Ye cannot serve God and mammon.' And v.14 tells us that this very much offended the Pharisees who heard this, because they were covetous. In v.13 He said, 'No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. In fact, what He mentioned at the end of the parable confirms that He was discouraging His disciples from following the covetous attitude of the steward.
It is important to understand that our Lord was not commending the steward for his unjust and unethical actions. Now the first thing we need to understand is that Christ is in no way excusing or endorsing such practices by using them in this parable. These practices have all been going on since time immemorial, and will probably keep going on as long as there is greed and sin in this world.
Some are able to find legal loopholes to get what they want. Some people who do these are caught by the law and prosecuted, but many get away with them. Today, we may hear of similar cases of managers involved in dishonest dealing, unethical practices, kickbacks, and under-the-table favours. The manager realizes that his days of work in the office are numbered, and so he schemes a way to guarantee himself a good and comfortable future - by cheating his boss. All of a sudden the boss gets wind of his mismanagement of funds, and calls for an auditing of the books. He apparently used the money freely for his own pleasure and expenses. The parable itself reads like a typical situation in the business world: A manager in a business firm was mismanaging his company's funds. The Business Setting of the Parable (vv.1-7) Of the over 40 parables that Jesus told, at least three of them deal with stewardship.
This morning we are going to look at a parable on the subject of stewardship - a term which means the management the things we have. Preached at / Published Life BPC 10.30 am service,
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