Luke 16 • A Parable, A Story and the Kingdom of God

in Luke chapter 16 the very first verse begins by saying he also said to his disciples so the discussions that are going on here are a continuation of what's been going on but we see here in this first phrase that Jesus is directing this portion specifically to his disciples and that means it's not being directed to the the crowd at large or or anything like that although they may very well be listening in and he says he begins to tell them a story he says there was a rich man who had a manager your Bible may say steward this is someone who was put in charge of the financial affairs of a fairly large household when there was a lot of buying and selling that needed to take place and he tells us here that charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions in other words the manager of our household steward was found to be unfaithful in his work whether he was pilfering money for his own personal gain or whether he was just losing it by bad management it says in verse 2 that he called him and said to him what is this that I hear about you turn in the account of your management for you can no longer be manager and the manager said to himself what shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me I'm not strong enough to dig and I'm ashamed to beg I've decided what to do so that when I am removed from management people may receive me into their houses so summoning his master's debtors one by one he said to the first how much do you owe my master he said a hundred measures of oil and 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 and he said a hundred measures of wheat and he said to him take your bill and write eighty so you can see what's kind of going on here in the final hours of his employment the steward is renegotiating the terms of the contracts that his master had with these various debtor's in order to kind of ingratiate himself to them so that they would be obligated to help him if you know what he figured happens and that is he falls on hard times he's figuring he can get a return for the favor someday down the road verse eight 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 now stop there for a moment what Jesus has just said here in verse eight this last verse we read is really the point of the story and you know you need to point that out because the point of the story is not to applaud dishonesty or you know necessarily the the the sneaky sort of a way that this guy is doing business but rather to speak of his his his clever way of using his resources the resources that were at his disposal in order to accomplish his goals now the point here again isn't to give you business advice the point here is to make the point that sometimes unbelievers people of the world who don't know the Lord are often smarter about the way they use what they've been given then are the children of God sometimes we're just not thinking right we're not thinking about how we might use what the Lord has given us and we're not thinking ahead when we ought to be thinking ahead so he goes on here in verse 9 to say and I tell you make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth and and the unrighteous wealth is a term that simply kind of refers to the wealth of this world that is often obtained through unrighteous means and can certainly be a the means of of tripping people up he says use that wealth so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings and what Jesus is telling us to do here is to think ahead and to use what we've been given for spiritual purposes in other words to invest into the kingdom of God not that we're buying our way to heaven we understand that's not what's being said here but rather using our earthly resources to make a difference in how we're received into our eternal dwellings later on and that's the point of the story that's the point of the whole thing you know you you the people of this world you know I mean and and it's seeped its way into the church there's a there's a huge a lot of emphasis I guess I should say on you know your financial investments and you know 401ks and and all these other things that people can invest in you know you gotta you know prepare for retirement and there's nothing wrong with that you know the problem is it starts to kind of take over the way you and I think about our financial resources and we start kind of doing like the world does we plan for retirement but that's not when your life comes to an end your life doesn't come to an end you're gonna be going into eternity and the things that you do here and the investments that you make here are going to have some payoff in eternity in at those later times and see he's kind of saying that believers forget that here's this here's this shrewd manager you know this unfaithful guy who had the smarts to say hey I got a plan for my future so because if I'm not able to work I want people to be able to like me you know so that I can encourage some favor from them and again he's not Jesus isn't telling you to go out and do that rather you and I are to look to word eternity and say what is it the Lord has given me how can I use it so that when I go to be with the Lord there's going to be a benefit to this sort of a thing look what Jesus goes on to say in verse 10 he says you know one who is faithful and very little is also faithful much doesn't matter whether you've been given a lot or a little in this your time on earth if you're faithful with it your your going to be faithful with a lot and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much so he says if then you're not faithful in the unrighteous wealth that you have during your time on earth you know who's gonna entrust you with true riches later on because you haven't proven yourself right so