The Lutheran Hour
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"Be Careful Who Sings Your Praises"
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Text: Luke 16:1-15
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“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia.
If you are a reader of detective stories or watch detective shows on TV, watch enough of them and you’ll soon realize they all seem to have a similar plot. There are the thieves or the unscrupulous characters that are clever in their crimes and seem, for most of the story, to accomplish their evil plot. As they outmaneuver the law, they sing their own praises for what they are able to accomplish. On the other hand, there are the detectives or the special agents who are seeking to catch the criminals. As the bad guys continue to evade them, in frustration, even the detectives and agents will often sing the praise of these unscrupulous characters for their clever ways of escaping the law, even as they try desperately to put them behind bars. In the end, there is still a judge who will have the last say; and the moral of the story is “be careful who sings your praises!”
Jesus tells the story like this. He speaks of a caretaker of a rental property hired by the owner to take care of it and collect the rent. But he was a bad guy, unscrupulous in his dealings and stealing from the owner. Someone, who knew what was going on, reports this to the owner, and he comes to check on the accusations, only to find out it is all true. The caretaker is busted, he gets fired. But this caretaker is smart enough to devise a plan that would provide for himself even after he was fired. Once the owner has fired him and he still has the books in his hands, he works a scheme that could possibly help him survive. He goes to the renters and he gives them a huge deduction on their rent. The deductions for each of them amounted to over a year and a half in wages, all at the owner’s expense. His plan was to make the renters obligated to him so that after he was fired he could say, “Don’t you owe me something for what I did for you?” You might say that he was hoping to at least earn their praise.
Later, when the owner received the books and when he checked them out, he was amazed at what the caretaker had done. The caretaker had been shrewd to take care of himself in this way. The owner realized that this was indeed a dishonest move and would cost him money, but he also realized how smart the caretaker was to take care of himself in this way.
Jesus wants us to learn something from all of this. No, it’s not about the dishonesty of the manager, the fact that he was greedy or the fact that he was a thief; there was no praise for that. There was at least some praise for his shrewdness for life!
Knowing the grace of God in Jesus Christ, are we as shrewd?
Let’s take a closer look. In the story that Jesus tells, there are two main characters. There is the master who owns the land and is renting it out to renters. So the master, the owner, who very often lived in a different city, entrusted his wealth and property to a servant, a caretaker left in charge. The second character in the story is the caretaker, hired by the owner to watch over his property, to make sure the property was cared for and the bills were paid, and the wealth was put to use for the benefit of both.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that Jesus is comparing His listeners to the caretaker; but in this story, the caretaker fails at his duties. In fact, he failed deliberately. He misused the owner’s property for his own gain. We are not told what he was doing, but it is evident that he was stealing and in some way lining his own pockets. He was dealing with the owner’s property as if it was his own – doing what benefited him alone and not what benefited the owner.
Now be careful, it would be easy to say this guy was a crook and pass it off as if this lesson were for someone else; you know, for those kinds of people. But, if we take a closer look, we realize that Jesus has a lesson for all His listeners, the disciples, the Pharisees, and of course, for every one of us.
So, go deeper. Take a moment right now and think about your life, take a good look. From the Bible’s point of view, Jesus’ point of view, all of who I am, who you are, everything we own, none of what we have ultimately belongs to us. It was given to us by our Lord. He has made us the caretakers of our life, all of our relationships and all of our belongings.
The Christian Church has always proclaimed the truth about the life we have to live this side of heaven. The Apostle’s Creed simply says it this way. “I believe in God the Father, Creator (Maker) of heaven and earth.” And then Martin Luther says it even more clearly in his explanation of that first article of the Creed when he says, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes and ears, all my members, my reason, and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, spouse and children, land, animals, all that I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.”
Now, the question behind the story that Jesus is telling them is the same today. The question is how are we caring for all of this?
Do you have a caretaker view of yourself? Do you see your physical life as a gift of God because He created you, that you are fearfully and wonderfully made? Do you see your spiritual life as a gift, one that Jesus Christ earned for you, for all, when He died on the cross to overcome our sin, and rose to eternal life so that all might truly live?
Or do you just see yourself as one in charge of his or her own life, on your own terms, period? Are you like the caretaker in the story who used what wasn’t his merely to care for himself, to be concerned merely for how you are faring in this world, using some of what our master has put in our care in a wasteful, dishonest way?
