Luke 16:1

Let us turn to the Gospel according to Saint Luke, Chapter 16, beginning with the first verse. I am going to read it in Spanish. Let us go directly there now. Chapter 16, verse 1: “... He also said to His disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a steward, and this man—that is, the steward—was accused before him of squandering his goods (that is, of misusing them). Then the rich man called the steward and said to him, “What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be steward.” Then the steward said to himself, “What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. Ah! I know what I will do, so that when I am removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their homes.” And calling each of his master’s debtors, he said to the first, “How much do you owe my master?” He said, “One hundred barrels of oil,” and he said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write fifty.” Then he said to another, “And how much do you owe?” And he said, “One hundred measures of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and write eighty.” And the master commended the wicked steward because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with their peers than the children of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous riches, so that when these fail, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. He who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much. And he who is unjust in very little is also unjust in much. Therefore, if you were not faithful with unrighteous riches, who will entrust the true riches to you? And if you were not faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No servant can serve two masters, because either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will esteem the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and riches.’” May the Lord bless His holy Word. May He give wisdom to expound it.

The last time I preached, I began, almost informally, a series of messages on the concept of stewardship. I am going to continue with this as part of what will be a kind of financial campaign to raise funds for our church building. What we want through this financial campaign is not merely to obtain money from you—and from us as well, because I am also part of this; all the leaders of this church are part of this process. We also want to enrich your lives, and our lives, through reflection on what Christian stewardship is, on what the proper administration of the goods that the Lord places in our hands is.

We want to place this within its proper biblical context; we do not want to manipulate people. We do not want to exploit anyone, nor do we want to use emotions or feelings of guilt. We want to do this in a truly biblical way. The Word of God has many, many themes along those lines.

You know, it has been said that the Lord Jesus spoke more about money than about anything else in His teachings, and He did so in many different ways. The Lord was not afraid to talk about money. But He always spoke of money in relation to the Kingdom of God. And He always sought to make that connection between our identity as people belonging to an otherworldly kingdom and our relationship with our possessions and our life here on earth. The Lord always spoke about that in many ways, and He praised people who gave generously to the Kingdom of God. Remember, for example, the story of the poor widow who gave everything she had. Some might have expected the Lord perhaps even to view it as inappropriate for that poor woman to give everything she had, but the Lord did not criticize her. Instead, He said, “Hey, look, that is the level of commitment there should be toward the Kingdom of God.” And whenever God wants to do something in the world, He uses men and women; He does not act unilaterally. The Lord always likes to work in unity with His people, and there is a lesson in that: God wants to treat us like adults. He allows that for a purpose. Our church now has this great dream, this great vision of building a church for the glory of God. A place where many souls can come to hear the Gospel of God; a place where we can worship the Lord comfortably, with much more space, more freedom, and more conveniences than we have now—and the Lord has been generous with us even here; we know that. And we also want it to be a place that makes a declaration to the city that God is blessing His people, that God prospers immigrant men and women—many of us are immigrants—even though we are humble. But God is enabling us because there is passion for the Kingdom of God, and that is an example to everyone, to the whole community.

This past week, an article came out written by a reporter who visited us here a few weeks ago. I had been in communication with him for several months, and he writes for a local newspaper, the “Boston Globe,” but he also writes for the Associated Press, whose articles are published in many different newspapers throughout the United States. And this reporter wrote about the quiet revival he is seeing in the city of Boston, and he used our church as an illustration of that revival. In fact, there is a very nice photograph in that article, and it appeared in many different newspapers. People from all over the nation have called us to say that they read that article. And the reporter came on the very day that I announced that the city had given us permission to build the church. And he writes about that in his article as an example of how God is blessing those congregations that are being faithful to the Word of God, unlike many other churches that are declining because they are separating themselves from the Word of God. In that way, the Gospel was already being preached to people who read that article by a man whose interest was not at all to promote faithfulness to the Word of God. He is simply a reporter reporting on a phenomenon.

What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that many times the things one does resonate not only with some people, but with others as well, and I believe this building is one of those things. That is why we have a great cloud of witnesses around us. Many people are watching to see the power at work in our lives and to see whether we are truly faithful to what we say, whether the rhetoric matches the way we live. And that is why, brothers and sisters, I encourage you to view this financial campaign not as an effort to get money, because ultimately that is secondary. It is meant to bring us to a new level of faithfulness in the Lord and also to bring us into a vision that will allow much glory to be brought to the Lord.

