Man, the title of my sermon this evening
is The Unjust Steward, The Unjust Steward.
The second half of this chapter is the more famous half
with the rich man and Lazarus and the story about hell
and everything like that.
This first half is probably one of the more difficult
passages for a lot of people.
A lot of people kind of struggle to understand this parable,
you know, why this unjust steward is being praised
and everything like that.
But it has some really great lessons
that I want to bring out tonight.
And so let's just dig into this right now
about the unjust steward.
It says in verse number one,
he said also unto his disciples,
there was a certain rich man which had a steward
and the same was accused unto him
that he had wasted his goods.
So when the Bible talks about having a steward,
this is like a guy who runs your accounts for you.
He runs your finances.
You're trusting this guy to just take care of everything
because obviously rich people,
they don't necessarily want to sit and worry about
buying things and just organizing their lives
so they have like a personal assistant or somebody
who's gonna do all that for them
and obviously they have to trust that guy
because he has access to their bank accounts,
he might have power of attorney or whatever
and so he's got this steward and the guy gets accused
unto him that he's wasted his goods.
So this guy's like skimming off the top perhaps
or he's wasting money, he's just making stupid decisions,
ruining the guy's finances and so he says in verse number two,
he called him and said to him,
"How is it that I hear this of thee?
"Give an account of thy stewardship
"for thou mayest no longer be steward."
He's saying, look, you're fired
and so we need to kind of do a final reckoning here
and you need to give an account for what you've done
and why you've done it and we need to settle up
because I'm not gonna work with you anymore.
Then the steward said within himself, what shall I do?
For my Lord, take it away from me, the stewardship.
I cannot dig to beg, I'm ashamed.
So the idea here is that he's not just fired on the spot,
like go clean out your desk.
This guy is so interwoven into the life of his master
that he's saying, okay, you need to wrap things up
and give an accounting of your stewardship
because you're fired so you have to wind down and whatever.
So this guy has a little bit of time
while things are winding down and he's saying,
man, what am I gonna do because this is my job
and I don't really know how I'm gonna get the next job
if I just got fired from this job.
I'm not gonna get a good reference.
And he says, I can't dig.
I'm not gonna go do manual labor.
Like I don't wanna go out
and do like a construction job or something.
And I'm probably not gonna be able
to get another white collar job
because I just got fired for screwing it up.
And he says, to beg, I'm ashamed.
I'm embarrassed to be out there,
one of these panhandlers by the side of the road,
just begging for money.
I mean, am I just gonna be out on the street?
Like, what am I even gonna do?
What am I even gonna eat?
And then he says in verse four,
I am resolved what to do
when I am put out of the stewardship.
And he says that they may receive me into their houses.
So he's like, you know what, I got an idea.
I'm gonna do something to where all these customers
that my boss works with,
I'm gonna do something to where they will kind of
owe me a favor, and then I'll be able to come
into their houses.
They'll receive me into their houses
so I can stay in the guest room,
and maybe I can get a job with them, whatever, okay?
And so it says in verse number five,
he called every one of his Lord's debtors unto him,
and said unto the first, how much oest thou unto my Lord?
And he said, a hundred measures of oil.
And he said unto him, today's your lucky day,
I'm giving you a big discount here.
Take thy bill and sit down quickly and write 50.
You know, yeah, you owe 100, let's just make it 50, right?
Super generous with someone else's money, right?
This isn't him that's losing here,
it's his boss that's losing.
And so he's ripping off his boss.
And so he says, oh, I'll just change it to 50.
Then said he to another, how much oest thou?
And he said, a hundred measures of eat.
And he said unto him, eh,
take thy bill and write four score.
That's not, instead of 100, let's make it 80.
So he's cooking the books, as it were,
and changing all these numbers around
to give everybody a deal, give everybody a discount,
not get the boss what's coming to him.
So he's ripping off the boss
and he's helping out the customers.
Everybody understand what he's doing?
And then it says in verse number eight,
and this is the part that sometimes
could be confusing for people.
It says, and the Lord commended the unjust steward.
Now what does it mean to be unjust?
Unrighteous.
I mean, is this the right thing to do?
Cooking the books and the accounting
and ripping off the boss and giving the customer money
that doesn't belong to them?
Obviously this is sinful.
This is wrong.
This is unjust.
And so the first thing that we need to notice
is that notice that the word Lord is not capitalized here.
We're not talking about the Lord up in heaven.
We're not saying that God looks down from heaven
and sees somebody who's cooking the books
and says, hey, good job, buddy, ripping off the boss.
That's not what it says.
The Lord commended the unjust steward.
This is the Lord, this is the boss himself.
The guy who's being ripped off
is the one who is actually complimenting this guy.
And why does he compliment him?
It says, the Lord commended the unjust steward
because he had done wisely for the children of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
And the idea here is that even though this boss
is being ripped off by his crooked employee,
he says, you know what, you gotta hand it to the guy though.
What he did was pretty smart.
He's a pretty smart guy.
That was a pretty good idea.
And you know, I think we've all been in those situations
where somebody did us dirty or did us wrong,
but maybe we admired some aspect of it.
Like, wow, they really got me good or whatever, okay?
Obviously this is morally wrong,
but yet what the guy did was smart.
Does everybody understand how somebody could be smart
and still totally wrong, totally in sin,
it isn't right, it isn't moral, but it's just smart, okay?
Whereas somebody could do the right thing
and maybe not be smart.
