The parable of the unjust steward illustrates how the "children of this world" are often more shrewd in pursuing their temporal interests than the "children of light" are in pursuing eternal ones. The sermon highlights the steward's cleverness in using his remaining time to secure future favor by reducing his master's debtors' obligations, leading to the Lord's commendation not for the dishonesty, but for his prudent foresight. The core lesson is that believers should use worldly resources and opportunities wisely to advance the cause of Christ, rather than isolating themselves or becoming ensnared by worldly pursuits. The application urges believers to adjust to their generation, understand it, and use its resources and inventions, like money and technology, to serve eternal interests.
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In case some will not be back this evening, I want to express our appreciation for the week, for everyone that had a part in it. Thank Mr. Majaniya for the original invitation to come here and for counsel regarding the subject. And then for the new friends we've met here, for friends we have known previously in the Chicago area, and then for these from Memphis that we knew. I'm also glad that My son David was able to come up for the last days of the conference. The parable for the morning is found in the sixteenth chapter of Luke, commonly called the parable of the unjust steward.
Luke sixteen. I'll read the first thirteen verses. And 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. And he called him and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer a steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? For my Lord takes away from me the stewardship. I cannot dig, to beg, I am ashamed.
I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship they may receive me into their houses. So 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. He said to him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much oest thou? And he said, A hundred measures of wheat. He said to him, Take thy bill and write four-score. And 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 I say unto you, Make yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much. and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who shall commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is in other man's, who shall give you that which is your own? No man can serve, no servant 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 others.
Ye cannot serve God and mammon. I suppose that many would consider this one of the most difficult of all the parables, and I would agree, if, together with the one we had last night, the labors in the vineyard. The parable itself is not particularly difficult to understand. A man had a steward who was accused of mishandling the man's goods. A steward in those days was not a slave. He was a trusted man, committed with the goods, the business that belonged to another.
In our day, when people come into money like an entertainer or sometimes an athletic celebrity, Dak Nicholas or someone else, they come into great deal of money. They don't particularly know how to handle it, so they hire somebody to administer their financial affairs. And that was more what this steward would be. He's a trusted man. He is an important man. But, as you can readily see, the one virtue that he would have to have is honesty. He would have to have somebody that you could trust. But this particular steward is accused to his Lord that he's wasted his goods.
He has been dishonest. Now the accusation is true. There's no question about it. It isn't that it's false. He's just simply someone tells on him, if you please. Now this could very easily be done, as we're going to see a moment later. He could very easily be dishonest. And so we see the master's actions. He says to the steward, Give account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest no longer be stewards. Now to give an account doesn't mean to come and have a hearing. We're going to have a trial on this. It means get the books in order, either to turn back to the Lord himself or to his successor.
Get the books in order. Give an account. For you may no longer be steward. And once again, it's not doubtful. It's not that you might be and might not be. It's you cannot be. Or to put it bluntly, you're fired. Now the steward acted quickly, he acted prudently. He faced the facts. He'd soon to be out of a job. My Lord takes away my stewardship. What am I going to do? Well, he faced the alternatives. He said, I can't dig. I'm ashamed to beg. And therefore he had no alternative but to resort to dishonesty.
I always think when I think of that first, I cannot dig of the school that I had the privilege to go to, and Mrs. Lee's children went there and some others, John Brown University in Arkansas, where John Brown, Sr., when he started that school, it was to be a vocational school, and it was built on the principle of training the head, heart, and hand. And you worked four hours a day, and then you went to school four hours. You got no pay for the work. He said, that's part of your education. And if you said you're working the way you're to education, he said, no, you're educating your way to work.
And he took the position that if you don't train somebody to do something, you might make a thief out of them. And I think there was an ancient proverb in Israel, wasn't there? If you don't teach a child a trade, you teach him to be a thief. Well, it's a bad thing when a person comes to a certain point in life and says, I can't dig. Well, I'll tell you, I can dig, and I have. I've dug ditches, and I threw the dirt just as high as anybody else. In fact, I like to dig ditches. It gets to be fun after a while, after you get used to it after a day or two. But the steward, see, he can't dig. Honest labor's out of the question.