In fact, before continuing, I would like you to take a moment to pray about this, to place this campaign in the Lord’s hands. May it be an act of worship to the Lord. Father, right now we place this financial campaign in Your hands, Lord, and we ask that it be for Your glory. May Your name be glorified; may the values of Your Kingdom, Lord, be exalted. Give me wisdom; give us wisdom as a church. And Father, right now I ask that Your Holy Spirit take control of every man and every woman in our congregation, and that it be You, Lord, speaking to their hearts. Crown this effort with success, Lord, so that at the end of this process we may say, “The Lord did it.” Father, just as we were able to thank You for the success we experienced with the city of Boston and for the effort we made, likewise, Lord, at the end of this campaign may we be able to give You the glory and honor and say, “God did it,” and we will give You, Lord, all the success, all the credit, Father. Thank You, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.

I am about to get directly into it, but I want to place something on your heart, brothers and sisters. Look, we considered bringing in a company, as many churches—especially North American churches—do, to guide us through this campaign. It costs tens and tens of thousands of dollars, and none of them is suited to the Latino context, to Latino culture. And after considering all of that, we decided that it was not right for us. And do you know what, brothers and sisters? I believe we do not need it, because I believe, brothers and sisters, that we have a committed congregation. I believe we can do it without having to give $100,000 or $75,000 to a company; we can keep that money ourselves, brothers and sisters. Seventy-five thousand dollars is an elevator, for heaven’s sake. We can do it. Do you know why it is sometimes necessary to spend so much money? Because hearts are hard. Sometimes it is as though we need a great force to get the machinery of people’s hearts moving so they can give. But I believe that when we have tenderhearted people who know the Word of the Lord, there is no need to struggle so much, no need to fight so hard, and things happen more organically, more spontaneously, without so much pain.

And the Lord gave me something simple that I am going to share with you publicly like this for the first time, and we are not going to do anything about it for quite some time, but I am going to put it out there so that the Spirit can begin to work in you, just as He has already worked in me. I simply believe, brothers and sisters, that there are two parts to this campaign:

If, in a church of more than a thousand people like this one, who are associated with our congregation in one way or another, we manage to get 200 people to commit to giving $5,000 over two years—24 months—then we will have one million dollars, which is the goal of this campaign. And I believe, brothers and sisters, that for something of this nature, it is worth it. The first one who has already made that commitment to the Lord is the one standing here, because I believe things begin with senior leadership. By the way, this is a project that will cost us about four million dollars by the time it is finished, because it has to be done through a company, and it has to be done quickly. And over the years, brothers and sisters, I have seen that when one gives generously to the Lord, God blesses beyond what we expect. And right now I want to leave that in your heart, to deposit that vision there. I ask the Holy Spirit to begin speaking to my brothers and sisters, and that there in your heart, without anxiety, without struggling or anything, you would ask the Holy Spirit whether you can be one of those 200 people who can do this over two years, over 24 months. That means, brothers and sisters, that if you give $50 a week, that is $2,500 in one year, and it would be for two years, because the project will take us two years to complete. That is our goal. And that is, of course, above and beyond your tithes, because if you take from them... because if you undress one saint to clothe another, then it makes no sense.

Let me clarify that; I wanted to add a little levity so you could breathe. Breathe like this, brothers and sisters. Breathe. Breathe. I know that people get a little tense when money is discussed, right? Think about it; I am depositing that vision there in your heart. Brothers and sisters, I do not believe you will have the opportunity to participate in something so glorious—you will not have many opportunities to participate in something as glorious as this vision. I thank the Lord because I was part of this project here, of seeing this building become a reality, and many of you were too; you gave your time, you gave your labor, you gave of your gifts. I look around here and see how many of you took part in bringing about this place, which has brought so much glory to the Lord. How happy we are with our building! Aren’t we? We are ethnic communities that people think are poor, miserable, troubled, and dysfunctional. How good it is to change people’s minds every time they come into a nice, beautiful, well-prepared, well-kept building and see the blessing God has given our community, the ingenuity He has given our community. And that is why, brothers and sisters, I want to encourage you in the name of the Lord to dare from this moment on, because this... Look, there are congregations that give much more than we do for things like this, so this is not a heroic effort either, in one sense of the word. This requires us to push a little, to go a little beyond what is comfortable. And that is what requires you and me to make a little effort, to stretch the boundaries of our generosity a little in order to give to the Lord for something glorious that we will be able to accomplish. And we are going to celebrate. I can already see that celebration on the day when we are in our church. I am placing it there in your heart. We will be talking about it, but from this moment on I want you to begin praying to see whether God might be calling you to be part of that great vision of 200 people giving $5,000 over two years. Two hundred, five thousand, two. Two hundred people, $5,000, two years. There you have it in your heart.

