Speaker 1: Hey, friends, thanks so much for joining us today on
Speaker 1: Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible Teaching ministry of Pastor
Speaker 1: Rick Warren.
Speaker 2: We're so glad to have you with us.
Speaker 1: And today Rick continues in his series called Transform. Together,
Speaker 1: we'll dive into God's Word and discover powerful principles that
Speaker 1: can truly change our lives from the inside out spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, financially,
Speaker 1: and vocationally. You'll experience how God's truth brings real transformation
Speaker 1: to every part of your life. And now here's Rick
Speaker 1: with part one of a message called Transforming How I
Speaker 1: See and Use Money.
Speaker 2: Now, we've looked at your spiritual health, we've looked at
Speaker 2: physical health, we've looked at mental health, we've looked at
Speaker 2: emotional health, and we've looked at relational health. We've got
Speaker 2: too more dimensions to deal with work and money, and
Speaker 2: this weekend I want us to look at financial health. Now,
Speaker 2: it may surprise you that Jesus actually talked more about
Speaker 2: money than he did heaven or hell. In fact, half
Speaker 2: of all of the parables that Jesus told are about money.
Speaker 2: Half of them. In fact, in the books of Matthew
Speaker 2: Mark and Luke, one out of every six verses is
Speaker 2: about money and money management. Why because money can dominate
Speaker 2: our lives, and money influences our lives for either good
Speaker 2: or bad. It can be used for great things, it
Speaker 2: can be used for bad things either way. And we
Speaker 2: spend so much of our time thinking about it, working
Speaker 2: for it, earning it, you know, studying it, saving it,
Speaker 2: and investing it, all these different things. And if you
Speaker 2: don't learn to manage your money, it will manage you.
Speaker 2: Now this weekend, we're going to look at the most
Speaker 2: misunderstood story of Jesus in the entire Bible. It's a
Speaker 2: doozy and it's in Luke chapter sixteen. If you have
Speaker 2: a Bible, you might want to turn to Luke chapter sixteen.
Speaker 2: And the reason why this is a confusing passage is
Speaker 2: because it appears that Jesus is approving of dishonesty. He's not.
Speaker 2: He just uses a clever crook as the hero of
Speaker 2: the story and he's using it for shock value. Now,
Speaker 2: let me read you the story and then I'll make
Speaker 2: a couple comments on it and we'll look in depth
Speaker 2: at it. Luke chapter sixteen. Here's the story of Jesus
Speaker 2: it's called the parable of the dishonest or shrewd manager.
Speaker 2: Jesus said, there once was a rich man who enlisted
Speaker 2: a manager to take care of his property. But the
Speaker 2: manager was accused of wasting his master's possessions. So the
Speaker 2: owner called him in and said, now, give an account
Speaker 2: of your stewardship and report what you've done with what
Speaker 2: I entrusted to you, because your time as a manager
Speaker 2: is ending now. The manager thought, what am I going
Speaker 2: to do now? I'm losing my job, but I'm not
Speaker 2: strong enough to dig ditches, and I'm too proud to
Speaker 2: beg I love that part. He goes, I know what
Speaker 2: I'll do. I know what I'll do so that after
Speaker 2: I lose my job, I'll have plenty of friends to
Speaker 2: take care of me. So he called in everybody who
Speaker 2: was in debt to his master, and he asked the
Speaker 2: first guy, how much do you owe my master? The
Speaker 2: guy says, five eight hundred gallons of olive oil. So
Speaker 2: the manager said, okay, here's what I want you to do.
Speaker 2: Tear up the bill and write a new bill that
Speaker 2: says you only owe four hundred gallons. Okay, this is
Speaker 2: going to between me and you we're not going to
Speaker 2: tell this to the boss. And that's the manager found
Speaker 2: another debtor and he asked him, He said, how much
Speaker 2: do you Oh? The guy said a thousand bushels of
Speaker 2: wheat And he said The manager replied, okay, here's what
Speaker 2: I want you to do. Change your bill to say
Speaker 2: you only owe eight hundred bushels. So he's doing this
Speaker 2: under the table, obviously without permission. Now when the master,
Speaker 2: this is the owner, heard what the dishonest manager had done,
Speaker 2: he still praised him. He praised him for his shrewdness.
