The Modern Shrewd Manager

0:00:00     Hey, how smart are you? Well, we’re going to learn that today because a smart person knows when there’s trouble in their lives and they do something about it. Don’t miss more faith, more life today. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another more faith, more Life podcast. Today we’re going to talk about something really interesting that I wasn’t going to talk about, but Zion, our producer, is sitting over there, and he asked if we could talk sometime. And I said, why not right now?

0:00:24     From Luke, chapter 16, which is titled right here in my Bible, the parable of the shrewd manager. And just given a lot of difficulty to people for a long time because it sounds opposite to what you expect. So Jesus tells this parable, and then at the end it sounds like the shrewd guy is being commended for dishonesty. And that’s not it because he’s separating the shrewd guy with his money a little bit from the kingdom of God. But let’s just talk about it, okay?

0:00:55     So how shrewd are you today? All right. With your money and your life? Okay. So the parable starts and he says, there’s a rich man, I have it right here, who had a manager because I guess he had so much money that he needed a manager to manage his money. And all of a sudden the word gets around that the manager is squandering or wasting the rich guy’s possessions. Now, we can probably assume that he’s spending it on himself.

0:01:23     He’s not giving it away to the poor, obviously, so he’s spending on himself. Wasting it on himself. He’s probably turning in information that’s not true or whatever. So the manager calls him in and says, what’s this I hear? So it must have been like a rumor or something. What’s this I hear about you that you’re wasting? You’re not managing the way. Let me grab my Bible. Okay. Let’s have it right here in front of us.

0:01:49     So you’re wasting my possessions? What is this? Give an account. In other words, you need to tell me what’s going on here. What’s going on? Because you’re fired. Basically it says, you can’t be my manager anymore. You’re fired. And the whole parable basically is Jesus saying you don’t want to be fired from the kingdom of God. Now, this is not starting at the kingdom of God. This is starting in a worldly, carnal money example, but you don’t want to be fired. Okay, so he does.

0:02:21     And the manager now is fired. He doesn’t have a job. And he doesn’t know what to do. He says, what am I going to do? And he thinks over his life, which is real funny, he says, I don’t want to dig ditches. I don’t want to be a beggar. I can’t do that. And so what am I going to do? So what he does is he goes to the people he’s been doing business with, and the first one’s enough. One example is enough where the guy says, well, how much do you owe? My master, my rich, the rich guy, how much do you owe?

0:02:51     And he says, I owe for like, I think it was 900 bushels or whatever. Olive oil. 900 and, yeah, let’s see, gallons. 900 gallons of olive oil. And so he says, that’s what I owe. And the guy says, well, let’s cut it in half. Take your bill, here’s your bill, and I’ll cut it in half. So you won’t owe for 900, you only owe for half of it. And he does it to each one and saves that person a lot of money. Well, when it comes back and it gets back to the manager or to the rich guy, what have you done? It says, you know, I changed all this. And he gets commended for doing it. Isn’t that amazing?

0:03:29     So he commends him for doing it. He says, take your bill, sit down quickly and make it 450 instead of 900. And then he did that to a second and he did it to a third. He changed the bill. And all of a sudden then the master commends the manager, and they even say in my NIV Bible, new international version, that the dishonest manager, he commended him because he acted shrewdly. And we are totally out in left field when it comes to that parable. We have no idea because Jesus is telling it.

0:04:05     And he says, the people of this world are more shrewd in their dealings with their own kind. Now that helps us because Jesus is not saying we need to be like that kind, okay? It’s their own kind. It’s a different kind. But he says they’re more shrewd with their kind and insinuating then that we’re not very shrewd with our own kind between us, how to make this system work in the kingdom of God. So we get in this, we get confused that somebody who’s being dishonest is actually being commended in the parable or commended by God or. Or commended by Jesus.

0:04:44     And that’s not it at all. He’s comparing and he’s saying, look how shrewd people are when they want something for themselves. All right, but how shrewd are we when we’re wanting things from God we’re not understanding, or we want others to be blessed by God, or we want to affect other people’s lives, and we don’t use the tools, so to speak, that we have to do it. Now, here’s what’s really happening, though.

0:05:11     The parable is much, much bigger than that, because if we keep it in the money realm, we get something that says we should be shrewd with our money. And it says, you know, they’re more shrewd. Maybe I should be more generous. Just a few minutes ago, I looked up this parable online to see what others were saying about it, and it was really interesting. So they turned it into hospitality. They turned in, we need to be more hospitable. We need to be more generous. We need to give to the poor, whatever.