And so what the Bible is showing us here,
at the end there, it says the children of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
What the Bible is saying here is
that just because someone is unsaved,
just because someone is not a Christian,
just because someone is immoral,
they still might have brains
just from like a secular, worldly point of view.
They might be able to know things.
And sometimes there are even things
that we could learn from unsaved people, ungodly people.
We don't want to learn their morality.
We don't want to cheat and steal and lie,
but we could learn just menial things from them.
Like, for example, you know,
There could be experts in, say, science or history or math or mechanics or whatever,
that you could still learn from, say, "Well, you know, I don't want to learn from these
people because they're unsaved."
You know, and the fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."
And so this guy says, "There's no God, therefore he's a fool, therefore I can learn nothing
from him."
Now, truly, I can learn nothing from that guy spiritually.
I'm not going to learn morality from the unsaved.
I'm not going to learn the Bible from the unsaved.
I don't want to learn theology from the unsaved.
But you know what though?
I could learn how to paint or how to do electrical or how to do plumbing or how to do carpentry
from unsaved people.
In fact, unsaved people, non-Christian people are often going to excel in the things of
this world.
I mean, that's all they've got.
And so for them, maybe making money is the biggest thing for them or just succeeding
at their career is the biggest thing.
So they might be masters at electrical work or masters at automotive repair or masters
at anything.
Okay.
And so we could still learn those things from them.
And so what the Bible is saying here is, look, this is a rotten guy.
He ripped off his boss, but the boss looked at it and said, okay, he's unjust.
He's wicked.
He ripped me off.
But you know what?
At least what he did was smart.
And then here's the moral of the story for us in the next verse.
It says, and I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that
when you fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.
Now let's break this down.
The guy in the story made friends.
Now he didn't make friends with his own money.
He made friends with his boss's money.
He's stealing money from the boss in order to help out the customer.
And therefore the customer loves him.
Now he's got a lot of friends instead of being out on the street.
He's got all these business contacts and references now.
And he's got all kinds of couches that he can sleep on because he helped these people
out and they like him and so forth.
So what we're supposed to do and take away from that is it says make to yourselves friends
of the mammon of unrighteousness that when you fail they may receive you into everlasting
habitations.
Now a lot of people will debate the meaning of this verse but I think if we just slow
down and break it down it makes a lot of sense what it actually means with respect to everything
else the Bible teaches.
Let's just slow down and break it down.
Make to yourselves friends and then of the mammon.
What is mammon?
Mammon is money.
And when it says the mammon of unrighteousness it's just calling it that because it just
means like the unrighteous mammon of this world is just obviously this whole system
of finance in this world is all tainted with sin and the love of money is the root of all
evil and everything.
So what the Bible is saying is use money in order to make friends is what the Bible is
saying.
Now look not by stealing, lying and cheating but look let's say I have extra money and
I'm generous with other people.
What does the Bible say?
Give and it shall be given unto you.
And in fact here's a verse from Proverbs that really spells this out.
It says in Proverbs 27 verse 10, "Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not."
Right?
Do not abandon.
Do not forsake your friends.
Do not forsake your father's friend.
You want to have those friends in your life.
It says, "Neither go into thy brother's house on the day of calamity for better is a neighbor
that is near than a brother far off."
And the idea here is that you know okay your brother may be your actual literal flesh and
blood brother.
He might live far away.
You need to have some friends in your life that are close by so that when you crash and
burn, when you have a calamity, when you have an emergency, you want to have people that
are close by that can help you out like local people, people from your local church, people
from your local neighborhood.
You know if you're a friend unto them then they're going to be there for you.
And again I'm going to read the verse again.
It said, "Thy known friend and thy father's friend forsake not."
Now why should I not forsake my friend?
Why should I not forsake my father's friend?
Well obviously it's just the right thing to do to be loyal but that's not what the Bible
is saying in this verse.
This verse is saying don't forsake your friend and don't forsake your father's friend because
you're going to need them down the road.
That's what the verse is actually saying just from a human pragmatic perspective.
It says, "Thy known friend and thy father's friend forsake not, neither go into thy brother's
house in the day of calamity, for better is a neighbor that is nearer than a brother far
off."
So if you have friends that are close by that can help you out when you need them, it's
even better if you just got friends everywhere.
I remember one time my wife was in a situation where she was in upstate New York and something
went wrong.
I don't remember if she lost her ID or something.
What was it?
Her driver's license has expired and so they won't rent her a vehicle and she has all these
plans and she can't rent a vehicle and she's kind of just stranded at the airport high
and dry and I'm just like hey, I've got friends everywhere, you know?
And it's like I've got a guy in upstate New York, called him up, the guy showed up, bailed
her out, helped her out, super cool.
It's nice to kind of know people and be able to tap people when you need help.
And here's the thing, if you go through life helping other people, then other people will
be there to help you.
Now obviously sometimes you're going to be really loyal and you're going to be a really
good friend and you're going to help people out and then when you need them, they're not
there.
It's frustrating, right?
It's sad when people will take, take, take, take and then when it's time to give they're
like see ya.
Some people are like this, some friends are like that and we've probably all had friends
stab us in the back or just kind of use us and use us and use us and then when we need
something from them, they're not there.
But here's the deal, now let's bring in the spiritual factor.
Let's bring in the supernatural factor that God's up in heaven and he's looking down and
guess what?
There's the natural sowing and reaping of just hey, if you do good unto other people
and you're a friend to them, they're going to be a friend to you.
But guess what?