Speaker 2: For worldly people are more shrewd in handling their affairs
Speaker 2: than are those who belong to the like. Now, that
Speaker 2: is a strange story. In the next couple verses, Jesus
Speaker 2: gives a little bit into the meaning of it, and
Speaker 2: he says in verse nine, So Jesus that I tell
Speaker 2: you use your worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves?
Speaker 2: What am I supposed to buy friends? This is getting
Speaker 2: even weirder. Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself,
Speaker 2: so that when it is gone, you'll be welcomed into
Speaker 2: eternal dwellings. He's talking about heaven. Whoever can be trusted
Speaker 2: with very little can also be trusted with much, and
Speaker 2: who's ever dishonest with little will also be dishonest with much.
Speaker 2: So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth,
Speaker 2: he's saying, if you're not a good money manager, if
Speaker 2: you're not taking care of the money that I've given you,
Speaker 2: if you've been untrustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who's going
Speaker 2: to trust you with true riches, spiritual riches, the real
Speaker 2: riches of life. And if you have not been trustworthy
Speaker 2: with somebody else's property, who's going to give you property
Speaker 2: of your own. No servant can serve two masters. He'll
Speaker 2: either hate the one and love the other, or he'll
Speaker 2: be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot
Speaker 2: serve God and money. Notice he didn't say you should not.
Speaker 2: He said you can't. It's impossible. You cannot serve God
Speaker 2: and money. Now, that may be the most frustrating, the
Speaker 2: most shocking, and the most misunderstored story that Jesus ever told.
Speaker 2: It's important to note a couple of things. First, Jesus
Speaker 2: is not praising the guy's dishonesty. He's praising his shrewdness.
Speaker 2: And we'll get back to that and just meanute what
Speaker 2: That means he's not praising his dishonesty. Second, you didn't
Speaker 2: learn from anybody. If you know the right questions, you
Speaker 2: don't have to agree with everything a person believes or
Speaker 2: does to actually learn from them. This is very, very
Speaker 2: important because today people think because I disagree with you
Speaker 2: on something, then I can't learn from you on something.
Speaker 2: That's nonsense. If you can only learn from people that
Speaker 2: you agree with one hundred percent, well guess what, You're
Speaker 2: not gonna learn anything because nobody agrees with you one
Speaker 2: hundred percent. Have you talked to your wife lately, or
Speaker 2: your husband, or your boyfriend or your girlfriend. Nobody's going
Speaker 2: to agree with you all the time. And you don't
Speaker 2: have to agree with everything a person believes or does,
Speaker 2: or acts or whatever in order for them to actually
Speaker 2: teach you something. I learned from people all the time
Speaker 2: who disagree with me, and you can too. And Jesus
Speaker 2: is saying learn from all kinds of people. For instance,
Speaker 2: if I got a brain tumor and I'm looking for
Speaker 2: a neurosurgeon, my first question is not did you read
Speaker 2: your Bible this morning? My first question to this brain
Speaker 2: surgeon is not did you go to church last week?