in other words you know if you've been unfaithful with what God has given you here on earth and you've just done what you needed to do to kind of pad your own resources but there was no investment in eternity no investment in the kingdom he's saying hey you know are you do you really have an expectation that you're going to be entrusted with a lot to invest later on verse 12 he says and if you've not been faithful and that which is another's in other words if you haven't been faithful with what belongs to somebody else what makes you think that you know you're gonna be given and be faithful with what is belongs to you or what is your own so again it's important to make the point here about what Jesus is saying about how we use our resources and he's not telling you to obsess over your money in fact quite the opposite he makes that clear in the next statement in verse 13 he says no servant can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other and then he makes this point you cannot serve God and money you can't do it so he's not telling you to obsess over money he's not telling you to know I want you to think about your worldly wealth and I want you you know no no no no no that's what the world does and if you obsess over it pretty soon you're gonna serve it and if you serve it then it's going to be your master and if that's your master that's your only master that's the point so so no no I'm not telling you to obsess but I am telling you to be smart and to think ahead and if listen if you're planning for your retirement and you not planning for anything beyond that you've kind of missed the point of life you've missed the point of the eternal life that God has given you through Jesus Christ you've missed the point that this life that we're living right now is the means by which we invest into eternal life you know they tell you you you when you die you can't take anything with you that's not true not for the believer no you can't take your favorite car or your dog or your horse or whatever okay but there is a great deal that you can take with you as it relates to the rewards that come your way for how you lived your life and how you invested faithfully the resources that God gave you let me show you a passage from the Proverbs that speaks into this from proverbs chapter 19 it says whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord and He will repay him for his deed that's a very interesting verse it tells me that I can invest into eternity into the kingdom of eternity by the way that I use the resources God has given me today and by simply blessing the poor that passage reminds you and I that God has this incredible accounting system that that that remembers everything you've done related to the good things and the way you've blessed others and the way you've used your resources to invest into the lives of others it's really a pretty cool thing so you know hey use your stuff use what God gives you with eternity in mind now as we move on in the chapter it appears that some of the Pharisees were listening in to this conversation because we're told in verse 14 that the Pharisees who were lovers of money and that's a very important point they were listening to this they heard all these things and they ridiculed Jesus now let me stop there and explain why they ridiculed Jesus is basically talking about money like it's not the most important thing in this life and your to invest it for eternity and the Pharisees believed very strongly that the presence of wealth was a proof that you had approval by God in other words if you had money and you wore nice clothes you walked around people would look at you and they would basically say well God approves of that man right it's it's it's you can see it you can see why he's look at all this wealth he has okay well Jesus responds to the pharisees here in verse 15 by saying and he said to them you are those who justify yourselves before God but God knows your hearts for what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God what does Jesus saying here he's that he's basically exposing a very common mistake made by men and that is that based on what you have or what you don't have people assume that God either is blessing you or he's punishing you if we see somebody with a lot of stuff we say that you know God is really oh then that guy has the the approval of God and if somebody doesn't have much it's like boy I wonder what he did yeah didn't get his life kind of going in order and so God wasn't able to bless him well there's a problem with that that's what the Pharisees were doing and you notice Jesus said you justify yourselves before men what he means is you justify the things that you do the things that you say and the things that you believe predicated upon the fact that you have a lot of money and you think that because you have a lot of money that you must be right about the way you're living and about the things you believe right and Jesus is reminding them that that kind of thinking is wrong to judge my actions as good and appropriate in God's eyes just because I've received good things from God is to engage in a very dangerous kind of self-deception I want you to remember what Jesus said about how he blesses people in Matthew chapter five up on the screen for you it says for he makes his Sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust that's God's character right he doesn't withhold sunshine from people or give rain to bless people he does it across the board and that means that you and I can't look at what I have or don't have or what somebody else has or doesn't have and say they have got to prove that God's approval they don't have God's approval that's what the Pharisees were doing that's what was wrong and Jesus continues talking to the Pharisees and he