I'm ashamed to beg. couldn't be seen out on the street corner, this man that once had this high position. Well, what can he do? Well, he has to resort to dishonesty. And I say he acted rapidly, he acted prudently. What is he going to do? He's going to juggle the books. He's going to fix the books before he turns them back. Now, I think the way he was able to do this was that probably it was a large business that let out material on what we would call consignment. And you know what that is, you businessmen, you give a man so much material and he signs a bill for it. And then when he sells it, he pays you for what you have received.
He was dealing evidently in wheat and oil and things like that. And so one by one he called these creditors in that had gotten this material on consignment. And he said to the first, how much do you owe? How much have you received? Well, he said, a hundred measures of oil. He said to him, take thy bill quickly and write fifty. Well, obviously, he just acknowledges receiving fifty. He can sell the other fifty and keep the money. He called the second. He said, how much do you owe? He said, a hundred measures of wheat. He said to him, take your bill and write four scores. Now we are to understand that he called every one of the creditors in, and there might have been hundreds of them.
He varied the amounts to avoid suspicion. He didn't have every one of them the same, fifty, eighty, probably some other figures. Now what was his hope? Well, he says in verse four, for it plainly what it was. I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. He's going to come back to these creditors and say, listen, I got you that saving. How about a little cut back here, you know, and that's not unknown in our day either. A kickback, I think they call it. Now, I want to stop at this point and say, I think in some parables, the best thing you can do is try to get the main point of the parable.
And sometimes you just simply can't apply every minor point. A statement that has grown up in these circles regarding parables is that they won't walk on all fours. Perhaps you heard that. That means you can't apply every single point. If you do, you're in trouble. You know the parable of the prodigal son. Who was the elder brother? Well, I think he was an unsaved Pharisee. Well, someone says he's a son. He's in the family. Doesn't that mean he's saved? No, you can't push the parable that far. I said in the parable of the sower that I think only the first of the soils represents the last rather, a saved person.
I don't think the stony ground represents a saved person. But I was at one seminary once when a teacher, namely Lewis Johnson, put forth the same teaching and one of the fellows spoke up and he said, I'm a farmer. And I'm not prepared to believe that a seed can spring up without having life, and therefore I think that represents a saved person. Well, the answer is you can't push the parable that far. Now, that's not a way of escape. That's not to get out of some difficulty when you can't explain it. We'll say you can't push it that far, but I think it's true. And so I want to get the main point of these parables, particularly this one. And I think it is simply this, that the unjust steward was smart enough, clever enough, to make the present serve his interest in the future.
And the admonition is that we should do the same. We should make the present serve eternal interest. But the point is also that the world will do that. A Christian usually won't. Now I'm not here to criticize the people at this wonderful place. I know you mostly are spiritual Christians. And while you're not old, you're not quite as young as you were a few days ago. Been here a long time. Been here a long time. Well, I know you've served the Lord well, and perhaps some are more or less not able to get out and do too much.
You pray and give, I'm sure, and all that. But Nothing that I say this morning is going to be directed at any of you because I'm just talking about Christians in general, you understand. I would say that most Christians do not do what this man did, and I think that's the point of the parable. The children of this world are wiser with respect to their generation than are the children of light, and I'll explain that a little later. The point, though, is obviously what did the man do well he acted cleverly prudently he's going to be out of work and so he makes those few remaining hours before he loses his stewardship work to his advantage isn't that the point I think it certainly is the point and then of course it's our job to apply the point and so I want to apply it by making three observations if you please three First of all, we have a commendation.
A commendation. Notice in verse eight, and the Lord commanded the unjust steward because he had done wisely. He commanded him. Now we here are used to the word command. You call on somebody to command us to the Lord and so on. But the Greek word here, I'm sure others will bear me out, means to praise, to laud. In fact, some of the modern speech translations are not far wrong, and they say the Lord bragged on him. That's exactly what it means. He bragged on him. Now the question is, how could anyone brag and boast, command an unjust steward?
