If God is the owner and we are the managers, then how are we supposed to manage all that God owns?

At the church where I serve we are spending our time together looking at what the letters that make up the Bible have to say about the subject of money and finances. Our hope and our prayer is that God would move in our heads and our hearts in a way that results in us embracing some timeless truths and principles that will enable us to live our day to day lives in a way that reveals and reflects Jesus head and heart when it came to the issue of money and finances.

Last week, we spent our time together addressing a tension and frustration that we can experience when it comes to our roles and responsibilities with money, possessions and treasure. We discovered that where we get off track, frustrated, and in trouble when it comes to finances is when we try to fulfill roles and responsibilities that belong to God, or ignore or fail to fulfill responsibilities that belong to us.

We then looked at a Psalm that provided clarity about our role and responsibilities when it comes to money, possessions, and treasure. In Psalm 50:7-15, we discovered the timeless truth that when it comes to treasure, God is the owner and we are the manager. The timeless reality is that we never really own anything. We only manage God’s money, possessions, and treasure for a period of time. We are only on earth for a finite period of time and, when our time on earth is over, all of the money, possessions and treasure that we accumulate while on earth stays here.

But what can tend to happen when it comes to our role and God’s role in money, possessions, and treasure, is that we can find ourselves falling into some faulty theology. We recognized that humanity throughout history have tended to fall into one of two extreme and faulty views of how God and money relate and interact with humanity.

Instead of falling into the faulty view of prosperity theology, where God is our spiritual Santa Claus that we use in order to get what we really worship, which is money, possessions, and treasure; Instead of falling into the faulty view of poverty theology, where we interact with money, possessions and treasure out of duty rather than delight; the Bible calls us to engage in stewardship theology, where we view God as the owner of all and embrace the role and responsibility that we have to manage all that God has given us in a way that reveals and reflects the generosity of Jesus to the world around us.

Now this week, I would like for us to address a natural question that arises out of last week. And that natural question is this: If God is the owner and we are the managers, then how are we supposed to manage all that God owns? How does God define success when it comes to how we are to manage the money, possessions, and treasure we have on earth? Will we be held accountable for how we manage all that God owns? And if that is that case; if we will be held accountable, then what is the standard we will be held to?

So, to answer these questions, I would like for us to spend our time together looking at a section of an account of Jesus life that is recorded for us in our Bibles, called the gospel of Luke. In this section of this letter, we see Jesus telling a series of parables. And it is in the explanation of one of these parable that we discover the timeless standard that God will use to measure and judge how we manage the money, possessions, and treasure we have been given. So let’s look at this parable together, beginning in Luke 16:1-2:

Now He was also saying to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and this manager was reported to him as squandering his possessions. "And he called him and said to him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management, for you can no longer be manager.'

To understand what Jesus is communicating here, we first need to understand what a parable is and how parables function. A parable is an earthly story that reveals a deeper spiritual truth. In this parable, there are two characters. The first character is a rich man, who represents God. The second character is a manager, who represents us. Jesus explains that word came back to the rich man that his manager was squandering his possessions. In other words, the manager was wasting all that the rich man had given him responsibility to manage.

After receiving the report that the money, possessions, and treasure that he owned was being wasted by the manager, the rich man called the manager in for a meeting. The owner confronted the manager in a very direct manner: “What is this I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management, for you can no longer be manager.”

In other words, the owner is saying to the manager “I have received a report that you are wasting my money, possessions, and treasure. I have seen the evidence in the report and believe that it is true. So, I want to know what you have to say for yourself. You were under obligation as the manager of my finances to manage my finances. But what I am hearing and seeing is that you are not fulfilling your obligation to responsibly manage my finances.”

“And, because of that reality, you are going to have to give an account for why you have failed to fulfill your obligation to manage my finances. In addition, you are no longer going to be in a position to have access to or manage my finances. I am no longer going to enable your irresponsibility by continuing to provide for you financially.”

Jesus then tells us how the manager responded as He continues this parable in verse 3-4:

"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg. 'I know what I shall do, so that when I am removed from the management people will welcome me into their homes.'

Now the manager’s response, if communicated in the language we use in our culture today, would have sounded something like this: “Uh oh, I am about to lose my job because I have wasted my boss’s treasure; my irresponsibility is going to result in a loss of my job and income. What am I going to do? How am I going to support myself financially? I am too weak to work a job that requires manual labor. And I am too proud to beg. How am I going to survive?”

Jesus then explained that the manager comes up with a plan; a plan that would result in the people around him being receptive enough of him that they would provide hospitality and support him financially until he would be able to find work. Jesus then reveals the wasteful managers plan in verse 5-7:

"And he summoned each one of his master's debtors, and he began saying to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' "And he said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' And he said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.'  "Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' And he said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.'

Jesus tells us that the wasteful manager contacted each person who owed money to his master and renegotiated the terms of their debt. The manager negotiated what we would call in our culture today a series of short sales. In these short sales, the manager would collect what he could on the outstanding debt instead of risking never receiving any money from the debt that was owed.

Now, as you might imagine, these short sales were a great deal for those who owed money to the rich man. And the great deals that would come about as a result of these short sales would earn the wasteful manager favor in the eyes of those whose debt was being eliminated from the short sale. However, these short sales were not a great deal for the rich man. The rich man would end up losing money.

Which is why what Jesus says next, in verse 8, is so surprising. Tomorrow, we will look at what Jesus had to say about the manager’s plan…