Fixed on Forever

a young Christian being challenged one day by a,
I suppose, a discipler in my life. And he just simply suggested
that I examine why I do what I do. And it really became for
me quite a revolutionary concept. to begin to examine my life and
everything that I do and why I do what I do. I found it to
be important not only in my own life and day-to-day activities,
but even in the church and in charting a course for the church.
Why we do what we do is all important. It directs what we do. And a
lot of times it corrects us from activities and behaviors and
programs and things that we ought not be engaged in. Why do we
do what we do? And for me, and for so many of
us, the easy and appropriate answer is we do all that we do
to glorify God. And that’s true. That is true. And that will keep
us certainly out of a great deal of trouble. But let’s be a little
more focused still, why do we do what we do? Why do we even
glorify God? Why do we seek to glorify God? And I suppose nothing is more
difficult than in the realm of work or employment or secular
activity, if you will. Because when you begin to ask,
why do you do what you do in that realm? The answer becomes
much more difficult. You can say that, yes, I’m doing
all that I do to the glory of God. But why am I working? Why am I engaged in this activity
that gobbles up so much of my time? And am I really doing all
to the glory of God in that realm? I’ll tell you another revolutionary
concept, and John didn’t intend it as such, but that hymn essentially
frames the mindset that we are to have. Be thou my vision. It’s God in focus. It’s God that
is to be in focus in all that we do and will have no greater
impact on our worldly activities. And I’m speaking in a good way
of that word worldly. It will have no greater impact
on our worldly activities. Keeping God in focus, keeping
eternity in view will have a tremendous, a profound impact if we truly
keep God at the center, if we keep His purposes and His glory. If we keep eternity in view. We come to chapter 16, it’s an
interesting chapter, it’s an interesting passage, the passage
that we’ll look at today. Let me just share just a brief
taste of the context. As you know, and for the last
four or five weeks, we have been looking at those three little
parables that were brought on by a simple question. Jesus was
being criticized for hanging out with tax gatherers and sinners. As I said, in times past, they
thought they had him dead to right, they thought they had
Jesus finally hemmed in for hanging out, not only hanging out, but
eating with such people. And Jesus began, as you recall,
to tell those three very intimately related parables. The lost sheep,
the lost coin, the lost son. And it’s almost an abrupt change,
and yet it’s related. It’s as if Jesus turns now to
those very people who he was just criticized for hanging around
And he gives them a profound lesson on life’s purpose. He
turns to those very disciples for whom he was criticized and
he gives them meat, food, spiritual nourishment. A lesson that would carry them
through life if they would apply it. Let’s look. at Luke 16, beginning in verse
1. Now, he was also saying to the
disciples, there was a certain rich man who had a steward, and
this steward 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 account of your
stewardship, for you can no longer be steward. The steward said
to himself, what shall I do since my master is taking away the
stewardship from me? I’m not strong enough to dig
and I’m ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that
when I am removed from the stewardship, they will receive me into their
homes. And he summoned each one of his master’s debtors and began
saying to the first, how much do you all my master? And he
said 100 measures of oil. And he said to him, take your
bill and sit down and quickly write me 50. Then he said to
another, how much do you owe? And he said 100 measures of wheat.
And he said to him, take your bill and write 80. And his master
praised the unrighteous steward because he acted shrewdly. For
the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own
kind than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends
for yourself by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that
when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” Piece of cake, right? I remember
reading through this the first time and I said, something’s
got to be wrong here. And I read through it again,
I said, this is Jesus commending this activity. Jesus told the
parable. Now, granted, the master is the
one that commends the steward. But Jesus certainly applies that
principle in the end. And I remember thinking, well,
maybe further study will clarify everything. I thought that maybe this was the
mistake in the Bible, and I began to study it. And I’d say there
is no mistake. Not a mistake here either. No parable in all of the difficult
sayings of Christ is more difficult to interpret and has been more
widely or diversely interpreted than this parable. People have
taken this and gone absolutely off the deep end. I remember
my personal shock at the first reading of that. But the shock
is only added to when I began to read about all the variety
of applications of this parable. The difficulty of the parable
is well known, the variety of interpretations is notorious. The steward in some people’s
minds and you get all kinds of different answers. Some said
that the steward in this parable is the Jewish hierarchy. and
that they had been unfaithful and that Jesus is tailoring on
or trailering on, if you will, to the previous parables and
the rebuke of the Pharisees. And this is directly related
to them. And it seems plausible on the face
of it. Some people said that it was the tax gatherers that
were in view, which is completely flies in the face of everything
that Jesus had just said. Some said it was Pilate. Pilate
was the one, the unrighteous steward, and certainly he had
done many of those same things. He was a shrewd, despicable,
deceitful man. This has nothing to do with Pilate.
