Investing for Eternity — Part Two

O what peace we often forfeit
[And] what needless pain we bear!
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer![1]

We cast all our cares upon you, and we lay all of our burdens down at your feet, and when, as with so many things, we just don’t know what to do, then we cast all our care upon you.[2] Help us in the reading and studying of the Bible to hear from you, the living God, far beyond the voice of a mere mortal. This is our earnest plea. Hear us, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Luke chapter 16. We’re going to read from the tenth verse to the fifteenth verse:

“‘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 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.’

“The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.’”

Amen.

Now, for those of you who are tracking with us in our studies in Luke’s Gospel, you will know that Jesus has just told his disciples this story of the shrewd manager. He is elsewhere referred to as the unjust steward. The central figure in the story, finding out that he was to be fired on account of his mismanagement, sees the opportunity of his final hours of employment to ingratiate himself with those who owed money to his master. And by means of a fairly slick plan, he came up with a strategy whereby, although he was about to lose his job, he would provide for himself in the future as a result of the relationships that he was building with these individuals.

Jesus then points out that there is a great contrast between the shrewdness—this is verse 8b—the shrewd dealings of the people of the world in comparison to the virtual gormlessness of the people of light. It’s not exactly the kind of thing we like to hear, but Jesus is saying, “You know, when people are employing earthly strategies for material gains, they seem to be a lot more ‘on’ than the average child of light, who seems to neglect similar strategies when it comes to the matter of preparing for eternity.” And having said that in verse 9, he then urges his followers to use worldly goods or worldly wealth, given to them by the Father—to use all of this in such a way that, first of all, it will bring blessing to others and at the same time will be conducive to their own eternal welfare.

Now, clearly, what he’s pointing out is that there is a way to abuse that which has been given to us, and there is a way to use that which has been given to us in such a manner that God is blessed, others are encouraged, and we ourselves can experience rich enjoyment. So instead of figuring out how to use resources for the now, Jesus’ followers are to employ them with their focus on the then. This comes out between verse 4 and verse 9. The shrewd manager adopted a strategy that would help him be welcomed into the homes of these individuals. That was in the immediacy of his circumstances. That was in the now. Jesus says, “What I want my followers to do is to adopt similar strategies in their shrewdness—to be prepared to use the resources entrusted to you in a way that doesn’t give you an immediate impact now but prepares for you eternal dwellings.” So what we are confronted with is this matter of investing for eternity. Investing for eternity.

There’s hardly a day goes by when most of us are not confronted with some invitation to invest something somewhere. No matter whether you have any money or not—it doesn’t seem to matter at all—the people will come and suggest that they could relieve you of whatever little bit you have in the prospect of you having a lot later on. And the challenge for them is to convince us that it is worth giving up stuff now so that we’re apparently going to have more stuff then.

Of course, Jesus in Matthew 6 says to his followers, “Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Don’t make that the priority of your life,” he said, “because ultimately, those treasures are transient. They disintegrate. They dissolve. They’re ultimately useless. But instead, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, because the treasure that you lay up in heaven,” he says, “is not subject to the same degenerative processes that that which is laid up on earth finds itself subject to.”[3] And then, of course, he has the punch line: He says, “Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”[4]

So, in very practical terms, when you take the Wall Street or you take the New York Times, the question is: Which section do you go to first? Now, some of us go certain places because of our jobs. The question is: Are you going immediately to the mutual funds and the stock pages? Are we going there before I read my Bible? Because, after all, where my treasure is is where my heart is. So we’ll actually be able to find out a lot about each other’s hearts by viewing our preoccupation with treasure.

Instead of figuring out how to use resources for the now, Jesus’ followers are to employ them with their focus on the then.

It’s a quite uncomfortable little section, I have found—changes the routine question from “What did she leave behind?” to “What did she send ahead?” You see? In the way in which we invest all that has been given to us—time, talent, money, resources, stuff—there is a way to do it which, of course, is the characteristic way of the world, whereby we will be able to leave a lot behind. And people say, “My, my, my! He did a wonderful job. Look what he left behind.” Jesus says, “No, I don’t want you to ask that question. I want you to ask the question, ‘What did you send ahead?’”

