The Shrewd Manager
Series: StandAlone
November 08, 2020
Krys Scroggins
Episode Notes
The Unrighteous Steward
[Luk 16:1-13 NIV] 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?' " 'Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. "The
manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred
and fifty.' "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. "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? "No one can serve two masters. Either you
will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
- The 1%
• Bill gates makes about $4 billion in a single year.
- $10,959,000 a day,
- $456,625 per hour,
- $7,610 per minute, and $127 per second.
• Bezos is worth $183 billion. He has made around $70 billion in last 12 months
1
Monday, October 5, 2020
- Jeff Bezos makes $2,219 per second
- Bezos is so rich that an average American spending $1 is similar to Bezos
spending about $1.9 million.
• avg. global annual income is $2,100/yr. , US avg is $62,000/yr.
- For every dollar an american earns, the global average makes 3 cents.
- americans making equal to or above $55,000/yr. are in the top 1% globally
• If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and
a place to sleep then you are more wealthy than 75 per cent of this world.
• If you have a computer OR attend university you are in the top 1% of global
population
• More than a third of people on earth live on less than $2 a day. 1.2 billion live on
less than $1.25.
• AMERICANS SPEND ROUGHLY $465 BILLION EVERY CHRISTMAS; which is
more than all but 29 COUNTRIES!
- more than the total out put of Denmark, UAE, and 6 x Guatemala
- Spicyness Graph
- Context
• Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem, but not quite there
• This is one of the more shocking and confusing parables for us, and was just as
much for the contemporary audience
- to us, it is puzzling because of WHY he made deals
• that a dishonest man would be rewarded
- to them, it was WHO he made the deals with
• debtors, people he had power over, unworthy people
• culture was focused on status and standing compared to others
• Cultural idea about the wealthy
- [Luk 18:24-27 NIV] Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to
enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye
2
Monday, October 5, 2020
of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Those
who heard this asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus replied, "What is
impossible with man is possible with God."
- The disciples minds are blown that a rich person WOULDN'T get into heaven
- Wealthy people were obviously blessed by God
• Abraham = Loaded, Isaac = Filthy Rich, Jacob = Hustled, Joseph = #2 in
Egypt
• So duh, wealth equals blessing and blessing equals heaven
- Jesus turns this paradigm on its head to such a degree the disciples almost lose
their concept of salvation
- There are some branches of Christianity that have adopted this idea
• Jesus' word for wealth is Mammon, aramaic name for the pagan god of wealth
- The Shrewd Manager
• He looked at what he HAD and not what he DID NOT HAVE
- "I know what I'll do..." v.4
• The unrighteous steward spent money on people of lower rank to him and his
master (vs. 5-7)
- these were people that were indebted to him
- but he turned his advantage into their advantage to win their admiration and
friendship
- And in the end, he is commended for it
• [Luk 16:8 NIV] 8 "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.
• He did something WITH money instead of doing something FOR money
- [Luk 16:9 NIV] 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.
- He won people's friendship
- He was not serving money, he was making money serve him
3
Monday, October 5, 2020
- This is the major implication; that wealth is a means to and end
• we often treat wealth as an end "get rich or die trying"
• we will use people, abuse generosity, etc to "get mine"
- we pass it off or excuse our actions as "just business"
• When we orient our lives around the amount of income we can potentially earn,
who would Jesus say we are serving?
- When we move on from college or careers, we should consider where God
wants us to be then look for a job there
• instead we consider where the best job is and see if we can find God there
• coincidentally, why do you think so many struggle to walk with God or find a
home church after a job change?
• It is clear that money is to be a means and not an end, but to what end?
- The Shrewd Manager used money for his selfish gain, but how does Jesus intend for
us to use it?
• Jesus talks about unrighteous wealth vs true riches
- it is scary to trust God with our money
- we sometimes want to hang on to our wealth so that we do not look like the
cursed by God
• If your god is money, the only sin is poverty
• Jesus talks about money more than heaven and hell
- because he wants us to be wary of giving ourselves to something lesser
• you cannot serve two masters
- it is not that making money is bad, it is that money is an unworthy thing to give
your life to
• If we are christians, then we are called to be slaves to Jesus, not to our bank
accounts
- [Luk 16:13 NIV] 13 "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one
and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You
cannot serve both God and money."
4
Monday, October 5, 2020
- if you ever find yourself mad about preaching about money, I wonder what God
your serving
- that means using money for the Kingdom of God!
• exchange our little bits of green paper for the advancement of Heaven on
Earth
- So what does it look like to serve God instead of wealth?
- William Whiting Borden
• Heir to the Borden fortune - yes that milk company
• Got saved while attending D.L. Moody's church
• 1904 went on world tour and caught a burden for the world
- Rededicated his life under R A Torrey in London
• During his first semester at Yale in 1905, Borden started something that would
transform campus life. Borden's small morning prayer group gave birth to a
movement that soon spread across the campus. By the time Bill Borden was a
senior, one thousand of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.
