"The Unjust Steward"

"The Unjust Steward"

Richard W. Church

"And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." (St. Luke 16: 8)

"The children of this world:" that is, the people who plainly and entirely live for this world alone and do not care, or profess to care, for anything beyond it. "The children of light:" that is, those whom God's grace and calling has enlightened and drawn to the light of goodness and truth, whose hearts and consciences feel and acknowledge what is right and lovely and of good report, and who in various measures try to follow it--wish to be on the right side and in God's favor, [and] hope in the end to attain by His mercy to the light of His countenance and the blessedness of His kingdom. And the lesson which our Lord means to teach by the remarkable story of the unjust steward (the dishonest servant who did his evil work thoroughly, and, having begun by cheating his master and not being willing to repent and do better, did not stop half-way but carried out his cheating to the last and made the most of it as a provision against the evil day)--the lesson, for the sake of which our Lord is not afraid to represent the master as praising the unjust steward because he had done wisely, is this:

that the men of this world, in the sense which they show and in the thoroughness and consistency with which they live for the world, outstrip and put to shame the men with consciences.

That was the general sight when our Lord was among us. It was never different before He came and has never been different since. The world is served more perfectly, more wisely, more successfully than God [is served]. Men think, and look forward, and take trouble, and even suffer for the world in a way in which they will not think and act and suffer for the sake of the world to come. The children of this world do their work with a whole heart; the children of light do theirs with only half a heart.

"In their generation." With a view to the object for which they choose to live and work, "the children of this world are wiser than the children of light." They are wiser, more prudent and sensible in what they do because they are more in earnest in what they want, and use the proper means to gain it. If the unjust steward wants still to enjoy himself and to have friends to receive him into their houses, he knows that he must think beforehand of the most likely way to gain his end; and when he has thought of the means, he must use them. He knows that he will never reach what he wants by dreaming about it, or wishing it, or talking about it, or beginning and then drawing back. Yet this is the way in which "the children of light" seem to think that they may gain their ends, may fulfill the will of God and please Him in their lives.

There are two points worth noticing in that wisdom of the unjust steward for which his master commended him. One is, that the unjust steward had the sense to look forward. The evil day, he knew, must come--the day when, unless he had something wherewith to meet it, things would go hardly with him. He knew it was no good shutting his eyes and wishing and hoping that it would not come. He did not try weakly and foolishly to escape from what cannot be escaped from. But he knew that he had certain means of preparing for it. He had time still; he had that knowledge of the business of his master's debtors and their affairs that gave him the opportunity of doing something for himself before the evil day came. We are not talking, as the parable does not talk, of the right and wrong of what he did. The point is, that there were certain things to be done and he did them.

OTHERS MAY, YOU CANNOT – G. D. Watson

If God has called you to be truly like Jesus in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility. He will put on you such demands of obedience that you will not be allowed to follow other Christians. In many ways, He seems to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Others who seem to be very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and scheme to carry out their plans, but you cannot. If you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others can brag about themselves, their work, their successes, their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing. If you begin to do so, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may supply you only on a day-to-day basis, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, a helpless dependence on Him and His unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and put forward while keeping you hidden in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.

God may let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing. Then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work which you have done; this to teach you the message of the Cross, humility, and something of the value of being cloaked with His nature. The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, and with a jealous love rebuke you for careless words and feelings, or for wasting your time which other Christians never seem distressed over.

So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign and has a right to do as He pleases with His own, and that He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. God will take you at your word; if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things that you cannot. Settle it forever; you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand or closing your eyes in ways which others are not dealt with. However, know this great secret of the Kingdom: When you are so completely possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven, the high calling of God.

Visions 2015-January to April

• Vision: The Beach April 10, 2015

• Vision: The Prisoners Return April 9, 2015

• Vision: The fallen trees April 2, 2015

• Vision-flash: Cracks April 2, 2015

• VISION: THE GIANT COMB March 21, 2015

• VISION: AQUARIUMS AND AVIARIES March 18, 2015

• VISION: WATER EAGLESMarch 8, 2015

• Vision: Ship and Dock March 7, 2015

• VISION: THE BURGUNDY RED BRIEFCASE February 23, 2015

• VISION: THE LIGHT SHIPFebruary 15, 2015

• VISION: TIERS OF ARIZONA February 14, 2015

• Vision: The Exercise Book February 12, 2015

• Vision: Cones and Keys February 10, 2015

• VISION: THE U-TURNS February 10, 2015

• Vision: Waiting January 15, 2015

• Vision: The Walls of Cambodia January 11, 2015

• Vision: The Wells January 11, 2015

Pleasing Not Ourselves

Richard W. Church

"We then who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not Himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them who reproached Thee fell on me." (Romans 15:1-3)

St. Paul here gives us the rule for our behavior to one another in the common everyday concerns of life; in the hundreds and thousands of little matters that rise up between us all as we are joined together in families, or as acquaintances, or in employments; of the way we guide our words and deeds to those whom we meet with continually day after day.

