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Prepare for the Future - Luke 16
Prepare For The Future - Luke 16
The parable of the unjust steward has been a problem for disciples of Jesus since He told the story. The main point is rather easy: you need to prepare for what is coming!
What gets us into difficulty is that we try to make ‘normal’ identifications of the various people in this story like we can in some other parables. Yet, when you try to identify the ‘master’ as God, and the ‘steward’ as a Christian, things just get out of whack! Even more troublesome is the making of what the steward did in the way that he did it an ‘example that we should follow’. No, he was a steward that was wasting his master’s possessions.
It is easy to go down this road in our interpretation for God is our master and we are stewards of all that He has given us. There will be an accounting, and probably many of us haven’t managed our stewardships very well. We don’t have to make this steward an example of how to serve God in order to learn lessons about life and stewardship.
- All things belong to God as the creator of all. Therefore we are stewards and must someday give an account.
- ALL that we have is a gift from God and hence ALL that we have is under this stewardship. Even the power to get riches was said to be a gift from God (Deut. 8:18).
- It is required of a steward that he be faithful.
- Faithfulness is not considered just in how we handle ‘big things’, but rather in our dedication to EVERYTHING and our taking care of even the small aspects of such stewardship.
- In particular we need to see that our worldly possessions are a stewardship to be used to the glory of God and not a possession to be lavished upon ourselves.
- We can USE worldly things to God’s glory, but we must be careful not to SERVE such. We must be careful that such do not replace God in our hearts.
- ALL such worldly possessions will some day ‘fail’ (come to an end - when we die we leave it all).
- Be prepared so that when they fail, you will be received into eternal dwellings.
Hugh DeLong
