Investing for Eternity — Part One

We’re studying in Luke’s Gospel at the moment here at Parkside, and we have come to the sixteenth chapter, and we’re going to read from there now—Luke chapter 16, and we’ll read from the first verse:

“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 [my] 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.’”

Father, as we seek your heart, thank you that we don’t have to wonder where we should go, but we take our Bibles, and we open them, and we discover that you have introduced your heart to us in the pages of your Word. So we pray now that you will give us grace that we might understand; that in understanding, we might obey; that in obeying, we may make amazing discoveries of the immensity of your love and provision for us, as we ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.

I hope that you found it a little unsettling to read through these verses, because I don’t see why I should find them unsettling on my own, and I’d be greatly concerned if I was the only one unsettled by them. Lenski, a Lutheran commentator, says, “No other parable has caused as much perplexity and has received as many interpretations as this one.”[1] And when you take pause for a moment and allow your eye to scan it again, you can begin to understand just why that is. However, as in each instance, we will be greatly helped by reminding ourselves always that the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things—that the Bible has not been given to us as a series of riddles to solve, but rather, it has been provided for us in such a way that by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit and the careful use of our minds, we would be able to understand what God is saying to us.

Jesus is in the course of telling stories—parables is the word that we often use. He has just, in chapter 15, brought his listeners along with three stories of lostness: lost sheep, a lost coin, and two lost sons. Luke tells us that he expressly addresses his disciples now as he goes on to tell them a further story about a rich man who had a business whose manager was found not to be toeing the line. And this morning, we’re going to look at these first nine verses. They are directly related to what precedes and follows it, but our time will be such that we’ll only be able to get to about the ninth verse.

The story is a good one. It’s a clear one. Someone had obviously spilled the beans. This man in verse 1 was accused of wasting his owner’s possessions. Somehow or another, this information had got back to the owner. Somebody had been this man’s accuser, and the word had got back. The manager was doing what the prodigal son had done with the possessions that had been given to him by his father. You remember in chapter 15, “the younger son got together all he had” and “set off for a distant country and there [he] squandered,”[2] or wasted, the wealth that had been given to him. And we turn the page, and here is another individual who is squandering and wasting wealth which does not belong to him.

There’s no immediate indication that the manager was involved in dishonest dealings. It may be simply that he was irresponsible with that which had been put into his care. All of you who are in business know that all delegation involves risk. You pass on to the charge of others responsibilities, and they do not always treat them in a responsible fashion. Perhaps the man was peculiarly extravagant. Maybe he was pushing the limits just a little in terms of the expense account that he’d been allowing to himself and some of the other people that were employed in the business. And eventually, somebody had blown the whistle, had gone into the owner, and said, “You know, I think that it’s probably a good time for you just to call in Joe and ask him just what he’s doing here in relationship to your accounts.”

And so, that’s exactly what happens—verse 2: “So the rich man called him in, and he asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give me an account of your management. You’re fired.’” It’s a very brief meeting and a very clear meeting: “I want you to answer this question. I want you to close up the books and get them ready for your successor, because you’re not going to be here much longer.”

Only those of us who have experienced getting fired will fully appreciate the impact of this brief meeting. I’m not going to ask for a show of hands of all who’ve been fired in their life, but I would imagine that it would be a fair assembly. Some of you who come and ask me, “Did you ever have a job before you started doing what you do?” can’t imagine that ever I worked—assuming that this is, of course, not work—and that I could ever have been fired. But I did work a little, and I was fired. I’m not proud of it, but I was fired for wasting possessions—not stealing possessions but wasting them. I can’t go into all the details now. I may have told some of you before, but I was gainfully employed after school in a supermarket in the small town in Yorkshire in which we lived, and I had a responsibility peculiarly for the cheese. It was a very high-ranking job, as you can imagine, and suitable to my gifts and intellect. And on Saturdays, my friend and I—a guy called Warren—we would slice up large blocks of cheese, we would weigh them, we would wrap them in cellophane, we would put stickers on them, and the way that you sealed the back of them was in putting them on a hot pad, and then you attached the sticker which bore the weight and the price by means of the same hot pad.