0:05:38     And that has nothing to do with this at all. Lots of people do that, and they’re not very shrewd. Okay? So we need to be as shrewd as with God’s things as the world is with the world’s things. All right, now, what is a parable really about, though? Is it about money? No. Here’s the deal. I’ve been involved in church now for however many years and been preaching and watching and looking at people and seeing how they operate their lives and their families and all that.

0:06:09     And I mentioned this before, that they give the impression, which is hypocrisy, really, that they believe everything you’re preaching. They believe everything you’re teaching. I’ve said this before. When I look out at the people, it looks like they’re all bobbleheads. They agree with everything I’m saying, and they just can’t wait for me to get done preaching so they can go out and do what I just preached about.

0:06:32     Well, that’s not the case. Here’s the deal. This parable is a picture of what’s going on in the spirit. It’s not a picture of what’s going on with money. And if we turn into a money thing, which isn’t bad, in that we could be probably a lot more shrewd with the money we have in winning. People use worldly wealth to win people, to show them your generosity, show them your trust in God, show them your love for them.

0:07:03     We could do that better, but that is not what the parable is about. You have to really move into the spirit now and keep it out of the money realm to see what he’s really talking about. Let’s look at what’s going on in his day. Okay? The people that he’s preaching to are Jews, because that’s. He says, I’ve been called to them, and the time was not right for the Gentiles. It comes later. Paul brings it and that comes. But right now his, his main focus is he’s trying to reach the Jewish people in Israel.

0:07:37     And so he goes about and he’s preaching, doing all the stuff he does. But the problem is they’re not getting that. They’re the audience. They want him to preach to the Romans. They want him to preach to the pagans. They want him to do a red hot sermon to how the Romans lifestyle. And they have naked statues and they have these, hey, much like today, they didn’t want Jesus to preach to. They want them to preach to the Romans. Isn’t that we like to go to church and hear the preacher preach about somebody else, about all the bad lifestyle. We want them to preach about alternate lifestyles and all the stuff going on in our country.

0:08:17     We don’t want him to tell us that we need to do anything. But that’s what he did. He said, you need to repent. You need to change. Your spirits are not right. Your spiritual focus is off, and you need to repent and turn to the kingdom of God. It was more than just turn to Jesus. I know that through the years, I’ve got the idea that people are saying, you know, they, you know, they, the Jews were the Jesus killers and Jesus murderers, and so they need to pay because they killed Jesus and all that.

0:08:48     It was more, they didn’t just kill Jesus. I mean, it wasn’t just. There were murderers, and not all the Jews were murderers. You know that there’s just a group of them. But, but they didn’t just kill Jesus. They killed the kingdom of God among themselves because that’s where they, they needed to get, was walking in the kingdom of God through Jesus. All right, so he’s preaching to them. He’s calling them to repent. And they didn’t want to have anything of it.

0:09:13     And so we need to understand that this thing is bigger than just talking about money, because if it’s just money, it wouldn’t have the impact. So here’s the deal. He’s trying to tell the Jewish people, look, you think you’re okay with God. You think the covenants and all the promises are operating, but they’re not. They’re not working. And the thing is, your life, your lives are in trouble. You’re in trouble with God in some way to speak, because you’re not operating. You’ve compromised. You’re not operating by the spirit of God. You’re not operating by the word of God.

0:09:49     Your lives are in trouble. And so he’s trying to tell them this and they’re ignoring it, and instead they’re going to turn on him. Okay, so what happens? What does that got to do with the shrewd manager or the shrewd guy here? It means he began to operate. He began to respond to the rich guy who said, you’re dishonest, and he began to change it. Okay? He did something when he realized he was in trouble.

0:10:22     He said, what am I going to do? He realized he was in trouble. That’s when he became shrewd. And he went to all the people and had them change their bill to less. And guess what? It wasn’t going to be either. He’s going to keep his job, but even if he doesn’t get his job back, he’s going to have a lot of people wanting to hire him because these are not poor people. Somebody, those 900 gallons of olive oil buying 900, that’s a rich person buying 900 gallons of olive oil.

0:10:51     Maybe that rich person is now going to hire him because I like you. You changed the bill. You saved me money. And then we think that he’s being shrewd also because he’s stealing from his manager. It says he was being wasteful, but I don’t necessarily think he was being dishonest in that respect, because he probably was giving his money away. The profit. He gave his profit. He gave his salary back to the people trying to buy olive oil or whatever bushels of that, or that.