A few weeks ago now, I came home, and there were just a whole slew of boxes sitting outside our garage on the driveway. And I was there by myself, and I opened the garage, and I went in, and eventually, my wife came home, and I said, “What are all those boxes?” And then I looked in the front hall, and there was a trunk, and there was a huge bag, like a gigantic sausage, and there was stuff everywhere! And then it dawned on me: I said, “She’s coming home!” It was our middle child, and this was all the stuff she was sending ahead. And boy, she had a lot of stuff to send ahead! I wish it were all books. But there it was. It was all at the house. Why? Because she was coming. She’s not there yet. She’s been gone all of this time. But every time I walked past all of that provision, I said, “You know, she’s coming! And the reason she sent it ahead is because this is her destination.”

Now, in the very most basic terms, if you imagine the portals of heaven and you imagine the vaults of earth, the preoccupation of the world is “How well are you doing? How much are you leaving behind?” The preoccupation with heaven is “How well are you doing? How much have you sent ahead?” And Jesus says the way in which we use the stuff we have now is either in such a way that it sends stuff ahead, or this, frankly, is all that we have.

As soon as the reality of eternity grips our lives, then the way in which we view everything changes. Think about that for a moment. As soon as the reality of eternity grips our lives, then it changes the way in which we view everything—the passage of time, our age, the prospect of our death, the use of our resources, the disbursement of our funds, the way in which we determine to use the minutes of our days. When we live only with our focus on the immediacy of things, then that determines the way in which we use all of this material. But when eternity, when even just a glimpse of eternity—even if God would just pull back the curtain, as it were, just a very tiny glimpse and let all of that light shine through—suddenly, in that moment of realization, it begins to change the way in which we view, not least of all, our money.

Now, I want to belabor this this morning, because the more I study these verses, the more convinced I became that the key to their radical application to our lives is to be found in living in the now in light of the then—living now in light of then. And I asked myself the question as I studied and restudied this passage and went back to the shrewd manager and went forward to the rich man and Lazarus—for the whole thing is ultimately a unity—I said to myself, “Why is it that although I understand this, that although I actually believe in its importance, I find it so jolly difficult to do?”

I mean, those of you who are involved in pensions and investments, you know that part of your responsibility is to convince the average young person of the importance of delayed gratification, of making a sacrifice in the now simply because of what they may get in the then. And pragmatically, it’s possible to do. Otherwise, there would be no pension funds, and no one would be able to sell these various annuities and life assurance policies and so on. So we all know that from a very pragmatic point of view, we can organize our money, we can apportion our goods, we can do certain things on the basis of just a cerebral, functional understanding of the wisdom of it.

But Jesus is not doing that here, you see. Jesus is actually calling us to a very different perspective. He’s not arguing on the basis of the pragmatic value of the repayment to us in the now—of how we’ll be better off, you see, by the time we reach such and such an age, and we’ll be able to fold this up and put that there and move there and still have enough for this and still have two of those and still be able to give stuff to our children. That’s not what Jesus is on about. Jesus says, “What I want you to do is I want you to view everything that you have in the now in light of the then. Because everything that is now is passing away. Only what is then is going to last forever.”

Now, instead of being snared by guilt, then, we find ourselves summoned by glory. There’s a tremendous sense of diffidence about dealing with the money matters from the Bible. Churches get themselves in all kinds of knots. Pastors are frightened to say anything. They think the people have got angles on them, or that they want to do something. And so it’s often skipped over. And, of course, you may be a visitor this morning, and you say, “Well, I came to church once in the last six months, and the guy was talking about money.” Say, “Well, yes, that’s exactly true.” The answer to that, of course, is not that I shouldn’t talk about money, but it is that you should have been here for the previous six months. And then you would have realized that the only reason we’re here is because this is the section we’re in. There’s no embarrassment on the part of Jesus.