God's also looking down and when he sees you being loyal, when he sees you being faithful,
let's say you do have a friend stab you in the back, he'll make sure that some other
friend is there to help you.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
Like God is going to watch out for you and take care of you when your friends forsake
you.
He's going to make sure that you have different friends and other people to say, "Look, I've
had friends bail out on me, but every time I've lost friends, they're replaced by better
friends."
God's got something better for you, you know?
And so that's just the way life works.
And so according to Proverbs, you shouldn't forsake your friend because you're going to
need them down the road, just from an earthly perspective.
So let's apply that back to what we're doing here in Luke chapter 16.
It says, "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when you fail,
they may receive you into everlasting habitations."
So basically, if I make friends, so basically, I'm doing well financially, I have extra money,
instead of just hoarding it and being really selfish and just spending it all on myself
and just saving it all up and whatever, instead I'm going to share the wealth and be generous
and I'm going to help people out that need help, I'm going to help the poor, I'm going
to help my friends, I'm going to help family, I'm going to be buying and spending for them
because I have an abundance, then when things get really tight for me, now all of a sudden
I can cash in those favors.
When I fail, they're ready to receive me.
Well, you know, hey, he's always been so generous with us, we're going to do, you know, whatever
we can for him.
That's going to be the attitude.
Now another sticky part of this passage that people get confused by is the everlasting
habitations.
So some people will read this everlasting habitations and their mind will automatically
go to like mansion in heaven or something like that, right?
Here's the problem with that though, is that a lot of times when we're reading the Bible,
the most obvious interpretation isn't always the correct interpretation.
Even though, you know, we should always start with whatever is the most straightforward
and obvious.
What happens is sometimes you plug that in though and it doesn't work.
So like in this case, let's plug that in.
So basically I'm going to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness and then when
I fail, they're going to receive me into heavenly mansions.
That doesn't make any sense.
That makes no sense because here's the thing, if this is about me dying and going to heaven,
how is that me failing?
I mean failures are happening now on this earth.
I might fail this year or next year or struggle.
When I'm in heaven, the struggle's over.
I don't need to be bailed out because remember, what is this story even about?
The unjust steward has fallen on rough times because he got fired.
He got fired.
He's afraid of being out on the street.
He needs somebody to show him generosity and charity, okay?
So the Bible's saying, well look, when you fail, you want people to be able to receive
you into everlasting habitation.
So I think it makes a lot more sense, instead of interpreting this as home in heaven, it
makes a lot more sense to just think of the word everlasting here as meaning just there's
no end to it, unlimited, or just always welcome type of a thing.
So the idea here is they're going to receive you into everlasting habitations, meaning
you can stay as long as you want.
The hospitality is lasting forever, goes on forever, it's never going to end, and obviously
all of our lives are going to end, but I'm saying that it's not like well you can stay
for a few days just to get you back on your feet, right, and you'll hear people say that
like oh man I'm in trouble I need help or whatever, okay hey you can stay on my sofa
for a week, but at the end of that week you're going to have to figure something out, who's
had those kind of conversations before like hey you know after a week you're going to
have to figure this out or whatever, whereas this is like, no this is like an everlasting
habitations, like because remember the guy said all these people are going to bring me
into their home because I took care of them, and the Bible is saying if you make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness you're always going to have a place to stay, you're
always going to be welcome, because you've got friends there to take care of you and
again there is a supernatural element of God's going to be looking out for you and even if
you can't stay at this particular place forever you're not going to end up out on the street
if you're a godly Christian serving God, being generous, investing in other people, making
friends, taking care of your friends, not forsaking your friends, I'm sorry you're just
not going to end up totally high and dry out on the street because there's always going
to be somebody that's going to take you in.
I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands, who would take me in if I needed it, but I'll
bet you there's a bunch of people in here that would say yeah, come crash on my sofa
Pastor Anderson, there's probably people listening online that feel the same way, right?
People out there?
The point is we want to make sure that we're blessing other people, being generous with
other people, taking care of other people so that we'll have somebody to take care
of us, and even if it doesn't work out, humanly speaking, God sees what we did, and here's
what the Bible says, that if you give to the poor, you're lending to the Lord.
If you give to the poor, you're lending to the Lord, and the Lord's going to repay you.
So if you do things for people that can never repay, then God will repay you.
If you do things for people that can repay you, sometimes they'll repay you.
You know, I've had so many friends come through for me.
Sometimes we emphasize the times that people don't come through for us, but I can think
of a ton of times when my friends did come through for me, and they were there for me,
and they were there to talk to when I needed to talk to them.
They were there to help me out materially or help me out spiritually or whatever.
You know, my parents have been there for me and helped me out a bunch of times.
Over the last 25 years, I've been married to my wife.
They've helped me out at different times financially.
They've helped me out at babysitting.
They've helped me out with just, you know, giving me places to stay when I'm in Sacramento
and showing me great hospitality or, you know, when I was in the hospital, they're helping
me out in Sacramento.
When I got out of the hospital, I was convalescing at my mom's house that one time that I injured
my back.
And so, you know, this is why we want to live our lives and we don't want to go through
lives just being stingy and a tightwad and just like, "Oh, I just got to keep everything
and save it up for a rainy day and I got to invest all my money."
And by the way, this is why a lot of people don't have kids too, because it's just like,
"No, no, no.
I just got to keep all the money and I just have to invest it and stockpile it and whatever."
Instead of investing our money in ourselves or in stocks and bonds and the Dow is over
50,000 and all this stuff, why don't we instead invest in people?