And so let me say at this point that there's absolutely no way to justify what this man did. And some people try to do that. I was listening to a man once expound this, and he said that the Lord commended him because actually the unjust steward was entitled to what he took, that he had been underpaid for a number of years, and that he was just getting that which was rightfully his. Well, let me ask you, my friend, since when does the fact you're underpaid give you a right to steal from your employer? Secondly, I heard another, and possibly the same man, say that probably the master knew what he was doing.
He knew he was doing this, but yet again he was trying to compensate for something that he had done wrong, and so he let him do it. It's absolutely beside the point, isn't it? There's no way to justify this man in what he did. He was a thief, here and simple. Well, how then can you justify the fact that the Lord commended him? Well, let me give three ways to sort of alleviate that problem. First of all, it's his Lord that commends him, not the Lord Jesus Christ. Is that not right? In verse eight, the Lord, small L, not our Lord, but His Lord.
Who is the Lord all the way through here? Well, it's His Lord. How much o'est thou unto my Lord, you see? How much do you owe? It's His Lord, not ours. Now, now let me say this, though. I think that our Lord would have probably agreed with Him. But it does understand that it was His Lord that commanded Him. But secondly, The word wisely here is not the usual word for wisdom in the Greek language, which is Sophia. I don't know if I'm giving that the right pronunciation, Mr. Willie. Sophia. Oh, thank you. But that's true wisdom from above, is it not?
The greatest, highest type of wisdom. But this word here is more a word that means cleverly or prudently, shrewdly. Now, I have to admit that sometimes it's used in a good sense in Scripture. In fact, in that statement there where it says, the wise man built his house upon the rock, it's this particular word. But yet again, it's not the highest type of word. It's not so much that he was wise in the highest sense of the word, but he was clever. He was prudent. He was shrewd. And he was, wasn't he? But thirdly, Not only was it his Lord who commended him, the word isn't the highest type of wisdom, but thirdly, he commended the shrewdness of the deed, not the deed itself.
And isn't it true that when someone does something wrong that you could possibly admire something about the way he did it and still disapprove of the deed? I remember some time ago in Chicago when they had the great Brinks robbery, perhaps you've heard of it. Brinks, Chicago is one of the few large cities that uses the Brinks instead of Wells Fargo or someone like that. And you know they collect all this money and take it to this depository and these particular men broke into that place and robbed that of some several million dollars. And you had to admire the way they did that. They had everything planned.
They'd come to a door, it would open. They would come to this place and if everything just worked perfectly, and they robbed that place. Now, of course, we would completely disapprove of robbing any place, but couldn't you sort of commend those men for their shrewdness? The same thing is true in Scripture. Jesus said to his disciples, Be as wise as serpents, but as harmless as does. Most of the time in Scripture, a serpent is something evil. In fact, Satan himself is called the old serpent. And yet Jesus said, you be as wise as serpents. There's one aspect of a serpent that you can imitate, cleverness, shrewdness.
And then usually a dove in Scripture is something bad. It's either a fickleness or lack of affection. It flips here and there, according to the book of Hosea. And yet he says be as harmless as does. There's one characteristic of a dove that's commendable. And so, with taking that into consideration, I really don't have any problem to you. The Lord, His Lord, and I think ours to some extent would agree, He commended this unjust to it. He bragged on it. A commendation. About now, secondly, a declaration. A declaration. The children of this world are wiser in their generations.
than are the children of light." Now Jesus said that. I take it, I'm sure you would agree, that the children of this world are the unsaved. The children of light are the saved people of any time, that day or this. Notice the declaration, the children of this world are, in their generation, wiser than the children of light. In what way? are the children of this world wiser, shrewder than the children of light." Well, once again, people try to get rid of the problem by saying they think they're wiser, but they're not really.