As important as those questions are, I think that this story turns on another point. It’s not merely a story that challenges us to be better caretakers of God’s gifts. The real tension is whether we see God as the owner and provider of our lives or whether we see ourselves alone as the masters of our lives. Jesus says, “No servant can serve two masters, for he will either hate the one or love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
God as giver or whatever my hands can make; which one is the key for your life? That’s the real conflict that we have with what Jesus is saying. As long as we believe that we are the owners, then we are constantly going to be in conflict with God over what we are going to do with all the things we have. It’s only when we understand that God is the Owner, the Giver, the Provider of all good things, and we the caretakers, then, and only then, can that conflict disappear.
But that’s our beef with God. The first commandment is really the sum of them all, “You should have no other Gods before me.” And the greatest temptation to that is us thinking of ourselves as the owners, the creators, the builders of our own lives and legacies. Jesus wants us to realize, that when it matters most, everything changes when the Owner, the true Owner, shows up. You might say, “When the time comes, it matters whether He sings your praises!”
Let me explain. In the story when the owner arrives on the scene and he asks the caretaker, “What is this I hear about you? Charges have been brought against you.” The caretaker knows that he’s got him dead to rights.
Immediately the owner asks the caretaker to turn over the books. He didn’t order him to balance the books or make things right, it was too late for that. He simply says, “Turn over the books. You are fired.”
But the caretaker, dishonest as he was, does something unique with his predicament. He puts the owner’s wealth to work one last time. And when the owner receives the books finally and sees what the caretaker had done, he shakes his head and says to himself, “Wow, this guy was pretty clever in what he has done.”
Now, here’s the point, don’t miss it. Jesus wasn’t implying that the owner was complimenting the caretaker for being dishonest; he had already fired him for that. No, he was commending him finally for how shrewd he had been with the blessings in his care.
The caretaker was a scoundrel-a clever scoundrel. But Jesus is saying how ironic it is that, “The sons of this world are much wiser in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.”
If that dishonest, yet shrewd guy, was clever enough to put the blessings under his management to real use for others as well as his own future well-being, then the real question is what are we doing with the life that God has given us, and even more, what about the eternal life that God made possible for us in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son?
When you find out that the Bible is being straight with us about these things; that the life, the relationships, the stuff we have is all meant to be put to use to give God glory and to serve our neighbors in His Name and when you find out that even our misuse of such things doesn’t have to be the final say about all of this, wow, are we as shrewd?
Maybe you are still stuck on the question of whether you are a good caretaker. Maybe you still think that what matters is how you think about things, period. Don’t forget, even though the story has Jesus commending the caretaker for his shrewdness. The guy was still fired and all he had left was the good will of those to whom he had given a momentary break.
Even in his shrewdness, he only had the praises of the people for a time. He had something but it wouldn’t last. He reminds me of a man who went on an ocean voyage carrying a large bag of gold coins. The bag represented his entire net worth. A terrible storm blew up and the call came for all hands to abandon ship. The man strapped the gold around his waist, jumped overboard, and sank to the bottom of the sea. Here’s the philosophical question, “As he was sinking, did he have the gold or did the gold have him?” Or better, didn’t he realize that his life was more precious than that?
Jesus doesn’t just want you to be shrewd with temporal things He wants you to see all the things that you have as a gift from God, who eagerly desires to give you all good things and then put them to work even more shrewdly for the sake of those both you and God love!
The lesson of this parable is clear. We are to realize that God is the owner of everything. Nothing on this earth is ours and God is no stingy Owner, no miserly Master.
In fact, He invites us to put to work all that He has given us with an attitude of gratitude and trust. He tells us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” because we can count on Him for all things today and tomorrow. He tells us to view all of our life in view of His mercy and grace. Remember how Paul says it in Romans 12:1, “I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.”
We have power to live life boldly, because our Savior rose from the dead by the power of the Spirit of God. We have hope to share in this life because Jesus freed us from all bondage by paying the debt for our sins by dying on the cross and rising on the third day. We owe our lives to Him, yes, but He made all of our life possible again as a gift.
In the story the benevolent owner allows the manager to go his way. He could have thrown him into debtor’s prison, he could have arrested him on the spot but this owner had mercy. But that owner’s mercy is nothing compared to the mercy of our God in heaven Who created you and redeemed you from all your sin, from all your mismanagement of His gifts, for all that separates you from Him and from those in your life.
Let me say it bluntly; life is not merely you amassing goods, status, and stuff, using it for 60, 70, or 80+ years then passing it on to somebody else. If that’s your view of life, you’ve got the wrong idea of stuff, but even worse, the wrong idea about God. Remember, no one pulls a U-Haul trailer behind their hearse because stuff, this side of heaven, was meant to be put to use as a response to God’s eternal love and grace to give Him glory and to serve others in His Name!