If one was less than diligent, it would be possible to leave the cheese on the hot pad for a little longer than is beneficial. And on a Monday afternoon, I arrived to fulfill my obligations to be met by a very stern-faced manager who was rooting around in the cheese cabinet. And he said, “Look at that.” And he began to turn the cheeses over, and they had begun to become toasted cheese on the back where I had left them. And it just struck me as incredibly funny, which was not the response he was looking for, and so we had a verse 2 encounter, and within ten minutes I was up the road to Woolworth’s, looking for another job, because I knew if I went home without a job, I’d get killed. And so I had another job before I went home, which actually paid half a crown more, which I regarded as an immense triumph. But anyway, we’re far from the point now, except to say, those of you who’ve been fired will remember this kind of experience: “I need to talk with you,” and before you get a chance to say very much, you’re out the door, and you are on your way.

So, the man, confronted by this change in his circumstances, is fairly astute. He has been living a life of plenty and, presumably, of ease. It would seem that he had a pretty good job. And now he sees no chance of accepting the strenuous activities of digging ditches, and he certainly doesn’t want to be humiliated by going out into the community to stand with a begging dish. So he says, “I’m not going to go out and dig; I’m not strong enough to dig”—it may be that he was strong enough but just was downright lazy—“and I’m far too ashamed to beg.” So, quick as a flash, he comes up with a plan. He says, “I know what I’m going to do. My job is finishing here, so what I’ll do is I’ll contrive an opportunity whereby I can put people in my debt, and as a result of that, then I’ll be able to draw in the chits as I need them, and I’ll be in fine shape, even though I’m not going to be working here for the rich man any longer.” He’s going to need friends. His circumstances are about to change, and his lifestyle with it.

So he devises this scheme. You see it unfold there. Jesus is telling the story. You can imagine that the disciples are listening with great care, as I notice one or two of you are. And “he called in each one of his master’s debtors.” Apparently, he did this one at a time. What we have here, I think, is illustrative of a much larger number that would have come through. It’s possible that the man only had two debtors; I think this is probably just illustrative.

But he asked the first one, “How much do you owe my master?”

“Eight hundred gallons of olive oil.”

“Well,” the manager said, “why don’t you take your bill, tear it up? Let’s write another bill. You sign it and just do it for four hundred.”

You can imagine the guy saying, “This is my day! This is a great day.” And he said, “Fine.”

And to the second: “How much do you owe?”

“A thousand bushels of wheat.”

“Well,” he said, “take your bill; make it eight hundred. Tear it up, rewrite it, sign it, and we’ll just process it from there.”

Now, we needn’t assume that these individuals were immediately assuming that the man was up to his tricks, because in reading a little of the background of this time, it was customary for notes to be changed. The reason they would be changed would be because, essentially, a slide in the currency—but actually, if you like, the value of futures, or, if you like, that the crops were not as good as they had anticipated, and in order to keep the processes of business flowing along, sometimes, as a strategic act, the rich man would say, “Look, rather than everybody go belly up, what we need to do is rewrite these bills so that we can keep everything going along.” Those of you who are in business understand that kind of thing. So it may well be that that was the thought on the part of these individuals. It doesn’t really matter, but it’s just to point out that we don’t have to malign them in the process. The result was that either way, the owner was caught. And so, in verse 8 we read the staggering statement that “the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”

Now, this is the first point at which our antenna goes up, because we say, “Well, wait a minute. You would think that he would have gone stark raving mad and started running around the office and throwing things and saying ‘You rascal!’ and everything else.” But you know, I’ve discovered that businessmen, that entrepreneurs, appreciate an entrepreneur, even when the entrepreneur gets them. And this guy had some entrepreneurial skills. I mean, this is a pretty good turnaround from a dreadful situation, isn’t it?

