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The Gospel of Luke Chapter Sixteen
Commentary by Timothy H. Burdick
In the first eight verses of this
chapter, Jesus has a lot to say about stewardship in the
form of a story. It is noteworthy He lets us know that this
story is for the benefit of His disciples, and not for the
crowd at large. As you read these verses, ask yourself: What
is Jesus saying to me as a disciple today?
He spoke to His disciples about “a
certain rich man who had a steward and an accusation was
brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. So he
called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you?
Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer
be steward.’ Then the steward said within himself, ‘What
shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away
from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. I have resolved
what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they
may receive me into their houses.’ So he called every one of
his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How
much do you owe my master?’ and he said, ‘A hundred measures
of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down
quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how
much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’
And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ So
the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt
shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in
their generation than the sons of light.”
First of all, we see the wicked
manager being confronted by the owner. Thinking about this
from a spiritual perspective, do we listen and confess our
sin when we are confronted by God’s Spirit? Or do we
rationalize God’s observations away, as we see the steward
doing? We are all God’s stewards. The question is, and will
we be faithful to Him or not. You might be asking yourself
right about now, “If the wicked manager was unfaithful, then
why did the owner commend him.”
Even though the steward had done
wrong, he was praised for his shrewdness. See what Solomon
has to say about this subject in Proverbs 8:5. “O you simple
ones, understand prudence; and, you fools, be of an
understanding heart.” Then look at what Jesus has to say in
Luke 16:9 – “And I say unto you, make friends for yourselves
by unrighteous mammon; that, when you fall, they may receive
you into everlasting habitations.” Do you use your money
(that is part of a fallen world system) to show people how
they can become friends with God? Become friends with a
hurting person and let God’s love spill over to them. To our
shame, many times the children of this world or people who
only have hope in this life, act in a wiser way than we
Christians do. Many non-Christians are thought highly of by
others because they are philanthropists and give generously
to others.
Jesus is telling us to learn from
others who are around us, but many times when we could learn
the most from others whether they are in the faith or not,
we just look down our noses at them. I would like to give
you an example that may help you see what is meant by this
Scripture. In case you don’t know, I am a person who
has been
blind since birth, and have been told in the past that if I
had enough faith, I would be healed and could see. It is a
shame that many times I have felt more comfortable among
people who do not share my convictions. Jesus is telling
those of us in the church that we in the Body of Christ
don’t have a corner on the market when it comes to having
and appropriating wisdom. Since we serve an almighty God, we
should have wisdom, but James 4:2 says, “Ye lust, and have
not: ye kill and covet, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war;
ye have not, because ye ask not.” True wisdom includes
asking God for help. Going a step further, James 1:5 tells
us how to appropriate God’s wisdom: “If any of you lack
wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and
upbraids not; and it shall be given him.”
Luke 16:10-13, presents a contrast
between faithfulness verses unfaithfulness: "He who is
faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much;
and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is
unrighteous also in much. Therefore if you have not been
faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust
the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in
the use of that which is another's, who will give you that
which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for
either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he
will be devoted to one and despise the other You cannot
serve God and wealth." Reread Verse Ten carefully, asking
yourself what being a faithful servant really means.
In Luke 16:11-12, Jesus
gives two key examples of unfaithfulness. First of all, He
talks about unfaithfulness in the area of money. He shows
how being unfaithful in the use of money is being unfaithful
in the Kingdom. Cross reference this with Matthew 6:19-21,
where it says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on
earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break
in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where
thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also."
Allow me to paraphrase Luke 16:12.
Jesus might be asking you right this minute: How can you be
expecting that promotion when you have been a bad manager?
He is telling us that our day-to-day life has everything to
do with our Christian walk. Too often though, we put our
walk with God into a special, separate compartment. God
wants a practical Christianity where His children are lights
in a dark world. See Matthew 5:14 – "You are the light of
the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden." You are
intended to reflect the “light” of our Lord into the
ordinary circumstances of your life today.
Finally in Luke 16:13, Jesus
challenges us to examine our priorities. Our love for God
and our trust in the Lord needs to shape everything that we
do. When Jesus talks about hating mammon or money, He is
drawing a comparison between the intense love for God that
should take hold of us and our love for the things of this
world. Love for money can become like a drug that consumes
all our interest and attention.
In Luke 16:14-17, we find an example
of Christ’s dealings with the religious party called the
“Pharisees.” Among these Pharisees were many who were lovers
of money, and hearing all these things, they scoffed at Him.
And here is His reply to them: "Now the Pharisees, who were
lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were
scoffing at Him. And He said to them, 'You are those who
justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your
hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is
detestable in the sight of God. The Law and the Prophets
were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of
the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is
forcing his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and
earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the
Law to fail." As we read these words, we look back to verse
14 and find that the Pharisees had been listening to Him,
but they insulted His teaching. The text observes that these
religious leaders were “lovers of money.” It controlled
their thoughts and actions to the extent that their service
to God was cold and lifeless.
Jesus used the Pharisees as an
example when He talked about how they justified themselves
in the sight of God. In fact He observed that this
pretentious attitude was detestable in His Father’s sight.