Invest in relationships, invest in our friendships, invest in helping other people out and getting
our money out there doing good work for God and helping other people out rather than just
stockpiling it and then we don't have the friends that we need and then we're like too
stingy to help out a buddy when he needs it and then we wonder when we crash and burn
why nobody's there for us.
That's not how I want to live my life.
I want to live my life investing in other people and God's plan, by the way, is that
people do have children and that those children grow up and honor their father and mother
and bless their father and mother, and actually they're going to be the ones that would take
care of their parents when they're old.
And when their parents and grandparents are too old to take care of themselves, they are
going to financially kick in and take care of it and pay for it.
And again, if for some reason you say, "Oh, well, I raised my children and then my kids
aren't there for me," again, if God sees you following the program, He'll step in and make
up for it.
And by the way, it's not just our physical children that we have in this world.
We got a lot of spiritual children, people that we won to Christ that are going to appreciate
us and take care of us and help us out when we need it, you know?
And here's the thing, maybe you're never going to need it, but you know what, it's nice to
know that it's there.
You know, it's not that I'm constantly calling my parents to bail me out or something, but
you know what, if I need it, it's nice to know that it's there.
It's nice to know that if I crash and burn, if I fail, quote unquote, hey, I got my dad
on speed dial, got my mom on speed dial, got tons of friends on speed dial, pastor friends,
layman friends, people in Arizona, people all over America, people all over the world.
Hey, it's nice to have that network.
I heard somebody say your network is your net worth, you know, because people in our
lives are more important than just possessions and money and things.
The Bible says a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesses.
And so I think it's a great story.
It's a great parable.
It's kind of tough to understand maybe, but I think if you slow down and break it down,
you'll see that the interpretation that I'm giving you is actually consistent with what
we're going to find elsewhere in the Bible telling us don't forsake your friends.
You want them to be there for you.
You know, if you give to the poor, you're lending to the Lord and on and on it goes.
Let's talk about a few other things in this passage.
Let's back up a little bit.
Now that we understood the main thrust of the parable, let's back up to this verse
in verse eight.
It says the Lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely, right?
Not because he was morally right, but because he was just smart about what he did.
For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
Go through what the Genesis chapter four, Genesis chapter number four is at the very
beginning of the Bible.
And so again, I said non-Christians, unsafe people can still be smart when it comes to
worldly things and we can sometimes benefit from their knowledge, right?
Let's say you go to work and your supervisor at work, your boss at work is part of some
stupid religion and you're, you know, it doesn't mean that you should just not respect the
guy as an electrician because he's, you know, mixed up into some dumb religion.
You know, I mean, we could list all the dumb religions if you want, but basically everything
other than being a Bible believing Christian.
So you know, if he's unsaved or maybe he's an atheist, it doesn't mean that you can't
learn from him, right?
And the same thing goes with books.
Here's the thing.
I'm not really interested in reading books about the Bible written by unsaved people.
I'm not going to go to some Jewish rabbi to tell me what the Bible means.
You know, if he doesn't have the son, he doesn't have the father.
And if he doesn't speak according to this word, there's no light in him and the natural
man receiving the things of the spirit of God.
But here's the thing, though, I'm going to read secular books about other subjects as
far as just learning information, like, you know, I might read a secular book about nutrition
or about, you know, weightlifting or about, you know, my job or whatever, electrical plumbing.
You know, you're going to read stuff, science, history.
It's not that like, oh, we just can only read the Bible or books written by born again,
save Christians.
Like, again, when it comes to morality and when it comes to theology and biblical things,
yeah.
But the world knows things about other subjects and it's not wrong for us to learn those things.
You know, the Bible says about Moses that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds.
You know, in the book of Daniel, you have Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being
taught the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans and being taught things like science
and learning all these things.
And at the end of it all, they were the best at all of those worldly subjects that they
learned in Nebuchadnezzar's court there.
Look at Genesis chapter four.
This is a really interesting passage to me because this is going way back to the beginnings
of mankind, okay?
Because we're talking about all the way back to the beginning.
You have Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
This is before the flood.
So this is going back to some of the earliest period of human beings upon this earth.
And so in the beginning, you have Cain and Abel.
But then Adam and Eve had tons of other sons and daughters in addition to that.
And so the world begins to be populated with people.
And you have Seth kind of representing the most spiritual group.
And you know, Seth's son, Enos, comes along and men began to call upon the name of the
Lord.
So it seems like Seth's descendants, all the way down to Noah, are excelling more spiritually,
whereas Cain obviously represents the worst faction, and Cain's descendants are still
excelling in some physical endeavors that they go to.
So look what the Bible says in chapter 4 verse 19, we get to Cain's descendant, Lamech.
You know, I'm not going to go through this whole genealogy with you, but it's like Cain's
great-grandson or whatever.
Sorry, I didn't count the numbers, but it's something like that.
And Lamech took in him two wives.
You know, this is the first time in the Bible that somebody has two wives.
Obviously, that's not God's plan.
That's not God's original intent.
But this is what the descendants of Cain are doing.
One of the things they're doing is polygamy.
But it says, "The name of the one was Ada and the name of the other Zilla."
Verse 20, "And Ada bare Jabal.
He was the father of such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle.
And his brother's name was Jubal, and he was the father of all such as handle the harp
and organ.
And Zilla, she also bare Tubal Cain, an instructor of every artificer, in brass and iron, and
the sister of Tubal Cain was Nehema."
So anyway, it's like a genealogy and it's explaining some things.
