Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Alright everyone.

Well, welcome back to another Thursday night.

If I haven’t had a chance to meet you yet, my name is Cody and I’m the college and worship pastor here.

And if you’re new, welcome to our Thursday night gathering.

Every week, this is what we do, we gather as like minded college aged believers, we spend time in worship, the word, and community.

Tonight, in our time in the word, we are continuing in the gospel of Luke.

Every week we take a small text out of the larger chapter for that week, and we look at it together.

This week we are in Luke 16, so go ahead and turn in your bibles to that chapter.

Luke 16, we will be right at the beginning of it.

If you’re wanting to stay in the know of where I’m going to be preaching, you can read Luke 17 for next week.

And, if you want to catch up on any of our teachings in the past, you can find them where you find podcasts, just type in Coram Deo College to find our teachings channel, or you can also find them on YouTube.

So, into the scriptures.

If you were with us last week, we talked about the most famous parable in history.

The prodigal son.

It’s a famous parable with a pretty clear meaning nowadays.

And honestly…it couldn’t be more different than the parable that we are in tonight.

You know, last week when I was researching the prodigal son, someone in the office would ask, or a friend from church…I’d tell them we were doing the prodigal son and they’d be like “ah, yeah…cool cool”.

This week…that’s not the case.

Most people, when I told them we were doing the parable of the dishonest manager…they were like…which one is that again?

It’s a parable that’s not well known…and honestly it’s a parable that’s a bit confusing.

So here’s what I want to do tonight.

I want to spend the first part of this message just going through and explaining the parable to you.

And then, after we’ve gone through the parable, I want to walk through the points of application that Jesus himself gives us at the end of the passage.

All right?

Cool.

Here’s the first thing I want to explain to you.

Parables are an illustration, meant to teach a moral lesson or truth.

Which means…not every single aspect of them can or should be evaluated for it’s spiritual implications.

For example, the parable of the man leaving the 99 sheep to find the one.

It’s a parable about God’s love for sinners and the rejoicing in heaven over the sinner who repents…it is not meant to teach you, that if you’re on of the 99, God leaves you at times so he can go find and love someone else.

The parable of those knocking at the door to be let into the house is not meant to teach you that everyone in hell is going to have a door they are knocking on…but rather that there will be people who did not love christ or prepare themselves for his coming.

Or, the parable to the vineyard owner who sends his son thinking that he will be respected, just to have his son killed…that parable is not teaching us that God misunderstood how we would treat his son…but rather that he would send him and he would be mistreated.

So do you see what I mean?

A parable has a truth or lesson to learn from it..but not every single aspect should be taken as descriptive about God.

And that’s important as we dive into this passage, you’ll see why.

But for now…let’s see one of the important things about his passage.

We see it right there in verse one, go ahead and look at it with me.

First thing for us to notice tonight..

1) This Parable is for disciples (v.1a)

That means that this parable is for us.

The last three weeks we have looked at parables that are being spoken mostly to the pharisees or unrepentant Jews…but now, right here, we have a parable directed towards the men and women who follow Jesus.

So as we start this parable together…first things to know…is that you need to come to the text with an attitude of learning.

“This parable is for disciples....and I’m a disciple…which means this parable is for me…and this truth should apply to me directly.”

So, first point.

Super simple, super short, but super important.

Second point...

2) It’s about money and stewardship (v.1b-8)

So, this parable is for disciples…and it’s about money and how we both spend it, and view it.

That’s why the title of this message is called “A Disciple’s Dollar”.

Because, after this passage, you should be evaluating what you do with your dollars.

That is, with your money.

So, this parable is for disciples, and it’s about money and stewardship…let’s look at the rest of it so you can see what I mean.

We will take it a couple verses at a time, and I’ll explain what’s going on as we read it, so we can all stay on the same page.

So, so far this parable isn’t too confusing.

The rich man here would represent Jesus/God, and the manager would represent the disciples.

