1.2.25 ~ Show Me The Money

Good morning!

The first two night's of teaching/sharing have gone well. Thank you for your prayers! As I shared with you a couple days ago, I'm here in Florida, speaking on topics that I've failed in (Luke 22:31,32)...finances, marriage, leadership, and a mystery topic :-)

Jesus/Yeshua talked about money more than heaven and hell. Half of the parables He taught are about money. 1/5 of all verses in the New Testament writings are about money and 95% of the verses are connected to the Temple processes. Money can influence us for good or evil. We think about it, worry about it, earn it, save it, invest it and study it so we can maximize it. It’s a fact for all of us, ‘If you don’t learn to manage your money it will manage you’.

We’re probably all familiar with Paul’s note to Timothy that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’ (1 Tim. 6:9,10). Stewardship of our money is highly and extremely valued in Scripture and we could say it is also the root of all good. Poor stewardship is frowned upon to the same extreme, which makes Jesus’/Yeshua’s praise of the unjust steward so strange (Luke 16:8).

Luke 16 challenged me for years and still does today. Yeshua begins by sharing a story of a rich man who had entrusted his goods to a servant who was unfaithful with that stewardship (Luke 16:1). One day He called His servant to give an account of his stewardship, because he knew of his unfaithfulness. Consequently, he was fired (Luke 16:2). The servant took inventory of the situation and recognized he was too lazy to dig ditches and too proud to beg (Luke 16:3). So He resolved himself to get in good with his master’s debtors so when he was fired they'd take him into their habitation to dwell in for the future (Luke 16:4). He called together two debtors of his master. One owed one hundred measures of oil and the other one hundred measures of wheat (Luke 16:6,7). To the first he said, write me a check for 50% and the second, write a check for 80%...don’t worry guys, I’ll take care of the rest (Luke 16:6,7). When the master saw this he commended his wise servant …huh?

Why would he commend his servant for losing 70% of his investment? And then he added a very strange addendum 'how the children of this world are wiser than the children of light' (Luke 16:8)…how so? Therefore, Yeshua goes on to say, ‘make yourselves friends with the unrighteous money of this world, for when it fails, and it will, you will have laid up for yourselves a habitation for life in the age to come (Luke 16:9)...more on this tonight! He goes on to say 'whoever is trusted with little can be trusted with much, and those who can’t be trusted with little won’t be given much (Luke 16:10). If you aren’t a good money manager, who's going to trust you with the real riches of life (Luke 16:11)? If you haven’t been trustworthy with another man’s property who’s going to give you your own (Luke 16:12)? No one can serve two masters. You’ll either love the one and hate the other or hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Luke 16:13).

Over the years, we have spent a good deal of time on the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. This story contains both. Let’s take the time to dissect it and see what we can learn by what is said and what is not said. First of all, Yeshua is not praising his servant’s dishonesty, but his shrewdness (smart, sharp, strategic, resourceful... you see a problem clearly, know what needs to be done, figure out how to do it.) in preparing for his future.

Second lesson is: ‘You can learn from anyone if you know the right questions. Nobody agrees with anyone 100%. You don’t have to agree with everyone to learn. For instance, if I had a heart issue and was looking for a heart surgeon, my first question would be,  'have you ever done this before'? Not have you read your Bible this morning? Or did you get your tithe in the offering this past week? Sometimes we get locked in to only learning from those who match our mindset completely, but here, Yeshua makes it clear there’s something very valuable we, as children of light, can learn from this shrewd servant.

Ironically, Yeshua is teaching this to the Pharisees. 1/7 of whom were covetous, loved money, self-righteous, demeaning and demanding of people, which they didn’t like and lived as hypocrites (Matt. 23). Yeshua had this incredible way of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. He shot a ‘zinger’ their way when he told them that the things that people hold most valuable are the most worthless in the sight of God (Luke 16:15).

If truth be told, most of us, speaking of me, myself and I, are poor money managers. God’s viewpoint with money is often the opposite of what we’ve been taught. We have no emergency savings. Little or no money set aside for retirement. We live hand to mouth and well beyond our needs and means. We buy it before we get the money. Live in debt. And when it comes to the stewardship that our ‘heavenly Master’ has given to us, we might find ourselves in a similar situation as this servant...fired.

Let’s close these thoughts this morning with 4 things not to do with money.

1. Don’t waste it. But, you say, 'I’m really good at that, how do I not waste it'? Begin to recognize that it’s not yours and it’s only a stewardship.
2. Don’t love it or live for it! Money is a master! You can’t serve it and God too. A divided allegiance will bring about a fall every time. The heart of the problem goes back to the problem with the heart. We can’t have two #1’s in life.
3. Don’t trust it for security. Doesn’t matter how much money you’ve had, it will fail and you can lose it (Luke 16:3). The guy is about to get ‘canned’. Hence, we should never put our security in something that can be taken from us. Good looks are going to fade. Health will wane. Jobs come and go. Marriages may fail. Loved ones can turn their back on you. Bank accounts are like ‘dust in the wind’. Security, on the other hand, is built on one thing that can’t be taken from you…God’s love for you. Our Government did us a favor by putting the eagle on the fiat dollar…it’s a great reminder how money can fly away like an eagle (Prov. 23:5). Contrary to the old slogan, money really doesn’t talk, it just flies away.
4th and final thought…Don’t expect it to be satisfying. The more you have, the more you want. Whoever loves money will never have enough and whoever loves wealth will never be satisfied (Eccl. 5:10). So guard yourself against greed. Self-worth has nothing to do with your financial worth. Your net worth is determined by God’s thoughts towards you coupled with your faithfulness to steward His provisions into your life and others.

Make yourselves friends with the unrighteous money of this world. Make as much as you can. Use it for His Kingdom. In doing so, you’ll find yourself preparing for a future stewardship that is much better than this temporal one.

Shalom from Ft. Walton Beach, Florida!

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