But when you look at these things that Cain's descendants are excelling in, this kind of
nomadic lifestyle with tents and cattle, and then obviously musical innovation, it says
in verse 21 that Jubal was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.
Now here's the thing, are the harp and the organ good musical instruments that people
are going to use throughout the Bible to worship God and praise God and sing unto the Lord?
Yeah, I mean these are instruments that the Bible speaks well of throughout the book of
Psalms and elsewhere.
So this isn't like some bad innovation that they invented here with the harp and the organ.
And here's the thing, every person who comes after them who's using the harp and the organ,
really it says this guy's the father of all such as use the harp and the organ, meaning
like this is the OG, like this guy started the whole thing with harps and organs.
He's the first guy.
And so everybody who comes after, you know, is basically building upon what this guy discovered
and what this guy learned musically.
And obviously music is sort of a science like anything else that develops over time and
discoveries are made.
In addition to being an art form, there's a lot of science that goes into music as well.
And then the same thing with, you know, brass and iron, this metallurgy and metalwork.
I mean look, obviously this is something that all of us are benefiting from.
All of us are enjoying, okay.
And it says this guy was an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron, meaning
everybody who comes after is drawing from this guy's original starting point.
Because we don't all just come along and reinvent the wheel in every generation.
Every generation takes the knowledge of the previous generation and builds upon it.
And so these guys got the ball rolling in some important areas.
These are not godly people.
These are not righteous people.
They're just worldly, unsaved, sinful people.
But hey, you know what, at least they made some advances in music, in metallurgy, in
husbandry and things like that that we all benefit from even to this day.
And so the idea here is that we don't want to, as Christians, get this attitude of we
can't borrow anything or we can't use anything, like for example, you know, this iPhone or
something.
Oh, you know, the companies that made it are bad or Apple is bad or something.
It's like, I'm still going to use an iPhone.
I'm going to use it for the things of God, just like I'm going to take a harp.
And here's the thing.
The harp could be used to praise Satan.
You know, there could have been some early death metal or something where these sons
of Kane are just rocking out and praising Satan or whatever and some, you know, wild
concert, you know, it could have been all kinds of like blasphemous and ungodly lyrics
and you know, whatever stairway up babble or whatever.
But the point is that you could also use those things for good because it's just like a neutral
tool, the harp, the organ, metal, and it's the same thing with things like our phone,
the internet, cars, all these technology, we don't even, oh, I don't want to use technology,
I'm going to go be Amish and I'm going to like grow a beard and shave off the mustache.
Huh?
I was wondering like, why does anyone do that?
I thought, is it so that I could kiss my wife without just tearing up her face with my mustache,
just shave a little kissing portion, I don't know, I can't figure it out, but all I know
is that my wife doesn't want me to have that chin beard at all, she's not, she's not down
with that, and neither am I, but the point is though, I'm saying like we shouldn't eschew
technology just because you say, oh this technology was made by worldly people, unsaved people,
so what?
I'm going to use it for the glory of God, I'm going to use the harp, I'm going to use
the organ, I'm going to praise God with the harp and organ, I'm going to use the metallurgy,
all the technology and things like that, why?
Because Jesus said the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children
of light.
They still have knowledge in their generation, in their realm, in their sector, they're good
at what they do in many cases and we can still learn from them and not just think that we
know everything and they know nothing.
You know, we can still benefit from those things.
And by the way, knowing a lot doesn't make you spiritual.
Just because some professor is smarter than me, it doesn't mean that he's right about
Jesus because if he doesn't believe Jesus is the Son of God, he's wrong.
And it doesn't, you know, you could have some super smart person telling you that Jesus
isn't real and then you could have, you know, one of the dumbest people you've ever met
who believes in Jesus.
And you know what?
The guy who believes in Jesus is the one who's right.
He's the one who's going to heaven because you know what?
People can be wrong spiritually and still be right about something else.
And I think we've all met people in our lives who were really smart in certain areas and
really dumb in other areas.
And you're wondering like, man, I thought this guy was smart.
How can this guy be so dumb, you know, and I was just like, what in the world?
Like, you know, here's an example that I thought of, you know, I heard from this, this really
super advanced chemistry professor who's, you know, publishing papers is super smart.
And look, for those who don't know, chemistry is hard.
Like when it comes to science, chemistry is one of the hardest sciences.
Like if you're taking science classes, chemistry is usually the worst and this guy is like
all the way in chemistry, super smart guy.
I mean, this guy knows science, right?
But then the guy said, "Oh, you know what I noticed?"
He said, "I noticed that during COVID," because I was wearing a mask during COVID, he's like,
"I noticed that I never got sick because I was wearing the mask."
So I just like, because he's like, usually you get like a cold, a flu, you know, just
basic seasonal sicknesses.
But he said, "I wore this mask during COVID for a couple of years."
He's like, "Every time I went out and I didn't get sick at all."
So he said, "I've decided I'm just going to wear this mask for the rest of my life and
just never get sick again."
And I'm thinking to myself, like, "Bro, you're a scientist?"
Because if you actually understood the science of biology and the way our immune systems
work, you'd realize that your immune system has to be exercised.
And if you're not getting exposed to germs, and if you're going years and years without
being sick, guess what?
When you do get sick, it's really going to tear you, it's going to just destroy you,
it's going to wipe you out.
And look, I'm not claiming to be an expert on this, but I know a little more than that
guy that no, you don't want to just live in a bubble and never be exposed to germs because
your immune system is supposed to fight off germs.
You don't want to be getting sick constantly, but you also don't want to never get sick.
