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10 “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. 11 And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? 12 And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own? 13 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.” Luke 16:10-13
The religious leaders had sold their souls to the wealth of this world, and the Lord Jesus uses the context to teach His disciples on the subject. When it comes to the investment of our lives, it is really an issue of the heart. Faithfulness is the hinge that flings open the door to real success. And, the lack of faithfulness is the precursor to the slamming of the door on such success. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. This is where we go wrong: when our hearts are influenced and led not by the Lord's heart but by the philosophies of this world.
The world is full of stories which testify that no amount of money, fame, beauty, success, or popularity is ever enough. The sad truth is that the higher we climb on the ladder of theses types of successes, the more disappointed we will be. But that doesn’t stop us from scrambling for the next rung.
Today's text begins in v.10 with, "If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities."
In v.10, the Lord Jesus juxtapositions faithfulness with dishonesty. If in small things we are dishonest, we can't be trusted with the larger things. Out of our hearts comes our essence. This is sometimes a painful discovery, and, our pain, in this context, could be God prying open our hearts to remove a gift of His that we have been holding on to more dearly than Him.
In v.11 we read, "And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?" These true riches are the values and godly characteristics of God's values. And, if God's heart is not winning over our heart in a given day, then we will not reflect His heart. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer.
Our unfaithfulness to God's way of thinking and choosing causes us to miss what He has for us in certain situations. If we are being defined by God's heart, it will be reflected in what we invest in. If we uproot our idols and fail to plant the love of Christ in their place, the idols will grow back.
In v.12 we read, "And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?" All we have, really belongs to God. We are His stewards. We can be like the steward in the previous story in Luke 16:1-9 or we can be true to the heart of God. We will never be perfect this side of heaven but the goal is to be perfect in our conduct.
The tragic irony of self-indulgence is that the more we waste what is God's on ourselves, the less the eternal will define us. The true riches are the eternal ones, the ones that will endure beyond time.
In v.13 we read, "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money."
Everything in this passage is predicated on the verb “serve” which is the verb form of the noun translated “bond-servant.” The Lord Jesus is describing slavery. He says, "No slave can serve two masters." The Lord Jesus is describing the obedience of the purchased slave. He is subtly pointing out the motivation of the faithful believer: we have been purchased by the death of the Son.
God will always lead us to embrace the solidity of eternity, this world will always lead us to be stunted by its fallenness. Money is neither moral or immoral. It is what we do with our money that determines whether it is moral or immoral.
There is nothing wrong with being wealthy. But, we must understand that money is only an instrument that is used to further the kingdom of God by the life that has had an encounter with God.
Money is not given to us for our benefit only. God rarely blesses us with only us in mind. He always has someone else in mind. We were all born with two great needs: to be loved and to love. And, the ultimate is to love. But we can't love without being loved.
We cannot look at the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us. When we do this, we totally miss the point. The Bible is primarily about God and His activity in the lives of broken people. And, when we see His heart for us through our brokenness, we are put on the road to being defined by His loving heart. This is the road that leads to being the bond-servant of God.