Some said it was Judas looking forward to what Judas would do
to Christ, and Judas did sell Christ out. Judas did this dishonest
act. This has nothing to do with Judas.
Some said this was Satan given a trust, given a task and that
Satan manipulated the books as it were. You know what? This
has nothing to do with Satan. Some said that it merely refers
to repentant sinners. Which is really an easy thing,
because in a sense, we’ve all done this. If you want to take
God as the as the landowner, we’ve all done things like this. Some even suggested, and these
last two baffle me. Some said that the steward here
is the Apostle Paul, that somehow in some way he had squandered
his master’s estate and squandered his master’s property and that
he was deceitful in the way that he went. I mean, I see absolutely.
But if that one baffles you, imagine applying this to Christ.
The Christ was the steward. And that’s why I said over the
history of interpretations, you get everything from just some
off base teaching to flat out heresy. So let’s be cautious,
let’s be patient this morning. You know what? I don’t think
that it’s even necessary to interpret the steward as referring to anybody
specifically, nor the master. Jesus is telling a simple story. He didn’t even have to apply
titles to it. And I’ll show you why in a moment.
Go back to verse one. In verse one, Luke records, he
was saying to the disciples, remember, Jesus had just finished,
in essence, defending his behavior in hanging out with these so-called
disciples, in befriending them, in loving them, in receiving
them. And remember, when we talked
about that, it was a more formal reception. It wasn’t just that
He greeted them casually and shook their hands in the marketplace.
He was receiving them. They were sitting down with Him.
They were eating meals together and in our modern vernacular,
hanging out. They were His friends. And for many verses there in
chapter 15, Jesus, in some of the most beautiful parables ever
told, Jesus defends His ministry. Which one of you? who lost a
sheep, or lost a coin, or worse yet, lost a son, wouldn’t do
the same thing. And they never answered. They
never answered. And so, it’s in that vein that
Jesus turns to these precious disciples and begins to teach them. What
a heart our Lord Jesus Christ had. What a heart for teaching
and seizing the moment, every moment. His heart hasn’t changed. And I believe that He would use
this passage for us today. We are His disciples, aren’t
we? The passage wasn’t meant to be static and stuck just in
that day and age. All Scripture is inspired by
God and profitable for teaching and reproof. What does it have to say to us? There was a certain rich man
who had a steward And this steward was reported to him as squandering
his possessions. I said a moment ago that the
steward has been variously interpreted and the rich landowner has been
equally and variously interpreted. Some suggested that this rich
landowner was the Romans. And given the context of the
day, that’s certainly an amusing attachment to the parable. It’s
not true. Others equally said that this
was Satan or some earthly ruler. And that’s interesting, but it’s
not true. Most people said that the rich
landowner is God. And it’s not, as I said a moment
ago, even necessary. Bear with me as I walk through
applying either the neither the the steward nor the rich landowner
to anybody. Just hear it as the simple story
that it is. It’s interesting there that word
squandering is the same exact word used of that prodigal son
who went away and squandered his father’s estate. The image
was vivid in the minds of his hearers. They knew what had just
gone on. And here is this steward. And it isn’t even the son, it’s
a steward who works for somebody else squandering, living in the
same fashion as this wayward son. The stewards, certainly
in the mind of the disciples, deserved less mercy than even
the son received. No wonder in verse two, when
it says, he called him and said to him, what is this I hear about
you? Give an account of your stewardship,
for you can no longer be steward. Let me tell you what’s in the
Greek. He calls him into the office and he says, bring your
books and your time card. You’re fired in our modern vernacular. He says, what is this I hear
about you? What what is up with this? It’s
a difficult interpretation. It’s a very simple sentence.
What’s up? What gives? What are you doing? What is this that I’ve heard?
And he calls him in to bring in the books and to go through
the books of all that he’s done. He was a thief. He was sponging
off of the master’s earnings. He was taking off the top, skimming.