That isn't what the Lord said, was it? He didn't say they think they're wiser, he says they are. Some have said, Well, what it really means that they're wiser in their generation, in, if you limit it to one generation. In other words, if you take a limited temporal view, then the world seems to be wiser. But if you take the eternal view, then of course a Christian is wiser. Is that what it means? No, if Mr. Willie has a Greek Testament before him, he said he usually does. It doesn't mean in a generation, does it, Brother Willie? Doesn't it mean with respect to their generation? Is that right? Not in, but with respect to.
Keep her. Yeah, thanks. I want to be sure I'm right here, you see. It's not a temporal word. It's not in. It means with respect to. the way they react to in relation to their generation. They're wiser than the children of light. How is that? Well, simply this, my friend. What is the philosophy of the world? Well, I think it's pretty clearly stated in that abominable beer ad that you have to look at if you watch any sports on television, that you only go around once in life So grab for all the gusto you can get, even in the beer you drink.
That's the philosophy of the world, isn't it? You're just going to go around once. So grab for all the gusto you can. Get everything out of life you can, even in the quality of your beer. What's the philosophy of the Christian? Well, I've seen claps on many walls. Only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Jesus will last. Did you know this, that if you put the whirling and the Christian in a debate as to which philosophy is ultimately the best, the Christian will win every time? Because everybody knows that the Christian has the best philosophy in the light of eternity.
But when it comes to putting into practice his philosophy, the whirling will put the Christian to shame ninety-nine times out of a hundred. He'll practice his philosophy. He'll grab And we say that only one life will, and what's done for eternity will last, but how much do we really do for eternity? Now, I say I'm not criticizing you. I'm talking about the average professing Christian or the average Christian. Well, I say that Jesus said that the children of this world are, with respect to their generation, the way they use it, react to it.
are wiser than the children of light. I just want to mention a few ways I think they are. First of all, in the matter of self-discipline, a man perhaps in his early youth sets out to be a millionaire, and he will discipline himself and train and sacrifice to get that million dollars. He'll get up early in the morning. He'll stay up late at night. My friend, how many Christians will do it? Well, there was one man that perhaps you've heard of, Dawson Trotman. He said, I'm going to be as diligent in the Lord's work as the world is in its.
He got up early. He did study. He did discipline himself. And of course, history will record what he accomplished. The whirling, if he's in business, particularly will know his product. But how well does the Christian know his? How much do we study the Bible so that we will minister to people? One time I was in the store, and the proprietor was there, and he just hired a new salesman, evidently, it might have been his son. And someone came in and wanted a certain item, and the young man said, we don't have it. And after the customer had slipped out, the proprietor came and really bawled him out.
He said, what do you mean we don't have it? We do have it. You've lost a sale. Well, he was torn up about it. The worlding, if he's in business, will make his product known. He'll advertise. Do we? Oh, someone says, my life is my testimony. Well, you won't win many souls that way. And as I say these things, I probably fail as much as the next one. I'm not just accusing other people. The whirling will be willing to bear insult and reproach in order to advance his interests. I was in the department store once and a customer came in and really bawled the sales girl out and, oh, it's unmerciful.
and the sales girl just smiled, you know, customer's always right. Christians won't do that. The worlding will go where his product will sell. We go where it's the easiest. The average ambition of a seminary graduate is to step into a well-established church where the finances have been rather stable over a number of years and where he has all the convenience. That's what he's looking for. Do you ever hear the story of the old man up in the hill country of Oklahoma? I'll say Oklahoma, that's where I'm from.
And they came up a rainstorm and made a little puddle of water outside of his back porch. Of course, there weren't any fish in it. He knew there weren't, but there he was fishing off of his back porch in that little pool of water. He was sitting there fishing. Somebody came by and said, you know, you're not going to catch any fish in there. They're not any fish. He said, oh, I know it, but it sure is handy. You remember Miss Lee when we used to go down the Mississippi and fight those dusty roads in the dark? We asked some people to go down there and, well, I'm not going down there.