In fact, Jesus wants us to get the motivation as well as the cleverness right. He wants you and me to be people with joyful hearts, with forgiven hearts who will also be shrewd with what God, the Owner, has given us so that even more might be blessed through our service in His Name!
In 1 Peter 4:10 the Apostle Peter jogs our memory with these words “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.”
The true owner of all things amazingly gives His blessings to you as a gift, makes opportunities happen for the sharing of what you have been given and then gives you all the credit for it when blessings shared become blessings received! He loves to sing the praises of those who put His gifts to work for others!
In Jesus’ story the caretaker had a problem. He was singing his own praises. He felt he had the good life. He had access to funds that didn’t belong to him and he was making the best of it unscrupulously using them for his own purpose and good. Even in his shrewdness, he only had the benevolence of ill-gotten gains for a little while. Jesus wants you to have the true eternal Owner’s abundant grace and blessing not just for a time, but forever; and to be shrewd with spreading it around because, even then you can trust in Him in the day to day living of life in His Name for others.
Don’t run a game on God, don’t deceive yourself; there is a time coming when it will be important who sings your praises. St. Paul says to us to seek praise not from man but from God. Why, because He is the One Who loved you enough to be your Savior and wants you to live an abundant life in Him now and forever. Trust in Him. Put your life to work in Him for others. You’ll be overjoyed that you did forever! Amen.
Action in Ministry for September 18, 2016
Guest: Rev. Steve MischANNOUNCER: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. This is Action In Ministry. Today’s sermon was “Be Careful Who Sings Your Praises.” Well, we were created to sing the praise of our Triune God.
SELTZ: Mark, the Bible tells us that even the rocks will cry out if we remain silent. Well, the rocks, I think, are crying out in a sense when we consider creation, the age of the earth, the flood, and the nature of the universe.
ANNOUNCER: Today we want to talk about a Biblical view of creation. Pastor Steve Misch has put together for us an in depth video resource titled: Out of Nothing: The Word, Creation, and Faith.
SELTZ: Pastor Misch, thanks for joining us.
MISCH: Oh, it’s great to be here.
SELTZ: Great to have you. So when we look at creation versus evolution, both science and faith come into play, so what are some of the key proofs that we need to be talking about when we’re considering creation?
MISCH: Well, there are many areas that we can talk about for a long time; including disciplines like geology, astronomy, biology, anthropology, all kinds of things like that. But there are three that I really like to touch on. The first is irreducible complexity. The second is variety in creation. The third is the Word.
SELTZ: So let’s start with that irreducible complexity. What is it and how does it point to the Master Designer?
MISCH: Irreducible complexity simply means this. For something to be something, that something cannot have less and still be that something.
SELTZ: Okay…
MISCH: No, no, no. Let me give you an example.
SELTZ: Okay.
MISCH: For an eye to be an eye. It’s got to have all the component parts for it to be able to see and to function as an eye or it’s not an eye. Such irreducible complexity exists not only in human beings but it exists in animals, birds, plants, green life, all of those things. Evolution, though, says that something less complex somehow became more complex and that’s a huge problem.
ANNOUNCER: All right, what about variety in creation, what is that?
MISCH: When we observe the variety in creation, what we really see is the result of a creative process. Creating of any kind takes deliberate and intentional action. You don’t write a book by accident.
SELTZ: The Master Artist at work.
MISCH: Yeah, exactly. Beethoven didn’t write his 9th Symphony by mistake. There’s a creator behind them.
SELTZ: Lastly you say the Word is a key proof for you. How does God’s Word play a role in this whole creation/evolution argument?
MISCH: The Word is marvelous in this regard and it is so very important. In fact, the Word tells us Who our Creator is. It talks about that, but one of the key words in a creation study is in Genesis, chapter one, the word “day”. Many people want this word to mean thousands of years. Many would rather have it be eons of time; but it doesn’t mean that. I was talking with a Hebrew scholar once and I told him I was doing a study on Genesis one. He got animated and excited and he says, he says, “Ah, man, any time the word day is connected with an ordinal or a cardinal, it means a 24-hour day,” and I said, “Oh, that is so cool. What’s an ordinal or cardinal?” It’s just an odd or even number and it’s connected that way all the way through and so Scripture means to say that day one through day six is 24 hours in length.
SELTZ: What people don’t realize is that Genesis one was a protest document even in its day. So, in its day human beings were considered nobodies and afterthoughts of the gods. Here comes this protest document that says man is the apex of creation. It went counter to all the conventional wisdom of the day.
MISCH: But, I’ll tell you. When we, when we look at that, the creation account is received by faith just as all Scripture is received by faith and it brings confidence in the promises of God, and the joy of forgiveness, purpose of life, assurance of eternal life, and all of that can become comforting for the believer and maybe it can reestablish life in them again.