And he had been doing it for some time. No wonder the steward, trembling,
began to say, look at verse 3, What shall I do? This man perhaps
had never worked a single day in his life. Really worked. And
he doesn’t know what to do. What shall I do since my master
is taking the stewardship away from me? There was no denying
it. There is no attempt at all in any of this passage to defend
his actions. There’s no attempt to explain
it away. He’s guilty as charged and he
knows it. What am I to do since my master
is taking away the stewardship from me? I’m not strong enough
to dig. I’ve never really had a job.
I haven’t cultivated a career, so the only thing left for me
is menial labor and I can’t do it. There’s another option available
to me. I could beg. I could go get myself one of
those signs and sit on the corner where all the cars go. We’ll
work for food. Anything helps. The problem was he had spoiled
himself over the years with these ill gotten gains. He was living
far above his means because his means were meager as a steward. He was a manager. They probably
paid him a sum of money, but it was meager, but he had gotten
himself into a lifestyle. And I believe the lifestyle is
what drove the thievery. And it was those ill-gotten gains
that seemed to get him by month to month. And perhaps the appetite
grew over time. And now he was standing the very
distinct possibility that he was going to lose it all. The money wasn’t his. He had
been living on borrowed money and borrowed time. And so he
begins to find the prospect of going back to work, real work,
Impossible. You can’t go get a job because
he’s never had a job. He doesn’t even know where to
begin. The option of begging wasn’t
any more appealing to him, and so he conceives this plan. I
know. Look what he says in verse four,
I know what I shall do. Always the worst counsel is the
counsel that you isolate within your own cranium. I know what
I shall do so that when I am removed from the stewardship
again, he doesn’t question it at all. He knows it’s coming.
Perhaps the master graciously gave him a 30 day notice, said
by next month you need to find something else. I know what I
shall do so that when I am removed from the stewardship, they will
receive me into their homes.” Who? The parable is completely undefined
at this point, but he’s got this plan. And Luke allows it to be
unfolded before us piecemeal, just as Jesus is telling it.
Those disciples sitting at the feet of Jesus didn’t know who
he was talking about either. When he said, they will receive
me into their homes, there’s a method to his madness. He’s
got a plan and he thinks it’s a good one. And he begins to
affect it. I’m going to confer on them such
a blessing, these people, whoever they are, undefined, that they
will take me in. As it begins to unfold, his whole
purpose, the whole approach is to gain the favor of these tenants,
these renters who are renters of the landowner. Remember, he’s
just a middle manager. He just turned in his books once
a month and turned in the funds that he had collected. And so
his whole approach is to cancel a large portion of their debt. I don’t even believe here that
he intends to pocket any of that. He’s just meaning to curry favor
with them. And it’s fraud. It’s deceitfulness. It’s theft. Look at verse 5. Watch what begins
to happen. He summoned one of his master’s
debtors. And you know how eager this guy
was to meet with him, right? This is the collector. And he began saying to the first,
how much do you owe my nester? You know, the guy was probably
irritated and he probably gave him the figure. And, you know,
times were tough. Things were lean. The last person
that he wanted to sit down with was the collector. That’s how
things were done back then. The rents, the receipts were
paid in kind. And a responsible steward, if
he was left unobserved or unmanaged, He had a great opportunity to
fraud his master, and that’s exactly what was going on. But
the production of the land varied from year to year. Times were
difficult at times. Crops weren’t what they always
had been, and from time to time, a manager may very well, at the
behest of his landlord, may go and relieve the burden of those.
Doesn’t make any sense to evict them. Because somebody is going
to come in in the same predicament and have the same struggles.
So it wasn’t altogether unheard of. And so it lightens, it lightens
the heart of the debtor. I remember one time during seminary,
our landlord came to our door. He was a Christian. It was December. Things were tough. It had been
a hard semester. And the landlord had our check
for rent in hand. We’d given it on time. We weren’t
late that month. That month. We weren’t late that
month. And he, we opened the screen
door and he handed us back our check. And he said, I think,
I think you could use this this month. It wasn’t unheard of. It’s not unheard of in common
rent situations to have those situations happen. I’ll give
you his address later if you need to move to California. And
the man answered and he said, a hundred measures of oil, that’s
what he owed. A lot of times rent would be
paid in the produce of the renter. Whatever his business was, that’s
what he would pay with. Watch what happens. This shrewd
steward says he said to him, take your bill and sit down quickly
and write 50. Why did he have to do it quickly?