You want to get sick a few times a year so that basically your body is functioning normally,
your immune system's kind of keeping up on all the current events of what germs are out
there and what the viruses are this year, and it can actually stay updated.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
It's sort of like when the white man came over to America, right, and then it's like
a lot of places like 90% of the Indians die of disease, how come 90% of the white people
didn't die?
You know, the white people had a stronger immunity and the reason why is because they're
living in Europe around a lot of other people.
So they're around like all kinds of people and they're also like around a lot of animals
and cattle and they're kind of cramped so they've already been exposed to so many germs.
They show up and whatever germs the Indians got it's like come at me bro because we've
already been exposed to so many germs we can take it.
The Indians like they don't have a wheel, they didn't even have the wheel right?
I mean they're not even, they don't even have wagons right?
They haven't invented the wheel.
So how far do you really think they're going?
They're not high tech and so they're local, they're only around their group or whatever.
They weren't very advanced and so what happens is you know they haven't been exposed to as
many people and animals and germs and so that's why it was kind of a one way valve.
Yeah, I'm sure some white people were getting sick too of course but it was more of the
Indians who got smoked because their immune system hadn't been exposed.
That's why I'm not, but I'm thinking to myself this guy's a chemistry expert but he doesn't
seem to understand how the immune system works because those are two totally different subjects.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
So you see how somebody could be really smart in one area and totally misunderstanding another
area even though they're both science you know and that's just the way it is and all
of us have blind spots.
I'm sure there are things that I say that are dumb and you're shaking your head every
once in a while but yet you respect my knowledge in general.
You respect my preaching in general except that one thing I preach that just kind of
has you like oh man like what is up with that.
That's just the way it's just the way the world is.
So you know I love what Brother Hiles said he said everyone knows something that I don't
know therefore all men are my teachers.
And by the way while we're on the subject of the Indians while I'm pissing people off
no I'm just kidding but basically like here's the thing is that there's no such thing as
primitive cultures because you know people will say like oh these tribes over here in
Africa or in the southeast you know Polynesian island places like where's that place that's
kind of primitive Papua New Guinea like people say like oh Papua New Guinea is primitive
or you know this this jungle over here is primitive this place in South America is primitive
or or you know this is over here is primitive or when when when you know the Europeans showed
up the Native Americans are primitive primitive here's why I don't agree with that because
primitive literally means like that they're early in their development like they haven't
arrived yet so everybody understand like prime means first so older they're primitive like
they're not as advanced yet everybody understand what I'm saying and this is kind of like an
evolutionary model that humans kind of we all kind of started out ooga-booga bone-in-the-nose
types and then somehow we've advanced and evolved out of that but I would submit to
you that these people are not primitive they are degenerate they're degenerate societies
what do I mean by that is that in the past they were advanced in the past and they've
degenerated because guess what if you look at the archaeology of Arizona if you look
at the archaeology of other parts of the nation but we could think specifically about Arizona
because we live here and some of you might have even seen some of this as you tour Arizona
and see the sites there have been advanced civilizations in Arizona and archaeologists
and historians will tell us that around the year 1000 AD or 1200 AD even up to 1400 AD
North America had some advanced civilizations, cities, irrigation, technology and things
I'm not saying that you know they had like trains or something but I'm telling you though
they were way more advanced than the way the Europeans found them right when Columbus shows
up in 1492 it was pretty rough and all the history books all the archaeologists will tell you
that these cultures were in their peak their heyday thousand AD over here 1200 AD over here
1400 AD and that they had all totally declined by the time the Europeans even got here so it's not
that the Europeans just came and ruined everything it was already in the toilet when they got here
okay and the only exception to that the only like major functioning civilization on this part of the
world in North America is the Aztec Empire and it it degenerated as well but that was like the
only like organized powerful empire and of course they're just human sacrifice cannibalism every
single day blood flowing down the steps of the altar there in Tenochtitlan which is now called
Mexico City and all that stuff they found that stuff but here's the thing there are other ruins
all over North America South America of more advanced situations even the writing system
of the Mayans like we think about the Mayan calendar you know the Mayans had an advanced
writing system but by the time the Europeans showed up like a lot of this knowledge had just
been forgotten these sites had been abandoned and they'd regressed another classic example
of this is Easter Island who knows what Easter Island is okay it's that place with those giant
heads on it those statues were just like a giant head and when the Europeans showed up
they found people that first of all didn't know how to get off the island they're stuck on the
island they don't know how to like build ships or navigate them but they had to have got there
somehow but they're like we don't know it's like how'd you get here we don't know how do you get
off the island we don't know how did the who made these statues we don't know how did you get the
statues all the way up on that mountain we have no idea there's just nobody everybody's clue
everybody's just saying oh we don't know we don't know what's going on but somebody was high tech
at some point because you know the pacific ocean is massive and yet going back hundreds and hundreds
even over a thousand years ago people are making boats and sailing across the pacific which is way
bigger than the atlantic and and and populating all those islands and all those people on those
islands the the languages are all related because people are just sailing over from asia and just
and and just populating all these islands and building all these civilizations building gigantic
statues and everything but what happened is the resources on the island got used up so then all
the movers and shakers are like there's nothing going on here we're leaving and then kind of the
people that stayed behind are just kind of like people who are just like i don't want to go
anywhere i'm comfortable and then they stayed and then pretty soon everybody who stayed is just
people who don't know how to sail don't really know how to do much and so the society goes backward
does everybody understand what i'm saying so it's not evolution it's devolution going to the devil