I said just now, the little matters that rise up in our daily intercourse with one another. We call them little matters, and taken one by one they are, perhaps, so. But they are not at all little or of small consequence when taken all together. For, in fact, what is our whole life made up of but of these little matters? We are at our meals, or at our work, or we are chatting with people near us, or we are walking, or reading, or taking our pleasure. Small things in themselves, but they fill up our hours and days. 

Great and serious actions and events do not make up our lives. It is not every day that we have an opportunity of helping some neighbor in trouble, or of bearing some great trial well, or of showing our patience in suffering. These things come only now and then. But our ordinary way of behaving to one another, our ordinary way of speaking to one another never stops. It goes on all day long, and from day to day, and from week to week.

The truth is, that what a man is is much more shown in his common words and doings than in his uncommon and seldom ones; and therefore it is these common words and doings which are of even more importance than what we call greater occasions. It may chance that a person who is peevish and ill-natured to people about him may be greatly touched by some case of distress, and may even put himself to great trouble and inconvenience to relieve it. It is a good thing that he should do so. Perhaps he may look on it as a proof of his ready sense of duty, of his love to Christ; [and] perhaps he gives little thought to the peevishness and ill-nature which prevail generally in what he says and does. But I greatly doubt whether this continual bad temper which is showing itself in the small events of life is not a much more serious matter in Christ's eyes than any one service, however apparently great.

This then is the Christian rule, not for great occasions but for ordinary and common life; the rule not for once in a while but for all day long, for about the house and in the room with others; the rule not merely for what we do to others but for what we say to them, and not merely for what we say to them but for the way of saying it; the rule against any vexing of others not by word only but by look and manner, and unkind tone of voice, or unkind holding our tongue. Who can tell the unkindness and uncharitableness and selfishness which is spread over the whole of our lives in our everyday going out and coming in, in the short speeches and even the short "yes" and "no" which pass between us--which wound, and sting, and provoke without our caring or troubling ourselves about it!

A SAFE STRONGHOLD

A message given by Mr. W. E. Thompson at the conference in Aeschi, Switzerland, 1969

A SAFE STRONGHOLD

"And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:3-4).

"Now I Paul myself intreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly among yon, but being absent am of good courage toward you: yea, I beseech you, that I may not when present shew courage with the confidence wherewith I count to be bold against some, which count of us as if we walked according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting dozen of strong holds); casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:1-5).

WE are conscious in these days here that we are dealing with things that are in considerable contrast to the Christian world outside. It is the contrast between the heavenly and the human; the contrast between that which is born of the flesh and that which is born of the Spirit; the contrast between the word of the Cross, the Word of God, and just a message from man. If you read some Christian magazines you will find that you can buy sermons for ten shillings each, while if you pay twenty shillings you are guaranteed to start revival! There are many people who do not have the word of God and have to buy these sermons.

We have also seen the contrast between knowledge about God and knowledge of Him Himself, and tonight I want to consider something of that which is arrayed against the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, that which robs us of the knowledge of Him.

THE BUILDING OF CITIES
We read in Genesis 11 of the activity of man at, I believe, the pinnacle of his powers, the total of human ingenuity: "Let us build us a city, and a tower." Now cities are phenomena which are quite foreign to the ways of God. A city is some thing more than a concentration of people, and more than just a centre for essential services, such as hospitals, fire stations, and all the rest. A city is the centre of all man's human powers, and the development of cities in the world today is a very significant feature. The number of people living in cities has increased ten times during the last hundred years, and all across the world cities are increasing and growing at an alarming rate. In India, where I have served the Lord, the growth of cities is out of all proportion to the growth of the population, and these cities are the centre of every kind of wickedness that you can imagine. These great cities are places where ideas are manufactured to brainwash the minds of millions. You do not find an advertising agency in a village! Cities are places where it is becoming increasingly difficult for a Christian to survive, not merely because of noise and people, but because they are the strongholds of Satan. He has deceived men into thinking that their learning in the cities, and their technology is going to help them to reach heaven.

If we are really concerned with the knowledge of God I believe that we must take serious account of this fact. A characteristic of human nature is to build, and it is this characteristic that has hindered the work of God. Even when our Lord Jesus Christ [127/128] took some of His disciples up to the mount with Him and revealed to them something of His glory, gave them a glimpse of an opened heaven, what was their reaction? 'This is tremendous! Let us build! Let us hold on to this thing!' And that has been happening all down the history of the Christian church. God works, God reveals Himself, God opens heaven, and man says: 'We must make something of this!' That explains all the ruins that we have of Christian movements in the world today. This is the mind of man, human, and quite contrary to the Spirit of God.

Matthew 25:1-13

25 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:

4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.

9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

12 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

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