Now, it would be a real problem for us, in terms of biblical ethics, if Jesus was telling a story in which verse 8a read, “The master commended the dishonest manager on account of his dishonesty.” But it doesn’t say that. It says that he commended him—albeit he was dishonest in his dealings—but he commended him for the fact of his shrewdness. Because what this chap had done was to contrive a circumstance in such a way, working separately, destroying the old, involving these individuals in the new situation, depriving the owner, the rich man, of the necessary proofs and the necessary witnesses that would have been the basis for a legal proceeding. He’s pretty well backed against the wall. And you can imagine him sort of rocking back in his chair in the office and saying, “You got me!” and then saying to himself, “You know, that was pretty clever. That was pretty good! He got me good!” and walking out of his office and saying, “You know, the manager that I just fired is one of the craftiest crooks that I’ve ever met in all my business dealings!”

In the same way as I’ve told some of you before… I’m at the stage now of repetition; it’s dreadful. Someone says, “You’ve been at that stage for at least ten years,” but I’m aware of it now in a way that I wasn’t before—at least, I think I am. The story of the thieves in Liverpool, remember, who stole the car from outside the house? Gave it back three days later, all nicely washed with, on the dashboard, a little note saying, “Thank you for the use of your car. Why don’t you and your wife go to the theater? Use the tickets enclosed.” And while they were gone to the theater, they burgled the house! You say, “That’s pretty good!” It’s bad. It’s dishonest. We’re not commending the dishonesty, but we’re saying if you want to look in terms of resourcefulness, in terms of theft, this is pretty good! I mean, this is a cut above banging people over the head with a piece of piping or something.

Now, that’s the whole point here: “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” He is not commending him for his dishonesty; he is commending him for his shrewdness.

Incidentally, remember, Jesus was quite keen on shrewdness. In fact, in Matthew chapter 10, he says to his disciples, “I want you to be as shrewd as snakes and as harmless as doves.”[3] In other words, “I want my followers not to be the kind of people that kind of walk around with their mouth wide open, just swallowing anything that is going around, but I want my followers to be shrewd, to be wise, to be skillful.” And in case that should take them into the realm of dishonesty or unloving activity, it is counterbalanced by the fact that we are at the same time to be as harmless as doves. Well, this guy was as shrewd as a serpent, but he was not as harmless as a dove.

Now, it is at this point that Jesus apparently breaks into the story, at the end of the first sentence in verse 8: “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Now, the disciples are probably saying to themself, “I wonder what happens next.” ’Cause this is a pretty good story! In fact, it’s a very good story. Now we have Jesus, and he makes this observation: “For the people of this world,” he says, “are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” The people of this world are expert at gaining advantages for themselves while often remaining undeterred by their consciences or by moral considerations.

Incidentally, we shouldn’t miss the contrast which is set up in this sentence by Jesus—the contrast that exists between “the people of this world” and “the people of the light.” Who are “the people of this world”? All the people in the world. For we are born into the world. We’re born into the world with a moral propensity that takes us to ourselves rather than to God, that seeks to secure our own benefit rather than the benefit of others, and that, even when we do our best to be kindly, it is often an indication of our own selfish preoccupations, when we’re dreadfully honest. So to be in the world is to be a child of the world. We’re born in sin, and we’re “shapen in iniquity.”[4]

Well then, who are “the people of the light,” and how does somebody cease to be described under the category of “the people of the world” and now find ourselves described under the category of “the people of the light”? Well, remember, Jesus said in John 8, “I am the light of the world; [and] he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”[5] In other words, the darkness of our existence as it is represented in sin needs to be transformed by our becoming the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we begin to follow him when we understand who he is and why he’s come.

