Ep 29 The Wealth Management Mindset for Longterm Security (Luke 16)

Hello and welcome to episode 29. Today we’ll be hearing stories from Luke chapter 16.

Before we get there, what about the stories we heard at the end of last episode, from Luke 15?

This whole chapter is Jesus’s response to some grumbling.

First, who was grumbling? The Jewish religious leaders. And why were they grumbling? Luke tells us it’s because Jesus receives sinners and eats with them. Now to grumble means to indignantly complain. These leaders were really annoyed with what Jesus was doing. Why do they find Jesus’ welcome of sinners so troubling?

Well earlier in Luke’s narrative, in chapter 11, Jesus speaks about the hearts of the Pharisees; he says that what they really love is not God, but the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplace. Their hearts seek to find joy, not in God’s friendship, but in their own status and importance. What brings them happiness is when other people look up to them and give them the honour they believe they deserve. Their thinking is ruled by human comparisons; they can only feel good about themselves when they have other people to look down on or when others praise them. They call those people who have a reputation for breaking the rules, such as prostitutes or tax collectors, ’sinners’, and they shun them. They feel a great sense of relief that their lives are so moral, and therefore so much more pleasing to God, than these obviously immoral people.

But Jesus has no regard for their system of deriving satisfaction in life. In the eyes of the religious elite, Jesus is a wandering teacher who places absolutely no importance on the precious human moral hierarchies that give their lives so much meaning. And because Jesus is so popular, and so many thousands of people are listening to him, the religious leaders find his utter disregard for their social practices deeply disturbing. Instead of shunning the immoral people, like any respectable religious person should, Jesus welcomes them, and not only that, eats with them - treating them as his friends! Jesus is a dangerous threat to the social customs that give the religious leaders their sense of personal value. And so they react with fear and anger, and they grumble about him.

Back in Episode 7 we heard how the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron - they were hungry and wished they were back in Egypt. When God’s people grumble amongst themselves it’s always a sign they’ve either forgotten who God is or they don’t truly know him. The Israelites in the desert grumbled because they forgot the powerful and kind God who had just miraculously rescued them from slavery. A few thousand years later, when the scribes and pharisees grumble about Jesus, it’s a sign that they really don’t know God. They think they are the experts in the “things of God”, but in reality, their hearts are very far from him.

So Jesus responds to their grumbling with three parables that reveal who God is. These three stories show that what really pleases God, and what makes God really happy, is not moral performance but a repentant heart.

In the first parable Jesus tells of a man who goes searching across the countryside for his one missing sheep. When he finds it, he is so overjoyed that he calls on his friends and neighbours to rejoice with him. In the second parable Jesus tells of a woman who loses a silver coin, and then seeks diligently for it. She’s so happy when she finds it that she calls her friends and neighbours together to share in her happiness. Now would the friends, when called to share in their neighbour’s joy, respond with a sarcastic ‘whoopdeedoodaa what’s the big deal’? Of course not. A sincere friend would care about the things that are important to the people they love.

Like these people who are overjoyed about finding something precious that was lost, Jesus says that heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents. This reason for joy is far from the hearts of the grumbling Pharisees and scribes. Their hearts seek after a self-centred, competitive happiness in which there are winners and losers. They can only be happy if they believe they are better than others. The joy of heaven, on the other hand, is an expanding, inclusive happiness that never depends for its value on the existence of losers.

Then Jesus tells the parable of the two sons. It begins with a younger son outrageously rejecting his father and wasting his father’s wealth in a far country. Once the money runs out the he is reduced to humiliating poverty. Finally he realises the stupidity of his choices and the horror of his sins. He decides to depend on the mercy of his father, and to beg for work as a hired servant in his father’s house. And so he returns home, but while still a long way off his father sees him and runs to give him a compassionate, joyful welcome. The younger son confesses his sin and his unworthiness, but before he can finish his rehearsed speech about becoming a hired servant, his father has ordered the robe of honour to be put on him, and for party celebrations to begin on the spot. But the older son, who has been working hard in the field, is angry about all the attention being lavished on his rebellious younger brother. The unfairness of the situation makes him sulk. He refuses to go into the party and stays away from the music and dancing, all alone in the dark.

His father comes to meet him outside, and entreats him to join in celebrating the return of his lost brother. But the older son responds to his father with accusations about how totally unjust the father’s treatment of his little brother is.

What is happening with the Father’s welcome of the younger brother, is that the assumptions and expectations that were previously lying deep and hidden inside the heart of the older brother, are now being exposed.

The older son’s previously unexpressed beliefs about the nature of the relationship he has with his Father, are the source of his hurt and anger. And these beliefs, now that they are expressed in the open, show that, despite appearing as a dutiful son, he has never properly understood himself or his Father.

