God’s Asset Managers

Posted by Brance on June 19th, 2005 filed in The Bible And Money

In our last look at the Bible and money, we studied what the Bible says about earning money and saving money. Today I want to study what the Bible has to say on the topic of managing money. We briefly talked about this subject before and we mentioned the word stewardship. we said that a steward was someone who managed assets for someone else. The Bible tells us that God owns everything.

We are just managers for God.

Notice that work was a part of the plan from the start, even before sin entered the world. The work God gave Adam was to ‘take care of’ the garden. To manage it.

Let’s look at a story Jesus tells his disciples in the book of Luke. There are a couple good lessons to learn from this story.

So what is the point of this lesson. I’ll admit I struggled to understand what was being taught here for over a day until I saw it. Let’s go through the story. Someone (we’re not told who) informs the rich man that his manager is wasting his money. The accuser must have been trust worthy because the rich man believed them enough to fire the manger before even hearing his side of the story. and of course it was true. he tells him to “give an account” of his management. this probably meant ‘get the books in order and bring them to me. you’re fired.’ so the manager has a small grace period, a window of opportunity. he has lost his job, but hasn’t turned over the authority yet. so he uses that authority to carry out a few last transactions before handing everything over to his boss. these transactions are collecting on account due. he called up a couple people who owed his boss money and gave them a discount if they would pay immediately. then we are told that his boss ‘commended’ him for acting shrewdly. what does it mean to commend someone?

commend = to praise formally or officially

why did he praise him? what was shrewd about what he did? he gave discounts and the rich man did not receive full payment for what was owed him. so how was this worthy of praise? the first several times I read this, I couldn’t make sense of it. especially the next two sentences.

what does that mean? what was Jesus trying to teach us about money? here’s what I learned. back up to verses 3-4 and we find the manager’s motivation behind what he did.

He wasn’t trying to do anything good for his boss, or give a break to those who had less by giving them a discount. he was looking out for himself. he said he wasn’t ’strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg’. He wasn’t able to get a job working in a field and he didn’t want to beg. he was buttering up these two men hoping they would help him out when he lost his job. maybe even take them into their home and give him a place to stay. so why did his boss praise him for this selfish action? I think it probably sounded something like ‘That was pretty smart on your part pal, now get out.’ He didn’t give him the job back. it was the thinking ahead part that he got praised for. Jesus then goes on to say that the people of this world are better at dealing with each other in this way, than Christians are. I think he was talking about Christians dealing with people of this world and not each other. He then tells us to use our money to make friends for ourselves, so that when the money is (not if) gone, we’ll be welcomed in eternal dwellings. remember that we are God’s managers, and he is also the only one that can welcome us into eternal dwellings. so who do you think we are supposed to make friends with by the way we use our money? God! We should use our money the way God wants us to and please him so that our reward will be in heaven.

Unwittingly the dishonest manager did something that God would like. he helped out people in need. he gave a discount to those who owed his boss money. we can’t go around giving everyone a discount, but if we use our money wisely as God would have us to, it will open the hearts and minds of the people around us in the world to hear what we have to say. It’s part of our witness. That whole salt and light thing we’ve talked about so many times.

Next week we’ll look at some specific instructions God gives us on how to wisely manage his money.