This Lord Jesus came to die upon a cross—not to put together a religious club but to call sinners to himself. And when a man or a woman has this truth dawn upon their mind in such a way as to make them understand their need of the Lord Jesus Christ, then they cry out to him for mercy and for forgiveness; and although they continue still to live in the world, they are no longer of the world, because, being placed now in Christ—he who is the Light—they have become people of the light. That is why Jesus has so much to say and the New Testament has much to say to the people of the light about the incongruity of declaring ourselves to be people of the light and then walking in darkness—for example, in 1 John: “If we walk in sin and we say we’re the people of the light, then we confuse everybody, not least of all ourselves.”[6]

We noticed that just in passing. It is a very important point, because some of you are here this morning, and you may never have come to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you may not like the designation of yourself, but you would see that this is one that Jesus is using, not something that we have contrived. We are either, this morning, people of the world, or we are, by God’s grace today, people of the light. We need to think that out.

Now, it is in this contrast that, then, Jesus makes this observation: The people of the world in their normal, everyday routine are often far more shrewd in dealing with things than are the children of the light. Now, we can leave that sit just as it is, but I think it’s perhaps helpful for us to think out just how that might be. This is a fact that Jesus is stating here. It’s not conjecture in his part.

We are either people of the world, or we are, by God’s grace today, people of the light.

In reading a commentary that goes back at least 150 years from Scotland, the commentator said that there were four key areas in which he could see indications of this fact. I want just to mention them to you again as we proceed to the point of application.

In what way are the people of the world “more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are … people of the light”? The observations of this Scottish minister were, number one, in “their ingenuity of contrivance.”[7] Now, I’m using the phrase that he used. Most of us need a dictionary now to find out what his first point was. Such is the demise of the English language. But what he’s saying is that when sinful people set about to contrive a strategy, they tend to be far more ingenious in their methodology and in their application than the average half a dozen Christians getting together to devise a plan for reaching the world for Jesus Christ. Now, it may not strike us as a very nice observation, but it is the observation that is made for us by Jesus.

So, those of you who understand, coming from a background of this, you know that when you move amongst these people, they will often spare no pains to understand what it is they are supposed to be doing, and then they will labor to make sure that they can teach them to those who are doing them. But the fact of the matter is that the average Christian doesn’t study his Bible as much as the average insurance salesman studies the actuarial tables, that the average Christian student does not know as much of a panorama of their grasp of the subject as does the average English literature student have a grasp of, let’s say, contemporary literature in the twentieth century. Why? Lack of application, lack of “ingenuity of contrivance.”

In the same way, when people sit down to mastermind a plan for achieving profit, for expanding territory—all legitimate exercises—you will find that they don’t want to be involved in silly planning; they want to be involved in sensible planning. They don’t want to miss one favorable opportunity; they want to seize every opportunity. And yet, when you think about the way the children of light operate in terms of the eternal perspective in seeing, let’s say, unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ, if the average business took as much raw material to get as little return as the average local church does on the basis of twelve months, it would deserve to be completely bankrupt.

Let’s just apply it as straightforwardly as we can. You think of all the people that come through our doors here—all the visitors today and last week and the week before that, the hundreds and thousands of people that have passed through here as visitors, all, in business terms, potential clients. If we simply were an organization that had a product to sell and we had the opportunity to bring people in at such phenomenal levels, we really should be hung up for missing the opportunity in the way that we continue to do.

Now, you say, “But it’s not a product, and we’re not trying to sell.” I understand that. This is an eternal issue—and the people of the world are more shrewd in their dealings with matters that are completely earthbound than are the children of the light in dealings with matters that are of eternal significance. So says Jesus! You take the unity of purpose of the world—not that the world is united, but I’ll tell you, the world is united against truth, isn’t it? You can take it from any point in the compass, and they will all come together and say, “No, we don’t believe that.”

You take the average Christian approach, with our tiny differences and our petty jealousies, and we destroy our usefulness. People set out on a venture, whatever it may be, business or otherwise. The dangers don’t deter them. The difficulties don’t discourage them. The amusements are not allowed to divert them. I see them. I travel with them on the plane all the time. They have these fat books, these ring binders. I don’t know who creates them or who gives them to them, but they’re mugging them up all the time—reading one, reading page 2, back to page 1, double underlining, turning it over, turning it back. I’m looking at them like, “Do you really care that much about this book?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“This is a strategy book. This is the book, you know. If I can get this, then I can get that. And if I get that, I can go there. And if I go there, I won’t need to go there anymore.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a pretty shrewd approach to things.”

