Jesus Concern for the Poor

Text: Luke 16:19-31

Focus: Jesus Concern for the Poor.

Function: To help people catch Jesus’ passion.

Form: Bible Study

Intro:

Luke 16 is the Chapter that I call “inconsistent.”

To be clear, it is not inconsistent with Scripture, but it is inconsistent with a lot of theology. It is almost to the New Testament what The Song of Solomon is to the Old Testament.

I mean, the OT has all these rules, regulations, stories of people accomplishing great things by faith, stories of the great people of faith making huge mistakes and sinning terribly, and all the failures of God's people to live sacrificial lives where they loved both God and their neighbors. And then, there is this love song. And people have chosen many ways to explain it. It is a story about our relationship with God, it is a template for worship, to “the people of Israel were merely a rather hot- blooded group of people.

I have never preached on it, but I have seen some good bible studies that are geared toward couples giving principles for increasing intimacy and respect between marriage partners. But you certainly can't preach that in a church with children attending.

The point is this, what do you do with it?

Has anybody ever really figured out the first parable about the unjust steward? I mean this: Jesus says: “Make friends by the means of the wealth of unrighteousness so that when it fails, they will receive you into eternal dwellings. They who are faithful in the little things, will be faithful in much. He who is unfaithful in the little things, will be unfaithful in much.

This is really odd. Is Jesus really saying that it is okay to cheat? That the wealth of unrighteousness will make friends that will give you eternal rewards?

Jesus says that the master of the unjust steward praised him for his shrewdness. Did that mean that the master was a scoundrel and a thief and he recognized the skill of his steward who was also a scoundrel and a cheat?

In the message, we read it completely interpreted that the shrewdness of the steward was praised, but it should be done in a righteous way.

I don't know. Jesus' statement, “friends for eternity” certainly cannot be talking about friendships in hell, and rewards by friends in hell because hell is a lonely and desolate place.

You are not going to go there and have a party with your friends. It is dark and lonely.

So what does it mean? Jesus isn't really talking about the virtue of cheating.

Jesus then goes on to tell the Pharisees that they have to choose between God and money. They cannot serve both.

You cannot serve money and God.

Do we believe that?

Do our lives reflect that?

My dad did the most good work in his pastoral ministry while serving as the head of maintenance at Fort Wayne Bible College and pastoring small churches or doing evangelistic crusades.

He was president of the Plant Managers Association in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Indiana University, Purdue University Fort Wayne offered him the position of being the head of their maintenance facility.

That school served over 15,000 students. FWBC served at the most, 600.

People would drop off old food at the college to help second career married students who were living in poverty while they were studying.

Dad's ministry was to those second career men, who got saved late in life, had a lot of rough edges on them and dad was their mentor, bringing the grace and patience of God to them while they worked for him in the shop.

I remember an entire week where my whole family was sick as dogs because we got ptomaine poisoning from some canned food that was donated because we were too poor to buy decent groceries.

So, when the big State school offered my dad an executive position, with a salary increase of 600 percent (no exaggeration), we jumped around for an entire week crying for joy that we were going to be rich. And the salary offered would have been riches.

Then Friday night, dad came home from work and had a family meeting. He said: “God called me to be here, and I am not going to trade my soul, or my calling, for money.”

Not a soul in our house was disappointed. I understood that serving Jesus means that it is going to cost us something, maybe everything.

So Jesus goes into this description, and the Pharisees, who loved money and its security more than God, scoffed at, ridiculed and mocked Jesus' teaching about money.

But wait a minute, did I just leave that first parable unexplained? Did Jesus really say that it is okay to cheat and lie to your employer?

No. That is not what Jesus is saying.

Jesus is saying, that God will condemn the people who refuse to love their neighbors as themselves.

Jesus will condemn the people who just write off the poor as being lazy.

And you may be thinking that I am starting to talk about politics. I assure you, I am not.

This is the passion of Jesus' teaching.

This chapter is really a question of repentance. Repentance for not loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.

Remember the story of the Good Samaritan. The Pharisee, wishing to justify himself said: “and who is my neighbor?” He tried to make an excuse, any excuse to not care for others. So Jesus' answer is this: “Even you enemy is your neighbor.”

I am thinking in the back of His mind He is thinking: “You aren't getting out of it that easily buddy.”

So what is the first part of this chapter? The point Jesus makes certainly doesn't fit with our theology. It seems to contradict the commandment: You shall not steal. It seems to contradict the Biblical principle that all business transactions must be win-win for both parties. Believers can never take advantage of another person's misfortune for personal profit. These are righteous and just business principles.