Speaker 2: My question is not even are you a Christian? Do
Speaker 2: you believe in God? My question is have you ever
Speaker 2: done this before? Because the guy might be cheating on
Speaker 2: his wife. But if he's a brain surgeon, he's a
Speaker 2: brain surgeon, if that makes sense, And so it is
Speaker 2: nonsense to say you have to agree with everybody in
Speaker 2: order to learn from this guy is dishonest. You don't
Speaker 2: want to learn that part from him. But there are
Speaker 2: some things that he did right that you need to
Speaker 2: do with your money. Now, the other thing I want
Speaker 2: you to notice is the two reasons Jesus tells his story. First,
Speaker 2: who is Jesus telling us to. He's telling this to
Speaker 2: the Pharisees. Who are the Pharisees. The Pharisees are the
Speaker 2: religious leader of Jesus day. And there are the characteristics
Speaker 2: of a Pharisee. Number one, they're incredibly arrogant, they're not humble,
Speaker 2: they're incredibly prideful, they're self righteous, they're judgmental, there's demeaning,
Speaker 2: they're demanding, and they really don't like people. But the
Speaker 2: number one characteristic of a Pharisees they're hypocrite. They say
Speaker 2: one thing and believe something else, and they tell people
Speaker 2: to do things that they themselves don't even do. So
Speaker 2: Jesus loved to poke at the Pharisees. He loved to
Speaker 2: just kind of bop them in the eye. He loved
Speaker 2: to pop their balloon. Jesus had an amazing ability to
Speaker 2: comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable, and he still
Speaker 2: does that today. If you're in pain, any kind of pain,
Speaker 2: Jesus wants to comfort you. If you're comfortable, Jesus probably
Speaker 2: wants to put you in pain because there's some things
Speaker 2: that need to change in your life. You've become very
Speaker 2: comfortable with the status quo. So here Jesus knew that
Speaker 2: the Pharisees loved money. That's why he tells this shocking
Speaker 2: story and makes a crook a hero. Look at this
Speaker 2: verse up here on the screen. This is the rest
Speaker 2: of the chapter that I was reading from. It says
Speaker 2: the Pharisees dearly loved money, so when they heard what
Speaker 2: Jesus said, they made fun of him. But Jesus told them,
Speaker 2: you're always making yourselves look good. But God sees what's
Speaker 2: in your heart. The things that most people think are
Speaker 2: important are worth lists as far as God is concerned.
Speaker 2: Now that last phrase is the reason why we're going
Speaker 2: to look at what we're looking at today. The things
Speaker 2: that most people think matter, God says that don't matter
Speaker 2: at all. What do most people think matters? Possessions, pleasure, power, prestige, popularity, sex, status, salary, money, lust, power,
Speaker 2: those kinds of things. God says, those things really don't matter.
Speaker 2: Those are the important things in life. And in this
Speaker 2: series on transformation, we've been talking about the verse in
Speaker 2: the Bible. It says, don't conform to the world's pattern,
Speaker 2: don't fall into their standard of culture, but be transformed
Speaker 2: by the way you think. I'm going to teach you
Speaker 2: a whole new way to think about money today, and
Speaker 2: it is radically counter culture. What God says about money
Speaker 2: is the exact opposite of everything you've been taught about money.
Speaker 2: So we're going to look at But Jesus is talking
Speaker 2: about people who love money. And the second thing Jesus
Speaker 2: tells this story, the reason he tells it is because
Speaker 2: most believers are poor money managers. Many of you are
Speaker 2: not very good at managing your money. You have no
Speaker 2: emergency savings saved up for an emergency, you have little
Speaker 2: or no retirement saved up, you're living from hand to mouth,
Speaker 2: you're living on the build. In fact, you're living beyond
Speaker 2: your means. It's not buy it as soon as I
Speaker 2: get the money, it's buy it before I get the money.
Speaker 2: And you're deeply in debt. And Jesus has some things
Speaker 2: to say to all of us about money. Now, this
Speaker 2: message today is not a message about giving. It's not
Speaker 2: a message about tithing. This is a message about how
Speaker 2: to manage your money well and how to think about
Speaker 2: money the way God does. Because money is one of
Speaker 2: the greatest sources of worries. It's the number one cause
Speaker 2: of divorce. It's till debt do us part. Now, Jesus
Speaker 2: doesn't praise the guy's dishonesty, but he does praise his shrewdness.