“Bet your life I do! This is the book!”

This is Jesus’ words. The people of the world are more shrewd. They’re greater in their perseverance.

They phone all our homes, right? ChemLawn phones everybody, right? TruGreen. We should pause for a moment and commend TruGreen, you know, for phoning at the exact moment when you don’t want to hear from them, consistently. I don’t know how you do that—not how you phone, but take the rebuttals again and again, you know: “Get lost!” “Okay.” That was just me responding. My wife’s much nicer than that, but it’s… No, actually, I don’t say that. They help me. But I have the hardest time.

And I think of this poor soul. He just started: “Hello, Mr. Begg.”

“You don’t know me!”

“Hello, Mr. Begg.”

“Oh, hello.”

“How is your evening so far?”

“Well, it was going well until I heard from you. But go ahead. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, you know, you’re one of a select number…”

“Don’t give me that stuff!”

And so it goes, right? Why are they doing this? So they can spray your trees!

You take the honest perseverance of some of us in seeking to see unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ. Talk about a follow-up telephone call? Forget that!

“So, did anybody come back from the VBS?”

“Oh, no, we phoned them.”

“How many times?”

“Well, we didn’t phone them all. We phoned some of them.”

“How many times?”

It would be a scary thought, wouldn’t it, if we had thousands of people that went right past the end of our road every single day, but mainly on Saturdays and Fridays and Sundays, to a huge, big amusement park in a way that not every other local church has thousands of people pass the end of their street, wouldn’t it? I mean, it would be a scary responsibility to have that happen, wouldn’t it? I mean, because you would think, with all those thousands of people there, that any shrewd group of individuals would come up with a market strategy for seeing these unbelieving people become the committed followers of Jesus Christ. No, we’ll just let them plop down another neighborhood and another neighborhood and another neighborhood, till now Solon has no more place for neighborhoods. It’s done—going to max out at twenty-six thousand people. Do you think McDonald’s has got a strategy for reaching the neighborhood? The people of this world are more shrewd in their dealings with the folks of their own kind than the people of the light are in tackling the issues of eternity. That’s what Jesus is saying.

“So,” he says, “in light of that, let me tell you what to do.” Because everyone’s sitting, saying, “Well, okay, let’s get on here. I mean, what’s supposed to happen now?” Well, Jesus says—verse 9—“I tell you, use worldly wealth,” which is, in the King James’s version, “the mammon of unrighteousness.” It’s almost a generic term for stuff, material possessions—money, certainly, but not simply money. “Use everything that you have”—incidentally, and it’s only entrusted to you; it’s not yours to keep. True riches are eternal and unending, but the transient riches of whatever we have going through are simply that. He says, “And what I want you to do is to use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

Now, this is quite amazing, isn’t it? “I want you to use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it’s gone, you’ll be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Go back to verse 4, and notice that that is exactly what this shrewd chap was doing. He said, “Now, I’m in trouble here, but what I’ll do is I will use worldly wealth—I will use the resources here, in terms of the oil and the wheat—I will use it in such a way that I will ingratiate myself with these people so that I may be able to call in my chits as necessary, and then they will be able to welcome me into their houses.” Jesus says, “Okay. How about, then, using the resources that God has given you not in terms of being able simply to get welcomed, in the time that we have here, into other peoples’ homes but instead to use them in such a way as to build the kind of friendships that will last for eternity?”

Now, we need also to be perfectly clear that Jesus nowhere suggests that the money or the possessions are in themselves sinful and unclean—rather, that it is our sinful attitude and our conduct in relationship to possessions which make things a curse for us.

