“Hearing hearts series: re-evaluating our loves”
The Scottish theologian, MacLaren, once said: “If my hands are laden with pebbles, I cannot grasp the diamonds that are offered to me. Unless you fling out the sandbags, the balloon will cleave to the earth, and unless we turn the world out of our hearts, it is no use to say: “Come, Lord Jesus.”[1]
MacLaren’s illustration about the Christian life is nothing other what Jesus says today: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” By ‘money’ Jesus means everything that money represents—wealth, property, possessions, power, security, feasting, extravagance, pleasure and entertainment.
In today’s text, Luke tells us that the Pharisees loved money. The issue with this is not money itself—we need money, and we need to live. God blesses us with the money we have. All that we have is given to us from God.
The issue is that the Pharisees loved money. They loved money, yet they claimed to love God. They had divided loyalties, which really meant loyalty to only one thing: money, and not God. And that is seen in their reaction to Jesus—and more particularly, the teaching of Jesus. They sneered at him, when they heard what Jesus said. The Pharisees claimed that they were children of the Father. Yet anyone who rejects Jesus rejects the Father who sent him (Luke 10:16).
The Pharisees’ love of money was closely followed by their love of women too, which is why Jesus continues his teaching in today’s text with words on divorce. God’s design for marriage—one man united with one woman for the rest of their life—has been undermined by human sin. So in the case of marital unfaithfulness, God gave a legal provision where a husband could divorce his wife. The intention behind the divorce law was to protect the person from remaining in an unholy relationship where their spouse had been unfaithful to them, defiling the marriage.
But the religious leaders exploited this for their own selfish pleasure—to put it plainly, they saw it as a legalised way of sleeping around! They followed the law technically, enabling them to ‘legally’ discard their current wife they had become bored with, and pick up another…like chattels.
A key theme at the heart of today’s text is actually the theme of righteousness. The religious leaders thought that so long as they kept the law, they would still be righteous in God’s sight. By living according to a strict legal framework, the Pharisees thought that they would have God’s approval. But to divorce their wife and marry another for these selfish reasons was an abominable abuse of God’s institution of marriage, and of the provision of divorce that God had given.
There are two ways a person can be righteous before God. The first way is to obey God’s commandments, as the guide to loving God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and to love our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39). The way of righteousness by keeping God’s law is to do this perfectly, in thought, word and deed, every moment, every day, all throughout our life.
If anyone seeks to use their behaviour to justify themselves before God, they must keep the whole law, for every second. Those who saw the provision for divorce as an opportunity to remarry for personal gratification were not loving their wife as themselves. They were not loving the Lord God with all their heart and upholding his intention and design for marriage.
Sometimes some people say that the Commandments are out of touch with modern life and not for today, they don’t really matter anymore; they’re just an Old Testament thing. What does Jesus say in today’s text? “It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to be erased from the Law.” God will not relax the least of his requirements for our life, not even an apostrophe or a full stop. Jesus did not come to do away with the law. If anything, Jesus shows an even deeper depth to the Old Testament commands which restrict us even more severely:
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28).
When a person trusts in their performance for their righteousness before God, they have divided loyalties: they are trusting in themselves and not God. The problem is that the whole law will always surpass our goodness. The Pharisees misapplied the law to make themselves look good, but love for God wasn’t in their hearts. God had said: “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7). Their hearts were far from God, and they showed this when they sneered at Jesus, the Son of God from heaven, in whom truth and righteousness are found.
In today’s text, Jesus teaches his disciples about where their trust and where their loyalty should be. It should not be in the law and their own efforts at keeping it. And it should not be in their own effort at accumulating riches to build their life. For when one is wealthy, wealth brings with it power, security, and a sense of control in life. It becomes tempting to think that one is the architect of one’s own life. Those who have a full treasury box often do not see that they need to be reliant on God as spiritual beggars, with open, outstretched hands, praying for daily bread in daily trust that God will give it.
The disciples are to re-evaluate their loves. They are to be as beggars. That is, they are to learn to rely on God’s provision through the help of others each day. If they are focused on accumulating money, they are to divorce this second love in their life, so that their hearts have room for Jesus only, relying on God’s provision for them only and shrewdly using what he has given them in service to the Kingdom of God, even as the traditional offering prayer leads us to pray: “Merciful Father, we offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us–ourselves, our time, and our possessions, as signs of your goodness, and tokens of our love. Accept them for the sake of your Son, who offered himself for us. Amen.”