says this the law and the prophets were until John since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached and every one forces his way into it this is a great statement what Jesus is saying in this verse is that things are changing and that his own appearance on the scene is a watershed event things are changing he says the law and the prophets ruled up until the time of John do you understand that John the Baptist was really like the final Old Testament prophet if you will and up until the time of John the Old Testament meaning that and that's what the law and the prophets is essentially ruled but with the coming of Jesus a new day was dawning and you remember John was the one who introduced the coming of Messiah and then Jesus came on the scene and began to speak of the kingdom of God and teach people about the kingdom and the the completely different dynamic that that brought into play and the Pharisees rejected it because it wasn't part of what they were doing it wasn't what they were building and so they were they rejected you know Jesus and all that he was saying to the people he didn't go along with what they believed in what they were accomplishing you know we we actually talked about this in our study this last when today we're going through the Psalms on Wednesday night and this last Wednesday we ended with psalm 118 which is a messianic psalm that means a psalm that gives insight prophetically about the coming of messiah and it's a really really incredible psalm and I want to put a portion of it up on the screen for you because it goes like this the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone this is the Lord's doing it is marvelous in our eyes now again the whole psalm psalm 118 is prophetic in its focus but what that psalm is saying is exactly what we're reading here in Luke chapter 16 the Pharisees and religious leaders had a building project in mind they believed they were the kingdom of God and they had a blueprint for what they wanted to do and Jesus didn't fit into it because he was preaching a different message he was preaching the kingdom of God and that so they rejected him but what they were unknowingly rejecting was in fact the cornerstone of God's blueprint of God's building plan and and although you and I don't build with cornerstones anymore we build with foundations but that's what a cornerstone was and and it was the plumb line upon all the other where all the other stones were laid and it would they were laid upon the cornerstone and they bore the weight and and and so the cornerstone is this key element to the building process Jesus Christ is the key element to what God is building but he was rejected by the builders and yet he was the very cornerstone of what God was accomplishing and the reason that the Pharisees rejected Jesus is because they were building something else they sought to build something that God never sought to build and essentially what that was is they they had taken the law and they turned it into something god never intended it to be you see the Jews eventually became to believe that law was the means by which that people were saved and if you look through the Old Testament you will find that never once did God give them the law and then promised them that if they kept it they'd go to heaven he never said that but that wasn't the intent of the law the law we find out later was meant to bring us to Christ bring us to a place of understanding that I can't keep God's righteous requirements perfectly they should have figured that out because along with the law God gave them a sacrificial system the means by which they would be forgiven when they messed up in other words God was saying here's the law but you're gonna mess up so I'm also going to give you a sacrificial system so that we can kind of work this thing out and continue to have a relationship somehow some way they just did they lost sight of that and they started to think that the law was the means by which they would be saved and be you know assured into eternity that's what they were building that wasn't God's building God was building a completely different structure with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone but they rejected him and and and of course every time Jesus talked they accused him of doing away with the law because of the way he spoke and that's one of the reasons why Jesus said what he did in verse 17 look with me there he said it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void you know we've talked about this before Jesus made this statement before and people look at it and they say see it says it right there we're still under the law one single jot of the law has passed away see we're still under that's not what Jesus meant he said he said the law will not pass away because the law is a reflection of God's character and holiness and God's character and holiness aren't going anywhere so how can the law go anywhere see the law will always be the law what Jesus did was he brought a new dynamic into play by dying for us on the cross sending the Holy Spirit who is the lawgiver into our hearts to create a completely new relationship to the law did you ever wonder why the law was given in the Old Testament on stone tablets hard stone tablets that's a picture of our relationship to the law prior to Jesus Christ in the coming of the Spirit the law is this hard rigid external thing that speaks from outside of you saying don't do this don't do that don't do this don't do that but after Jesus's death on the cross and the sending of the Holy Spirit to come in dwell believers the law giver took up residence and now it's no longer this external voice saying don't do that it's an internal voice of the Spirit which which which merges with my own heart it's a joining of hearts