If you read these verses—“You can’t serve two masters. You’ll hate one; you’ll love the other. You can’t serve both God and Money”—you find yourself just moving a little in your seat, just rearranging your seat: “Mm! Oh, that’s a funny feeling. Mm!” Because you know what your checkbook says. You know where your checkbook is. You know what you’ve already disbursed. And it would be possible for the teacher—in this case, me—by the pain of guilt, to induce you to temporarily rearrange your priorities. And that, in my experience, is mostly what happens in relationship to the money-matters discussion within the framework of churches. We are made to feel guilty by the disparity that exists between where we are and where the Bible says we ought to be. And so we tolerate the guilt long enough to assuage it by doing something. So we give, or we change something, and as soon as we’ve managed to do that for once or twice or however long simply to get that pain to go away again, then we’re able to settle down to mediocrity all over again, waiting for the next dreadful time when somebody turns up the guilt meter, and “Ope! We’re going to have to do something about that again.”

What happens here is not that the pain of guilt is used to induce the temporary rearrangement of priorities, but if you look carefully, it is that the prospect of glory invites me to permanently realign my passions. Now, here’s the question, loved ones. If you want to go the sort of short-burst “Get it off your back” way, then allow the study of Luke 16 to so annoy you that you temporarily rearrange your priorities. If you want to go God’s way, then allow the prospect of glory to induce you to permanently realign your passions. For what a man or woman is passionate about will determine the use of resources.

That is why we will prepare to get up early in the morning because we’re passionate about exercise. That is why we stay late into the night with just a lamp burning because we’re passionate about knowledge and about reading. Nobody has to induce guilt within us. It is a passion. Nobody had to make me read: “You know, if you don’t read, then you won’t know this, and you won’t know that.” I didn’t read because I was afraid of what I wouldn’t know. I read because I had a passion to read. I still do. “Now, when eternity,” says Jesus, “looms large across the horizon of my follower, then it’s going to radically change the way in which they live in the now.”

The prospect of glory invites me to permanently realign my passions.

Let me illustrate it just from two places, to reinforce this, because I really believe that this is the key to getting to terms with this. If you take Paul, for example, in 2 Corinthians 4—you can find it if you just turn to it briefly (I’ll only give you a couple of places to turn)—2 Corinthians 4, talking about his journey through life and all the challenges of life and not least of all the physical harm into which he’s come. Two Corinthians 4:16: He says, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away”—that’s the now—“yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day,” in prospect of the then. “For our light and momentary troubles”—that’s the now—“are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” That’s the then. “So,” he says, “we fix our eyes not on what is seen”—that’s the now—“but on what is unseen.” That’s the then. “For what is seen”—the now—“is temporary, but what is unseen”—the then—“is eternal.”

Now, do you understand what I’m saying—why this is so difficult to get to? The average person gives their resources, I think, induced by the same mechanisms that are employed to encourage people to invest in annuities and in pension plans—especially because there is a narcissistic element to it. It pays you back! “Don’t you want to have all this? Don’t you want to pray the prayer of Jabez?[5] And you can have the house you didn’t know you could have. You can have the girl you didn’t know you could marry. You can have the income you didn’t know you could find.” Where did we get that from?

Jesus says, “No. I’m not seeking to induce you to deal with your stuff in a way that is eternal so that it will pay you back in time. I’m telling you,” he says, “that if you do not use stuff with the prospect of the then while you live in the now, when you get to the then, there’ll be no then! Because how can somebody look forward to eternal riches who is unprepared to let go of worldly goods? You cannot serve God and money.”

“Oh, yes I can,” says somebody. “I’ve been doing it for years.” We’ll come to that.

First Corinthians 13, the great chapter on love, you get the same distinction. Verse 11: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” Some of us were having a discussion this week about why it is that the summer holidays were so long when you were small, and now they’re so short. Somebody said, “Summers lasted a lot longer when I was a boy at school.” I said, “No, they didn’t. They lasted the same length of time.” “No, no, no,” he said. “No, no, no. Summers were much longer when I was small.” I said, “Well, the future comes in at the rate of sixty seconds a minute. That hasn’t changed. It was the same length of time.” Oh, I couldn’t convince him. No, when he was small, summers lasted forever!

