River Church NOLA
Wed Sept 9 The Path to Promotion
  • One Way
  • Set A Fire
  • I Worship You Almighty God
  • We Are Hungry
  • Intro
    You know Boudreaux finally got promoted at the plant. His wife Clotile couldn't believe it. She said, “Boudreaux, how in the world did you get promoted over Thibodeaux? He's been there twenty years!” Boudreaux say, “Well, cher, the boss came by one day and dropped a dollar on the floor right in front of both of us. Thibodeaux, he look at that dollar and say, ‘That ain't mine, I ain't touchin' it.’ I picked it up, dusted it off, and gave it right back to the boss.” Clotile said, “That's it? That's why you got the promotion?” Boudreaux say, “No, cher — the boss said anybody who'll bend over for a dollar, he trust with the whole warehouse.”
    That’s not exactly the theology of the verses we will look at tonight, but Boudreaux stumbled onto something true.

    Trust isn’t handed out randomly, it’s built.

    It’s built in small not so glamorous, no-body’s watching moments long before it ever shows up in big ones.
    That’s exactly what Jesus is teaching us in the passage we are going to focus on. Let me set the scene for you.
    We're dropping into the middle of one of Jesus' stranger parables — the parable of the shrewd, or dishonest, manager. A guy about to lose his job goes around slashing what his master's debtors owe, currying favor so he'll have friends when he's unemployed. And Jesus, surprisingly, commends the man — not for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. He saw what was coming and he acted decisively to prepare for it.
    Then Jesus does what Jesus does. He takes a strange, worldly story and mines gospel gold out of it. He turns to His disciples — turns to us — and lays down a principle that cuts across parenting, marriage, work, ministry, money, and the whole Christian life:

    If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones.

    Let’s read the passage
    Luke 16:10–12 NLT
    10 “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. 11 And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? 12 And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?
    I am going to give this principle a name tonight.

    The Promotion Principle.

    This is the way God actually grows trust, capacity, and responsibility in a person’s life. We are going to walk through 3 test that are layid out in these verses tonight.

    1. The test of Consistency.

    Luke 16:10 NLT
    10 “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.
    Here is the first thing Jesus wants you and I to see:

    Little and much are the same

    Little and much are not two different characters. They are the same character wearing two different sizes of cloths.
    Here is what I mean. We tend to think of ourselves in categories.
    I would never steal a car … but a pack of crackers? whose watching anyway.
    I would never blow up a marriage … but flirting with a co-worker over is harmless.
    I would never embezzle money from my job … but taking extra time on breaks… coming in late… everybody does it
    Jesus says no. There is no line or place on the line where a different you shows up. The person who cuts corners in the small things is not a different, not more honest person waiting to emerge once the stakes get higher. The person who cuts corners is revealing exactly who he is. Larger stakes will only give that same character more room to do more damage.
    On the other side is good news.

    The person who is faithful in the small un-noticed, unrewarded thing is becoming the person who can be trusted with more.

    The person who is faithful in the small, unnoticed, unrewarded thing is not wasting their integrity on something too small to matter. They are becoming, day by day, decision by decision, the kind of person who can be trusted with more (money, responsibility, authority).

    Character isn't built in the crisis.  It's revealed in the crisis.