0:11:25     And so he took his portion and crossed it off. And they thought, that’s pretty smart, because now your manager, the rich guy, is going to like you because he sees that you were spending your own money on them. But all the other people that you changed the bill to is you changed them. Now they like you. Okay, so what’s the message of this parable? Is it be shrewd? Is it changed the bill? No, it means this.

0:11:52     When you know your life is in trouble, when you know you’re not right with God, you’re not right in your heart, something’s off, right? Here’s what most people do. Nothing. They do nothing. So if this guy acted like most of us act like in the spirit, we realized something’s wrong, we’ve been caught, we’re off, and we just try to get by. We do nothing different. Nothing. So we have millions and millions of people sitting in church every Sunday all around the world hearing the word of God?

0:12:26     The Holy Spirit convicts them. Shows us how to do better. Shows us how to really follow Jesus. Really. Because you do know how you do. You can’t say, I don’t know how to follow. Yes, you do. You know how to follow. You know how to live your life the way you should. You know how to speak. You know how your attitude should be. But we realize all this. The Holy Spirit convicts us. So in this case, the Holy Spirit would be the rich manager. The rich guy, right? Not the manager. The rich guy who comes and says, what’s this I hear about your management?

0:12:55     And the Holy Spirit begins to convict us and say, hey, what’s this I hear about your lifestyle? What’s this I hear about the way you talk to people? What’s this I hear about the way you do manage your money? You’re not generous. You don’t. You don’t give anything to God. You spend it all on yourself. Wasteful, wasteful, wasteful. Spending your whole life on you. Okay, well, the holy spirit convicts us, and then what do we do?

0:13:18     Nothing. So why is this guy in the parable at least commended by Jesus, and obviously in the word of God? Because he knew his life was in trouble. He knew his job was in trouble. He knew his finances were going to be in trouble now. And he did something about it. He says, what will I do? I know what I’ll do. I’ll go and make friends with all these people. I’ll cut the bill in half. I’ll give up my portion.

0:13:42     I’ll give up my portion of profit, and they won’t have to pay. They only pay half. And when they pay half, you know what? They’re going to like me, and maybe they’ll hire me. I’ll do something. That’s all this really is. It’s not a complicated parable. It’s a parable about people who know by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, something’s off. Your life is off. You’re in trouble. You’re not serving the Lord like you should, or you could, and then you do something about it. He’s commended not for being dishonest.

0:14:13     He’s not commended for being a bad manager. He’s commended for doing something when he realizes he’s caught. And that’s what’s wrong with Christianity today. We don’t want to improve. We don’t want to serve God. We’re not concerned about. About what he thinks we’re only concerned about wasting life on ourselves. We just want to waste. Waste. Waste time, money, talent. It’s all for me. Then when you get the conviction of the Holy Spirit saying, you know what? This is not what life is about.

0:14:42     You need to focus. We need to focus on who? The savior of the world? The messiah of the world. There’s a system. There’s a kingdom that he runs, and we need to get in it, and we need to become a part of it. And once we get that conviction, we need to do something about it. We’re not. We’re not where we need to be with God. So I’m going to change something. I’m going to change something. This guy changed their bill, right? He changed the bill.

0:15:09     And he was. That was a wise move. You took what was wasted on yourself. Cause remember, when he says, I hear, well, this is what I hear. The rich guys. This is what I hear. I hear you’re wasting my possessions. Well, how? You can be pretty sure he’s wasting it on himself. Now he flips the thing and says, I won’t do that anymore. I’m going to go bless these people, so to speak. I’m going to cut their bill in half and give my portion away, not collect it.

0:15:38     Then I am going to be popular with them. And that’s who I want to be popular with. Because I want a job. I want to work. I want to be. I want to be. I want to have a good. I want to take opportunities that are mine. I want to do what I can with my life? Well, have you ever thought those things like, I want to be prosperous. I want to be productive. I want to do something with my life. I don’t waste my life. And then it’s over or whatever.

0:16:04     And, you know, the kids are. I’m married, then the kids are grown, the kids are gone. What do I do now? No, I want to be productive. I want to do something. So what do you do? Look, who do you want to be popular with? This guy lost his popularity with his original master or his boss? But he said, but I still. I still want a job. I need a job. What will I do? I’m going to become popular with the ones who can hire me, the ones that can make me prosperous again, and they’ll like me because I’m going to cut it in half. So he went to the people that he needed to go to to be popular with. The idea is, I’m going to change their bill.