Well, we understand that. How many of us have said today, “Goodness, can you believe it’s the first of July? How did we get so quickly from Memorial Day to the first of July?” And then we did one of those quantum leap forwards, and we said, “You know what? The summer’s almost over. The buses will be here before we know where we are. School’s back.” And the children are saying, “Oh, no, no! There’s an eternity yet before that happens!”

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. [But] when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we [will] see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall [fully know], even as I am fully known.[6]

“Now,” he says, “the challenge is that we don’t have the clarity that one day we will have in the then.” But when the then invades the now of my earthly pilgrimage, then it will change the way in which I view today.

You see, if you think about heaven this afternoon and the fact that you’re going to live in heaven as a believer, and you’re going to fall down before the throne of God, and you are going to worship the Lamb for eternity, I suggest that that will make a difference about the way in which you view the prospect of our evening Communion service, than if you view the balance of this day simply in terms of now. Once you introduce then to the now, the now is affected.

And what I found as I read this passage is that I am an unbeliever. I don’t believe in the then. If I really believed in the then, then why am I like this in the now? So, what are you going to do for me? Induce guilt so that I can rearrange my priorities momentarily? No! We’re going to ask God to show the wonder of then so that my passions are realigned.

Now, don’t be surprised that your pastor said he’s an unbeliever. “Lord, I believe; help me with my unbelief stuff![7] Because I can’t tell my kids I really believe this if this is how I am in the now. Lord Jesus, you’ve got to help me to live in the now in light of the then.” Jesus says, “Read the parable again. Listen to what I’m saying.”

You get the same emphasis—and I won’t take you to it—but in 2 Peter chapter 1, in verse 10, he says, “You know, you’re looking forward to a rich welcome into the kingdom of heaven.”[8] That’s then. And he says it is by “his divine power”—verse 3—that we have come to this epignōsis, which means the intimate, personal, acquainted knowledge of God. By “his divine power” we have come to know who God is. “He has given us his … great and precious promises” so that by this knowledge we might escape from “the corruption in [this] world,” which presses on us by the “evil desires,” and that we may then look forward to a rich welcome. So it goes like this: divine power, precious promises, great escape, rich welcome. Divine power, precious promises, great escape, rich welcome.

What prospect is there for a rich welcome in heaven, unless first we’ve been confronted by his divine power; and then that we become convinced of his precious promises; and, as a result of being so convinced of the promises he said are true, it changed the way in which we lived in this culture? And so, as a result of the change that was brought about in living in this culture, we began to escape from the clutches of the culture—not by going and living in a wardrobe, not by going and living in a cave, but by living differently in the now because, unlike the children of this world, who are without God and without hope,[9] we know that the then is actual reality.

Now, I say to you again: Unless you come to this passage of Scripture and recognize this vital distinction, I don’t think you’re ever going to get close to it. We needn’t be in any doubt about the prospect. Two Corinthians 5:5, Paul says, “God … has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” He’s actually put within us his Spirit so that we have this sense of dissonance. We have a “not yet” dimension always to our lives. We realize that there is more than this. Hymnody helps us in that way. “Heaven is better than this,” the song says. And we say, “Well, I hope it is.” And part of the great escape of 2 Peter 1 is to be liberated from the idea that “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Has anyone said that to you this week? I’m not sure if I heard it this week, but I’m sure I heard it last. I understand why a person says it. I’m tempted to believe it. You’re standing on the fourth tee, you hit your drive, and it wasn’t an embarrassment like the other ones on the previous tees. You looked up into the blueness of the sky, the warmth of the sun on your shoulders, the companionship of your friends around you. You got ready to walk up the fairway, and as you set off, someone said, “You know, it doesn’t get any better than this!” Oh yes it does! Yes, it does. But you see, the child of the world is without God and without hope in the world. That’s why we’ve got to get all this stuff. That’s why we’ve got to be able to play all those clubs. That’s why we’ve got to be able to take all those trips. That’s why we’ve got to amass all those toys. Because we believe the lie: “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Divine power, precious promise, great escape, rich welcome. See, we want the rich welcome without the escape. Or maybe that’s just me. “The things [that] we see now are here today,” they’re “gone tomorrow. … The things we can’t see now [are going to] last forever.”[10] That’s hard to get your head around, isn’t it? I’m no scientist; you know that well enough. But in terms of the actual critical mass of a mountain the size of the Eiger, you could take that—or Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn or something—and you could just actually reduce it to something you could put on your coffee table. And yet it seems so vast and so permanent.