I remember one lady went one time and she said, that's enough for me. But you know, sometimes you find a person that will really be what he should be and all of these things. Paul was one of those, wasn't he? He disciplined himself. He beat his body and kept it under subjection. He didn't want to step into a ready-made work. His motto was not to build upon another man's foundation, but regions beyond. That was his call. The children of this world are wiser with respect to their generation. then are the children of life.
They look around, they size up the situation, they evaluate their generation, and then they use it to advance their interests. My friend, why don't we? And so that leads me to my last point. An exhortation, and this is what is the most difficult. Jesus said in verse nine, I say to you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. that when ye fail they may receive you in everlasting habitations make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness now the mammon of unrighteousness is primarily money isn't it but i think in a broader sense it's anything of this world make to yourselves friends is that what he wants us to do now there are some modern speech translations that are pretty good in fact living letters that's not too bad, living Gospels, but they just completely garble this terrible.
And if you don't believe it, just go read it sometime in living Gospels. They make it a question. Shall we make friends with this mammon of unrighteousness that when we die, we may go to the regions of the lost? Is that what it means? Shall we? No, it's a command. It's an exhortation. Do this. And I think it simply means what the parable meant. Make the present serve the interests of the future. We're only here for a short time. Let's use our generation to advance the cause of Christ. Isn't that what he's saying? That's what the unjust steward did.
We're trying to apply that parable. I think there are three attitudes that a person can have to the things of this world. Money and other things, of course, apart from seeing you understand. One of them, you can sell out to it and make it your master. Obviously that is wrong. This very passage of the last verse says, you can't serve two masters. You can't serve God and Mammon. And so obviously we're not supposed to sell out to this thing. But secondly, neither are we to look at it and condemn it and then isolate ourselves from it. That's what they did back in the Middle Ages, wasn't it?
We got to escape this sinful world. And so they go off in a monastery to get away and to develop holiness. Is that what we should do? That isn't what the parable said. Jesus said, make friends of this mammon of unrighteousness. Use this generation. Isn't that what we should do? The steward was cunning enough to make the present serve his interest in the future. Why do not we make our present serve the interest of Christ in the future? What should we do? Adjust to our generation. Understand it.
Know it. Don't enter into it. Sins. Don't sell out to it. But neither should we isolate ourselves from it. Don Taylor died a short time ago. He was in the Wheaton Assembly when we were there, and we knew him quite well and thought an awful lot of him. He wrote an article in Letters of Interest several years ago. I don't know whether you read it or not. Along this very line, Don Taylor was a pretty deep thinker. He said some would put us on the train of time and take us back to the first century. And they try to get us to do things like they did back in the first century.
Well, maybe there's some things we could well imitate. But we don't live in the first century, we live in the twentieth century. And Don Taylor went on to say, Jesus adjusted himself to his day. He wore the garb of his day. He dressed like the people of his day. He spoke the Galilean dialect. He engaged in carpentry, not Edenic agriculture. And I thought that was a classic statement, and I told Don one day, I really appreciated that. Jesus didn't engage in Edenic agriculture. It's like Adam and Eve. He was a carpenter. He served his day.
You remember what the Scripture says of David? And David, when he had served his generation, fell asleep. Well, what other generation can we serve except the one in which we live? We should not become a part of it. We should not sell out to it. But neither, my friend, should we isolate ourselves from it. The late Paul Little, whom we knew quite well, too, used to say, separation is not isolation. And many get the two confused. May I suggest three ways, in closing, that we could use the things of the present to advance the cause of Christ in the future.
First of all, What about money itself? Make to yourselves friends of this mammon of unrighteousness. Why couldn't Christian men be successful in business and make money and then use it for the cause of Christ? I mentioned the other night that some have. R.G. Laterno did, and he made millions. but he used that money in the cause of Christ. He made friends of that mammon of unrighteousness, didn't he? I understand that the crows at Moody heard of institutions begging for money. He said it shouldn't be, and so he said, I'm going to make money and put it behind this school.