Well, I have done a lot of research on this because I do not believe that the Bible would contradict itself so completely.

You know that at the time of Christ, the Jewish people were under terrible bondage to their Roman masters. The taxation was crippling them.

People couldn't pay their taxes, so they had to sell their land to those who had been luckier than them. Pretty soon, most of the land was sharecropping under rich masters who used their new positions to further indebt them.

It was a sort of “you load 16 tons and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt.”

The steward, decided to give the sharecroppers a break. Now I know the text says “it was reported to the rich man that the manager was squandering his resources...”

I am not saying that the manager was noble in his intention. But the stories are directed at the Pharisees. They are not teaching passages on how to do business. The reason why Jesus praises the steward is because the man had decided that the system was wrong, and he wasn't going to take part in the wealthy man's getting away with taking advantage of his poor neighbors anymore.

Jesus tells us that he does this in order to garner favor with the people that he has been a part of taking advantage of because of his position with his master, not because he was repenting over the abuse of the poor.

But repenting over abuse of the poor is certainly the theme of this entire chapter, and it was the main reason why the Pharisees wanted to put Him to death. He confronts just how unjust their religious practices truly are and they find out that God isn't pleased with the status quo.

So the verse: “Make friends by the wealth of unrighteousness” is a statement that we are called to be involved in changing structures and systems that take advantage of the poor.

At Beech Grove Church, a consortium purchased all the land around the church in order to build a horse racing track.

I was called on to speak at the big zoning hearing about it. It was a media event, and a sound bite from my speech made it on the Indianapolis TV news stations highlights of the year at the end of the year.

I oppose gambling because the industry exploits the poor. And I spoke to how evil that is.

A young man, who worked for the architectural firm that was planning the attached casino came to me and asked me how come he was a faithful Baptist, a deacon in his Church and I had just called him Satan for building a casino.

Of course, I never used that word, he put it on himself. But my answer was this: “you cannot serve God and money. You may have to change employers.” He hung his head and walked away, sort of like the rich young ruler.

Listen, Jesus died on the cross to purchase our salvation from sin. But they killed Him because He confronted the way they loved money more than God or their neighbors.

And in response to that, we come to today's text: The Rich man and Lazarus.

In this parable Jesus is explaining to them just exactly what will happen if they do not repent.

He shows them how a rich man refuses to repent.

And the proof of his refusal to repent is not listed in the things that this man quit doing. There is no mention of making it to worship every Sabbath. There is no mention of his commitment to stop lusting after women. There is no mention of his commitment to pay his tithe. There is no mention of his commitment to stop drinking to excess every night. There is no mention that he refused to worship idols anymore.

Yet this man ends up in torment, and there is no mention of vice, or any other thing that we consider sin.

His only sin is “ignoring this poor man who was laid at his doorstep.”

His sin was not one of commission. It was a sin of omission. He refused to love his neighbor as himself.

I love going to Tijuana. A month and a half ago, Kathy and mom spent Friday night in Fort Wayne with my grandkids.

I was bored and decided to go to the Greene shopping center.

They had a band playing music. They had a fountain for kids to cool off in. They gave free towels to dry off with. There were street performers and vendors. The place was packed. I looked around, I saw 2 black youth and one black couple. Then I thought about Rachel. The woman in Tijuana last year who taught Jane how to make a piñata. She is so happy, so full of the joy of the Lord, so much at peace, and living in incredibly difficult life just to survive with her husband and her kids.

I wondered what she would think of me if she knew how easily I have access to this wealth. From the mountaintops in Tijuana, one can look across and see San Diego, but she has no real clue what we have.

I wonder if she would look at the extravagant wealth and desire it for herself? Would she wonder what it would take to get here herself? Would she sell her soul and her Christian values to just live here? Or, would she just look at me and say: “How can you stand there, look at me, tell me you love me in the Lord, care for me a week and then feel comfortable coming back to this?”

Would I be ashamed? Is it easier for me to help her simply because she doesn't know what she is missing?

Are we supposed to feel guilty for being so blessed?

What was the rich man's sin?

It was his refusal to care for this man at his doorstep.

I think of the story of the boy and the starfish on the beach.

A tropical storm leaves a whole colony of starfish stuck on the beach in a high tide. Thousands are exposed to the sun and are dying. The boy is walking down the beach throwing as many as he can into the surf.

An older man comes along and says to him: “son, there are thousands here, there is no way you can make a difference for them all, your efforts are futile compared to the size of the problem.”

The boy picks up another starfish, throws it in the sea, looks at the man and says: “it made a difference to that one.”

The rich man refused to take care of the one starfish who was sitting right on his doorstep and was condemned for it.