between God and the believer and it's no longer thou shalt not commit adultery it's like I would never do that against my wife I would never do that against you Lord you see it's this coming together of the heart of the believer and the heart of the law to make this beautiful picture of desire to desire the things of God apart from the rigidity and the externality and the coldness of the law the external law well that's what God was doing and it's cool it's marvelous but it wasn't what the Pharisees were doing so they rejected the cornerstone rejected him out of him and then he goes on in verse 18 I want you to notice this and he says everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery and you read verse 18 and you're kind of like huh I don't know what that's doing in there I mean it almost kind of looks like a cut-and-paste job doesn't it it's like he was just talking to the Pharisees about how the law is you know never going to pass away and then he throws out this statement about marriage divorce and remarriage and you're kind of like huh I guess that kind of page got lost or something but no actually what Jesus is doing is he's speaking to the Pharisees to the religious leaders who by the way had really messed with God's moral law as it relates to marriage and he's saying exactly what he just got done saying that God's moral law isn't going anywhere and the end specifically as it relates to marriage he says God's intention for marriage his desire for marriage and the things that go along with it related to divorce and remarriage are just as foundational and established as they ever were and they will continue to be so and that basically tells us that that just because there's a new dynamic coming into play through Jesus and the preaching of the kingdom and the relationship of the believer to the law doesn't mean that the law is simply now going to kind of go up and be rewritten as it relates to the moral guidelines of the law the moral aspects of the law are still as sure and foundational as they ever were you know people say that to me not all the time but I get it pretty often not so much from people here in our fellowship but when I get email and stuff from people hear me talking about the law and and the legalists love to write me nasty letters and say things like you know so so you're saying that we can just go out and murder people then it's like what no don't you guys understand the dentistry in the moral law and the ceremonial law there's a there's a there's a big difference Jesus fulfilled the ceremonies of the law he is the fulfillment of those things the moral aspects of the law that's that's the holiness of God doesn't change this doesn't change anything right so you know you gotta understand that and and and so he he raises this one issue about marriage divorce and remarriage to show that this is all still very much in in force and I I'm not gonna talk a lot about what he says here in this verse about marriage divorce and remarriage because we've covered it a lot in the past but I'm aware of the fact that some of you May this might be something you really would like to hear about because maybe it's a it's just a current issue for you or someone you know so can I just encourage you to take a little note go to our website at CC Ontario com go to the through the Bible page and then go to Matthew our study in Matthew scroll down to chapter 5 and you'll see some messages there about when Jesus taught on marriage divorce and remarriage and you should be able to find pretty much all your everything you're looking for and if you have any questions beyond that just shoot me a note and we'll work it through the final section of this chapter covers something that we've spoken about several times before but we now come to it here excuse me and Jesus is telling a story here this is not a parable do you understand the difference I mean a parable is a story but a parable is something that is made up to communicate a truth a story is potentially a very real event and the way we know parables from stories is that stories often have proper names that are given to them parables do not for example in the parable of the prodigal son which we covered last week it was the father the son the older son the servant no names were given in this particular story proper names are given we're gonna see the name of Lazarus not to be confused with the man that Jesus raised from the dead but a different man and then we're also going to see Abraham operates in this story as well and his proper name is given as well let's read it verse 19 there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day and at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus covered with sores who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table moreover even the dogs came and licked his sores the poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side now stop there for a moment this term Abraham's side your Bible if you have an older translation may say Abraham's bosom and this is another name for paradise this is where people were taken prior to Jesus paying the price for our sins on the cross you do know that people didn't go to heaven before the cross right the way to heaven wasn't open because the price had not been paid we're told in the scripture that God left the sins committed before the cross unpunished it doesn't mean God didn't forgive people he did he forgave people in the Old Testament when they cried out and asked for forgiveness but their sins weren't punished God did not punish them for their sins he forgave them and nobody nobody got punished you said well wait a minute they're a bunch of animals died yeah but the blood of goats and bulls and animals can't pay for the price of the sin of man that was just a picture of sacrificial