[Note: This is the prepared text for a sermonette given to the Portland, Oregon congregation of the United Church of God on Sabbath, July 4, 2026.
Good morning brethren. Today in my sermonette I would like to focus on a single passage of the Gospels, one of the most troubling parables of our Lord Jesus Christ. Few of the Lord’s parables have troubled commentators as persistently as the account of the dishonest manager. The discomfort is understandable. Here a man caught wasting his employer’s property responds to dismissal not with repentance but with a fresh round of self-dealing, and his master commends him for it. To grasp why Jesus Christ would hold up such a figure as an example, we must first understand the world of estate management and commodity debt in which the story unfolds, and then weigh carefully the cluster of lessons He draws from it. This passage serves as a striking example of a difficult scripture that is difficult not for what it says but for what it means.
Let us turn to our scripture for today, Luke 16:1-15. Luke 16:1-15 reads: “He also said to His disciples: “There was 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. “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what 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 loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
The Parable in Its Setting
Let’s examine this parable in its context. A rich man employs a steward, an oikonomos, to administer his holdings. Charges reach the master that this steward is squandering the estate, and he is summoned to render his accounts before being released from his post. The man pauses to reckon his prospects. He is too soft for digging and too proud to beg. So he devises a plan that will earn him welcome in other households once his keys are surrendered.
He calls in his master’s debtors one by one. To the man owing a hundred measures of oil he says, take your bond and write fifty. To the one owing a hundred measures of wheat he says, write eighty. Then the master commends the dishonest steward for acting prudently. The commendation does not endorse the man’s prior waste; it acknowledges the foresight with which he secured his future when the ground was collapsing beneath him.
The Nature of the Commodity Contracts
The transactions at the heart of this parable are not casual IOUs but formal commodity obligations, and their character explains a great deal. The quantities are enormous. A hundred batous of olive oil approaches nine hundred gallons, the yield of a sizable grove; a hundred korous of wheat represents perhaps a thousand bushels, the harvest of many acres. These were commercial debts secured by written bonds, often penned in the debtor’s own hand, recording an obligation in kind rather than in coin.
Such bonds frequently bundled more than the bare value of the goods. A steward acting on his master’s behalf customarily folded in a markup, and in an agrarian economy where the Torah forbade lending at interest to a fellow Israelite, that prohibition was often evaded by stating the debt in inflated commodity terms. A man who received fifty measures of oil might sign for a hundred, the surplus functioning as disguised interest or as the steward’s own commission. Read against this practice, the steward’s reductions become intelligible. He is not simply giving away his master’s property; he is likely striking out the concealed interest and his own profit margin, leaving the genuine principal intact. The debtors gain real relief, the master appears generous and pious before the community, and the master cannot reverse the gesture without publicly confessing that he had charged usury in the first place. The steward has bought goodwill with money that was, at best, of questionable title, and he has done so with a craftsman’s eye for what the moment required.
The Complexity of the Four Lessons
What makes this passage demanding is that Jesus Christ does not attach a single tidy moral. He attaches at least four, and they pull in directions that require thought to reconcile.
The first lesson observes that the sons of this age are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. Worldly people apply intelligence, planning, and urgency to securing their temporal interests, while those who profess eternal hope often drift along passively. From this the Lord presses an exhortation: make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, you may be received into eternal dwellings. The instruction is not to imitate the steward’s dishonesty but to imitate his foresight, deploying the perishable resources now in our hands toward ends that outlast them. Mammon will fail; the wise use it before it does.
The second lesson turns from shrewdness to fidelity. One who is faithful in very little is faithful also in much, and one who is dishonest in very little is dishonest in much. Material wealth is the small thing, the testing ground; if a person cannot be trusted with unrighteous mammon, who will entrust him with true riches? And if he is unfaithful with what belongs to another, who will give him what is his own? Here the steward functions as a warning rather than a model, for his unfaithfulness with another man’s property is precisely what disqualified him.
The third lesson states the impossibility of divided allegiance. No servant can serve two masters; he will love one and hate the other. You cannot serve God and money. The two preceding lessons each concerned the right handling of wealth, and now the Lord names the hazard directly. Wealth is a tool to be wielded or a master to be obeyed, and it cannot be both at once.
The fourth lesson emerges from the confrontation that follows, where Jesus Christ exposes the difference between human esteem and divine judgment. What is exalted among men is an abomination before God. The very thing the world honors, the accumulation and display of wealth as a mark of worth, God regards with revulsion when it has become an idol. The four lessons thus move outward in widening circles: from prudence, to faithfulness, to the singleness of allegiance God requires, to the chasm between what men prize and what God sees.
The Response of the Pharisees
The Pharisees, whom Luke describes as lovers of money, heard all this and ridiculed Him. Their derision is itself instructive. They had constructed a theology in which prosperity served as evidence of righteousness, and a teaching that set God and mammon in irreconcilable opposition struck at the foundation of their self-regard. The Lord’s reply cuts past their scorn to its root: you justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. They had perfected the art of appearing righteous while loving the very thing that competed with God for their devotion. The disguised usury behind the steward’s bonds and the disguised covetousness behind the Pharisees’ piety belong to the same family of concealment, and both stand naked before the God who reads hearts.
Lessons for Us
We are not exempt from this examination. The steward teaches us to act now, with foresight and urgency, sending ahead through generosity and faithful stewardship what we cannot keep. Fidelity in small material matters is the proving ground for greater trust, and dishonesty in little betrays a heart that will be dishonest in much. Most searchingly, we are forced to ask which master we actually serve, for the answer is rarely the one we would profess aloud. The Pharisees laughed because they assumed the question did not apply to them. The danger for us is the same comfortable assumption. The God who saw past their self-justification sees past ours, and He asks not what we esteem, but what He esteems, and whether our use of perishable wealth is quietly purchasing eternal welcome or quietly purchasing a master we were never meant to serve.