Because this whole operation was clandestine. It was all under
the table. He was getting by. He was going
behind the back of his master. Then he said to another, how
much do you owe? And he said, 100 measures of wheat. And he
said to him, take your bill and write 80. In other words, he
knew that he could be bought for a much less amount. The guy
was just despicable. You know what? Perhaps this was
even a notorious, a real account that Jesus had heard of that
maybe others had heard of. It is a very plausible scenario. But it’s not new. It’s employee
theft. And whether it’s employee theft
that has this direct approach, like what he had been accused
of, or whether it is this employee theft that pads for the future,
it’s all the same. He bargained with the tenants.
He reduced their rent and made himself look like the good guy.
In essence, what he did was have them destroy the real IOUs, make
up new ones with only a fraction of the original rent. And he
is viewed as the great benefactor. What a good guy. And this is
what is going to motivate them to take him into their house.
Let me tell you how restaurants operate. I know we’ve all been
in this scenario. The waiter comes to your table
15 minutes after you’ve been sitting there. You’re staring
at each other. You have the menu memorized. The water the busboy brought
you 30 minutes ago is dry and you still haven’t put in your
order. Then the waiter forgets to turn in your order. Waiters never admit that they
forgot to turn in your order, by the way. It’s always the cook
forgot to start the steak, right? I know that as a former waiter.
And so the waiter comes back to you and begins to try to salvage
his tip. And the last means that he uses,
if he hasn’t turned you around with his electric personality
by the end of the meal, the last thing that he uses is what? May I offer you a complimentary
dessert? Let me tell you how restaurants
operate. No waiter. unless he owns the joint, is
going to give you a complimentary dessert. No waiter is authorized
to do that. Being in the restaurant business,
I terminated plenty for the very same thing. It’s the same exact
thing that this steward was doing. Let me try to appease you and
make you happy and secure back my tip, this portion, this benefit
to me with some indiscretion. with a little dessert on the
side. That’s exactly what the steward is doing. It just doesn’t
have strawberries on top. The steward knew what he was
doing. He began to make one adjustment
for one debtor and one for another. He knew how they could be bought. He knew how desperate each one
was. And I believe that he went right on down the list. It only
gives us an example of two, but I think he went to every debtor
that this master had and he gave every one of them a deal, a break. But it was all of it was an unsanctioned
break, and it was clearly a scheme to make these renters personally
indebted to him. That’s what it was. Did the debtors realize? that
this manager was dishonest. I don’t even think they do. I
think they just think here’s a magnanimous landowner and a
great manager and isn’t this kind and great. I think it would have worked.
The steward was providing for his future by means of these
goods, which weren’t even his own. They were entrusted to his
care. And greed, this is totally an
aside note. The greed in this man. The greed
is so evident and it’s so much a part of our nature that we
will do anything to maintain that level of living and even
beyond where we’re living. One commentator said of greed,
he said, avarice is the most exacting of all vices. It is
never off its guard and it never relaxes its hold. Sights which
will make even the hardened sinner compassionate for a brief space
make the miser draw his purse strings the tighter. The claims
not only of relations, friends and country, but even of honor,
comfort and health are disregarded when money is at stake. Do you
not know that to be true? This man really, in so many ways,
represents us. Look at verse 8. The master smiles and perhaps
leans back in his big office chair and says, in essence, you
got me. OK. His master praised the unrighteous
steward because he had acted shrewdly. And that’s the part
when I first read this that I thought this doesn’t make any sense. Maybe the Greek will clear it
up. It didn’t. But look again, the master doesn’t
praise the manager, the steward for being dishonest. He praises
him for being shrewd. He praises him for his creativity. He acknowledges, you know what?