To illustrate this, Jesus tells his disciples a parable, of a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. The rich man calls his manager in and demands an account. He fires the wasteful manager, who realises that no other employer will want to give him a chance because of his dishonesty. He knows he will need to come up with a plan to make friends fast so that he’ll have people to welcome him into their homes and help him in his time of need. There’s only one thing for it—a client loyalty program of epic proportions! He will call in each one of his master’s debtors and slash their debts.
The dishonest manager’s plan is based on his master’s merciful nature. Because the master’s reputation is known to be one of mercy and kindness, such generous reductions in accounts don’t seem to be out of character. Because he is merciful, he will not overturn the manager’s plan and the debtors will be glad to help the manager because of what they have gained. It’s an ingenious plan!
But it all depends on the mercy of the master—and that’s the focus of the parable. Even though the manager didn’t deserve it, he pinned all his hope on the master’s merciful character so that he had a home to go to. Jesus tells this parable to teach his disciples that they too must place their complete trust in their merciful Master. They are not to trust in their efforts at being good, but they are to trust in God’s mercy in Christ alone for their righteousness. They are to trust in him for everything, and not place their trust in money, their possessions, or ingenuity to build a secure foundation for certainty in an uncertain world. Instead, they are to trust in their merciful heavenly Master to provide all that they need for their life and ministry. They are to use what they have first received from God as faithful managers of the gospel for the sake of his kingdom, so that at the end of their time in managing their heavenly master’s wealth, they have a heavenly home to go to.
Today’s Gospel reading is for Jesus’ church today, too. We cannot serve two masters. We will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. In whom—or what—do we pin our hopes for our righteousness, worth and approval before God? In what ways do we seek to control our lives? What are the priorities, values, and morals we have as we bear the name of Jesus as his disciples today? What do we turn to for peace and joy? What things do we cherish in our hearts that lead us away from following Jesus, bringing only harder work, and more cost to ourselves? What do we turn to towards to still our fears and calm our anxiety? To whom, or what, do we have an allegiance to that we would find so challenging to surrender?
We do not deserve anything from God, but he keeps on giving to us so generously. Just as the wasteful manager’s only hope was the mercy of his master, so too our only hope is in our Heavenly Father’s mercy to us for Jesus’ sake. The Good News is that our righteousness is found in Christ alone—Christ who kept his Father’s commands perfectly and humbled himself, by obeying him even to death, death on a Cross. It was the Father who showed undivided loyalty to us, and claimed us as his own, not with silver or gold, but the precious blood of his own Son Jesus.
Just as the dishonest manager didn’t get the punishment he was due, neither does God treat us according to how our sins deserve, because of the precious blood of Christ which has reconciled us to God. That is God’s own sermon to you as Jesus invites you to come to the Lord’s Table again today, with outstretched arms and empty hands—hands that Jesus fills with his holy body and precious blood. This is what he gives for you, for the forgiveness of all your sins, for life, and for salvation. This holy meal is how you taste and see that the Lord is good. Through him, our God and Father has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing, chosen in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” (Ephesians 1:3-4).
Therefore, like the disciples to whom Jesus first spoke, we too are to trust in Jesus alone, abandoning all efforts and thoughts that through our behaviours and actions we could ever be righteous before God by our own performance, and earn more of his approval than before we began trying. Just as the wasteful manager pinned all his hope on his master being merciful, in the same way our only hope is to pin everything on our Heavenly master’s merciful nature for Jesus’ sake. We do not give our time, our talents and our money to God to win his approval—but we do this as workers and stewards already approved by God, in Christ.
One day all that we have—our houses, property, possessions, money, church buildings, and even the face of the earth—will be no more. But your true home is not on earth, because through faith you have been raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6). Keep your eyes firmly fixed on him, so that when the wealth and things of this world finally end, you will be received into your heavenly home and be commended with the words of your merciful master; your Father in heaven: “Well done good and faithful servant!” Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Time after Pentecost, 2025
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION POINTS:
“We do not deserve anything from God. But just as the wasteful manager’s only hope was the mercy of his master, so too our only hope is in our Heavenly Father’s mercy to us for Jesus’ sake.”
- In whom or what do you pin your hopes for righteousness, worth and approval before God?
- Who do you go to, and/or what are the things do you tend to turn to when difficulties arise in daily life?
- The more we have, the more we have to work and spend at maintaining what is ours. How, then, might the things of this world, like money, be our master?
- Why is it impossible for anyone to be able to have two Masters in their lives?
- What dependencies and strategies that you use in life is God calling you to hand over to him? How would your life be different if you did?
- What do you need today? Tomorrow? Into the future? Do you find it easy or difficult to trust in God’s provision for this?
- What was the dishonest manager’s only hope in his predicament?
Where is the only ho
[1] Burgess, David F (comp) Encyclopaedia of sermon illustrations (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House) 1988:213
