockefeller: “I have made many millions but they have brought me no happiness.”
William H. Vanderbilt: “The care of 200 million dollars is too great a load for any brain or back to bear. It is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it.”
John Jacob Astor: “I am the most miserable man on earth.”
Andrew Carnegie: “Millionaires seldom smile.”
You can serve money if you want to, but it won’t bring you any happiness. And it certainly won’t give you a love for other people.
There is a Jewish legend about an old man who was very rich. But he was a miserable tightwad with his money. One day he went to see the rabbi. The rabbi took him to a window. “Look out there” the rabbi said. “What do you see?”
“I see men, women, and children” said the rich man. Then the rabbi took the man by the hand and led him to a mirror. “Now what do you see?”
“Now I see myself” said the rich man. The rabbi said “Listen to me. In the window there is glass, and in the mirror there is glass. But the glass in the mirror is covered with a little silver. No sooner is the silver added than you stop seeing others and you only see yourself.”
We’ve learned three things from this parable of the shrewd manager.
1. Use your money to invest in eternity.
2. When it comes to being a manager, the way you handle the little things indicates the way you’ll handle the big.
3. You’ll either love God and use money, or you’ll love money and use God.