Parable of the unjust steward4/10/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() It seems that animals have more sense than humans in this area. And he doesn’t procrastinate once he hears the bad news. He is now looking to the future and he knows that the future holds trouble. He did not try to deny that it was happening, hope it would go away, hope the master would forget, etc. Verse 3 - The steward said to himself, “What shall I do.” I think it is significant that this steward recognized his problem. Suffice it to say that he was caught and in trouble. We’ve already mentioned that we don’t know how the steward squandered the money. The master heard that the steward was not performing properly and told him he was fired, but before he left, he was to prepare his books for an audit. So, the question is: How can believers be shrewd in dealing with their money? The Progression I think the emphasis in our parable is on eternity and using money for eternity. This steward was not thinking about the future until he got his pink slip. If you are being evaluated, you will perform your job diligently so that you receive a good evaluation and don’t get fired. You will live with a very real sense of what the future holds for you. You are going to spend money only on what you must. If you know you are about to lose your job next month or might lose your job next month, you are not going to go out and take out a loan on a new house, go out to eat every night, buy a new set of golf clubs or a big screen TV, or whatever. If he’d believed he might be fired for poor performance, I can’t help but think he would have performed better and been more careful with what was entrusted to him. He assumed he would always have that job and was not careful with the stuff entrusted to him. The main problem is that the steward did not work with a view to the future. ![]() I think the main problem is related to the emphasis on eternity following the parable. If the emphasis is not on using the money for himself, then what is it? Perhaps one of the ways he wasted the money was by spending it on himself, so the idea might be included in the parable, but that is not the emphasis. ![]() It doesn’t say he was using it for his own. I don’t think that is what the passage is really about. Some people say that the problem is that the steward forgot he was a steward and began using the money as his own. The danger of squandering money, loving it too much and eternity are the backdrops to the parable.The parable of the rich man and Lazarus follows with its emphasis on eternity.There is a warning to the Pharisees concerning their love of money following this parable in 16:14-17.In our parable we will see the importance of “investing” your money. This follows the parable of the lost sons where the younger one “wasted” his life and inheritance and the older son “spent” his life slaving for his father.The younger son squandered the family inheritance and I think there may be a link to the word squandered in 15:13.Therefore, this applies primarily to saved people. As Christians we are stewards of what God has given us. He does not own it, he uses it for the profit of his master. A steward is one who manages another’s wealth.Do you know anybody who doesn’t want to win the Lotto? Do you know anybody that thinks winning $10 million would make them miserable? Luke 16 gives us two parables that deal with money and tells us the proper way to spend it if we have it. Somebody defined money as, “an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven and as a universal provider of everything except happiness.” 3 People think that if they just had more money, life would be better because then they could buy all the things they wanted and that would make them happy. ![]()
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