Fire On Your Head

“The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. (Luke 16:8-9, ESV)

I’ve been mystified and intrigued by this particular account in Scripture which always seemed at first glance to reward or at least commend the dishonest behavior on the part of the manager spoken of in the parable this passage comes from. Numerous commentaries I’ve consulted over the years–or just plain people I’ve asked their opinion on this–have all had conflicting and contradicting opinions.

As a manager who stewarded all the belongings of his master, this man implicitly would have had the power of attorney for his boss in being authorized to cancel debts owed to his master, and carry on the affairs in his name. It is impossible to not notice some Biblical principles that are laid out here in the concept of stewardship.

Jesus the Son said that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him (Matthew 28:17-19) by God the Father, and Christ has given the believing Christian His authority (Luke 10:18-20, Mark 16:15-20, 2 Peter 1:3-4), by filling us with the indwelling presence of His nature, His own Spirit–Who is no less God than the Father or God the Son are. We represent The Master to the world. His servants are enabled to carry out His will so that it may be done on earth as it is in heaven. We know from other similar parables Jesus taught, that all of us in the kingdom of God have been entrusted with talents that we’re going to have to give an account for (Matt 25:14-30, Luke 19:12-28). The manager in this parable is a servant, who after a likely significant amount of time, got fired after being found out for his dishonesty with the master’s assets. Specific details are lacking from the text, but that is the jist we’re given.

It’s the opinion of this writer, that the man probably had been doing this for a long time, perhaps his whole adult life and had no other backup job he could go do at his age. In the culture of his time, if you weren’t practically born into the laborious workforce, you weren’t physically up to the job because you’d not have been using your muscles to chop down trees or construct large edifices–hence his pondering ‘I’m not strong enough to dig‘ (verse 3)–indicates he probably had been doing something like stewardship and accounting for a significant amount of time prior. His physical body had only known the work of pushing pencils. Subsequently, after being the go-to person many of his master’s debtors would go to regarding their debts, he would naturally be ashamed to be seen begging on the street as well.

It should be noted, that although the details are mentioned briefly as to two of the people who he spoke to here, it might sometimes slip our notice that verse 5 says he summoned all of the master’s debtors one by one. The total debt he wiped clean from all of the master’s debtors totaled the equivalent of a year and a half’s worth of pay. He used his power of attorney–power of being able to represent and speak on behalf of the master as though he were the master himself regarding matters of money (interestingly enough, in the Spanish Bible, it says that the servant asked the first person “how much do you owe me“). He used his authority not only to shrink those peoples’ accounts significantly and cancel some of their debts, but to garner himself favor with each of them, and this is what the master was commending–not the dishonest and shrewd act itself, but the foresight this servant was operating with.

Make Friends For Yourselves By Unrighteous Wealth

‘I say unto you‘ usually indicates Jesus is speaking to the listeners. He’s making a point specifically, and so since He’s telling us something directly, it’s best to listen and understand! Therefore, as odd as this particular verse seems, it can’t be ignored, but the context we’ve just been exploring sheds light on it.

All of mankind is indebted to The Master. For all intents and purposes, none of us are able to approach God the Father except we be forgiven of our sins by Him, which is what Christ’s work on the cross was intended to do–and did accomplish–but only for those who choose to receive it and accept it. Because God has chosen to use fallen, but redeemed members of mankind in order to accomplish His purposes in the earth, we are then like the servant in this parable in that we are wretched and dishonest at heart until our prior debt to Christ has been canceled through faith in Christ coupled with repentance. Once we are born again into the kingdom of God, we’re then His servants, and His ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20) in this world, carrying out His will on the earth. It is in this regard the parable is speaking to the disciples and followers, bearing in mind His audience was both his disciples and the pharisees who were listening (verses 1, 14).

God wouldn’t tell us the children of darkness are wiser than us, without going into detail as to how we can be wiser than they. Verses 8-9 of this chapter contain the application that is being set forth throughout the story shared in the verses prior to it. Jesus gave parables so that He could put something into our spirits to have a spiritual application made understandable to our mental faculties, in order to penetrate our spirits with it. Therefore this phrase or verse is like the punchline, or the point He has been making with this illustration.

