Tuesday, October 18, 2011

What Jesus Said about Your Money, Part 23 of 31

TEXT: "He who is faithful in what is least is faithful in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much" (Luke 16:10).

IDEA: Money is a little thing. It’s what we spend it for that is the big thing.

PURPOSE: To help listeners have a proper appreciation for money.

Have you ever thought what it must be like to be the press secretary for the President and the administration?

Do you sometimes feel like that when you teach the Scriptures?

There are subjects you’d rather not deal with.

There are statements that sound absurd that you must explain and defend.

Jesus talks about money and calls it “a very little thing” (Luke 16:10). That sounds absurd.

I. In our society, people believe that money is a very big thing.

People in our society are hesitant to discuss their salaries or their income publicly. I know a great deal about my friends, but I don’t know how much they make or how much they are worth. Why?

Oscar Wilde was quoted in the Harvard Business Review (3/4/68), “When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am older, I know it is.”

Whether people are wealthy or poor, very few believe that money is “a very little thing.”

II. Why would Jesus say that money was a very little thing?

It is little in somewhat the same way that one tree is little in comparison to a vast forest.

Larry Rasmussen (Economic Anxiety and the Christian Faith) says that Godfrey Davis, who wrote a biography about the Duke of Wellington, explained why his biography offered something others could not offer. “I had an advantage over earlier biographers. I found an old account ledger that showed how the Duke spent his money. It was a far better clue to what he thought was really important than reading his letters or speeches.”

Our checkbook may be the best and clearest biography any of us ever writes. What we spend money for is what we really value.

Money is temporal. It is not eternal. God entrusts us with money as a test. Like an allowance to a child, it is training for handling things of more value.

If we can be trusted with small assignments, then that is a symptom of our honesty and reliability for larger assignments.

Business people have thrown away a career because they cheated on expense accounts. They could not distinguish between what was really small and really important.