The older son’s beliefs are expressed through his explanation to his Father of why he can’t go to the party, ‘Look! These many years I have worked like a slave for you, and I never disobeyed your commands. Yet you never gave me even a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends! But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’

He shows that he sees his Dad, not as a good and generous Father, but as a stingy and hard master. He sees his Dad as a mean employer who expects dutiful service from him, with little to no reward. The older son has been working for his Father, not with the joyful mindset of a son who already owns the family business, but with the resentful mindset of a down-trodden employee.

The folly of this way of thinking is shown by his Father’s response, as he says “Son, you are always with me, and everything that belongs to me is yours”. What the older son believes he has to earn by working as a slave, already belongs to him.

The slave mindset of the older son, springs from a faulty belief that his external obedience can earn him what is actually already his through the gift of inheritance. We see in the story that the Father is kind and generous, lavish in his desire to give good gifts to his kids, and yet something is blinding the older son from seeing his Father in a positive light. It seems that his blindness stems from a desire to gain praise and honour for himself. He’s deeply attached to the idea of accumulating credit for himself based upon his own actions. Ultimately his motivation for working is to enjoy his own glory amongst his own friends. He doesn’t delight in the love and acceptance of his Father - he takes it for granted. And in taking it for granted, he looks away from his father and into himself. He can’t accept blessings from His Father as gift, because to do so would mean rejecting the cherished lie that it is his hard work that makes him worthy of receiving blessing. He won’t accept as a gift what he is determined to earn as a wage.

When the father abundantly showers his repentant younger brother with gifts and honour, the older brother grumbles. What he would have preferred, presumably, is for his father to shun and disown the younger son. And while his immoral little brother shivered out in the cold, big brother would have felt affirmed and satisfied in himself, smugly thinking “Well I never wasted money on prostitutes, he’s just getting what he deserves”.

But far from shunning his younger son, the Father embraces him. The underserved welcome the younger brother receives is felt by the older brother as a slap in the face of all his hard work. He interprets his Father’s compassion, as a direct personal insult. Unless he is willing to give up the idea that his Father’s love can be earned, the older brother will never be happy. He will be the one to remain outside, excluded from the family circle.

And so Jesus, by welcoming and eating with sinners, has exposed the heart of the Pharisees and scribes. They want God to be stingy with his welcomes, only bestowing approval on those who appear to have deserved it. But their grumbling about Jesus shows they do not know God’s character. God is a loving Father who delights in children who turn to him with repentant hearts. If the Pharisees and scribes remain determined to treat God as mean employer, rather than a generous father, they will find themselves as the ones shut out forever from the Father’s joy.

The stories from chapter 16 start here:

Jesus also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who was informed of accusations that his manager was wasting his assets. So he called the manager in and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Turn in the account of your administration, because you can no longer be my manager.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What should I do, since my master is taking my position away from me? I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m too ashamed to beg. I know what to do so that when I am put out of management, people will welcome me into their homes.’ So he contacted his master’s debtors one by one. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ The man replied, ‘100 measures of olive oil.’ The manager said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ The second man replied, ‘100 measures of wheat.’ The manager said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write 80.’ The master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their contemporaries than the people of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by how you use worldly wealth, so that when it runs out you will be welcomed into the eternal homes.

“The one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and the one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you haven’t been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will entrust you with the true riches? And if you haven’t been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you your own ? No servant can serve two masters, for 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 God and money.”

The Pharisees (who loved money) heard all this and ridiculed him. But Jesus said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in men’s eyes, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly prized among men is utterly detestable in God’s sight.

“The law and the prophets were in force until John; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is urged to enter it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tiny stroke of a letter in the law to become void.

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery, and the one who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

“There was a rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. But at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus whose body was covered with sores, who longed to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. In addition, the dogs came and licked his sores.

“Now the poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, as he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far off with Lazarus at his side. So he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in anguish in this fire.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus likewise bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. Besides all this, a great chasm has been fixed between us, so that those who want to cross over from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ So the rich man said, ‘Then I beg you, father—send Lazarus to my father’s house (for I have five brothers) to warn them so that they don’t come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they must respond to them.’ Then the rich man said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He replied to him, ‘If they do not respond to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

The Story ends here

Thanks for joining us for today’s story.  You might like to take a moment to pause and think about what you noticed. Things you liked, things you didn’t like, something the story showed you about Jesus. To read it for yourself it’s in the book of Luke chapter 16. If you can find someone willing to read it and talk about it with you, even better! You’ve been listening to stories from the Bible - I’m Jen and I look forward to sharing more stories with you.