How are the children of this world wiser than the children of the kingdom of God?

This man had tremendous foresight, and knew to do something with the ‘power of attorney’ he had to cancel significant portions of peoples’ debts, in order that when he no longer was this Master’s servant, he would have many people who might receive him into their homes when he needed somewhere to go, because they were now indebted to him, the manager, with gratitude for what he had done for them. Jesus called this manager wise, because he used this power he was given–to serve and prepare for his final end. Jesus is teaching here, that the world is better at thinking long term for their lives in terms of unrighteous wealth in just this earthly temporary realm, than we are about eternal righteous power in money. When I look at how Hollywood can make $200 million dollar budget movies just for us to be entertained by, but churches using bake-offs and garage sales to fund the spreading of the Gospel, I tend to agree.

However, Jesus said all that in the parable about the natural, in order to make His point in the spiritual. He is saying to make friends to ourselves using not specifically the money itself, but the power that it’s in it. The persons in this parable all had debts they owed, and one way this servant made friends to himself, was using what they needed–freedom [from their debts]–and made them ingratiated towards himself. Jesus is telling us to do the same thing.

Steve, this sounds like name it and claim it, blab it and grab it to me. I’m surprised you of all people would take any time to post something like this or imply that’s what a Scripture is teaching.

You would be right about how this sounds…until you read the phrase “so that when it fails” or depending on the translation “when you fail, they may receive you into eternal dwellings” (KJV). Most prosperity and faith teachers I’ve heard of don’t have the word ‘fail’ in their vocabulary, so hear me about where I’m going with this:

God would represent the master, and the servant, as–already stated–would be us. Unbelievers–the sons of the world–are indebted to the Father and as His ambassadors, we represent Him and mete out his judgments and authority, and cancel peoples’ debts with His name as we proclaim the Gospel and sinners get saved. When we proclaim liberty to the captives. When we lay our hands on the sick and set them free, using the power of the Master that is in us, to see them healed. When we cast devils out of people and set them free. To them who have been forgiven much, they also love much (Luke 7:47) The slave, and debtors in this parable, are those of us bound by sin and held captive by the afflictions the Master has given the Christian believer authority to set people free of.

When we carry out this authority, and proclaim the Gospel to people and they get saved; or when we do some amazing act of generosity towards someone in a manner that they could never repay us for such as giving to the poor, and the light of God in us shines through in a way that makes an impact on them so as to remove their blinders that they would be open to receiving Christ; or when we lay hands on them or a loved one and see them healed of terminal disease–all these examples leading to them having an encounter with the living God and putting their trust in Him, and being set free from their debts owed but paid for on the cross of Christ at Calvary–these pave the way for them to one day receive us into the eternally heavenly dwelling when we too get there.

How are you impacting people?

Therefore, we’re given a mandate for the proper way of using the power that’s in money, for eternal purposes. One day, all of heaven and earth will have passed away, and there will be no more currency being exchange between men. There will be no more buying and selling, indebtedness or borrowing. No more stock market crashes and fluctuating commodity prices. Those who will have gone on to eternal life will be there and those who didn’t accept Christ and put their trust in Him, eternal damnation. And when our earthly bodies have passed away, and all the elements of this natural realm have been dissolved and nothing remains but the eternal, we will be ready to enter the eternal dwellings. Those that you’ve had an impact on, using the proper use of money and the power in it, will have people there waiting for you when you get there, to thank you for having led them to Christ or seen them set free from their unforgivable debts towards Him. It is these people who are ‘they’ who are going to receive you into eternal dwellings.

In closing, let me challenge you with your eyes towards eternity: how are you using your money, resources, and your gifts, calling and talents to store up treasures for yourselves in eternity? Will there be people to receive you into the eternal dwellings for the impact you’ve helped have in getting them there? Will there be people in eternity who will thank you not necessarily because you led them to Christ, but because you wisely stewarded into places, people, ministries and causes who did in ways you weren’t able to yourself?

If so, you are just as much a part of that, by using and stewarding the power of money, your resources, and your talents and enablings God’s endowed you with for the use of the Gospel in evangelism or other manners–in appropriate kingdom ways–for the glory of eternal God.

