The Riches of the Kingdom Are Now Yours :: Luke 16:1-13

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Please open your service book to page 321 and join me in confessing our faithful doctrine on the Seventh Commandment. 

What is the Seventh Commandment? You shall not steal. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbor’s money or possessions, or get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income. 


Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

5.

The text for our meditation today comes from our Gospel reading in Luke. 

I will confess right away, this is a challenging text. It raises challenging questions. If answered incorrectly, many people could be left wondering whether Jesus actually told this parable. They wonder because it seems to be so out of character for our Lord. Listen again to how the Lord handled the unrighteous manager: He praised him for being shrewd, for using his master’s money or possessions for his own earthly gain. Then Jesus said, if only we’d be so wise.

When the Roman Emperor Julian, in his apostasy, heard this he concluded that this was a reason not to believe in Jesus. Jesus must be a mere man and hardly a worthy man, Julian is quoted as saying. … I wonder how many people Julian fed to the lions for stealing. Like Julian ... Many people wonder why Jesus would tell us that an unrighteous man should be praised. 

So let’s hear this parable again. Jesus said to his disciples: There was a rich man who had a manager and this man was reported to be wasting his possessions. And when the Lord called the man to himself, he said to him: What is this I hear concerning you? Give the account of your management, for you are no longer able to be manager. And the manager said to himself: What will I do because my Lord is taking the management from me? I’m not strong enough to dig. And I’m ashamed to beg. I know what I will do in order that when I am removed from management [people] will receive me into their homes (vv 1-3). 

Having called each one of his master’s debtors, he began saying to the first, How much do you owe my Lord? [And the man] said, one hundred measures of oil. [So the unrighteous manager] cut the debt in half. Then for the guy who owed one hundred measures of wheat, he cut to eighty (v 6-7). [When the Lord heard this, he] praised the unrighteous manager for this practical wisdom (v 8). 

That can’t be right. Can it? 

4.

Indeed, it is! There is a lot of wisdom in this text. Recognize that the unrighteous steward had no wishful thinking about what would happen. He wasn’t hoping against all hope that his good works would outweigh his bad works ... that some so-called scales of justice would work in his favor. He didn’t pretend to think that he had no sin. Instead, he had faith in his Lord.

What about you? 

The worldly man thinks of himself first. He puts himself first. The religious man on the other hand often becomes casual about his soul. He may say he is concerned about the poor and downtrodden .. the widow and orphan. But be honest for once. Do you, the followers of Christ,  keep in mind eternity, planning for your destiny? Most of us believe in savings accounts, pension plans, annuities, insurance ... forms of preparedness for this world. But how do we prepare for eternity? As Jesus put it, The sons of this age are more prudent in their own generation than the sons of light (v 8). 

3.

If only my followers would do the same, Jesus is telling us. If only we Christians were equally ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of the Gospel that saves ... sharing the riches of Christ crucified with all of our neighbors. If only we were willing to actually confess our sin and believe the Gospel. We should invest in God’s Word and sacraments. Scripture makes it very clear that we will all be called to stand before the throne of God to give an account of our stewardship of the gifts the Lord has given us. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God has no part with sin and unrighteousness. And you won’t be able to boast about your good works. God has declared that the wages of sin and unrighteousness is death. Period.

And like the unrighteous steward, we won’t know when our hour of judgment will come. It will come like a thief in the night (Mt 24:43) ... So we need to be ready for it. Too many people … who call Christ Lord … live as if this will never happen. Too many people never share the riches of Christ, his Gospel. They don’t share what Jesus has done for you and continues to do for you. They don’t share the promises of salvation. They don’t share the forgiveness of sins. 

If only we would learn like Mary and Martha to face the one thing needful (Lk 10:42) ... hearing God’s Word ... with realism and swiftness like the unrighteous  steward …only with an eye on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. As Jesus said, If you have not become faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will have faith in what is true? And if you do not become faithful in what is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? (vv 11-12).

2.

So repent every one of you in the name of Jesus. That means, take account of your own sin in your own life ... your unrighteousness. Listen to the law like that from our epistle from Corinthians. We must not be idolaters, putting ourselves first. We must not indulge in sexual immorality ... We must not put Christ to the test (1 Cor 10:7-10). 

And most importantly, believe the Gospel which gives you saving faith. Have confidence in the Word and sacraments of your Lord, who is faithful and just and will cleanse you of all unrighteousness ... not because of what you say ... not because of how you say it ... but precisely because of what Christ has done on your behalf ... dying and rising and ascending. 

He is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah! 

THE RIGHTEOUS STEWARD, OUR LORD JESUS, HAS FORGIVEN ALL OF OUR DEBT

1.

This is where Christ was leading us with his parable. 

Our money can’t buy our redemption. But the riches of God does. Our money won’t get us off the hook for our sin and unrighteousness. But the riches of God do. Our mammon won’t help us reduce the debt we owe to our Lord for our sin and iniquity. But the riches of God ... the precious blood of Christ crucified ... not only reduce it, but eliminate it, setting us free. 

Thanks be to God … Jesus is our Lord, and he has set us free by living and dying and rising, uniting us with his Word and Sacraments. 

Jesus doesn’t just pay half your debt with his means …he has paid it all … for you. 

Our Lord Jesus ... God in the flesh ... was born for this reason. He lived the righteous life ... one without sin for you and thus, he fulfilled all the scriptures. He carried your sin in his body to the cursed tree ... a cross on Golgotha ... and he ensured that your curse died with him. By giving his body and shedding his blood, Jesus has redeemed you ... the unrighteous. He has purchased and won you from all your unrighteousness ... your sin and iniquity, which is immorality. Because he has united himself with you and was raised from the dead for your justification, he has set you free from death, and the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with his holy precious blood and his innocent suffering and death, that we may be his own. 

The one who is faithful in this one thing will be faith in much (v 10). This is what Jesus is showing us today. 

Whereas the unrighteous steward thought that his favors would go a long way to make life on earth more pleasurable, you can have confidence that your righteous steward ... our Lord Jesus has laid up for you a treasure of incomparable riches in paradise … from him flow the font of living water. Through baptism, you now enjoy all the fruit of faith ... that is, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, and self-control. Your righteous Lord washes you clean in baptism, preaches a word of absolution to all who sin, and he nourishes and nurtures your faith in Christ through the Lord’s Supper, the first fruit of redemption. 

We can’t take our mammon ... that is the things of this life ... with us into eternity. But when we can use it to serve the world around us. We can use it to give witness to our faith ... faith that God forgives us on account of Christ, who gives us his body and blood in the sacrament for the forgiveness of sins. 

Like David said in his prayer to our Father ... With the merciful God shows himself merciful; with the blameless man he shows himself blameless; with the purified he deals purely, and with the crooked he makes himself seem tortuous. He saves a humble people ... those who recognize their unrighteousness and have faith in the riches of the kingdom (2 Sam 22:26-28) ... in Jesus’ name.


Now may the Lord of peace grant you peace at all times in every way.

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