Some of you will have gone and seen the cave of St. Francis of Assisi—a tiny little cave in a beautiful spot, up overlooking a river. And if you’re going to live in a cave, it’s quite a nice little place. It’s more than a cave, actually. It’s a structure that he lived in. Sue and I stood in there, and we found ourselves admiring his devotion, admiring his zeal, admiring everything else, but we remarked at one another, “You know, if you’re going to try and deal with the rigors of life, this is an easier place to try and do it, and this is an easier way to do it than just to live in Solon.” And the easy way to handle this is to say, “Oh, yes, we’re going to divest ourselves of everything. We’re going to put flowers in our hair, and we’re going to San Francisco. We’re going to wear open-sandaled shoes, you know. We’re going back to the ’60s.” Not a good idea! The hard thing is to be a group of people such as we are, to be confronted by the fact that Jesus conveys, to now be faced with the challenge that he issues—namely, “All the possessions that you have, all of the resources you’ve been given, all of the stuff that is stuff,” he says, “what I want you to do is to get shrewd in the way you use this so that you will make friends that are friends forever.”

Now, if you think about this—and it’s a bit like understanding a painting. And I know nothing about paintings, but sometimes I stand and look at it, and I said, “Oh, is this a good one?” And the person said, “Oh, yes, it’s a very good one.” I said, “Well, what am I missing?” And they said, “Stand back.” You stand back, and suddenly, things that you didn’t notice become clear.

If you stand back from the text here in chapter 16, you’ll pick up 14:14 again, which, you will remember, was a quite staggering little insight there on the occasion of how to put together a party invitation list. ’Cause on that occasion, remember, where Jesus had been at this banquet, he said to the host, “When you give a luncheon or [a] dinner, do[n’t] invite your friends, [or] your brothers or [your] relatives, or your rich neighbors.” Remember, this was not a categorical statement here. Jesus is making a point. He says, “If you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.”[8] In other words, if you take your resources and simply use them to invite the people who also have resources, then you will have the immediate gratification of them saying, “That was a very pleasant evening, and why don’t you come over to our place a week from Friday, and we’ll do the same thing? Then we’ve seen your Minton china; now you can come over and see our Paca-yuki-homa china, and then we’ll be able to show you the ornamental garden, and you can see the fountain. And then we’ll all say, ‘Mm-hmm!’ you know.” All right?

You say, “Well, if you want to do that, it’s okay. Go ahead and do that. Your repayment is immediate gratification.” But if you want to get serious about things, he says, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. [And though] they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”[9] “You will be repaid.”

You see, we’ve got ourselves tied up in knots here, because we’re so concerned to make sure that we all understand that we do nothing to earn God’s favor. Absolutely true. We cannot put God in our debt. Absolutely true. But, you know, when you push that to an extreme, you may find yourself on the wrong side of what Jesus is saying here. The nothing that we can do is the nothing whereby we come to faith in Christ. There is everything that we can do and must do. That’s the whole point of James. He’s asking the question: He says, “You show me your faith without deeds, and I’ll show you my faith with deeds,”[10] and then he says of the faith without deeds, he says, “Can such faith save? Is this saving faith?”[11] Someone who just professes? That there is a root, but there is no fruit?

So Jesus says, “If you use your stuff to the benefit of those who cannot repay you—if you make friends of the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind—there will be a blessing that attaches to that. And although there will be no immediate gratification, when you get up to heaven, there will be people hanging off the light fittings, saying, ‘Here she is!’”

The person says, “Here’s who?”

Said, “Here’s the lady!”

“What lady?”

“The lady that drove me.”

“Drove you where?”

“Drove me to church.”

“When?”

“Every single Sunday after my husband died.”

“Here’s the guy who paid for the…” “Here’s…” You want investments for eternity? Invest in people. Invest in the gospel. Because every other investment’s just a pain in the neck, ultimately. ’Cause the closer you get to the end of the day, you’re now spending all your time trying to figure out who’s going to get what you put away, and whether you still like Johnny and Mary and Jimmy, and whether they should get it or shouldn’t get it, or whatever it is. “Make friends for eternity,” Jesus says. “Get shrewd. Use your resources.”