“I brought you into the fruitful land to eat its fruit and its good things. But you came and defiled My land, and My inheritance you made an abomination. The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ And those who handle the law did not know Me…” -Jer. 2.7-8a

The situation with Judah in Jeremiah’s day was desperately grim. The once holy functions of the temple had been tainted with hypocrisy and idolatry, and the leaders of the nation, along with the nation itself, had been lulled to sleep by the spell of sinful pleasures. Jeremiah was one of a small remnant of souls who still valued the word of the Lord, but even though the Spirit of God was resting profoundly upon him, and even though he had been praying and prophesying with clear statements from heaven, his words were not being heeded by the priests, the prophets, or the rulers of Judah. The nation’s response to his life and ministry is here summed up by Dr. Michael Brown:

…. despite forty years of incessant prophetic ministry by Jeremiah and clear indications that his words would be fulfilled- his people remained deaf to his warnings, suffering crushing defeat and exile.

(From his forthcoming commentary on the book of Jeremiah; Zondervan Publishing)

Verses 7 and 8 of Jeremiah 2 are a picture of the dramatic contrast between the fickleness of Judah’s leaders, and the unwavering faithfulness of the Lord. We see here a remarkable view of His kind intentions toward His people, and His plan to bring them “into the fruitful land to eat its fruit and its good things.” It becomes obvious that His desire is to bless them with a revelation of Himself, to crown them with lovingkindness and mercy, and to set them apart as His own Beloved people, a “light unto the nations.”

Tragically, as is elsewhere found in her history, Israel fell totally short of the Lord’s glorious intentions, and the downward spiritual spiral was so steep that the land, its leadership, and the nation itself was shot through with idolatry, presumption, indifference, and deception.

The priests had become so numb and accustomed to apostasy that they weren’t keen-hearted enough to ask, “Where is the Lord?” The glory of God had departed from the temple, but they were no longer jealous for His honor, no longer hungry to know Him in a vital way, no longer eager to come into that which He had desired for their lives or for their nation.

Instead, they had found a dubious niche in a man-centered view of life, a self-serving paradigm, and the Lord of Creation was not a part of their concocted plan. Yahweh was grieved beyond measure, and so was His prophet Jeremiah. Hear Walter Brueggeman regarding the condition of Judah in that day:

No healing is possible. The sickness is too deep. The idolatry is too pervasive. Judah refuses the medicine that is available. The poet (and God) are pressed by this awareness to a new wave of grief.

…. The hurt in the face of Judah’s death requires and evokes more grief, more crying, and more tears than his [Jeremiah's] body is capable of transmitting.

(A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile & Homecoming, Walter Brueggeman; Eerdmans Publishing, 1998; p. 94)

“Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (9.1)

The prophet Jeremiah, and Yahweh all the more, had been shattered with sorrow over the condition of Judah. The Lord had lavishly offered the blessing of Himself, and His people- unwilling to rightly value His ways- had fallen headlong into sin, and made His inheritance into an “abomination.”

How is it that an inheritance, something which God Himself has initiated and given, could be distorted to the extent that it becomes an abomination? How can land that He has made holy and given so freely become a defiled land, if He Himself is the Author of that covenantal gift? True to His word, He will keep His promises with Israel, and all that He has intended for them will be fulfilled once and for all. But the tragic reality is that in Jeremiah’s day, the vast majority of those who had heard His name and been touched by His promises allowed the power of sin to snuff out the presence and word of the One who had given Himself to them so momentously.

“Yahwism,” as the scholars call the faith of Israel’s patriarchs and prophets, required an ultimate consecration of the heart and life to Yahweh. He had revealed Himself to Israel as the One true God, and He required an allegiance of the utmost kind. Any measure of affection given to other gods was an abomination in His eyes. “Yahwism” became too much for a people who desired to cling to their sin, and the events leading up to Judah’s judgment and exile are filled with backslidings, the hardening of hearts, and a turning away from the reality of worship. O.T. scholar Adam C. Welch had these remarkable thoughts to add to the picture, suggesting that “Israel trades gods because this One is too demanding”:

…. Israel forsook Yahweh, because the relation to Him was full of ethical content…. Yahwism had this iron core in it. The iron core was that Israel could only have Yahweh on His own terms…. Yahwism was no colorless faith which was simply the expression of the people’s pride in itself and its destiny. It laid a curb on men, it had a yoke and bonds. The bonds were those of love, but love’s bonds are the most enduring and the most exacting.

