Mysticism vs. child's play?

Luke 16 is one of those strange passages in Scripture where people say, “What in the world is this?!” and preachers just respond, “That’s a good question.”

In the Parable of the Unjust Steward, Jesus “said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods.
[2] And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.”

“Here’s a steward; the guy’s in charge of all of his master’s house and somebody’s come along and accused him of mismanagement,” explains Jordan. “Now, that’s a pretty intimidating thing.

“Verses 3-4: ‘Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.
[4] I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’

“He’s thinking about the accusation; what’s been placed against him. So he thinks in his heart, ‘What shall I do?’

“See what he did? He said, ‘Here’s the problem. I need to figure a way to protect myself and my interests so I come out in good shape in the end. I got it! I know what I’ll do!’

“He looked at the situation and devised a plan to extricate himself; to protect himself from the problem he saw coming. So what does he do? ‘[5] So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?
[6] And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.’

“He says, ‘I’ll just cut it in half for you.’ Now, if somebody's owed a hundred barrels of oil and I come along and say, ‘I’ll reduce it to fifty,’ what are you going to think about me?

“You’re going to think I’m a lying cheat. The master’s going to think that. But if I just reduce YOUR debt 50 percent, what are you going to think? ‘Hey, Rick’s all right. He’s for me. He’s a guy I can do business with.’

“Verses 7: 'Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.'

“You see what he’s doing? Here’s a guy who realizes he’s going to lose his job. He goes out among the customers of his master and figures out how to make them his friends so in the end they’re going to like him. He’s figured a way to get out of the problem.

“Now, look at what the Lord says in verse 8: ‘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.’

“That’s the part of that verse that gives people problems. How can the Lord look at that guy and what he did and say, ‘Hey man, that dude figured out how to operate.’ He commended the unjust steward! When you commend somebody you say, ‘What he did was a good thing to do.’

“You say, ‘Wait a minute!’ but remember this is the parable Christ is telling you. Why did He say that? ‘Because he had done wisely.’

“That word ‘wisely’ there means wisdom. In other words, he’s been prudent, he’s been sensible, he’s been practical. You remember in Matthew 7 where Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘The wise man builds his house upon a rock.’ Why? Because when the storm comes what happens? If you’re on the sand you get washed away, but if you’re on the rock, it stands.

“He’s saying, ‘That guy’s skillful in handling life’s problems.' Now, here’s the explanation for that: ‘For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’

“That’s the verse that when people read it they say, ‘What in the Sam Hill is going on here that Jesus is commending this dude over here who’s finagled his way . . . ?!’

*****

“Christ’s not commending or recommending; He’s not promoting dishonesty. He’s making a point about ‘the children of light’ and ‘the children of this world.’ The key to it is in how He describes these two people.

“There’s a doctrine He takes and applies out of this parable as He goes down in the chapter, but I just want you to see how He describes 'the children of this world.'

“Where did these children come from? The world is the source of their life, their wisdom; it’s where they come from and they’re wiser in their generation than 'the children of light.' The children of this world don’t take God into consideration. The children of light do that.

“When the children of this world look at creation (look at life in the world) they don’t look to God for answers. The look to the world. They don’t have God to call on so they look at the world and they try to figure out, ‘How does the world work?’

*****

"What did that unjust steward do? He said, ‘The master’s going to come and get me so I need to look out for myself. How am I going to protect myself?’ and he figured out how the world worked!

“He knew he could ingratiate himself to the customers out there by giving them discounts so that in the end they would say, ‘Oh, come on in here, here’s the guy that took care of me,’ and literally what the guy did was figure out how the world works and then took advantage of it.

“When it talks about them being the children of the world, it’s a reference to the source of their life; the source of their thinking. What they’ve done is embraced the world as it is. They don’t think about it being God’s world; they just say, ‘Here we are, there’s the world I’m given,’ and they take their effort and direct it toward that world and extract from that world by their observation and figuring out how the world runs.

“Who put those principles in the world, by the way? The Creator. They don’t take God into account at all but Jesus says, ‘You know what, they tend to be wiser than the children of light.’

“It’s almost like He’s saying it’s preferable to act like an atheist and that’s what bothers people, but the problem is, ‘How do the children of light expect life to work?’

“If you don’t have God in it, you don’t wind up falling into the trap of mysticism. You don’t fall into the trap of thinking, ‘Well, this is a problem, so let’s pray and ask God to zap it.’

*****

“Mysticism is where you think of your life as the result of a series of miraculous provisions rather than looking at it and saying, ‘This is the way the world works; I have to do it this way.’

“Now, Jesus said that guy was wiser in digging into the world than 'the children of light' because they’re off over trying to look for the miraculous to take care of what’s going on and that isn’t how the world’s created and made to work.