You see, unless the Spirit of God does this in our hearts, I don’t think it can be achieved. ’Cause where’s heaven? Try and tell your kids, “We’re going to go to heaven.” Say, “I don’t want to go to heaven. I want to go to Disney World.” “It’s going to be great! We’re going to go to heaven.” Say, “I don’t want to go to heaven. I want to go to Burger King. Burger King’s here. Heaven—who knows where heaven is?” Why would we be surprised? That’s what we say: “I don’t want to go to heaven. I want to go to Hawaii.” “I don’t want to go to heaven. I want to live on a lake. I mean, heaven?” And you see, until the Spirit of God convinces us by his Word about the factuality and actuality of these things, all we’re doing is moving concepts around on a board that make absolutely no impact on our lives at all.

And God is so vitally concerned that his children would be seized by this perspective that he actually uses things in the events of our lives to steer us in the right direction. Many of the things that we want, again, to run away from and hide from are the mechanisms that God uses in order to pull back the curtain of eternity and say, “There you are! Let that light shine on you.”

For example: disappointment. He uses the disappointments of our lives—our unreached goals, our unfulfilled dreams, the sense of unanswered prayer. He uses that so that we would realize that this earthly pilgrimage is something of a shadow, is something of “a poor player” who “struts and frets his hour upon the stage,”[11] you see. There is a sense in which Shakespeare gets some of this right. And we look forward to a day, as we put on heads on our pillow in the evening and bury our faces in our pillow and say, “You know, I never thought that I would reach forty-nine,” or fifty-two, or whatever it was, “and this would be my lot in life!” And he says, “Come on, now. Don’t fall asleep with your face in the pillow like that. You’re going to live forever in my presence. I’m going to wipe away every tear from your eye.”[12] He uses disappointments.

He uses departures. The first time that we said hello began our last goodbye. That’s the strange thing about life, isn’t it? You look forward to your girlfriend coming for twelve months. She finally comes, and the moment that you greet her at the airport, you have this great surge of emotion that goes, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!” and simultaneously, “Oh, you’re going to have to go!” You never thought about her going until she came, but in the minute she came, you knew she would go. You take your children, as they’re gifts from God, and you hold them to your arms, and you love them, but the minute you look at them, you know that your whole journey in life is to let them go.

God uses departures in order to wean us from now to then. Our youngest now, sitting there at Hopkins, getting on great iron birds, you know, to fly the Atlantic—she’s gone. Departure—a reminder to me of the ultimate departures of life, when we will never see one another again in time. There will be a last kiss, there will be a last door close, there will be a last wave, and it will be gone. God uses that to wean us from now so that we might live in the then.

And it is when the then impinges upon the now that my disappointments and my departures, and thirdly, my disfigurements and my diseases begin to take on a whole different picture. Of course there is disease! We live in a fallen world. Of course there is disfigurement! Deny it if you wish. But not in front of your spouse you can’t. The other day I discovered that those ornamental handles in the bath are not ornamental. It never occurred to me that you’re supposed to pull yourself up on those things. But somehow or another, there it was. I was lying in the bath, and I went to do a sit up to get up, and it just didn’t happen. It never happened. And then I found myself hanging on and pulling myself up. I said, “Well, that’s what those things are for. Look at that!” What is this? This is disfigurement.