Speaker 2: What is shrewdness? To be shrewd means you're smart, you're sharp,
Speaker 2: you're strategic, and you're resourceful. And when you're shrewd, you
Speaker 2: see a problem clearly, you know what needs to be done,
Speaker 2: and then you figure out how to do it. And
Speaker 2: what God wants you to do is God wants you
Speaker 2: to learn how to be biblically shrewd with your money
Speaker 2: for the rest of your life and from this story,
Speaker 2: and we're going to look at it today in detail.
Speaker 2: We learn four things not to do with your money.
Speaker 2: God says, don't do these things with your money, and
Speaker 2: five things you need to remember every day of your life.
Speaker 2: And if you will remember them every day of your life,
Speaker 2: your stress regarding your finances is going to go down dramatically,
Speaker 2: and your joy and your satisfaction is going to increase dramatically.
Speaker 2: All right, let's look at the Bible and see what
Speaker 2: God has to say. First thing we need to learn
Speaker 2: this story is four things not to do with your money.
Speaker 2: I don't spend a lot of time on this, so
Speaker 2: let me right quick and we'll get to the other part.
Speaker 2: Four things not to do. Number one, don't waste it.
Speaker 2: The Bible says, don't waste the money that God allows
Speaker 2: you to have. Luke sixteen to two. The manager was
Speaker 2: accused of wasting his master's possession. Now you know, if
Speaker 2: I walk around thinking it's my money, well obviously, well
Speaker 2: it's my money. If I want to waste it, who cares.
Speaker 2: But if I think this is God's money, then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I don't want to waste God's money. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is a big difference. Don't waste it. Number two,
Speaker 2: don't love it. The Bible says we are not to
Speaker 2: love money, don't love it or live for it. And
Speaker 2: that's what he says. In verse thirteen. He says, no
Speaker 2: servant can serve two masters. He'll either hate one and
Speaker 2: love the other, or he'll be devoted to one and
Speaker 2: despise the other. You cannot cannot circle that cannot serve
Speaker 2: both God and money. It's impossible to live a divided allegiance.
Speaker 2: Have you ever tried to work for two bosses? How'd
Speaker 2: that work out? Yeah? Not very good. The heart of
Speaker 2: the problem is a problem with the heart, and God
Speaker 2: wants your heart. And Jesus lays it out in Black
Speaker 2: and Life. He isn't vague here. He goes, Okay, you
Speaker 2: got to choose what's going to be number one in
Speaker 2: your life. You can't have two number one things in
Speaker 2: your life. You can't say my number one goal lives
Speaker 2: to make a lot of money, and my number one
Speaker 2: goal is to love God. You're going to have to
Speaker 2: decide what's going to be number one. You can't have
Speaker 2: two number ones in your life. Is God going to
Speaker 2: be number one in your life? Or is making a
Speaker 2: whole lot of money the number one goal of your life.
Speaker 2: You cannot serve them both. Number three, he says, don't
Speaker 2: trust it, don't waste it, don't love it, don't trust
Speaker 2: money for security. I don't care how much money you've got.
Speaker 2: You can lose it. And so he said, don't put
Speaker 2: your security in it. Now. The manager learned this pretty quick.
Speaker 2: In verse three, he says, what am I going to do?
Speaker 2: I'm losing my job. Many of you know what it
Speaker 2: feels like to lose your job, to be out of work,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you got no source of
Speaker 2: security anymore. How many times have I told you never, never, never,
Speaker 2: put your security in anything that can be taken from you.
Speaker 2: If you put your security in your appearance, how you look,
Speaker 2: I hate to tell us you're not always going to
Speaker 2: be as sexy as you are right now, Okay, those
Speaker 2: looks are going to fade. If you put your security
Speaker 2: in your health, you can lose your health. If you
Speaker 2: put your security in your job, you can lose your job.