That was pretty sharp. I got to admit, got to hand it
to you. I remember the time that they caught somebody over at
Home Depot, they caught him. And they couldn’t figure out
where all these pneumatic nailers were going until they found this
one individual that on a regular basis came in about one roll
of insulation, one roll. That’s all he needed. And he
would stuff it full of these pneumatic nailers and out the
door he’d go. And I can remember my manager
saying, you know what, that’s pretty clever. Steward, he’s not set before
us as a pattern of morality. It’s not that we’re supposed
to look to him and say, oh boy, let’s pattern our life after
him. Let’s do what he did. It’s not at all. Jesus isn’t
trying to sanction dishonesty here between man and man. He’s just acknowledging the cleverness
of it. What I want to point to in just
a few minutes that remain is three features of this eternally
focused service. Because this steward, he was
focused. He knew what he was about. He
was about survival at all costs. He was about getting by. He was
about making it no matter what. And that’s the only thing that
we’re supposed to pattern ourselves after. I want to look, as I said, at
three features of an eternally focused service. First of all,
and here is where, incidentally, Jesus comments come back in. He has told the parable. Now
he is going to apply the parable. Look again. Beginning in verse
eight, his master praised the unrighteous steward because he
had acted shrewdly for the sons of this age are more shrewd in
relation to their own kind than the sons of light. You know what
the first feature of an eternally focused service is, it is intense. If we are truly going to serve
the Lord, what Jesus in essence says is that we ought to serve
with the same intensity as this thief. We ought to be as concerned
about our eternal focus as he was about his earthly focus. He was prudent, he was intelligent,
he was shrewd. He manipulated the means to justify
the ends. And it was the man’s prompt prudence
that in essence was praised in the end. The sons of this age,
Jesus says, make a far better use of earthly opportunities
than we do of the spiritual opportunities that are given to us. We kind
of muddle through life and wander and meander through life. Well,
all of the rest of the world, and sometimes we get caught up
in this rat race, too. of everything being focused on
making money and making money. Being involved with businesses
and reading the reports and you become so myopic that your nose
is always, always, always on the numbers. It’s always on the reports. It’s
always on how you can make more money and squeeze more profits
and sell more gizmos. We get caught up in that as well.
But Jesus says, the sons of this age are experts. It’s their whole
life. You know what the lesson is? It’s
the same lesson that Charles Spurgeon had the morning that
he got up. He got up and he realized some
of the men in the town were already up about their businesses. And
he had slept in. And became so convicted that
others were about earthly business. And here, Charles Spurgeon was
about heavenly business. And he was up late. He was up
after them. Sons of this age, they’re wise. And Jesus, in essence, says that
He would have us to be wise. He would have us to be shrewd
in regard to eternal things. He would have us to be wise in
the use of the things of this earth for eternal purposes. We should be as wise, said one
in holiness, as they are wise in wickedness. That’s the moral of the whole
parable. That people in their dealings with other people are
just like, or more prudent than the children of light than they
are in our dealings with one another. They put us to shame
in so many ways in their intensity. And that’s why Jesus, in essence,
says that the spiritually minded man, the Christian man, the one
that really is pursuing Christ, ought to be equally ready in
making one another promote heavenly things. We ought to be as eager
about pursuing heaven and pursuing heavenly things as these men
are about making money. And please note, Jesus isn’t
saying that we should become worldly minded or crooked or
dishonest or do any of the things that this man did. He’s just
stating the obvious fact that in their worldly things, men
of the world show much greater tenacity and intensity than we
do. One said it this way, the diligence
of worldly men about the things of time should put to shame the
coldness of professing Christians about the things of eternity.
Let’s do away with the time of day in which we wake up. Let’s
set aside that for a moment. Do we go about our Christianity
with the same intensity that the successful businessman goes
about his business life? that the successful salesman
pursues his next contact, do we do the same thing with the
same intensity? Do we love our God and love our
fellow Christian with the same intensity that the man of this world loves
his sin and loves his hedonism? That’s the message that Christ’s
asking. The zeal and tenacity of men
of business encompassing sea and land to get earthly treasures
may well reprove, rather, the slackness and indolence of believers
about the treasures of heaven. The truth is, people, you and
I, we don’t pursue it with the same intensity. You know, in
your heart, there are dozens of people that go about their
worldly business with much greater intensity. Go visit a farm sometime.
Those men get up when it’s dark. They stay out until it’s dark.
And the whole time they are working. When was the last time we could
say that about our own Christian walk? There’s a second feature
about an eternally focused service. Not only is it intense, secondly,
it is investment minded. investment minded. Look at verse
nine. I say to you, make friends for
yourselves by means of the mammon of unrighteousness. Now, if there
are this would probably be, in my opinion, the top 10 sentences
in Scripture to really interpret, not to not to translate. The words are pretty simple,
but to interpret. What does it mean? Make friends
for yourselves by means of the mammon of unrighteousness. Because
just by acknowledging it, doesn’t Jesus acknowledge that mammon
is this evil thing? He even calls it the mammon of
unrighteousness. Let’s examine it. First of all,
what is this mammon? It is the world’s God. But he’s
really just talking about money, and we’ve talked about it countless
other times. The first Bible lesson, really,
I think that I can remember I ever received, we were reading in
Timothy and it corrected my previously understood perspective about
money in the world. Money is the root of all evil.