• Borden's outreach ministry was not confined to the Yale campus, with his own
money, he funded a New Haven rescue mission and there did personal work
himself. One of Bill Borden's friends wrote that he "might often be found in the
lower parts of the city at night, on the street, in a cheap lodging house or some
restaurant to which he had taken a poor hungry fellow to feed him, seeking to lead
men to Christ."
• One well-traveled English visitor, when asked what had most impressed him about
America, is said to have replied, "The sight of that young millionaire kneeling with
his arm around a 'bum' in the Yale Hope Mission."
• In 1906, at a Student Volunteer Movement convention in Nashville, Samuel
Zwemer, opened a map and awakened Borden to the open doors for evangelizing
the Muslim world. This would become William Borden's great missionary call.
• Bill Borden wrote home about his "desire to be a missionary." One friend
expressed disbelief that Bill was "throwing himself away as a missionary." In
response, he wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."
5
Monday, October 5, 2020
• Fixing his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered. He also challenged his
classmates to consider foreign missionary service.
• After graduating from Yale in 1909, Borden attended Princeton Theological
Seminary before graduating in 1912.
• During that time he funded the National Bible Institute, the Moody Bible Institute,
and the China Inland Mission, which became the agency to send him to the
Uyghur, a muslim people of Northwest China.
• Later, his father told him he would never let him work in the company, at this time
Borden wrote in his Bible, “No Retreat.”
• When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because he was
hoping to work with Muslims, he stopped first in Egypt to study Arabic. While
there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden
was dead.
• His mother had arrived from America weeks after his death because they had
previously planned to vacation in the mountains of Lebanon. Then, she discovered
in his Bible these words written shortly before his death in Egypt, “No Regret.”
• Borden bequeathed $800,000 to the China Inland Mission and other Christian
agencies. Which today is the equivalent of just under $2.1 billion.
• What does it look like to exchange your unrighteous riches for true riches?
- It looks like the life of William Borden
- how many heavenly homes will he be welcomed into? Thousands? Millions?
- Not all of us are called to cross the world for the Gospel, but we are one body and
we are definitely called to SEND
• buy a meal for that person you work with
• invite your neighbors for dinner
- Your call from CZ to San Angelo
• maybe some of you are called to help this church and this XA go and plant a
church in the small towns around us
- Missionary is WHO YOU ARE, NOT WHAT YOU DO
[Luk 16:1-13 NIV] 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?' " 'Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. "The
manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred
and fifty.' "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. "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? "No one can serve two masters. Either you
will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
- The 1%
• Bill gates makes about $4 billion in a single year.
- $10,959,000 a day,
- $456,625 per hour,
- $7,610 per minute, and $127 per second.
• Bezos is worth $183 billion. He has made around $70 billion in last 12 months
1
Monday, October 5, 2020
- Jeff Bezos makes $2,219 per second
- Bezos is so rich that an average American spending $1 is similar to Bezos
spending about $1.9 million.
• avg. global annual income is $2,100/yr. , US avg is $62,000/yr.
- For every dollar an american earns, the global average makes 3 cents.
- americans making equal to or above $55,000/yr. are in the top 1% globally
• If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and
a place to sleep then you are more wealthy than 75 per cent of this world.
• If you have a computer OR attend university you are in the top 1% of global
population
• More than a third of people on earth live on less than $2 a day. 1.2 billion live on
less than $1.25.
• AMERICANS SPEND ROUGHLY $465 BILLION EVERY CHRISTMAS; which is
more than all but 29 COUNTRIES!
- more than the total out put of Denmark, UAE, and 6 x Guatemala
- Spicyness Graph
- Context
• Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem, but not quite there
• This is one of the more shocking and confusing parables for us, and was just as
much for the contemporary audience
- to us, it is puzzling because of WHY he made deals
• that a dishonest man would be rewarded
- to them, it was WHO he made the deals with
• debtors, people he had power over, unworthy people
• culture was focused on status and standing compared to others
• Cultural idea about the wealthy
- [Luk 18:24-27 NIV] Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to
enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye
2
Monday, October 5, 2020
of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Those
who heard this asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus replied, "What is
impossible with man is possible with God."
- The disciples minds are blown that a rich person WOULDN'T get into heaven
- Wealthy people were obviously blessed by God
• Abraham = Loaded, Isaac = Filthy Rich, Jacob = Hustled, Joseph = #2 in
Egypt
• So duh, wealth equals blessing and blessing equals heaven
- Jesus turns this paradigm on its head to such a degree the disciples almost lose
their concept of salvation
- There are some branches of Christianity that have adopted this idea
• Jesus' word for wealth is Mammon, aramaic name for the pagan god of wealth
- The Shrewd Manager
• He looked at what he HAD and not what he DID NOT HAVE
- "I know what I'll do..." v.4
• The unrighteous steward spent money on people of lower rank to him and his
master (vs. 5-7)
- these were people that were indebted to him
- but he turned his advantage into their advantage to win their admiration and
friendship
- And in the end, he is commended for it
• [Luk 16:8 NIV] 8 "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.