“What I’m trying to say to you is wisdom’s the skillful handling of creation. That’s what He tried to teach Adam to do and that’s what Christ’s commending here. Not just, ‘I’ll do this,’ then get in a jam and pray, ‘Lord, come get me out of it!’

“That isn’t the way the creation was designed to operate. Man’s mandate in the creation was to go out and take the wisdom God already placed in it and then use that to accomplish the purpose of establishing the dominion in the creation.

*****

“Let me give you another illustration. There’s a lot of passages like this one but I’m just going to pick this one because of where we are. In Isaiah 28, there’s a whole long description of God’s judgment on the nation Israel. Actually, you see the Antichrist and so forth in operation in the passage.

“Toward the end of the chapter, beginning in verse 23, God’s going to describe His judgment against the Antichrist and the nations of the earth in the rebellion against Him.

“Verse 23-25: [23] Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. [24] Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground?
[25] When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and rie in their place?

“He starts with plowing, then he goes back in and harrows what he plucks. You know, when you plow up you break up long clumps. You don’t want to plant in the middle of that, so then what does he do?

“He figured out, ‘If I just go out here and dig it all up and plant in that, it ain’t going to work very well, so I need to come along after it and harrow it down and then smooth it out,’ and when he’s got the ground ready, then he plants the seed. When he does, he casts abroad the fitches and scatters the cummin.

“Notice some of it he cast abroad and some of it he plants in the earth. How did the farmer figure out how to do that? The point God’s going to be making here is it’s going to take more than one type of judgment and He knows what each activity is and what it takes to judge each one. That’s the doctrine.

"He’s using the farmer as an illustration and He said, ‘You know what a farmer does? He’s figured how to grow a crop.’

*****

“(Southern Illinois soy farmer and preacher) Morris Chestnut was telling us that only nine tenths of one percent of people today in our country are farmers.

“You know what that means? That means most people don’t know how to feed themselves. We go to the grocery and buy it in a box but as a populace we’ve lost the wisdom to go out and grow a crop.

“Isaiah 28:26 (‘For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him’) is one of the verses that tells you why farmers tend to be the closest people to the Lord in a population.

“Verse 29 says, ‘This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.’

“You harvest different kinds of crops in different ways. That’s why your combine has different heads on it and so forth. You learn by seeing how things work and then you get the wisdom out of it to produce the food.

“The farmer says that’s the Lord teaching them, but the way the Lord taught them wasn’t by giving them a dream: ‘I think what I need to do . . . ’

“It’s that they looked, they thought, they labored, they considered creation, they figured out what worked and what didn’t work and then they went to the next step and sought out that hidden wisdom.

“By the way, have you ever looked at a combine? You talk about one complicated mess. I used to watch these guys down in Alabama pick cotton. You ever seen a cotton-picker? Mercy. They got all these little things as long as your finger and there’s thousands of them and they spin and run through that cotton.

“It’s the weirdest-looking thing I ever saw. They spend all winter rebuilding the thing so they’re all sharp and ready to go the next year. I think, ‘Who in the Sam Hill invented that thing?!’ You know what they did? They watched people picking that cotton and said, ‘There’s got to be a better way,’ and they do just what that dude in Luke 16 said: ‘There’s got to be a way to do this that’s going to help me out on the other end.’

“With Morris, it’s just him and his son—two guys—farming a couple thousand acres. If you went back 50 years ago and told somebody you could do that they’d think you were nuts. Eventually Morris says they’re going to do all this stuff without anybody; it’ll just be the machinery.

“We call that technology but that’s somebody sitting down and figuring out how creation works and how to push it forward.”

 

*****

"Proverbs 2 reads: 1] My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;
[2] So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;
[3] Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
[4] If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;
[5] Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
[6] For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.

“You want that wisdom, knowledge and understanding God put in creation? He said, ‘You got to dig for it! You got to search it like it’s buried treasure!’

“You know good and well any and all of us would go to extreme measures to find treasure that we knew was there. If somebody came along and told you there was a foot locker of gold stored underneath the back of your house, you know what you’d do? You’d go get a bobcat and some shovels and start digging like mad.

“We have that innate interest to go and seek out that hidden treasure. That’s what the farmer did. He wants the crop and he’s constantly trying to figure out how to get better and bigger and make it work. You’re taking creation and extracting the wisdom out of it. It’s basically just the issue of skillful living.

*****

“The term 'technology' comes from the Greek word ‘techne.’ That word is used in the Greek Bible in the Book of Acts. Acts 17:29 says, ‘Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.’

“Man’s device that creates all these artifacts; that’s the word ‘technology.’ Man develops a technology to extract out of creation these images.

“Acts 18:3 says, ‘And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.’ That word ‘craft’ there is the word ‘techne.’ A craft is the application of wisdom and knowledge to a task that develops the ability to accomplish the task.”