Gert Oliva, whose funeral service I conducted years ago now, her husband gave me her Bible in prospect of the funeral. I took it. I was going through it, looking at the notes she’d made from the sermons in her own personal devotional life. And I came to the section in 2 Corinthians 4 where it says, “Outwardly we are wasting away,”[13] and she had an asterisk. On the top of the page she had written, “So much for face-lifts!” “Outwardly we are wasting away.”

See, New Age nonsense is trying desperately to say, “No, we’re all going to live forever. No, we’re all fine. Take this jelly; rub it on your belly. Take this; rub it on your forehead. Take this; stick it behind your ear. Take this and do this with it, and you’ll be skipping through life for the rest of your days.” No, you won’t. You’ll be going like this with all this jelly and everything hanging off you and people saying, “Why are you sticking that stuff everywhere?” “’Cause ‘I’m going to live forever. I’m going to learn how to fly.’”[14] No, you’re not! I’ve got news for you: You are dying! And here’s the problem: All your stuff is dying with you. It’s all going in a garage sale or to your dumb kids, whom you never trusted in the first place. And now you’re staying awake at night going, “Goodness, gracious!” So then you say, “Well, I can’t spend it fast enough.”

Well, if you’ll let eternity dawn, we can help you to get rid of it. Who’s going to reach China for Christ? Who’s going to underpin the translations of the Bible in languages as yet untranslated? Who’s going to go to the ends of the earth to let the people know that Jesus Christ is alive and well and ready to meet them? You really planning on doing that after you’re dead? We all sit around in your attorney’s office and wait and find out just what you’ve done? Why don’t you do it now, silly person, and have the enjoyment of it?

And if we doubted that God wants to form this in us, then we don’t even understand the nature of death. Because compared to what lies ahead, living conditions around here are like a stopover in an unfinished shack. Now, you say, “That’s not very nice. I just put a new deck on the back of my house, and I don’t like you referring to my house as an unfinished shack.” I wasn’t referring to your house. I was referring to my house. Compared to where I’m going, where I live is like an unfinished shack. You too. I don’t care where you live. You couldn’t even approximate to it. Still, you’ve got to paint it. Still, you’ve got to fix. Still, you’ve got to do this with it, do that with it, make sure somebody’s there, somebody’s here, somebody’s over there—all the stuff that in the story of the sower… Remember, the guy was completely messed up, because he allowed the challenges of wealth and of possessions to squeeze the very life out of him, and he never came to maturity.[15]

Part of the reason for the immature nature of the contemporary American church is right here. ’Cause we’re living in the now, ’cause we’re planning on staying in the now. We want healed now. We want heaven now. We want happiness now. We want fixed now. We want perfection now. We want everything now! And Jesus says, “Listen: If you are going to play that game, you have no prospect of eternal riches.”

What you and I do with the small things in our lives is an indication of what we’ll do with our big things.

I read a manuscript this week. One of my friends sent it to me. Actually, a publisher sent it to me; it was written by one of my friends. There was a note in there concerning his wife, who had died. She was a friend of ours. She had an inoperable brain tumor. He tells a wonderful story in the course of the book of his wife, knowing that her time is coming close, visiting a florist’s shop in this small town where they lived. She was a young mother. She had four young children. They were all tiny. And she went into the florist for just a routine something.

As she stood waiting in the florist’s shop, it became apparent to her that the series of floral displays that were all around the foyer area had all been put there because they were going to be sent to a funeral. As she looked forward and looked at the greeting, she discovered that the majority of the cards were black-edged cards, solemn expressions of condolence. “Oh,” she said out loud, “these are far too gloomy.” She goes forward to a rack, and she picks out a card, and having looked at it, she gets a handful of the cards, and she turns to the owner of the store or the manager of the store, and she said, “When the people come to purchase flowers for my funeral, have them use this card.” And with that she left. And as the door closed behind her, the florist turned the card over and looked at it, and it read, “Welcome to your new home.”