okay because what happens is when people forsake god when people don't worship the lord when people
are not christian they go backwards as a society they go backward as a culture and technology is
often lost and societies will move backwards so it's not that oh they're primitive they just
haven't gotten there no because go to these primitive parts in the world and you can find
that in the past they did have powerful empires they did have machines they did have technology
they did have abilities they did have sophisticated agriculture writing whatever and it went downhill
it decayed it degenerated that's the true story because here's the thing i'm looking at you say
well prove to me that from the bible well i'm looking at the bible this is the very beginnings
of mankind we're talking like people that kane is related to pretty closely kane's great grandkids
are already smelting iron and brass i mean that's pretty advanced because here's the thing you know
if you're going to sit there and work with brass and iron you have to create fires with extremely
high temperatures you can't just melt that stuff in the campfire and in order to melt that stuff
you have to use something like a bellows that's pumping air into the fire to make it super hot
and you have the bellows going and heating things up extremely hot so that you can melt brass and
iron different understand this is high tech stuff and this is going all the way back to the beginning
and by the way you say yeah but they're living in tents well a couple verses earlier it says they
built a city the tents come after the city the city comes first again it's not like oh well they
evolved from caveman to tent dweller to see no they're building cain the first thing cain does
is he goes and builds a city so this is like the first family and cain's already building a city
no uga buga no caveman no living in the jungle no the first the first son that's born on this earth
goes out and builds a city the nomadic lifestyle with the tents and the and the and the animals
they're doing that by choice people still live in tents to this day and i'm not talking about
homeless people you know i'm talking there are cultures in this world where you know they have
that nomadic lifestyle i mean look abraham and isaac and jacob are super rich have hundreds of
employees and have just tons of wealth abraham isaac and jacob are super rich and they all lived
in what they lived in tents right it's a nice tent abraham's got his own jacob's got a tent
for his wife over here different everybody's got their own tent okay nice tents luxury tents okay
this is a lifestyle that they're doing okay and then what's interesting if you think about it
says the harp and the organ okay now here's the here's the thing about the harp and the organ
and i'm i'm going off a little bit of a rabbit trail but just just deal with it because we'll
be out of here in 10 minutes what's the difference so here 15 but but here's the deal okay when it
comes to an organ obviously i'm not saying that they had like something like this we're not
talking about an electric organ and we're not talking about like a giant pipe organ like you'd
find in a medieval church okay but obviously when the bible says the harp and the organ
we're talking about some kind of a wind instrument okay and here's the thing it probably didn't have
a keyboard necessarily but if you think about it an organ in essence i'm not talking about this this
fake organ that we have that's electric a real organ is making musical notes by forcing air
through a pipe okay and then the length of that pipe determines what note it is that's why you
see all these different like staggered pipes for different notes right and so if you think about
it the same technology that is forcing air into a bellows to smelt iron and brass that's probably
the same kind of technology in a sense that you would force air through a pipe to make a really
loud musical instrument because yeah you could say oh you know when the bible says organ it just
means it's just talking about a small wind instrument like a little a little pan flute
or a little pipes or something yeah okay maybe it was just blowing into a pipe but you know what
maybe if they're forcing air through pipes in order to make metal then you know they probably
notice that sometimes it makes a cool sound and then you know they made some i guess i don't know
industrial music i guess you could say but the point is that there's nothing new under the sun
because you go back all the way to the beginning and you have some high tech inventions going on
and obviously i'm not saying computers or something but still this is not caveman
ooga booga hunter-gatherer stuff and it's even before the flood and mankind has always been able
to do stuff like this if man puts his mind to it he can accomplish amazing things because we've
been given a lot of intellect by god and so-called primitive cultures are squandering their intellect
they're not harnessing their intellect but they could but they're degenerate okay it's sort of
like that story about that kid in africa who uh built the windmill and brought power to his whole
village right that's just you know he can they can do that whenever they want anybody can make
their world better make their situation better build something innovate something be that
entrepreneur like that kid did instead of just saying oh well you know i'm just going to go
with the status quo and you know i guess we just don't have power i guess we just don't have
plumbing it's like well no let's build it let's do it and the thing about these descendants of cane
is that they're not godly they're not righteous but they're building stuff and at least we could
all benefit from it down the road because all of the musical innovations that they made and by the
way while i'm on the subject of music let me say this too is that you'll get this idea of like oh
you know western music and blah blah blah and and then let's let's go look at this primitive music
over here and you go to that musical instrument museum who went to the musical instrument museum
with us lots of people the other musical instrument museum and there's just all this there's all these
whole sections of ooga booga kind of music where they're basically just like like just one second
you're listening to some like symphony or like you're listening to some really sophisticated
like guitar music or something and then the next room it's just like they're just like it's just
like some guy dressed up like a bird like with feathers he's just dressed up and he's just like
and it's like hey these are both equally valid man and it's just a guy just like beating a drum
running around dressed like a bird or whatever like you know it's like okay and here's what i say oh
that's primitive music that's primitive music that's that's how all music started no my friend
because right here early on they got harp and organ they're probably playing sophisticated music
and by the way the 12 keys on the piano the 12 notes on the piano that is found in nature like
that is not just an arbitrary like oh that's just our western convention of having 12 notes
you know chinese traditional music is also based on 12 notes because here's the thing
if you actually do the math behind music it's inevitable that you're going to end up at a 12
note basic chromatic scale and you know the number 12 is found in nature as well with the you know as
far as the lunar versus solar situation 12 months in a year but you know i don't know if you want me
to explain to you the math right now about uh about the 12 note chromatic scale probably not