Speaker 2: If you put your security in your marriage, you could
Speaker 2: lose your marriage. If you put your security in a
Speaker 2: loved one, you can lose a loved one. If you
Speaker 2: put your security in your bank account, there's a thousand
Speaker 2: ways to lose all your money. If you want to
Speaker 2: really be secure, the center of your life has to
Speaker 2: be built around something that can never, never be taken
Speaker 2: from you. And there's only one thing that you can
Speaker 2: never lose. That is God's love for you. You can't make
Speaker 2: God stop loving you. You can try, but you will
Speaker 2: fail because God's love is unconditional. It's not based on
Speaker 2: who you are, It's based on who He is. So
Speaker 2: you build your life on God's love for you and
Speaker 2: that relationship. So he says, don't waste it, don't love it,
Speaker 2: don't trust in it, because you can lose it. Proverbs
Speaker 2: twenty three, verse five from the Bible says this, I
Speaker 2: like this verse. Your money can be gone in a flash,
Speaker 2: as if it had grown wings and flown away like
Speaker 2: an eagle. Fly like an eagle. Okay, so just fly.
Speaker 2: It can just fly away like an egle. People say
Speaker 2: money talks. It does not. It just walks away quietly,
Speaker 2: and you have no idea where it went, and you
Speaker 2: have too much month left over at the end of
Speaker 2: the money, you go, what happened here? Is money just
Speaker 2: flies away. You know, the state's government is so polite
Speaker 2: and helpful in this that they put an eagle on
Speaker 2: every dollar to remind us that money could fly away
Speaker 2: like an eagle. All right, So every time you look
Speaker 2: at a DOLLI I'm not keeping this one very long,
Speaker 2: all right, It's going to be gone like the wind.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Wow, some powerful words from Pastor Rick today. And now
Speaker 1: this is really one of my favorite parts of the broadcast.
Speaker 1: This is letters from our listeners, and now here's Rick Today.
Speaker 2: I want to share with you a very special testimony
Speaker 2: from one of our listeners named Marquita, and thanks to
Speaker 2: Daily Hope and your support, she recently asked Jesus Christ
Speaker 2: to be the leader of her life. Here's her story. So,
Speaker 2: Pastor Rick, I wanted to let you know that I
Speaker 2: have prayed the prayer of salvation that you included in
Speaker 2: the Deepening the Eyes of Faith message. I've been listening
Speaker 2: to your messages for years. In fact, my child wouldn't
Speaker 2: even be here today if it weren't for your words.
Speaker 2: You wrote there may be accidental parents, but there are
Speaker 2: no accidental children. Well, I've given birth to a beautiful
Speaker 2: baby girl, and she's the light of my life. In fact,
Speaker 2: it now hurts to remember a time that I was
Speaker 2: fighting to decide whether I was going to have her
Speaker 2: or not. But I repeated your words throughout my pregnancy.
Speaker 2: There are accidental parents, but they're no accidental children. And
Speaker 2: although I'm a single mom today, with the support of
Speaker 2: my family, we're thriving. I want to make sure that
Speaker 2: she grows up to find her purpose and to serve God.
Speaker 2: So thanks for renewing my faith in God. And as
Speaker 2: I still try to find and fulfill my purpose, please
Speaker 2: pray for me and my child. Wow, Marquita, you are
Speaker 2: so right. God does have a plan and a purpose
Speaker 2: for every single baby. There are no accidental babies. So
Speaker 2: I want to take a moment right now and just
Speaker 2: pray for you in this broadcast. Pray for you and
Speaker 2: for your daughter. Lord, I'm asking you right now to
Speaker 2: put your hand of protection, your hand of blessing, your
Speaker 2: hand of guidance on Marquita and her daughter, and I'm
Speaker 2: praying for both of them to know your purpose, to
Speaker 2: feel your presence, to discover your power, to live in
Speaker 2: your plan for each of their lives. In Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen, you know when you give a gift to Daily Hope.
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Speaker 1: as we look into God's word for our daily hope.
Speaker 1: This program is sponsored by Pastorick's Daily Hope and your
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