bloodshed which which God was preparing them for to show that there must be another sacrifice one that is to come so you know this is the place where people would go this this place called in this case Abraham's side or paradise this is where this is where jesus promised the thief on the cross this day you'll be with me in paradise okay later on they were able to go right into the presence of the Lord and that's been the case ever since Jesus died on the cross and opened the way as Paul tells us so it goes on to say in the middle of verse 22 that the rich man also died and was buried but he didn't go to paradise it says and in Hades being in torment he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side so in this place of this holding place if you will prior to the cross there is the place of paradise and there's also this place of suffering and torment for those who died reject the Word of God and they could see one another from each of these places kind of crazy isn't it it's also interesting to see in Jesus's story that this man is instantly transported to where he deserves to go and you'll notice that you don't hear anything about a judgment there's no judgment given as far as some kind of an eternal judgment that is to come the eternal judgment is not when people find out what happened you know even though our weird stories make it sound like that judgment is simply going to be the the legal official declaration of someone's you know eternal destination but you'll notice that the rich man is instantly in a place where he is suffering and you know I I'm not going to hang on this for terribly long because what I'm explaining to you isn't really the point of the story I'm bringing it up because we do get insights from this story but what really must have raised some eyebrows about Jesus telling this story is his statement that the rich man died and ended up in Hades because remember I told you at the very beginning the Jews assumed that a man's wealth was proof of God's approval and so here's Jesus saying the rich man died and ended up in Hades and they're like what a rich man in Hades are you kidding me okay it goes on in verse 24 that we find the rich man calling out father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am in anguish in this flame but Abraham said child remember that you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus in like manner bad things but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish now I want you to stop there for just a moment and be very careful the point of this story is not to explain how you get to heaven or why you might end up in Hades that's not the point of the story so don't go away thinking that the rich man was lost because he was rich and that he had good things and the poor man you know went to paradise because he was poor and he had very little that's not the point of the story people are lost because they refused to heed God's Word simple as that so let's find out what the point of the story is verse 26 and besides all this between us and you a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who had passed from here to you may not be able and none may cross from there to us and he said then I beg you Father to send him to my father's house for I have five brothers so that he may warn them lest they also come to this place of torment but Abraham said they have Moses and the prophets let them hear them and he said no father Abraham but if someone goes to them from the dead they will repent you'll notice that the rich man he knew that his family would not heed the word of God he knew it when Abraham said hey they've got the Word of God let him pay attention to the Word of God he immediately says no that's not going to be enough but if you send Lazarus back and they know that this is a man back from the grave that will get their attention liquid Abraham says verse 31 and he said to them if they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead and that amazing do we know that that is in fact the case yes we sure do it's exactly what happened Jesus is talking about himself he is basically prophesying that when I rise from the dead they will not believe because they would not heed the word of God and even if someone rises from the dead and I'm going to they still won't believe I found a quote from one of my favorite authors Harry Ironside who's with the Lord he's in the real heaven he wrote the man who refuses to heed the clear definite instructions of the Holy Scriptures would never believe though one came to him asserting that he had been on the other side of the tomb and had returned to warn him to flee from the wrath to come somebody might say well now wait a minute here pastor Paul I III know somebody who saw a miracle and and and they came to the Lord yeah it's possible that's because they they that's the kind of person who did heed the Word of God and would heed the word of God the point is if you're dealing with someone who had just refused to hear what the Word of God has to say anyway they're not gonna believe in miracle either so if you're praying for somebody who refuses to heed God's Word that God would bring a miracle into their life so they come to him you may be wasting your time rather I think you probably should be asking God to do a work in their heart that they might that God you know would would prepare them to hear his voice right to be open to what he's saying about the the truth of their situation and the truth of his word amen let's stand together

Channel: Calvary Chapel Ontario

Views: 43,275

Keywords: Bible, Bible teaching, Thru-the-Bible, verse by verse, Calvary Chapel, Bible study, Christianity, New Testament, Old Testament

Id: Wq7oenOFEaA

Length: 34min 50sec (2090 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019