Luke 16

Some people in this world have some sense of how to get along. This does not make them godly. They just know how some things work, and especially they may know how to please the right kind of people who can do good things for them. This type of skill can only take a person so far, since there is a God who rules over the affairs of men, and He has a way of working out His will. Nonetheless, there is something that normally is at least internally consistent between the philosophy of worldlings and their actions. Jesus tells a parable about such a reliable worldling in order to teach us a surprising lesson about how we ought to live; that we need to live in a way that is consistent with what we believe about this life and the next.

The story is about a dishonest manager who gets fired. Before he turns back the keys of the operation to the owner, he uses the last moments of his employment in order to position himself well in the life beyond his job. He does this by more cheating. He helps other people cheat his master. In helping them to dishonestly lower their bills, he makes friends with these people, so that when he leaves the employment of his master, he will have friends in his new life.

Many of Jesus’ parables have at least one big surprise. In this one, the surprise is that the master commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. The master could see that what the manager did made some good internal sense. God is not in favor of cheating. He is in favor of his people, the sons of light, making decisions now that will help them in the life to come. The time we have here is very short. We need to make decisions that will be in our interest according to what God has revealed about this coming life. Therefore, we should use our money now for the progress of the kingdom to come, and those who are helped into that kingdom who may go on ahead before us will see us as their friends and will welcome us into our eternal dwellings.

If we use our possessions now for our blessing in the life to come, we are not only acting with good heavenly self-interest, we are also doing what God, the Lord of heaven, wants us to do. This is called faithfulness, and God calls us to this way of life. If we try to cheat God, we are making a big mistake. He entrusts us with things now that are comparatively small, but if we will be faithful in these things, he will grant more lasting riches to us in the life that is quickly coming. We cannot serve God and money. Someone who claims to love God and heaven should live in such a way that shows some regard for his own heavenly estate.

In addition to all of their other problems, the Pharisees were lovers of money, and when they heard these parables they made fun of Jesus. They flattered themselves as being more righteous and intelligent than the Son of God, but the Lord God Almighty knew their hearts. Meanwhile, others who may have seemed morally suspect to the Pharisees were pushing their way into the Kingdom of God ahead of them through Jesus Christ. They would be judged as keepers of the Law of God through the obedience of Christ, while these well-studied Pharisees could not yet embrace the truth about eternity. They were married to their own faulty understanding of the Law, and they did not see that the Law itself would face something of a death in the death of Christ, because of His fulfillment of the Law and His death for our sins. They missed the truth about marriage to the Messiah, because they were married to their own self-righteousness.

To miss the Messiah is a very serious omission. It is the Messiah who secures us a place in His presence, in heavenly realms, a place where the great patriarch Abraham dwells. Despite his wretched existence on earth, a very poor man named Lazarus died and was carried off by angels to that great place. A rich man who seemed not to notice this Lazarus at all when he was begging at his gate also faced death, but he was in a place of regret, a very uncomfortable place from which he could see not only Abraham, but even Lazarus in the land of eternal life.

There was nothing to be done after death to change the divide between these two men. One had prospered on earth, but now he was in anguish. The other faced horrible poverty and need on earth, but now he was abundantly supplied. Nothing could be done for that rich man, and there would be no messengers sent to his brothers who were perhaps heading toward the same place of torment. They needed to listen to the truth from the Scriptures. Even a man coming back from the dead would simply be rejected by those who refuse to listen to Moses and the prophets.

Moses and the prophets have a message about the life to come. They show us that our place in the life of eternal blessedness can only come from the one who was rich in heavenly treasures and then came to earth for our sake. He faced the greatest poverty known to man in his death on the cross, dying the death reserved for the most despised criminals. He faced the eternal anguish that we deserved for our sins, so that we could live the life of heavenly abundance. It is not a normal thing for any man to make a choice like that. This is what Jesus did for us, and He did it as a man who knew what made the most sense in light of His perfect understanding of heavenly realms. Though what He did might cause Him to be thought a fool by many of the wise and powerful on earth, those who find a place with Abraham in heaven know that His name shall be exalted in heaven forever and ever as the King of kings and Lord of lords.