maybe save it for geeking out at the uh i'll geek out at the musicians conference with my fellow
musicians but you know if you just just i'll just tell you and if you know you know the circle of
fifths enough said right you follow the circle of fifths and that's how they originally tuned
pipes and stringed instruments in the early days they can get a perfect fifth of a perfect
fifth of a perfect fifth of a perfect fifth of a perfect fifth of a perfect fifth and you end up
going you know c g d a e you know you're going to end up back at the beginning again and you have
exactly 12 notes it's a little bit off but that's another story that shall be told at another time
the point is though that music has always been sophisticated for some people and it's always
been ooga booga for other people it's a choice right people over here that are putting time and
care and effort into producing sophisticated instruments and making sophisticated skillful
sounds with those instruments and then people over here who are just beating a drum and running
around first first take a hit off the the peace pipe and then you know the peace pipe that was
a joke because peace pipe is just tobacco okay so you know they take a hit off something a little
stronger and then go running around and you know talking to the spirit world you know or whatever
all right so let me just close by saying this i think we've done enough here go back to luke 16
and we'll pretend that we stayed on topic here verse 9 says make to yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness that when you fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations
verse 10 it says he that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much
and he that is unjust in least is unjust also in much verse 11 if therefore you've not been
faithful in the unrighteous mammon who will commit to your trust the true riches and if you have not
been faithful in that which is another man's who shall give you that which is your own no man can
serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one
and despise the other you cannot serve god and mammon okay and so what the bible is saying here
is look money is a tool okay don't serve money don't love money don't worship money money is a
tool use your money to build relationships right you want to know where most of my money's gone
for the last 25 years you're not going to believe this but most of my money has been spent by her
over the last 25 years okay that's who spends my money and it's spent on these kids can anybody
relate to me right now i mean wait you think i just get my paycheck and it's like all right
what are we going to do with this as soon as the paycheck comes it's already spoken for she's going
to spend it the kids are going to you know but but here's the thing i'm taking the mammon of
unrighteousness and what am i doing with it i'm using it to build relationships i'm using it to
build a family i'm using it to bless other people i'm using it to build friendships family here's
the thing a lot of people take their money and you know what they do they spend it on going on a
mission strip with friends from church and what are they doing number one they're building a
relationship with the person that they're traveling with they're building relationships
with their church friends and then they're also winning people to christ and then they're they've
got that relationship there as well somebody that they have won to the lord even if they never see
that person again god sees and so spending money should not be about just pleasing ourselves it
should be about doing something of spiritual value spending money to build relationships you
know oh i don't want to get married because i just want to keep all the money for myself well you're
going to be pretty lonely whereas you can spend that money to pay for that wife and it's worth
every penny to have that wife to have those kids to have that situation that's what the bible is
saying and also whenever we help people out god sees that he's going to bless that given it shall
be given unto you the bible says and so we want to not worship money but want to realize money is a
tool and by the way the our church treats money as a tool as well and here's here's what we're not
interested in buying a palatial building you know and here's the thing our building is nice i think
it's great i love it i think it's beautiful it's really nice but you know this building's cheaper
than our old building you know and it's like and we don't even own it we're just renting it oh you're
just renting here's the thing because we'd rather put our money into people put our money into
missions and soul winning and doing the work than to just get it all sucked up into building some
palace some monument having some fancy building to impress the neighbors not interested you know and
so when it comes to our personal money when it comes to our church's money we don't want to
hoard money and stockpile money you know we want to use it to be a blessing to people bless other
people and then we know that they've got our back or at least god's got our back down the road that's
the main thrust and then the other thing that we can learn from this story is that worldly unsafe
people they have something to teach us we can still learn from them we're not going to follow
their ungodly example spiritually but you know what we can learn musical skills we could learn
metallurgy skills we could learn carpentry we could learn husbandry we could learn farming
we could learn these things don't look down upon your boss at work because he's not a saved
christian look up to him as a mentor in the trade teaching you the tools of the trade even if he
can't teach you anything spiritually the children of this world they have knowledge they have wisdom
and also don't be afraid to use the tools of this world we're just not necessarily going to use it
the way they use it you know i'm using the same iphone as some kind of purple hair nose ring lesbian
is using the same iphone i'm using but we're probably using it for two different things
right because i'm going to use my iphone i'm listening to preaching i'm reading my bible on
here i'm communicating with brothers and sisters in christ right i'm organizing work for the lord
on this thing i'm broadcasting the word of god to the internet on this thing right and other people
are using this for something wicked the tool isn't the problem the harp isn't the problem
the organ isn't the problem the phone isn't the problem the tents and cattle aren't the
problem the iron and brass aren't the problem these are neutral tools that can be used for
good or for evil and so knowledge can come from people that aren't saved if it's secular knowledge
and that's what the bible is teaching us here in luke 16 let's pray let's have a word of prayer
father we thank you so much for your word and we thank you for this passage in scripture
it's a little difficult lord but i pray that everyone tonight learned something useful
from the sermon and that we would go through life not loving money but using money for your
glory and using money to build meaningful relationships instead of hoarding it or being
selfish with our money lord help us to use it to build meaningful friendships help us never to
forsake our friends but to cherish and value those relationships lord and help us to try to learn
everything we can from every one we can and to realize that an expert in one area is not
necessarily an expert in another area lord bless us as we go our separate ways in jesus name we pray