(Jeremiah: His Time and His Word; Adam C. Welch, Oxford: Blackwell, 1951; p. 183, as quoted in Brueggeman’s Jeremiah)

The history of Israel is marked with awesome demonstrations of the nature and power of God, but in Jeremiah’s day, they had set aside the revelation of the Lord to follow after gods of wood and stone. The prophet was a lonely, weeping figure, calling them back to Yahweh, back to holy ethics, and back to the primacy of whole-hearted worship. Catastrophically, they rejected Jeremiah and his message, and by doing that, rejected God Himself.

This is the horrific result of what becomes of a people who are being led by priests and rulers that handle the law, but do not know the Lord. To know the Lord is to be overcome with His kindness and mercy. To know the Lord is to bask in His ways and to relish in the place of prayer. To know the Lord is to tremble delightfully at His word, and to despise that which grieves His heart. To know the Lord is to desire the setting forth of His Son in the darkest places of the world. To know the Lord is to long for justice to “roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Am. 5.24)

I am afraid we are facing the same grave conditions in the Church of modern America that Judah was facing in Jeremiah’s day. We have swept aside the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles and replaced it with a message that is less requiring, less demanding, and altogether inglorious. Our congregations are often made up of souls who are not willing to “have Yahweh on His own terms.” We want to have a packaged religion, one that we can control, that will never surprise us, and that is devoid of the element of inward consecration. The glory of God has departed from the temple, and scarce few are discerning or truthful enough to ask, “Where is the Lord?” We have grown content with something so far beneath the glory of His intentions that we hardly know how to hunger after Him.

So many of our pastors have lost a value for the Scriptures, and are relying on all kinds of methods and novel ideas to enlarge their congregations. The “iron core” of “Yahwism,” which is whole-hearted worship and obedience, and the clarion call to righteousness and selfless love can be seen on precious few occasions. Idolatry is mingled throughout the Body, with saints gawking at American Idol, chasing after greater and more pricy possessions in entertainment and fashion, and our bellies are our gods. Fasting is a rare phenomenon in most places, and buffets are hit the hardest on Sunday afternoons. We know very little about self-control, and it raises a question as to how deeply we have really been immersed in the Holy Spirit. The nation is perishing under the weight of sin and rebellion, and we are often paying its way, having bought in to the consumeristic lie.

The word of Jeremiah is the same to the American Church as it was to Judah:

“Be appalled, O heavens, at this, and shudder, be very desolate,” declares the Lord. “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (2.12-13)

I am convinced that we have hewn up broken cisterns for ourselves. We have settled for a few hours of religion a week, while the abiding life of Christ is neglected in the realm of real life. We get an emotional lift in a church meeting and think we are doing God a service, but we have shirked off the true call of the cross, which Jesus said His disciples would take up daily. Our compartmentalized Christianity- this pathetically broken cistern- does not hold Living Water, and the lives of the saints show it. We need to break loose from the bonds of this age, shut down the distracting forces and all that robs our affections from Him. We need to return with all of our hearts to the Lord, the Fountain of Life.

We need desperately to enjoin our hearts with the prophet’s cry before it is too late for our nation. If the Church doesn’t come into the reality of faith, truth, and consecration, our witness and testimony will become a mere religious opinion; a diluted, powerless consideration, rather than an apostolic Gospel that, when proclaimed, will cause men to turn “from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.” (1 Thess. 1.9-10)

Can we break off the mingling of our hearts with the lies of this age, and plunge headlong into the Fountain of Living waters? Can we shatter the broken cisterns of compromise and timidity, and allow the Lord to make us into vessels of the abiding Life? Can we cease religious performance and twice-a-week emotionally based Christianity, and take up our crosses daily, following the Lamb wheresoever He goes? O, for a total consecration of our hearts to Him! O, for love that springs always from the Fountain of Life! O, for holiness that burns brightly in this crooked and perverse generation. O, for God to be glorified in His Church, and an apostolic witness to “turn the world upside down” again!