    It's built on a Monday through Friday afternoon when nobody's watching and the stakes are so low you could cut the corner and nobody would ever know.
    Picture two employees doing the same job.
    One clocks in on time, does the boring task well even when the supervisor's at lunch, tells the truth about the hours she actually worked, and doesn't help herself to the office supply closet.
    The other comes in late, stretches a fifteen-minute break into thirty, pads the timesheet because “everybody does it,” and slips a few things into his bag that technically belong to the company.
    Nobody's writing headlines about either one. But six months from now, when there's a promotion on the table, or a season where nobody's watching and real money is on the line, guess which one the boss already knows he can trust — because he's been paying attention all along, whether they knew it or not.
    It’s the same in our walk with the Lord.
    Faithful looks like opening your Bible and spending time in prayer on Monday morning when nothing is wrong and nobody is watching.
    Faithful is telling the truth in the small conversations.
    Faithful is keeping your thought life honest and clean, even though others can’t see it.
    Faithful is serving even when you don’t feel like it… going to work when it’s the last thing you want to do.
    Unfaithful in little things looks like skipping your QT with God “just this once” but then it becomes a habit.
    Unfaithfulness looks like making excuses not to serve or go to work when you don’t feel like it.
    Unfaithfulness looks like letting a grudge sit instead of dealing with it…
    Unfaithfulness looks like telling yourself that a small compromise doesn’t matter because it’s not a Big Sin.
    Jesus is telling us: that private, unnoticed walk with Him is exactly where He's building — or exposing — your character.
    Boudreaux and that dollar was a test. The warehouse was just where the dollar sized faithfulness got to show up in a bigger costume.

    2. The test of what isn’t permanent.

    Luke 16:11 NLT
    11 And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?
    Jesus makes a striking move here.

    Jesus call money a little thing compared to true riches.

    He calls money — “worldly wealth” — a little thing. Compared to what He's about to call it — “true riches” — money is small potatoes. It's Monopoly money. It's practice.
    I don't know that we always think of it that way. For a lot of us, money is the biggest, most stressful, most consuming category of our lives. We organize entire seasons of life around it.

    Money is the training ground to see if we can be trusted with spiritual influence.

    But Jesus is recalibrating our sense of scale: this — the money, the stuff, the portfolio, the paycheck — this is the little thing.  It's a training ground. It's the small-stakes arena where God is watching to see something: can this person be trusted with a resource that isn't ultimate, so that I can trust them with something that is?
    What are the “true riches” He's talking about? Kingdom responsibility. Spiritual influence. The care of souls. Gospel opportunity.
    The kind of trust where God says, “I'm going to let this person shape other people's lives, carry real weight in my church, steward something eternal.” And the training ground for that isn't a seminary classroom first — it's your checkbook, your budget, your tithe, your generosity when nobody's tracking it but you and the Lord.
    Think about what that looks like on the ground.
    Faithful with money is the guy who gives his tithe off the top of the check, before the bills get first crack at it — even in a month it's tight.  
    It's the woman at the register who gets five dollars too much in change and hands it back instead of pocketing it.
    It's paying back the twenty you borrowed from a friend without being asked twice.
    Unfaithful with money is padding the expense report a little because the company won't miss it, or telling yourself you'll “catch up” on giving next month and next month never comes, or hiding a purchase from your spouse because you already know what they'd say.
    None of that is headline news. But Jesus says it's exactly the small print God is reading.
    How you handle what’s temporary is a rehearsal for how you will handle what’s eternal.

    3. The test of what isn’t yours.

    Luke 16:12 NLT
    12 And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?
    This one hits a lot of us and to be honest, it can sting when you think about it. Most of us think of faithfulness as something we owe to our own stuff — my house, my time, my calling, my ministry, my kids. Jesus flips it:

    The proving ground for owning something is how you handled something that was never yours to begin with.

    How do you treat a rental car? A borrowed tool? A coworker's project you're just filling in on? A church you're a guest at, not a member of? Somebody else's reputation, when you're the one telling the story.
    That's the test. Because everything you currently call “yours” — your ministry, your marriage, your body, your children, your gifts — is, in the truest sense, not yours either. It belongs to God. You're a steward, not an owner, of every single thing in this room right now, including your own life.

    The person who handles someone else's things carelessly, because “it's not really mine” is disqualifying themselves.

    The person who handles someone else's things carelessly, because “it's not really mine, who cares,” is disqualifying themselves from something they think they already possess free and clear.

