Have you encountered a scene like the one above? Though this activity is legal, positioning yourself in the midst of a multitude of speeding, turning vehicles to acquire a few dollars seems unwise.
In Luke 16:1-9 Jesus told a parable about a business manager who was wasting his boss’s assets. When his boss discovered the manager’s untrustworthiness and fired him, the manager shrewdly made lightning fast sweetheart deals with several of his boss’s creditors to create a soft landing for himself after his dismissal became final. Jesus commended the worldly wisdom and shrewdness of the manager — an evaluation that likely left his first audience (and successive ones) in confusion and disbelief.
But Jesus had skillfully designed that parable as a contrast to this truth about handling worldly assets in wise, God-honoring ways.
“The one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and the one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you haven’t been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will entrust you with the true riches? And if you haven’t been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” Luke 16:10-13 NET
To further highlight the preceding words, Jesus concluded his teaching session with a powerful narrative (Luke 16:19-31) about interactions between an ailing beggar and an uncaring rich man. Those exchanges had eternal results — comfort for the beggar and torment for the rich guy. So the parable and the story provide bookends for Jesus’ most memorable nugget about wise evaluation and management of earthly resources:
No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Matthew 6:24
Eternal wisdom is developed by learning to discern the voice of the best master to serve — it’s God, of course. The only way to develop an ear for God’s voice is to consistently study his Word. The optimum way to pursue God’s concerns and build his kingdom is to make decisions that reflect the wisdom he’s revealed.
Sometimes this entails making uncomfortable decisions — unencumbered from satisfying immediate personal interests — in order to please our Heavenly Master and bring eternal glory to him. Those hard decisions lead to establishing true wisdom in our hearts.
Look at the picture above again and imagine yourself standing at that busy intersection. Have you been enticed to engage in actions the world around you permits (or even promotes) as legitimate but are unwise and precarious by the principles God has revealed in his Word? If so, let him give you renewed strength to resist temptation and continue his kingdom work through you.
by Kathleen Petersen
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