SELTZ: Pastor Misch, thanks so much for sharing this with us and all of your work on this extraordinary resource. Thanks for being here with us today.
MISCH: My pleasure.
SELTZ: Well, that’s our Action In Ministry segment today to bless, to empower, and to strengthen your life in Christ for others.
ANNOUNCER: The name of this resource is Out of Nothing: The Word, Creation, and Faith. To view or download this content for free go to lutheranhour.org and click on Action In Ministry. That’s lutheranhour.org. Or call, 1-855-john316. That’s 1-855-564-6316.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for September 18, 2016
Topic: Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”ANNOUNCER: We are back once again with Pastor Gregory Seltz responding to questions. I’m Mark Eischer. Pastor, Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That might seem like a very negative idea. Where is the hope in that?
SELTZ: Mark, this is a face the facts kind of verse in the Bible. It’s a short statement. It’s quite negative. And, none of us may want to focus on our failures and our weaknesses, but this verse is actually the turning point that leads to some really good news.
ANNOUNCER: How does it turn us to good news?
SELTZ: In the book of Romans, Paul lays out the fundamental realities of Christianity for real, eternal, abundant life. And, the main focus of the book is that God is the One Who acts in order to save us from our sin; by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
ANNOUNCER: But this verse by itself doesn’t talk about that salvation or even God acting. It tells us about our inability to live up to God’s demands.
SELTZ: Yes it does. The reason we need God to act on our behalf is because we are sinful. Paul explains the depth, the breadth of humanity’s sin. We can’t even begin to rectify our situation, especially eternally. Our thoughts and actions do not earn life and eternal rewards. Instead, now here it comes, our actions actually merit punishment and death.
ANNOUNCER: So there’s nothing anyone can do that could earn eternal life?
SELTZ: Right, there’s nothing we can do. Romans 3 teaches that no one is good on God’s terms. We are all in this predicament together before God. We can even see that in our world today no one seems to be seeking God on His terms. No one wants to do what is good and right to God and for others all the time. That’s sin in action and, left alone, it ends badly. Such a life ends in death and just punishment.
ANNOUNCER: Wow, not good news. I hope it gets better.
SELTZ: It does, but it’s not merely because we hope it does. It actually does! If the message was only about how sinful we are, there would be no reason for joy. But the good news is what God has done about our sin, about everybody’s sin.
ANNOUNCER: I think we’re ready for some good news. It had better be really good news.
SELTZ: It is and it’s better than you can imagine. It’s eternally good news. Listen to how Paul continues his thought in Romans 3:23-24. He says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (declared innocent) by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Did you hear that? God’s response to our failure, to our sin, is not to destroy us or condemn us. His response is redemption in Christ Jesus.
ANNOUNCER: What is redemption?
SELTZ: Redemption means to buy back. Usually, this word has to do with buying someone’s freedom from bondage. The Bible proclaims that God has paid that price for our freedom from our sins, from death, even from Satan’s power. When Jesus suffered and died, He did so in order to set us free from our sins and from the punishment we do deserve.
ANNOUCER: How do we receive that forgiveness, that freedom?
SELTZ: In verse 24, Paul says that this justification, this salvation, is by grace. You don’t do anything to earn this forgiveness. It is given to you as a gift. He loves you and gives you that forgiveness and salvation because of what Jesus does. That’s what we receive through faith in Jesus as our Savior.
ANNOUNCER: So you are saying that we are all sinners. We deserve punishment and death because of it. But God has something else in mind. Instead of giving us the punishment we have earned, He gives us salvation because of Jesus; and this is all free. It’s a gift through faith.
SELTZ: That’s exactly what I’m saying. I told you it is really good news. A lot of people are scared to admit their sin because they are afraid to face how bad they really are and to face its consequences. But this verse teaches us not only to admit our sin, but to fervently look to God for our help and the salvation we so desperately need. Think about it. Only sinners are eligible for forgiveness. I bet people didn’t think that’s what the church taught.
ANNOUNCER: Because everyone is a sinner, therefore everyone is qualified to receive God’s grace, His mercy, His forgiveness?
SELTZ: Even more. By faith in Christ you actually receive that forgiveness personally!
ANNOUNCER: So, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But that isn’t the end of the story. God’s love for us through Jesus’ death and resurrection forgives our sins and gives us eternal life through faith.
SELTZ: Good news for the harsh realities of life!
ANNOUNCER: Thank you, Pastor Seltz. This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Seek Where You May to Find a Way” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House)
“We Give Thee But Thine Own” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House)