• He did something WITH money instead of doing something FOR money
- [Luk 16:9 NIV] 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.
- He won people's friendship
- He was not serving money, he was making money serve him
3
Monday, October 5, 2020
- This is the major implication; that wealth is a means to and end
• we often treat wealth as an end "get rich or die trying"
• we will use people, abuse generosity, etc to "get mine"
- we pass it off or excuse our actions as "just business"
• When we orient our lives around the amount of income we can potentially earn,
who would Jesus say we are serving?
- When we move on from college or careers, we should consider where God
wants us to be then look for a job there
• instead we consider where the best job is and see if we can find God there
• coincidentally, why do you think so many struggle to walk with God or find a
home church after a job change?
• It is clear that money is to be a means and not an end, but to what end?
- The Shrewd Manager used money for his selfish gain, but how does Jesus intend for
us to use it?
• Jesus talks about unrighteous wealth vs true riches
- it is scary to trust God with our money
- we sometimes want to hang on to our wealth so that we do not look like the
cursed by God
• If your god is money, the only sin is poverty
• Jesus talks about money more than heaven and hell
- because he wants us to be wary of giving ourselves to something lesser
• you cannot serve two masters
- it is not that making money is bad, it is that money is an unworthy thing to give
your life to
• If we are christians, then we are called to be slaves to Jesus, not to our bank
accounts
- [Luk 16:13 NIV] 13 "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one
and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You
cannot serve both God and money."
4
Monday, October 5, 2020
- if you ever find yourself mad about preaching about money, I wonder what God
your serving
- that means using money for the Kingdom of God!
• exchange our little bits of green paper for the advancement of Heaven on
Earth
- So what does it look like to serve God instead of wealth?
- William Whiting Borden
• Heir to the Borden fortune - yes that milk company
• Got saved while attending D.L. Moody's church
• 1904 went on world tour and caught a burden for the world
- Rededicated his life under R A Torrey in London
• During his first semester at Yale in 1905, Borden started something that would
transform campus life. Borden's small morning prayer group gave birth to a
movement that soon spread across the campus. By the time Bill Borden was a
senior, one thousand of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.
• Borden's outreach ministry was not confined to the Yale campus, with his own
money, he funded a New Haven rescue mission and there did personal work
himself. One of Bill Borden's friends wrote that he "might often be found in the
lower parts of the city at night, on the street, in a cheap lodging house or some
restaurant to which he had taken a poor hungry fellow to feed him, seeking to lead
men to Christ."
• One well-traveled English visitor, when asked what had most impressed him about
America, is said to have replied, "The sight of that young millionaire kneeling with
his arm around a 'bum' in the Yale Hope Mission."
• In 1906, at a Student Volunteer Movement convention in Nashville, Samuel
Zwemer, opened a map and awakened Borden to the open doors for evangelizing
the Muslim world. This would become William Borden's great missionary call.
• Bill Borden wrote home about his "desire to be a missionary." One friend
expressed disbelief that Bill was "throwing himself away as a missionary." In
response, he wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."
5
Monday, October 5, 2020
• Fixing his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered. He also challenged his
classmates to consider foreign missionary service.
• After graduating from Yale in 1909, Borden attended Princeton Theological
Seminary before graduating in 1912.
• During that time he funded the National Bible Institute, the Moody Bible Institute,
and the China Inland Mission, which became the agency to send him to the
Uyghur, a muslim people of Northwest China.
• Later, his father told him he would never let him work in the company, at this time
Borden wrote in his Bible, “No Retreat.”
• When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because he was
hoping to work with Muslims, he stopped first in Egypt to study Arabic. While
there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden
was dead.
• His mother had arrived from America weeks after his death because they had
previously planned to vacation in the mountains of Lebanon. Then, she discovered
in his Bible these words written shortly before his death in Egypt, “No Regret.”
• Borden bequeathed $800,000 to the China Inland Mission and other Christian
agencies. Which today is the equivalent of just under $2.1 billion.
• What does it look like to exchange your unrighteous riches for true riches?
- It looks like the life of William Borden
- how many heavenly homes will he be welcomed into? Thousands? Millions?
- Not all of us are called to cross the world for the Gospel, but we are one body and
we are definitely called to SEND
• buy a meal for that person you work with
• invite your neighbors for dinner
- Your call from CZ to San Angelo
• maybe some of you are called to help this church and this XA go and plant a
church in the small towns around us
- Missionary is WHO YOU ARE, NOT WHAT YOU DO
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