When Jesus addresses the Pharisees
it has many times seemed to me that most people think that
what He said only applied to the people of 2000 years ago.
But far too often today we PRETEND and simply PLAY at
church. Don’t we spend more of our time trying to please men
rather than God? Ask yourself if you are a lover of money
like these men were. Or is your life spent as a faithful
lover of God? A preoccupation with money is a snare that we
can all fall into if we are not careful. Compare these two
verses, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their
greediness, and pierced themselves through with many
sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:10). Compare that verse in Timothy
with 1 Corinthians 10:13 - "No temptation has overtaken you
but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will
not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but
with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so
that you will be able to endure it."
John the Baptist became a pivotal
figure in history. Jesus said in Luke 16:16 that the Old
Testament era concluded with him. But, what does He mean
when Jesus said in relation to John, “that the violent take
the Kingdom by force” (Matthew 11:12).
I believe that Jesus was using
hyperbole or exaggerated speech. He simply meant that we
need to seize the kingdom of God with a singleness of heart
that leads to an abandonment of everything else in life that
is ungodly by comparison. Cross reference Luke 16:16 with
Revelation 3:15-16, where Jesus addresses the church at
Laodicea - “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor
hot: I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you
are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out
of My mouth.”
You have heard of selective hearing;
we seem to have it the most when it comes to the Word of
God. In Luke 16:17, Jesus is saying that the Word of God is
not like a menu in a restaurant where we can pick and choose
what we want. A lot of people in the church mold God’s Word
into their own image, instead of letting it shape their
thoughts and actions.
Using what He has said about the
Word of God, the Bible, in these verses as a backdrop,
Jesus embarks on a controversial topic in Luke 16:18, namely
divorce. He said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries
another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is
divorced from her husband commits adultery.” The Lord
doesn’t give any exceptions here, so we will have to look
further in order to find them. Read Matthew 19:3-9 "Some
Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, 'Is it
lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?'
And He answered and said, 'Have you not read that He who
created them from the beginning made them male and female,
and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and
mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh?' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What
therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
They said to Him, 'Why then did Moses command to give her a
certificate of divorce and send her Away?' He said to them,
'Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to
divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been
this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife,
except for immorality, and marries another woman commits
adultery.'”
Reading the preceding passages, we
can see that rights for divorce in that culture were slanted
in favor of the man. Women really had no rights at all.
There were two major schools of thought in the days of
Jesus. There was the school of Shami, which held to a
literal acceptance of the Old Testament Scriptures, and then
there was the school of Hillel, which treated a subject like
divorce much like it is treated today. This popular school
told the people what they wanted to hear, saying that man
could put away his wife for almost any reason. The Pharisees
were basing there views about this subject on a
misinterpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1-4; which says, "When a
man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she
finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some
indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce
and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house,
and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's
wife, and if the latter husband turns against her and writes
her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and
sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies
who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who
sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his
wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination
before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land
which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance."
In the popular view of that day, the
Jewish leaders theorized about what “defiled” or “unclean”
really meant. Jesus who took a more literal view, stating
that the Scripture in Deuteronomy referred to sexual
unfaithfulness.
Furthermore, Jesus was a champion of
women’s rights; here elevating women, revealing that a man
could not just leave his wife high and dry for any reason.
Jesus shows us that divorce was not a factor in God’s
original plan for mankind. A man and wife were joined
together as one flesh for life. So Jesus makes it clear that
while in Deuteronomy 24, the man is permitted to give her a
bill of divorce because of his hard heart, this was not
God’s perfect will for the people, then or now.
In Matthew 5:32 Jesus clearly states
that a man cannot just up and leave his wife simply because
he feels like it. Please read this verse with me: ”But I say
to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except
sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever
marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.”
In Mark 10:3-9, Jesus in speaking to
the Pharisees says basically the same thing, so there is
really no need to look at it right now. I would encourage
you, however, to look it up on your own. Mark is another
witness to Jesus’ revolutionary words about divorce and
remarriage. In the various accounts about this subject,
Jesus did not change anything that He or the Old Testament
scriptures said. Rather He enlarges differing points and
makes them more clear.
As to the Church of today, divorce
is still one of the hottest topics out there, and many
people who have gone through it, are plagued with guilt. If
you believe that you have sinned in this area, 1 John 1:9
says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.” Furthermore the Psalmist says that God has
separated our sins as far as the east is from the west. Read
Psalm 103 verse 12 - “As far as thee east is from the west,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” John, who
walked with the Lord in this world for three years and then
served Him for decades after His resurrection, also said
this: “If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our
heart, and knows all things” (1 John 3:29). God does not
like divorce, but if you have divorced and then remarried,
take what you have done to the Lord – He will forgive you.
We also must read Malachi 2:14-16 -
"Yet you say, 'For what reason?' Because the Lord has been a
witness between you and the wife of your youth, against
whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your
companion and your wife by covenant. But not one has done so
who has a remnant of the Spirit And what did that one do
while he was seeking a godly offspring? Take heed then to
your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the
wife of your youth. For I hate divorce," says the Lord, the
God of Israel, "and him who covers his garment with wrong,"
says the Lord of hosts. "So take heed to your spirit, that
you do not deal treacherously." While it says that God hates
divorce, nowhere does it state that God hates the person who
is affected by divorce.