The rich man calls his manager in…that is someone who manages all his wealth and estates…he calls him in and says “I don’t like what I’m hearing.

You’re not doing your job, give me a full account of everything then you’re done..you’re fired.”

And the manager’s response to this is…what am I going to do now?

I don’t want to have to beg in the streets…and I don’t have the capability of doing hard labor…what shall I do?

So that’s where we are so far.

Let’s continue.

Look at verse 4.

So in this chunk of scripture…the manager has a lightbulb moment.

An aha moment.

He says, “I know what I’ll do…I’ll go to the people who owe the rich man money, I’ll edit their accounts so that they aren’t in as much debt…and they’ll be so grateful to me that they will receive me warmly and take care of me after my master has fired me.”

That’s what it means when it says in verse four that the people would “receive him into their houses.”

They would take care of the manager.

So that’s the idea that the manager has…and that’s exactly what he does.

He goes to the first guy and and takes his hundred measures of oil and drops it to fifty.

He then goes to the second guy and takes his hundred measures of wheat and drops it to eighty.

We should know…these numbers actually represented some big money.

I won’t get into all the specifics tonight…but it would essentially be like someone buying a house and getting a 30 -year loan for $300,000.

And then someone that manages that loan for the bank comes to you, and changes the ledger to read $150,000 instead of 300....essentially taking off 15 years of the loan in a single swoop.

And the manger, is banking on these men being so grateful that he’s taking off years of their debt…that they will welcome in into their household.

So so far, this parable still isn’t that confusing.

And if we were to stop right here…we would probably have some assumptions about how the next part went.

Namely…many of us would think that the rich man would come to find that the manager and lied, stolen, and committed fraud…and would be angry and throw him out.

You see, our natural instinct, knowing the character of God…is that he hates evil, he hates lying, he hates theft…and so, we naturally anticipate this parable to be a moral lesson on right action and good heart…on honest living and glorifying God in all that we do…that’s our natural assumption…and that’s why the next part of the parable becomes so confusing…because this is not what we see at all.

Look back at verse 8.

So the master…commends the dishonest manager...

Remember, that the master/rich man is suppose to represent God…and the dishonest manager represents the disciples…so why…why does the master celebrate the cheating of the manager.

That’s why this parable can be so confusing…because what it looks like…is God is celebrating theft.

God is celebrating deceit.

God is celebrating lies.

But we know that not to be true…because other parts of scripture make it very clear that God is holy and against all evil.

Everything from the 10 commandments in Exodus 20, to pretty much any letter that the apostle Paul ever wrote.

So if that’s the case…and God hates sin…then we need to let those really clear scriptures interpret this sort of unclear scripture…and note and say “okay…that can’t be it”.

So, what is going on here?

Well, I think the key here is in the last part of verse 8. Look back at that.

So at the end of verse 8 here, Jesus goes into a very quick explanation/description of what the master is doing.

He says the master commends the manager because that’s what people of the world do…they celebrate shrewdness…that is, they celebrate cunningness more often than those who are christians do.

That’s what the passage means by sons of this world, and sons of light.

So, Jesus says the master commends the manager because he was cunning…and people of this world are way more cunning with their money than people of God are…and Jesus says…that needs to change.

And he says it needs to change in verse 9.

So…Jesus is not celebrating sin in this parable…remember I told you that we can’t take every single aspect of a parable and assume it to be a theological nuance…Jesus isn’t celebrating the action of theft or deceit…but he is making a point that the Lord wants to celebrate the cunning of believers in money the way that the world celebrates cunningness.

I’ll say that again…in this parable…Jesus is not celebrating the sin…but rather saying that believers should possess a cunningness with their money…much like non-believers possess a cunningness with their money.

Believers should possess a trait of thinking about the wealth they have and the wealth they could have…but not in a worldly , greedy, sense…but an eternal sense.

I can’ t make it more simple than this.

Disciple.