Let us turn to the Word of the Lord to see how that is embodied. First of all, brothers and sisters, this passage says that there was a rich man who had a steward. Oikonomos is the word translated as steward, from which the word economy comes. And right there we already begin to see something about the Word of the Lord: that idea of an administrator. Of course, it refers to us; it is an image of a man, a person who could be us. This man does not own the riches; he administers the riches for the one who owns them, who is the rich man, and there is already an idea there. It is the idea, brothers and sisters, that everything belongs to God—and who are the administrators? We are. You go to the Book of Genesis, and there God created the earth and placed man there to administer it. From that point onward, all Scripture tells us that everything in this world belongs to God and that we are its administrators, and that is why God has the right to ask of us whatever He wants.

Look at Psalm 24. What does it say there? The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell in it, for He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. So there you have the idea, brothers and sisters, that everything you have.... Look, the work you do and the profit you derive from that work belong to God. Do you know why? Because the brain with which you carry out the process and the body with which you work belong to God; God created them, and therefore what you earn is ultimately not yours but God’s. The atoms that make up your physical being belong to God. The ground on which you walk and the health you have are products of God. That is to say, in everything you do, you cannot escape the lordship of God, because everything you breathe, everything you do, is a product of God’s creation, of God’s creative act. Everything you think, what you do, what you aspire to be, your talents, your gifts—everything belongs to God, and that is the key; that is the central thought in the concept of stewardship. And the Bible is full of that principle; I do not have time to unpack it completely. So that is the first lesson.

There is also something else here that is very important, and it is this: notice that a moment comes when the owner of the riches says to the steward, “Come and give an account of what you have done with my money.” And that is also a principle found many times in the Scriptures: one day all of us will be called to account for what we did with what belongs to God and was entrusted to us. Brothers and sisters, the Bible is full of that—of that principle. The Lord Jesus Christ, in many of His parables, spoke about this. For example, in the parable of the unfaithful servant, the lord of the estate goes away and tells him, “Work until I return,” and then he comes back and says to them, “What did you do with your talents?” And each one has to give him an account. And I am always struck by the tone of those moments. It is not a tone of asking a favor and saying, “Would you like to tell me what you did?” No, it is: “Hey, what did you do with what I gave you?” And the idea is that you are expected—expected—to use what God gives you, your money, your time, your talents, to advance the kingdom of the One who owns that talent; that you do something, that you invest, that you use your creativity, that you exercise vision, that you take risks, but that somehow you produce a return on what the Lord of the estate has entrusted into your hands. So that is something that haunts me—that thought. And I believe that you and I want—I am continually haunted by this—that when I come before the Lord, I may at least be able to say to Him with some confidence, “Father, I did everything I could to advance Your kingdom a little while I was in the body and on the earth.”

I believe that each one of us, if we take our Christian identity seriously, has to be thinking about that. We take so many liberties as Christians, brothers and sisters, and we think this is something optional. Well, should I give to the Lord today or give to Him tomorrow? Should I take an active part in the Christian life, or should I simply be a pew-warmer? That is not an option; you have to produce for the Kingdom of God. God expects you to produce. He has given you the kingdom of heaven; He has given you the eternal salvation of your soul, and He expects you to work for His kingdom and to render to Him what He places in your hands.

There is another very important point here, and it is what it says later. I am going to skip ahead a little. It says in verse 9: “...and I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” What does that mean? When this man realized that he had been a bad steward—and we do not want to be bad stewards; say amen—when this man realized that he was going to be fired, he quickly got to work preparing for his departure, and he began forgiving debts, using the last little moment he had left to forgive large debts, because what he was forgiving the owner’s debtors amounted to a great deal of money, in order to prepare for his departure at the end. And he was shrewd; he planned for the future. This is what the Lord praised. It is not that the Lord is saying it is good to steal and to be dishonest like this man, because I know that sometimes you take things in directions you should not take them. No, what the Lord praised was his shrewdness in planning for the future instead of merely obsessing over what was happening at that moment. There is a great lesson there, and it is this, brothers and sisters: many of us Christians are so consumed with the crises and needs of the moment that we do not plan for what the future will be.