0:16:45     Who else are they going to hire? But lucky me, right? I’m going to take the ones that somebody that’s blessed them. And so now you look at your life and you say, you know, I’m not where I need to be with God. Well, go be right with God. He’s the one that holds your eternal future and wants you to be trustworthy with his things. So then towards the end of the parable, Jesus says this. He says, you know, those who are trustworthy with a little will be trustworthy with a lot.

0:17:17     But then he adds this. The ones who are faithful with what they do not own what is not their own will be faithful if you give them their own. Okay, so this guy was not faithful with his, the rich guy’s stuff, his boss’s stuff, right? He wasn’t. But then he turned it and gave it away and blessed other people with his profit. Now, now there’s, now the prayer boat’s. What if you can do that, if you can start being trustworthy with the things of God which are not your own, then God is going to what?

0:17:54     He’s going to give you your own. You’re going to end up with things because you’re showing God I’m trustworthy with another person’s things or with God things. Now God says, then you’ll be trustworthy with the things I give you. And now you’ve promoted your own life. You promoted yourself in God. And God’s the boss of everything, right? Yeah. Jesus is the king of the king of all kings. And with that you’ve turned your life around.

0:18:23     You saw it, you made a change. You changed your priority. And now you’ve made friends with the savior of the world. You’ve made friends with the messiah of the world. You’ve made friends in the kingdom of God. Now life is going to change because now the blessings are going to start because you’re going to be faithful with what God gives you. And God says, and with you I can give you your own. And now you get blessed not just blessing God and blessing God’s people, but God now blesses you because you’ve turned things around.

0:18:56     So here’s the lesson. Israel. No, let’s back up. Not Israel, the, the controlling, powerful Jews of Jesus day were in trouble. God wasn’t pleased. What’s this I hear about you? You haven’t managed Israel well. You’re not managing the temple well. You’re not managing religion well. And that’s who they were. They were the managers of religion. Israel. What is this I hear? And they did nothing. They changed nothing until eventually then their enemies came. In 70 ad, the Romans came and destroyed it all.

0:19:29     But they could have changed. Now, what about you? What’s God saying to you? Is your life in trouble? Are you off the mark? Are you not managing your life well when it comes to God’s opinion? Change it. Make a change. What can you do to find favor with God? Start winning him over. Be faithful. And then on top of that, Jesus says the people of the world are more shrewd than the people of light because they’re not using their talents, their abilities, and that to win over God, to win over his favor and to win other people and to be favor with other people.

0:20:03     So there you go. The shrewd manager is not being commended to being dishonest. He’s being commended because he knew his life was in trouble and he did something about it. That’s you today. What are you going to do? You’re going to change. I have focused my life completely on the kingdom of God. That’s me. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m always going to do. I’m going to do it till I’m no longer here. Okay. Maybe you’re to take over. Maybe you’re next.

0:20:28     So be smart. If your life is not what it should be and you’re not focusing on what you should be, but you’re wasting your life on yourself. Be shrewd like this manager was and set your future up for generosity from God and favor from the Lord. Good stuff. Yeah. Now you’ll know what most people don’t know. Most people don’t know anything about this parable. Now you do. So go do it and get yourself in the right position to be blessed by God.

0:20:54     Right? All right. So glad you joined us today. Remember, you could start right now. Maybe the right thing to do if you just listen to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit saying, give a donation. Give a gift to this ministry. Not to me, to the ministry, to more faith, more life. You can go to that and see, or you can go to stevegreyministries.com and you can give a gift. Why wouldn’t you do that? Well, I just want to waste it on myself.

0:21:18     All right. All right, then you’re not being very shrewd, though. You’re not being very smart. You need to bless what God is doing. Bless his ministers, bless the kingdom. And you know what? When you do that, stop wasting everything on yourself now. Then he’ll give you more and more and more of your own. When you’re faithful for what’s not yours, how about 10%? How about tithing? How about giving? How about being generous? Right?

0:21:47     So think about that donation. Go online. Maybe get a book or something. One of my books when the kingdom comes. Or the one. The little booklet I just wrote. You know, about how we’re the clueless generation. Yeah. Do something different. Don’t just listen and walk away. Do something. Change something so you can get in this mode of being shrewd, like this guy was, and he gave himself a bright future.

0:22:14     How about that? Till next time. Bye.