TEXT: Luke 16:9-13

SUBJECT: Luke #59: You and Your Money

One of the hardest things about preaching the Word of God is trying to make the sermon interesting to everyone. How do you do that? If you want to impress the Doctor of Divinity, you confuse the gardener. If you aim for the little girl, you miss the middle-aged man. How do you make the sermon connect with everyone?

The masters did it with great gifts. Martin Luther, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, and a few others could rivet the attention of scholars and common people at the same time. But then again, they were masters. The rest of us aren’t. How do ordinary preachers make everyone sit up and take notice?

They preach about money!

Everyone is interested in money. From the little boy waiting for his allowance to the senior citizen looking in the mailbox for her Social Security check. Everyone cares about money; the world’s favorite color is green.

Is it wrong to care about money? No it isn’t. Money matters in this life. And because it matters in this life, it also matters in the life to come. The Lord has a lot to say about money; He doesn’t say it all here, but what He says cuts right to the heart. No professor of finance or economics has ever written a book to match the few words our Lord spoke that day about money. There is something in His words for everyone: they tell the girl how to spend her allowance, the working man what to do with his paycheck, and the tycoon how to think about his investments.

In today’s passage, the Lord tells us three things about money. They are as plain as the nose on your face, and therefore, the things you’re most likely to not see. What He says is far more insightful than anything you’ll read in the Wall Street Journal or see on PBS or hear on a late-night radio program. It’s sad that many believers will turn to financial advisors (many of whom are fools and some are crooks), but will not open their Bibles and find out what their Lord says about money.

The reason is not hard to find: the Lord offers no scheme for making $50,000 a month at home in your spare time! What He offers is financial discipleship. And that’s not quick or easy or flashy or likely to make you rich. But it will make you holy. And, in the long run, that’s what your money is for.

What does Jesus Christ want you to do with your money?

In the first place, He wants you to adopt a long-term strategy. If you go to a financial advisor and tell him you want to double your money by tomorrow, he’ll tell you to go to Las Vegas. For the first trait of a serious investor is patience. He’s willing to wait for a return on his money. He knows small gains add up over the years.

A fool cannot wait that long. Instead of saving his nickels and dimes to buy a few shares of stock--or even put in the bank-- he spends them all on lottery tickets or buys prime real estate in the Everglades at $20 an acre or chases after some other promise of immediate riches! Which never come through.

Long term investments often make you rich; get-rich-quick schemes almost never do. Every broker and financial planner will tell you that. Except the crooked ones!

The Lord agrees with them, only He stretches out the long-term strategy a bit longer than they do. They often aim for the retirement years. But He looks ahead even farther; He looks for a good return on your money in heaven, v.9:

This is not the easiest verse in the Bible to explain, but when read carefully and in context, it becomes fairly clear. It looks back to the parable of the crooked manager. You remember what he did with his master’s books? He cooked them! He cut the debtors’ bills by 20-50% so that when he lost his job, he would find a warm welcome in their homes. The man was a crook—no doubt about that—but he wasn’t stupid and the master praised him for his cleverness.

The Lord wants you to spend your money as shrewdly as the manager did. Spend it in such a way that—when your money runs out—you’ll have someone to welcome you into His home.

Who is that Someone? The word, "they" in v.9 has caused some confusion. Some thing they’re angels; others say they’re poor saints whom you helped in life and who welcome you warmly into heaven. But most scholars say that "they" is but a polite way of referring to God.

It seems to me that it makes no real difference. Whether angels or saints or God welcomes you into heaven when you die is a detail. The big idea is that those who have spent their money God’s way will go to heaven!

We don’t buy our way into heaven—of course not! But how you live has something to do with where you go when you die. And how you spend you money has a lot to do with how you live.

Your spending habits are making someone happy. If you spend all your money on bookies, pimps, and drug dealers, you can be sure that they—and the devil—are really happy with you. But I don’t think you’re spending your money on such things.

But what are you spending it on? Who are you pleasing with your money? Are you sending the chairman of Mastercard to Tahiti every year with your monthly payments?

Or, are you pleasing God? How do you please God with your spending? The issue is a big one, but let’s start with the basics—with the commands of God in the New Testament. We know for sure that He is pleased when we spend our money in four ways:

• Taking care of your family--not their every lust, but their real needs, cf. I Timothy 5:8.

• Paying men who preach the Word of God, cf. Galatians 5:6.

• Helping the poor, cf. James 1:27.

• Supporting missions, cf. II Corinthians 11:8.

The list is not complete, of course, but all these items are on it. These are some of the things you can pay for that please the Lord. Now, are you doing it? I hope I’m not being rude—and I sure don’t want to be greedy—but how much do you give the church? I knew a man who gave 50%--and he wasn’t rich! Some give 10%--and that’s a good place to start. But I can’t see how 0% is making friends with angels, saints, or the Lord!

The man who invests everything he’s got on bananas is a fool. Because in five days they’ll be black, soft, and worthless. Much of our spending is on bananas—good for a short while, but rotten for eternity. But money put into God’s Church, into missions, helping the Lord’s poor, and so on is wise investment.

Others will laugh at you for wasting your money on something that won’t pay off in the end. But it will pay off! You have God’s Word on it.

What does the Lord want you to do with your money? He wants you to invest it in eternity. And unlike the others who promise future riches for a little money today, you can trust God.