There’s only one place with which to conclude. Let’s just go to Matthew 25. We’ll come back and pick this up later. Matthew 25. You know this passage well.

Incidentally, just in passing, as you turn there, in talking about making friends: The Pharisees never really made friends, did they? I mean, you don’t read the Pharisees, and you say, “Oh, I’d love to go over to the Pharisee’s house.” The Pharisee’s like, “Oh man, I don’t want to go to his house!” The Pharisees never made friends with the publicans and the sinners. That’s why Jesus was so attractive: ’cause he made friends with them.

You want investments for eternity? Invest in people. Invest in the gospel.

Do you make friends with sinners? Are you loving them to win them? “Jesus, what a friend [of] sinners!”[12] “As, Father, you have sent me into the world, so I send them into the world”[13]—so that I’m making friends for the sake of eternity. The children of the world make friends so that they can be repaid, so that they can call in the chits in business, so they can phone up and say, “Hey, listen, I’m the guy that did such and such two years ago. By the way, there’s a truckload coming from Minneapolis; I wonder if you could help me with such and such.” That’s how it works. We understand that. It’s not all wrong. It’s just the way it works.

What a tragedy when the average Christian is so self-righteous that instead of us being a bridge for people to come to Jesus, we actually repel people! You see how skillful, how shrewd the children of the world are: working diplomatically, working wisely, working strategically to an earthly end.

Well, Matthew 25: “[And] when the Son of Man”—verse 31—

comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. [And] all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

[And] then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

[And] then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we [ever] see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we [ever] see you sick or in prison and go [and] visit you?”

[And] the King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.”[14]

And Jesus said, “The people of the world are a lot more ingenious in putting together a business plan than are the people of the light in putting together a strategy to see unbelieving people become the committed followers of Jesus Christ.”

And incidentally, for the small number of you that are saying, “Well, hey, go ahead. You’re our faithful leader. Come up with a strategy and present it”—no. No. My job is in Ephesians 4. I’m supposed to edify the saints so that you can do the works of ministry.[15] Do you think God gave you all that business acumen, all that skillful ability in the world of the arts or medicine or in being able to put a factory together in a way that works—do you think he just gave you all of that—so that you could use it just to do what you do, just to get a paycheck? He gave it to you for that, but you realize that that shrewdness, that ingenuity, that skill that the average half-witted pastor has never even thought of is the key in the development of ministry. Let’s get shrewd for Jesus’ sake.

Let’s pray:

Father, what an immense array of resources you have entrusted to us here at Parkside! Stuff—goodness, whew! We’ve got resources here that are bigger than the gross national product of some countries. We’ve got people who have been capable of taking some of the most insurmountable challenges, climbing up the mountain, and burying the flag of achievement right on the top. And we pray that you would help us to understand this passage—not to violate it but to live it—and that as we think about the next ten or fifteen years of ministry and opportunity and responsibility, as we think of our lives ebbing away, as we think about making plans for the end, as we see the finish tape in sight, help us, Lord, to be as shrewd as serpents and as harmless as doves.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one, today and forevermore. Amen.

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[1] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel (Columbus, OH: Wartburg, 1946), 830.

[2] Luke 15:13 (NIV 1984).

[3] Matthew 10:16 (paraphrased).

[4] Psalm 51:5 (KJV).

[5] John 8:12 (RSV).

[6] 1 John 1:6 (paraphrased).

[7] Ralph Wardlaw, Sermons (Edinburgh: Gadam Black, 1829), 465.

[8] Luke 14:12 (NIV 1984).

[9] Luke 14:13–14 (NIV 1984).

[10] James 2:18 (paraphrased).

[11] James 2:14 (paraphrased).

[12] John Wilburn Chapman, “Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners!” (1910).

[13] John 20:21 (paraphrased).

[14] Matthew 25:31–40 (NIV 1984).

[15] See Ephesians 4:12.