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Transcript 207A — The Rich Man and the Steward [Luke 16]
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I have a question, and I'll take my answer over the air. It involves Luke 16. The verses that I particularly want to know about are verses 8, 9 and 10, especially 8 and 9.
HC: The question that is raised is this interesting question raised by the parable in Luke 16 of the rich man who had a steward. And this steward was very dishonest. He was going to be fired because he was wasting his master's goods. And so before he was fired from his job, the steward made provision for what he would do after he had no job any longer.
And so he called one of the debtors of his master, and he said, "You owe hundred measures of oil. But you take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty." In other words, in a dishonest way he's befriending this man, so that afterwards he can go to him and seek favors from him. Another one owed a hundred measures of wheat, and he said, "Take your bill and write eighty."
When the master heard about this (in verse 8), he commended the dishonest steward for his prudence, for his wisdom. "For the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal habitations."
Now let's first of all look at verse 8. "The master commended the dishonest steward for his prudence, for the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation than the sons of light." Now what is "their own generation"? Well, the Bible speaks of the generation of evil. This phrase, "generation of evil," is found, for example, in Luke 11:29: "This generation is an evil generation. it seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah."
You see, amongst evil men they have a code of ethics that is also evil. But within that evil code of ethics, within that sinful set of rules that they follow, they are very wise. They work it out so that they are concerned about the future. And so Christ is really pleading here with us to make sure, as a born again believer—you're of a different generation, of course; you're not of the generation of evil now you are a child of God—that you are wise in your own generation. You too must be concerned about the future and about using your opportunities as wisely as possible.
Now in verse 9 He begins to describe what He has in view. He says, "I tell you [now He's talking to born again believers], make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations." Well now, what's unrighteous mammon. That's money, it's property, it's anything at all that we own, anything that the world covets after. That's unrighteous mammon. There's not a nickel of it that is ever going to go into Heaven. When we die, we can't take any of it with us. It's the oil that lubricates the desires of natural man. It's unrighteous mammon. It in itself is not righteous. But you are given charge of this. As born again believers we're not paupers. We have land, perhaps. We have property. We have a job, in which we receive our salary. We are given charge of this. And we're not to despise it. We're not to be careless with it. We have got a job to do with it.
Now what job is that? Verse 9: "I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon." Well, what kind of friends? You mean I'm just to enlarge my circle of acquaintances? I'm to make sure that more people know me? Is that what's in view? No. Notice the last phrase: "so that when it fails." And of course it will fail when we die. There's not a penny that we can take with us. When it has served its purpose, and we go to Heaven to live with Christ, "they" (Who are they? These friends that we've made with unrighteous mammon) "they may receive you into the eternal habitations."
This means that those friends that God particularly has in view are those who have become born again. In other words, God effectively is saying, you are the custodian of property, of a salary, of the energy to make money. Now with this, you are to get on with the task of evangelizing the world. You are to get on with the task of being a witness.
Not everybody is called to be a preacher. Not everybody is called to be an evangelist. Not everybody is called to go from door to door, or to sit behind a microphone, or whatever. But we all are called upon to evangelize the world. And so whatever means that we have, whatever property that we have, we are to lay down on the altar of service and use it to the highest degree possible, with the greatest efficiency possible, that others might know about the Lord .Jesus Christ. In this way we are making friends. In this way we are being the wisest possible stewards of the unrighteous mammon God has entrusted to us.
And if we do this, if we make our property available to causes that do bring the Gospel as efficiently as possible, then when we go to Heaven, we're going to be greeted by those in Heaven who are going to tell us, "You know, I have become born again believer because you were willing to lay your property on the altar. You were willing to make it available. And so the Gospel came to me, and God saved me. And now I am here." And this is really the message.
You know, it's interesting, as you go through the Bible, that again and gain there are two major themes. Oh, there are many themes. But there are two major themes. One is the theme of salvation, the fact that we must be born gain. And this of course is set in the light of God's justice and God's judgment and the wrath of God, and the fact that we can know the love of God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and so on and so on. And that theme is found in every book of he Bible, whether we're reading in Genesis or whether we're reading in the Book of Kings, or in Ezekiel, or in John, or Revelation. We're going to find that theme of salvation.
But the other thing I find again and again in the Bible is another theme. And that is that once we have become born again, particularly in the New Testament, because this became effective with Pentecost, we have a task to evangelize the world. Again and again this comes through, that we are to evangelize the world. We're to be as available as possible, with our talents, if we have talent to speak, or whatever, with our property, with our means, and so on, so that this task might be done. That is the glorious privilege, that's the glorious heritage of the born again believer, to complete the sufferings of Christ. Christ came to preach the Gospel, and He suffered as He brought the Gospel. And the Bible teaches that we complete His sufferings. And we do this as we lay down our lives on the altar of service and bring the Gospel.