The second thing our Lord says about your money is not a command, but an observation. Money is a window into your soul. In other words, what you spend your money on tells you what kind of person you are. It doesn’t make you into that kind of person, but it reveals your character.

If a man spends $600 a month on chocolates, you be can pretty sure that he’s got a sweet tooth. If he spends a lot on hydraulic shocks, dingle balls, and tiny chain steering wheels, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he’s a Low Rider.

Advertisers know this. If you spend a lot at Neiman-Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue, you’re not going to get a long of catalogues from Mervyns, Ross, or K-Mart. If marketers know it, you know it too. You may not like to admit it, but you know it’s true: your spending is a window into your soul.

This is exactly what the Lord says in v.10:

The man who cannot control his spending cannot control himself. He lives by impulse instead of by reflection; he is ruled by lust instead of wisdom; he serves advertising instead of Jesus Christ. The judgment is very harsh! And yet, it is the Lord’s judgment.

We live in a consumer age in which every part of life is geared to getting you to buy something. People look for fellowship in malls instead of in families, churches, and neighborhoods. Men spend hours every night clicking through websites to find something to buy that will soon perish instead of with their wives who will live forever in heaven or hell. Mothers ignore their kids—not to eat, but to buy things they can do without.

If an Old Testament prophet rose from the dead, I believe the first thing he would cry down is our materialism—which is seen in every month’s credit card account, in the log of every checkbook, in every tax return.

How you spend your money tells you what you are—for good or bad. The Lord wants you to think about that. And to make the necessary adjustments. God help us to resist the siren song of advertising and listen to the sweet psalms of our Savior!

Our spending habits not only reveal what we are, but also what we will be. Earth is connected to heaven and hell; decisions made here affect us there.

The man who will not spend his money wisely in this life, won’t have riches in the life to come. The Lord says, vv.11-12:

Here the teaching breaks with the parable of the crooked manager. That man made out well by the sinful use of his master’s money. But we won’t. How you spend your money is a test—sort of like a review you get at work. If you’re an accountant and at the end of the year, the boss says you did a really bad job, you won’t get a promotion. But if you did a fine job, you move up. Your faithfulness in lower jobs indicate that you’ll be good for higher jobs.

We have an example of this in the Bible: Joseph. Potiphar buys him as a slave (maybe a house boy), but his work is so good, that he eventually becomes the manager of the rich man’s estate. Later, he’s thrown in jail, but he’s such a fine prisoner that he’s made a steward of prisoners. Later, he becomes the king’s advisor and is so good at it that Pharaoh makes him Lord of the Empire and second only to himself!

God has given us money. If He sees us spending it well, He’ll commit better things to us. Some say this is the Gospel—but that doesn’t fit the context. What it is is true riches or heaven.

We don’t earn our way to heaven! But life is a journey up or down. Those who please God with their spending habits are on their way to heaven; those who please themselves or advertisers with what they buy are on their way to hell.

The last thing our Lord says about money is also the most challenging. He says that money is one of two things: (1) His servant or (2) your master.

You control your money or your money controls you. The love of money is the opposite of loving God. Having plenty for yourself and nothing for the church, for missions, and for the poor means that money has mastered you. Which is another way of saying, God hasn’t.

Make no mistake about it: though many have tried, no one has ever succeeded:

Mammon is the Aramaic word for money. Why Luke used it instead of the Greek word, I don’t know. To us, it has a sinister ring, something like filthy lucre or ill-gotten gain. It doesn’t mean that. It just means money.

The Lord is very liberal in giving you money. He also allows a lot of discretion in how you use it. But He will not be made a fool of! He knows and idol when He sees one. If you serve money, you do not serve Him.

That’s why it’s so hard for rich men to get into heaven. Their money offers them so much more than what we have. It offers freedom and power and girls that you and I will never afford. As a side note, you need to pray for the rich for their money temptations are far greater than yours. But that’s on the side.

The main point here is that Money is an Idol; it was idol of the First Century—and the idol of our time too. Has it mastered you? I can’t answer that for you. But I can tell you you need to answer it for you!

Instead of dreaming about money or griping about not having enough of it, why don’t you think long and hard about what money is doing to you. Is too little leaving your unhappy with God and envious toward people who have more of it? Is too much making you proud of yourself and causing you to think of the future without also thinking, "If the Lord wills"?

Are you spending priorities right? Are you investing in heaven or spending everything you’ve got on things that perish with the using or will one day melt with fervent heat?

In short, who are you serving? Who are you loving? Who are you most loyal to? Is it God or is it Mammon? I don’t need to know, but you do.

Am I the only one who feels battered by the Word of God? Am I the only one who cannot stand up to the scrutiny of God’s audit on the Day of Judgment?

I need a bit of encouragement in light of this shattering passage. And I have it. For this Word did not come down from Mount Sinai. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who brings it.

And with it, He brings forgiveness; He brings His Spirit; He brings hope for doing better.

If you have botched your spending, there is forgiveness with Jesus Christ! Zacchaeus served money like no other man; but Christ came to his home and saved him. The publican’s sins were wiped away that day. And his heart was renewed. The man who loved money more than anything in the world could say,

How dear the Lord Jesus Christ ought to be to consumers! To people who have found nothing better to do with their money than to spend it on things that don’t matter!

Sinners need a Savior. And God has given us one. In the Lord Jesus Christ there is hope for repentance and hope for heaven. Now, don’t be discouraged! Seize the hope! Lay hold on Christ for pardon, for change, for heaven. And to save your money as well as your soul.