Now, what’s that about? It’s about the then impinging upon the now. “He is no fool who gives [up] what he cannot keep to gain [what] he cannot lose.”[16] Tell me how you write that and mean it at the age of twenty-four unless the then has transformed your now. And what I’m saying is: I have yet to see what will happen in a life where the then breaks into my now. And we have yet to see what will happen to a congregation when the then invades the now in terms of the use of resources to bless others and to prepare for our eternal dwellings. But that is the principle. The shrewd manager decided, “I’m getting fired. I can do this, and I’ll have friends now.” Jesus says, “Use the same kind of shrewdness to ensure that when everything is gone, you are welcomed into eternal dwellings.” In other words, all of the instruction that he gives, all of the behavior he calls for grows out of an orientation to eternity.

In verse 10, contrary to the popular notion, Jesus says we do need to sweat the small stuff. We do need to sweat the small stuff. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, … whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” The manager was not commended for being dishonest; he was commended for being shrewd. What you and I do with the small things in our lives is an indication of what we’ll do with our big things. Our character is not determined by the quantity of goods entrusted to us. If a man is dishonest with change for a dollar, he shouldn’t be trusted with larger amounts. It’s an obvious principle.

That’s why we have to teach our children honesty in their speech and in their dealings. People say, “Well, you know, you don’t need to interfere with your children and be down on them so hard.”

The child said, “I saw the big dog in the front yard.”

Said, “Honey, the big dog wasn’t in the front yard. The big dog was in the backyard. You can say ‘I saw the big, black dog in the yard,’ but you can’t say ‘I saw it in the front yard’ if you actually saw it in the backyard, because it wasn’t in the backyard, and that’s not true.”

“Oh, what does it matter?”

“It matters a great deal, son. Where was the dog?”

“In the backyard.”

“So why did you say it was in the front yard?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, don’t say that.”

’Cause this is the same kid who then comes home and says, “I went to my music lesson after school,” when in point of fact, “music lesson after school” is a synonym for “I went with my friends to who knows where after school.” But it starts with “big dog in the front yard.”

The same with money. If you can’t give your kid a dollar and get the right change back, be careful. And this, of course, is the place where small stuff is irrelevant. There’s money lying all over America. Have you seen it? Someday I’m just going to… I say this to myself all the time; now I’m going to have to do it. But I’m going to take a day, and I’m going to go and see how much money I can find. ’Cause money’s everywhere in America, lying everywhere! There are a few of us eccentrics in Solon that find it in the early hours of the morning. I’m unashamed to admit that. I know where to go. Some of it’s in front of Dairy Mart, some of it’s by McDonald’s, and there’s a significant stash down by the pay phone—because, you know, “I’ve got to reach out and put that quarter in. And aw, it fell on the ground! Goodness gracious! That’s going to mean I’ll have to pull forward, I’ll have to open the door, I’ll have to get out, I’ll have to pick the thing up. Who cares? What’s a quarter between friends?” A quarter is just ten cents away from a Plain Dealer, that’s what it is! And I’ll take that quarter!

So I got this great quest in life to see how much… I can get a coffee, a newspaper, and a muffin, and I never even have to reach in my pocket. And when I go in the Dairy Mart to my Indian friend and I say, “Hey, it happened again!” he always says, “Only in America. Only in America!” And the two of us aliens, we have this little thing there. We’re going, “Isn’t this a great country? Can you believe we live here? Isn’t this fantastic?” “Oh, very, very good. Only in America. I put money in here, I put money in here, and there’s money everywhere, you know!”

And then they’ve got it figured out, ’cause a coffee’s a $1.59. Sounds like $1.60. But it isn’t a $1.60. But if you give ’em $1.60, you’re going to have to stay and embarrass yourself waiting for a penny. Watch me! There it is, right there. That’s this morning’s. ’Cause I’ve figured it out. Five hundred people a day passing through—and that’s conservative—who got this large coffee for $1.59 but left the penny behind: They put $5.00 in the pot. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year to the bottom line is $1,825.00. With four hundred outlets, it’s $730,000 a year to corporate earnings—because of a penny, which is apparently irrelevant!

