“Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever wanted more? Your first thought to that question was probably: More of what? Well, anything for now. Have you ever wanted more? I sure have. I’ve wanted more of a lot of things. In fact, there are not many things I haven’t wanted more of. The real question to answer seems to be not, do we want more, but how do we get more? Jesus has a thought here.
“The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light in dealing with their own people.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
As we saw this morning, this parable is another one of those stories of Jesus that start out as we might expect, but then suddenly take a sharp left turn into ground that not only isn’t what we expect, but doesn’t make any sense. If you had only this verse to go on, you might think that the unrighteous manager had done something good. You would be wrong. He cheated his master out of a lot of money (thus his title). So then, what are we supposed to do with this?
“The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light in dealing with their own people.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Jesus said some strange things during His ministry. There are whole books dedicated to examining this or that hard saying. LifeWay’s Bible Studies for Life Sunday school material has been looking at different hard sayings of Jesus for the last few weeks. I’ve preached at least two sermon series on the subject. Of all the weird and hard things Jesus said that the Gospel authors recorded for us, this parable ranks right near or even at the top of the list. Let’s talk about why and what we are to do with it.
This week we continued our series, Bible Stories to Make You Squirm, by looking at one of the most well-known stories in the whole Bible. What could possibly be problematic about a story that every knows and is used in baby nurseries all over the place? When you look more closely, a whole lot. But, when we look more closely, as before, we’ll find that there’s more here than meet’s the eye. Keep reading to see how this all unfolds.
The Cleansing Flood
Have you ever gone back as an adult and watched a TV show you remembered from your childhood only for it to seem like a totally different show than you remembered? Over the years with our boys I’ve tried a few times to take them back into my childhood with some of the cartoons I loved to watch. Some of these have been enduring classics like Looney Toons or Tom and Jerry. Scooby-Doo was a hit for a while with them. But on occasion, as I have tuned into something with them, I’ve been left wondering what my parents were thinking letting me watch this or that. More probably they just didn’t know I was watching it.
“Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
We want options. Lots of them. The more the better. We want cars with bells and whistles. We want television service with a million channels. We want restaurants with huge menus and buffets with over 100 items. One of the worst feelings in the world today is having no choice about something. As a result, this is one of the hardest things Jesus said. Can we make it any easier?