    4. Salvation is not a ladder to climb.

    This is not spiritual hustle to gain your salvation. You don’t have to perform your way up so that God will trust you with something bigger. IOW to earn your promotion. That’s not what Jesus is doing here and if that’s what you are hearing, you are missing it.
    Look at where this parable sits. It's Luke 16 — right after Luke 15, three straight stories about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son, every single one of them ending with a father, a shepherd, a woman who goes looking, who throws a party, who runs to embrace someone who did absolutely nothing to earn the welcome they got. Grace comes first. Sonship comes first. You are already loved, already adopted, already secure — before you have proven anything.
    Look at where this parable sits. It's Luke 16 — right after Luke 15, three straight stories about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son, every single one of them ending with a father, a shepherd, a woman who goes looking, who throws a party, who runs to embrace someone who did absolutely nothing to earn the welcome they got.
    Grace comes first. Sonship comes first. You are already loved, already adopted, already secure — before you have proven anything. 
    Faithfulness in small things isn't the price of admission into the Father's trust. It's the fruit of already belonging to Him. We're not climbing a ladder trying to reach the Father's approval. We're already home, already sons and daughters, and faithfulness is simply what grown, secure children of God do with what's put in front of them — not to be loved, but because they already are.
    And here's the deepest comfort of all:

    The ultimate faithful Servant has already gone before us.

    Jesus Himself was faithful in the small thing — thirty hidden years in a carpenter's shop in Nazareth, obscure, unnoticed, no platform, no crowd — before He was ever faithful in the large thing: the cross. Philippians 2:5-11
    Philippians 2:5–11 NLT
    5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. 6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, 8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. 9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
    Paul tells us that Jesus humbled Himself, became obedient to death, even death on a cross — and therefore God exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name. He was faithful in the very smallest, most hidden, most costly thing — laying down His life — and He was promoted to the highest place, given all authority in heaven and on earth.
    That's not a coincidence. That's the pattern. And here's the good news for you and me: we don't have to generate that kind of faithfulness out of nothing. We are united to the One who already lived it perfectly. His faithfulness is credited to us. And now, out of that security, He works real, growing faithfulness into us by His Spirit — not so we can earn what's already ours, but because we already have it.

    How does this look this week?

    It looks like being the same person at home that you are at church.
    It looks like showing up on time for the small assignment nobody will thank you for — nursery duty, setup crew, the parking team in July heat.
    It looks like giving generously and honestly even when the amount is small enough that no one but God will ever see the receipt.
    It looks like keeping your word on the little promise — the “I'll call you back,” the “I'll be there at six” — because the person who breaks small promises will break big ones too, and the person who keeps them is quietly becoming someone who can be trusted with more.
    It looks like handling your marriage, your kids, your job, your reputation — the things you did not create and do not ultimately own — the way a faithful steward handles what belongs to someone else. Because it does. It belongs to God, and one day you'll give an account for how you carried it.
    And if you're sitting here this evening and your first thought was Boudreaux's — “I'd never touch that dollar, I know that's wrong, I've got this” — good. Keep going. Don't despise the small assignment. It's not beneath you. It's exactly where God is doing His deepest work.
    But if your first thought was closer to Thibodeaux's — if you've been cutting corners in the small, unseen places and telling yourself it doesn't matter because the stakes are low — hear this as grace, not condemnation: today's the day to pick the dollar back up. Not to earn God's trust. You already have His love. But because you are His, and this is simply what His children do.
    Wrap up
    Faithful in little. Faithful in much. Same character, different-sized clothes. And the God who is watching every unseen, unrewarded, unremarkable moment of your faithfulness this week is not keeping score to decide whether to love you.
    He already does.
    He's just getting you ready for what's next.

      • Luke 16:10–12NLT

      • Luke 16:10NLT

      • Luke 16:11NLT

      • Luke 16:12NLT

      • Philippians 2:5–11NLT

River Church NOLA
robert@riverchurchnola.com
504-578-8317
https://riverchurchnola.com
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