Jesus says, “If you don’t take care of the small stuff, nobody’s going to trust you with big stuff.” Can you imagine how Judas Iscariot felt when he heard that? “Hey, Judas, if you can’t take care of that purse that you’ve got hanging from your belt, do you think that you’re actually going to take care of people? It’s not going to happen, Judas.” Do you imagine his eyes closing down as he gives his instruction? Because he’s the very one who said, “Why did that lady go and waste all that money with that jar of perfume? That could have been sold and given to the poor.” And John says, “He had no interest in the poor. It was only because he couldn’t stand seeing the money go through his fingers.”[17] And when he goes out from there, he goes to the Pharisees, and he says, “I’ll betray him.” And the Pharisees said, “That’s fine. We’ll give you money for it.” And that’s good, because he wanted money. Then he takes his thirty pieces of silver, and he throws them down on the temple courts, and he goes out, and he hangs himself.[18] Because what would it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?[19]

Well, our time really has gone. You say, “Well, we can serve God and money.” No. We can attempt to worship God and money in a haphazard, disjointed, irregular, and undevoted fashion, but to be at the absolute disposal of money, I cannot be at the absolute disposal of God. If I make the accumulation and enjoyment of stuff the main object of my life, then I put myself under the domination and power of stuff, and so I become the slave of stuff. If I recognize that all that I possess—my talents, my privileges, my money, my stuff—if I recognize it belongs to God, who lends it to me, then that opens the door to use all that I have to honor God, to bless my fellow creatures, and to enjoy myself. Because he gives us all things richly to enjoy.[20]

This is not some form of economic masochism. He says, “When you allow eternity to break into the now, then you will be able to take all you have—your house, your cars, your money, your resources, whatever it may be—and you may use it to honor God, to bless others, and to enjoy yourself. But if you worship at that shrine, you won’t enjoy yourself, you won’t bless others, you won’t honor God, and who do you think is going to give you riches for eternity?” So we jump in the car, we stick in a CD. It’s Bob Dylan, and he says, “You gotta serve somebody.”[21] He’s right. Jesus just said that. “Choose you this day whom [you] will serve.”[22] We cannot serve two masters.

Father, out of all of these words we pray that we might hear your voice. We pray that we might become students of the Bible, that we might search it diligently, that we might be like the Berean church, who, having heard Paul preach, went away and examined the Scriptures to see if these things were so.[23] I pray that this congregation will go out and do the same—that each of us will learn to study your Word so that we might become not only its students but also its servants.

May your grace and your mercy and your peace be the abiding portion of each one who believes, today and until, in the then, we see Jesus forevermore and we enter into eternal riches. Amen. Amen.

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[1] Joseph Medlicott Scriven, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (1855).

[2] Kelly Willard, “Cares Chorus” (1978).

[3] Matthew 6:19–20 (paraphrased).

[4] Matthew 6:21 (paraphrased).

[5] See 1 Chronicles 4:10.

[6] 1 Corinthians 13:11–12 (NIV 1984). Emphasis added.

[7] Mark 9:24 (paraphrased).

[8] 2 Peter 1:11 (paraphrased).

[9] See Ephesians 2:12.

[10] 2 Corinthians 4:18 (MSG).

[11] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.

[12] See Revelation 21:4.

[13] 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NIV 1984).

[14] Dean Pitchford, “Fame” (1980).

[15] See Luke 8:14.

[16] The Journals of Jim Elliot, ed. Elisabeth Elliot (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1978), 174.

[17] John 12:5–6 (paraphrased).

[18] See Matthew 26:14–15; 27:1–5.

[19] See Matthew 16:26; Mark 8:36; Luke 9:25.

[20] See 1 Timothy 6:17.

[21] Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody” (1979). Lyrics lightly altered.

[22] Joshua 24:15 (KJV).

[23] See Acts 17:11.