And what the Lord is saying is: look, there is a connection between how you conduct yourself with your money and possessions here and what you are going to have in the Kingdom of Heaven. I am not saying that salvation depends on works and on what we give; let me make that clear. What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is that in many passages of Scripture we are mysteriously told that in the world to come it is not as though we are all going to have a little white robe and a harp and a cloud, and that is all. The world to come will be a world of great dynamism and of different states of glory, responsibility, and action. We are not going to spend all eternity there doing nothing but eating grapes. I believe this is going to be something wonderfully active. If life here on earth is immensely creative and challenging, how much more will eternity be, brothers and sisters? Just think about that. The truth is that I would not like to go there wearing a little white robe. If that is what God wants, amen; I do not want to be a heretic either. But I believe God has much more for eternity and that it will depend on how we conduct ourselves here with wealth; it will determine whether they give you an immense planet to govern or give you a tiny piece of land there on one of those cold, hellish planets way out at the edge of the universe. I do not know, but everything will depend..... that is, the glory you have, the level of reward you receive, the level of approval, the degree of responsibility—something about your future state will depend on how you invest here in the Kingdom of God. Scripture says this again and again; it suggests it in different ways. The Apostle Paul speaks of different crowns; he speaks of a throne where we will be given different degrees of reward.

It is this idea that the way we sow here will likewise determine our future there. Look at another interesting passage concerning this, in chapter 12 of Luke. Luke 12:33: “...sell what you possess and give alms; make for yourselves purses that do not wear out, a treasure in the heavens that does not run out, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” The idea is to store up treasure for heaven because, in other words, it is possible to affect heaven through what you do here. There is a very subtle but very real connection between those two dimensions—the dimension to come and this dimension. I will end here. There are many very important things in this text, but I am going to leave it there and perhaps continue next Sunday. But I do not want this idea to be lost, brothers and sisters: in the future we will be called to account, and how God treats us will be according to what we did, just as the Lord treats the unfaithful servant and the servants who gave. He says of the unfaithful servant, “Cast him out.” If we are going to be faithful to the text, one might even say, “Well, this person did not use his possessions, so he simply did not believe in Jesus.” Because that could also be said: a person who has a real experience with Jesus Christ gives to the Lord; there is no possibility of his not giving, and if he does not give, it is because he does not have a personal relationship with Jesus. One could make that argument.

Brothers and sisters, God is calling us to commitment—not only now. Brothers and sisters, I would like you, for the rest of your life, whenever you see a need in the Kingdom of God, to say, “That is for me; they are speaking to me. Take part in this matter.” I want you to commit yourself, my brother, my sister, to a life of being a cheerful giver, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There is no better life than being a cheerful giver. I have seen the Lord bless me, and many of us can say the same thing: with the very little I have given Him, every time I give to Him, He gives me more and more and more. So commit yourself to being a cheerful giver. I want us to be blessed through this time, brothers and sisters. Amen.

Let us bow our heads for a moment. Let us embrace that vision of an attitude of being cheerful givers. God loves a cheerful giver, the Bible says. The Lord blesses the cheerful giver; He delights in giving him more and more and more—the ones who take risks, the ones who dare. The unfaithful servant in the other parable did not invest the gift because he was afraid of losing it, so he simply held on to the gift. Never let fear keep you from giving to the Lord. Giving is a matter of the will and of reason illuminated by the Holy Spirit; it is not a matter of emotions or circumstances. It is one of the most powerful principles I can share with you on this day. “Lord, I want to be a cheerful giver,” tell Him. “First of all, I want to give You myself. When You have me, You will have everything that is mine.” Hallelujah! Thank You, Lord. Thank You. We embrace Your call. Father, we reject the anxious mentality that clings to things. We strip ourselves of everything we love and give it to You alone, Lord. We surrender everything to You. Father, we surrender it all to You. Give us only what You want to leave with us. Help us to be wise, upright stewards. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Jesus. In Your name, in Your name, thank You. Amen. Amen. Glory to the Lord. Give the Lord a round of applause, brothers and sisters. Amen.