That’s what I came to the Bible with. And you know what I went
away with? The love of money is the root of all evil. Money
inherently in and of itself isn’t bad. And that’s what Jesus says.
You’ve got to use it. Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Pay your tax. Why does he call it the mammon
of unrighteousness then? Not because business itself is
unlawful. Not because money itself is inherently
evil. Or not even because property
or things are somehow bound up and founded on sin and sinful
principles. But he calls it the mammon of
unrighteousness because of the tendency that it has to affect
us for evil. The evil tendency that it tends
to have in the lives of those who are not touched by Christ.
If we haven’t been sanctified by Christ, the tendency is going
to take us downward. So what does it mean? Make friends
for yourself by means of the mammon of unrighteousness. What
he says is use your money to God’s glory. And I believe that
he doesn’t even that he isn’t even limiting it to our money
here. He’s talking about our resources,
all of our earthly resources. Should we use our homes to the
glory of God? Absolutely. Shouldn’t we use
our money, our vehicles to the glory of God? Shouldn’t we use
our time to the glory of God? Shouldn’t we use all of those
things for the purpose of building into other people’s lives so
that in time we may have the opportunity to proclaim Christ
to them? Shouldn’t we take them a meal
If they need something, shouldn’t we, if we have the means, buy
it for them? If they have a need, shouldn’t
we supply it? That’s what he says. J.C. Ryle said it simply,
spend your money in such a way that your expenditure shall be
a friend to you and not a witness against you in heaven. And I’ll
tell you, the way many people live, their money is going to
be squawking in eternity, isn’t it? It’s going to be a tattletale,
J.C. Ryle says. Another said it this way. That
we make ourselves friends by means of unrighteous men, and
when we use it not as our own to squander. But as God’s to
employ in deeds of usefulness and mercy, that is the main lesson
of the parable, people. the use of this earthly bounty
that we’ve been given, whether it’s time or opportunity or service,
or the use of our giftedness, or the use of our money. It’s
to use all of that toward the goal of ministering to others,
serving others, reaching out to others, making friends of
others. And there’s a third and final
feature. I said there were three features of any eternally focused
service. Not only is it intense and investment
minded, but finally, it is intentional. It’s done with a purpose. It’s
done because we are focused or fixed on forever. We know that
there is eternity. We know that there’s a God. We
know that we will be there for a long, long time. And we know
that we have a stewardship to account for. These are not our
things. We are the managers of them.
And note what verse nine says, make friends for yourself by
means of the mammon of unrighteousness. Why? That when it fails, they
may receive you into the eternal dwellings. You know what? Don’t
even get the crazy notion that you’re buying your way into heaven.
We’re not. We could never. Christ has paid
it all. And it’s on him and his shed
blood that we trust. But what he does say. What he does say is that the
way that we use our money. The way that we use the resources
that God has entrusted to us will tag along with us. The report
will be there to read and review for all eternity. And I love the way God’s Word
is so clear. When it says, make friends of
yourself by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when
it fails, and it’s going to fail, whether it’s a stock market crash
or what have you, it’s going to fail. It’s a matter of time
before the bottom drops out and the money is worth less Even
if it’s just you and I going one by one to heaven, we don’t
take any of it with us. That when it fails, they may
receive you into the eternal dwellings. How we use our God
given resources is important. And what God calls us to here
is an industrious, legitimate earning. He calls us to honest
work. He calls us to intelligent business dealing and honest.
He calls us to regular and generous giving. He calls us to liberal
and eager sharing. He calls us to responsible saving,
but what he calls us to is to a use of these things for the
glory of God with an eternal perspective. May God indeed be glorified in
how you manage what God has entrusted to you. Let’s pray. Our kind and our merciful God,
we do thank you. As we look back upon the blessings
that you’ve poured out upon us, we acknowledge that we don’t
deserve a single one. And yet you have been so abundantly
enriching to us, giving to us far above what we need. Lord,
we know that this passage is not just about money. It’s about
the precious gifts that you’ve given to us to serve the body
of Christ. Sadly, we squandered those as
well. We squandered opportunities.
We squandered the means that you’ve given us. We squandered
our money. Lord, God, forgive us. Correct our hearts. Correct
our habits. Glorify Yourself through us once
again. Use us, we pray, for Your glory.
Make us to be a people fixed on eternity. We thank You and
we praise You in Jesus’ name, Amen.