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DAVID'S EMAIL BIBLE STUDY:
Brain Tease
A.INTRO
... At the risk of boring you, let me repeat: these recent chapters from Luke's Gospel coming from the final months and weeks of his life. There is a real sense of urgency, a need to be brutally frank, to prep his followers to spread his message after he's gone. .
C. SUMMARY.
Summary is easy. Grasping it's meaning, and applying it, that's tougher. Here's the easy part. Jesus tells a story about a "shrewd" manager of a large farm. He gets fired by the owner for "wasting", mismanaging, the farm's assets and properties. Facing unemployment, the shrew manager conspires with merchants/vendors who do business with the farm, to alter their accounts so they'll owe less to the owner. He does this to ingratiate himself with those vendors, so that after losing his job they will help him out (vs 3-6). Surprisingly, the owner applauds the manager's "shrewdness". Jesus tells the disciples that the manger's behavior, indeed the worldly behavior of people, can teach Christians a lesson ("people of the light", vs. 8). We also need to do some ingratiating for the sake of our own eternal security, by using our worldly gains generously. Then, with a contortionist's twist, Jesus tells us all that we need to show trustworthiness in everything, large or small; and we need to choose now whether our #1 commitment is to God or to "mammon" (vs. 13), which represents worldliness and ill-gotten gain.
D. KEY POINTS
1.
US vs THEM. The Bible often contrasts those who follow God's ways vs. those who don't. Good vs. Evil. Godly, righteous, saved, the elect, the chosen, spirit-filled, the remnant, or, in today's scripture, people of the light on one side. On the other side are the unGodly, the lost, the worldly. St. Paul said we are in the world but not of the world. St. James says there is wisdom from above and earthly/worldly wisdom. AND YET, Jesus says we "people of the light" can learn a thing or two from the "shrewd manager" who just got fired, then used his shrewdness to benefit him and his boss and his colleagues. Well....? Two steps to figuring this story out. First, look at the totality of Jesus and the Bible. They don't advocate cheating, short-cutting, dishonesty from one end of the Bible to the other. So that can't be the lesson, Second, there's got to be a lesson in there somewhere! My take? Like it or not, you and I live in the real world, and we have function in it. And most of life is lived in gray areas in between total right and total wrong. Also, look at the world: business, politics, culture. What lessons can we learn from them that we can apply to our church and to our Christian lives? There are attributes that help people be successful, profitable, that are not wrong or evil in and of themselves: drive, effort, risk, study, practice, teamwork, leadership, confidence, investment, vision.
2. $$$$. The Bible has a love/hate relationship with money. We love the good it can do. We hate how it can warp people. Hence, Jesus' demand that we choose what is #1 in our life, with his other teachings assuring us that by putting God and God's way first, other things will fall into place. If money (or "mammon", the things of this world) control us, everything else is out of whack. The Bible is not anti-money. It is anti-how we get it sometimes; and anti-how we use it sometimes. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things (the things we worry about and need) will be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33) says it clearly. We need to be honest with ourselves. What's important to us? How do we get what we want? Where does God fit in?
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