While this is not a treatise on the
subject, I would like to tell you what I believe that Jesus
is saying here. God said this to Hosea concerning
unfaithfulness in Chapter One, Verse Two, "When the Lord
first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, 'Go, take
to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of
harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking
the Lord." Therefore, it would seem to me, since God the
Father talked about unfaithfulness in an allegorical form,
God the son may well have meant that His statements about
divorce has spiritual over tones also. Abuse that is life
threatening to the innocent party would seem to me to fall
into the same category as sexual unfaithfulness. While you
may not agree with me on this, it is clear from what Malachi
has said, the same God who hates divorce, hates abuse.
Jesus encapsulates this Chapter in
Luke when He tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus in
Luke 16:19-31. Please read that section with me – "Now there
was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine
linen, joyously living in splendor every day. And a poor man
named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and
longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from
the rich man's table; besides, even the dogs were coming and
licking his sores. Now the poor man died and was carried
away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also
died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being
in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his
bosom. And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have
mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of
his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in
agony in this flame.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember
that during your life you received your good things, and
likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted
here, and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us
and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish
to come over from here to you will not be able, and that
none may cross over from there to us.' And he said, 'Then I
beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house -
for I have five brothers - in order that he may warn them,
so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let
them hear them.' But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if
someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!' But
he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the
Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises
from the dead.’”
It is interesting that the rich man,
who probably was an important figure, and who according to
the Bible lived a life of luxury, didn’t even have his name
recorded. Lazarus was an unimportant beggar, yet he was
given personal recognition by God. God felt the pain and
humiliation that Lazarus experienced on a daily basis. Not
only was his freedom of mobility gone, as he depended on
someone to lay him at the rich man’s gate, but he also had
to live in a poverty that forced his existence to become
lower than an animal.
The Bible doesn’t say that both died
one right after the other, but what it does say is that the
rich man was buried. It doesn’t record that Lazarus even had
a grave. I don’t think that it is just speculation when I
say that based on the text, he probably couldn’t afford one.
In any case Lazarus was carried into Abraham’s bosom, while
the rich man went to Hades.
Before we go on with the second part
of the story, I just want to let you know that whatever you
are going through God feels your pain like He felt the pain
of Lazarus. And like in the story of Lazarus He is a God of
justification. He will make all things right for you.
Please read this Scripture with me
from Romans 12 19 - “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but
give place to wrath, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine I
will repay, says the Lord.”
In Luke 16:20-26, make note of the
following: 1) there was recognition by the rich man when he
saw Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. This is noteworthy, because
even though he likely saw the man many times, it is probably
the first time that he gave Lazarus the time of day. 2) The
tables had been turned and now the rich man was suffering.
3) We are shown two separate compartments fixed in Hades;
one for those who have trusted in God, and one for those who
have rejected Him. Just as we in the Church Age look
backward to the cross for salvation, the Old Testament
saints looked forward. If you will notice, I didn’t say what
they looked forward to. I don’t think that they knew for
sure what the future would hold. While the Old Testament
saints knew that God had a plan for their salvation, like
their hope for a Messiah, it had not totally been revealed
to them what form that salvation would take. That is why
first Peter 1:10 says, “Concerning which salvation the
prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of
the grace that should come unto you.”
Ephesians 4:8-9 (see also Psalm
68:18) indicates that Christ went down into this “Hades”
after His death on the cross to lead out the Old Testament
saints who had been held until that time. ”When He ascended
on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.”
Matthew 27:52-53 goes on to say,
“And the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints
that had fallen asleep were raised; and coming forth out of
the tombs after His resurrection they entered into the holy
city and appeared to many.” There is only one plan in the
Bible for salvation. Jesus told us about it in John 14-6 -
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the
life; no one comes to the Father but by me.’” Have you
accepted His plan for your life?
Aren’t you glad that God’s plans
don’t depend upon our limited understanding? In this context
read these three Scriptures. Jeremiah 29:13, “And you shall
seek Me, and find Me, when you search for Me with all your
heart.” Isaiah 55:6-8, “Seek you the Lord while He may be
found; call you upon Him while He is near; let the wicked
forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and
let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon
him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For my
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My
ways, says the Lord.” Finally Hebrews 11:6 says, Without
faith it is impossible to please Him; for he that comes to
God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
those who diligently seek after Him.”
A lot of people are like the rich
man and think, that if they don’t get it right in this life,
that they can just try again. If you are one of those, note
that the Bible doesn’t teach that king of thing. There is no
hint of reincarnation; and no coming back from the dead.
Read Hebrews 9:27 - “It is appointed unto men once to die
and after this comes the judgment.”
No matter how you read it, this
Chapter in Luke is all about choices. The Bible makes it
clear that you have a free will and can choose to either
follow God or follow your own desires. Thank you for reading
this commentary - please join me next time for Luke 17.
Friday Study Ministries
The First Church On The Net
www.FridayStudy.org
www.FirstChurchOnTheNet.org
"While
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8)
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