Now, of course, you don't want to go too far with that and depend upon some endowment of some kind because we want to go by faith, of course, but he put his money or it would do some good. Why shouldn't we? And then, why shouldn't we use the inventions of our day to serve the cause of Christ? I understand that when the radio first came out, or was becoming popular, that someone talked to James M. Gray at the Moody Bible Institute and wanted the Institute to have a radio program. James M. Gray said, no, it's an instrument of the devil, and we will not have it in this school. Satan is the prince of the power of the air.
We won't send our messages through the air, I guess. Well, anyway, someone persuaded him, let us just have one program and try it out. And so he consented. And someone preached the gospel message. And at the close of the message, a call came in. Someone has been saved through this message. And thus was born WMBI. And what a blessing it's been through the years. Why not use that invention? Why let the devil have it? And you know, people today are saying the same thing about television. It's an instrument of the devil. Why does it have to be? Why not use that? And of course some are. The airplane. One of our young men there, Tom Brewington, is using the airplane in the missionary service.
Why not? Wouldn't it be stupid and foolish not to use these things? Yes, we could make friends of money itself. And then the inventions of the day, but finally, why not use the different situations of the day? Down in Memphis, we were quite closely associated with the Child Evangelism Fellowship, and they do a great work in most places. And every year the fair would come, the Tri-State Fair, Now there's three attitudes that you could take toward a fair. First of all, you could enter into its sinfulness, and there are certain things there that are not the best. Or you could say, that's a sinful place, I'm not going to go near it.
But why not do like child evangelism did? They said there are going to be hundreds of children there. Let's put a tent up and have gospel services. And so they got a place right near the exit where the children retired. They're waiting to go home. and we fill that tent hour after hour and preach the gospel. Isn't that the sensible thing to do? I suppose that much that goes on at the Olympic Games is not of the highest quality. That the Moody Bible Institute said last year we'll send fifty students to mock to Munich, Germany, some speaking German, French, the other languages, and we'll show the science films and we'll witness for Christ and they're going to do the same thing at Montreal this summer.
Isn't that wise? I'm sure you could think of other ways. A commendation. The Lord commanded the unjust steward. His Lord, because he had acted prudently, he commended the way the deed was done, not the deed itself. A declaration, the children of this world, are in their generation with respect to, wiser than the children of life. And then an exhortation, make to yourselves friends of this commandment of unrighteousness, adjust to your generation, serve it, and make it count for Christ.
Well, that's the way I see the parable of the unjust steward. And I think it's the most interesting parable. Now we've had a request that we sing number six hundred and ten. So Woodhouse, do you want to leave this hymn? It's a six verses. I don't know if you want to sing all of them. We have three or four minutes. It's a beautiful hymn. You can leave out some of the verses if you want to. He passeth knowledge that, dear love of thine, Lord Jesus, Saviour, that this soul of mine would of thy love in all its breadth and length, its height and depth, its everlasting strength, know more and more.
Let's sing then the first and the third and the fifth verses. Then fill me, O my Saviour with thy love. First, third and fifth. Now this is March time, it's four, four time. That's the time we'll sing it. It hath acknowledged that the love of thine, Lord Jesus, Savior, yes, his soul of mine, would all thy loving, all its friends and length its pride and death, its everlasting strength no more and more.
It pulses praises that the love of mine, Lord Jesus, Savior, yes, it's part of mine, would change the love for it's so full, so free, which brought a rebel sinner, Such is me, I ask you, God. Then fill me, O my Savior, with thy love.
Please lead me to the living fount of thy love. Viverr may I simply fill your night, and never show another. Thank you. Our Father, we read in Scripture that in our Lord Jesus Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And then the next verse, that we are complete in Him.
If we are thus complete, surely we need not flee to any other fountain. We don't go anywhere else. For as the disciples said, Peter said, To whom would we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. We thank thee, Father, for this all-sufficiency. It isn't being narrow-minded. We are not limiting ourselves, but we're opening up the infinite resources of heaven. Now bless us as we go forth through the day. May we keep our mind stayed on these. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.