Luke 16:1-9 now He was also saying to the disciples there was a rich man who had a manager and this manager was reported to him as squandering his possessions and he called him and said to him what is this I hear about you? give an accounting of your management for you can no longer be manager the manager said to himself what shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me I am not strong enough to dig I am ashamed to beg I know what I shall do so that when I am removed from the management people will welcome me into their homes and he summoned each one of his master’s debtors and he began saying to the first how much do you owe my master and he said 100 measures of oil and he said to him take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50 then he said to another and how much do you owe and he said 100 measures of wheat and He said to him take your bill and write 80 and his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light and I say to you make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness so that when it fails they will receive you into the eternal dwellings that is the craziest parable I never understood that for years and years and years why would the master praise the guy that squandered his money why would he say he was a good guy and I finally came to an understanding of it when I read a book by a man named Donald Kraybill called The Upside-Down Kingdom and here’s what I learned in that book very interesting in those times if we skip down to verse 14 we see something said of the Pharisees very interesting it says they scoffed at Him at Yeshua and then it describes them and it says they were lovers of money what’s very interesting it appears in the parable that the steward or the manager gave away his master’s money but in reality he did not here’s what Donald Kraybill exposed in his book there was at that time no way that Jewish people could lend money at interest to other Jewish people it was against Torah it was forbidden but the Pharisees had figured out a way around that through the oral tradition so they said if a business man comes to you it’s called the law of immediate necessity if a man comes to you and he wants to borrow say some oil or he wants to borrow some wheat if it’s not something that’s of immediate necessity you can charge him commodity interest so say a man comes and says I want to borrow 50 measures of oil you can say to him you know what I’ll lend you 50 measures of oil but you have to pay me back 100 within 6 months 100% interest or somebody else I want to borrow 80 measures of grain I’ll lend you 80 measures of grain but you have to pay me 20 measures more give me back 100 and so what was going on the stewards or the managers who were in charge of managing their masters inventory they were charging commodity interest to other business people so for example I’ll lend somebody 50 measures of oil from my master’s inventory does the master know about this no he doesn’t this is going on clandestinely who’s making the money, the stewards who’s cut in on the deal, the Pharisees they’re taking a cut of this thing the steward takes the master’s inventory lends 50 measures of oil say to a businessman and then collects an additional 50 measures of oil 100% interest for himself using the master’s inventory the master doesn’t know about it who’s in on this deal the business men know because they’re borrowing the Pharisees know because they’ve set it up so that the oral tradition allows it even when Torah says it’s not righteous, it’s not right and of course the stewards know who doesn’t know, the masters Yeshua is teaching, who do you think is in the crowd that day all of them business men, Pharisees, masters stewards and Yeshua exposes this scheme of unrighteousness suppose that this is going on what do you think is happening the Pharisees are going, NO He’s exposing the scheme the stewards are going Uh Oh we’re in trouble and the masters, they’re going wait a minute Mr. Steward, Mr Manager are you doing that? and Yeshua exposes this whole scheme publicly before everybody and is getting these stewards in great trouble what did this steward do it wasn’t his master’s oil it says, he says to the one how much do you owe and they guy says 100 measures of oil he says take your bill and quickly write 50 50 was the interest that the steward was going to collect for himself so he just said hey just bring back the 50 forget the interest my master has found out what’s going on and I’m going to get removed from my stewardship from my management here so he writes off his own interest and the the steward the manager pardon me the master comes along and said hey you’re pretty smart cancelling the interest and Yeshua said the sons of darkness are sometimes smarter than the sons of light who are the sons of light the Pharisees the people that should be upholding the standard of Torah the people that should be holding up righteousness instead they being lovers of money are in cahoots with the stewards to rip off other businessmen at the master’s expense masters don’t even know it Yeshua exposes this scheme and the master praised the unrighteous steward because he had acted shrewdly for the sons of this age are more shrewd in their relation to their own kind than the sons of light that is a huge dig against the Pharisees He’s saying you guys should be the ones that are upholding righteousness instead you are corrupt yourselves you’re in on this whole deal and Yeshua exposes this it’s just a masterful masterful thing that He has done here what’s the point of the parable the point of the parable is this we should side with humanity against the unrighteousness of the spirit of mammon that uses money to oppress people in this case uses usury extreme interest to oppress people and the steward was a good guy because he cancelled the interest there by siding against the spirit of mammon with humanity for the businessman and Yeshua is exposing this entire unrighteous scheme exposing it for everybody to see so the point is this what are we supposed to do with money we use money to bless people not use people to make money that’s really the whole point of this thing breaking the power of the spirit of mammon using money to build relationship not using relationship to make money let’s just pray Father I pray that we would not be lovers of money that we would not be like the Pharisees that we would not be figuring out ways to cheat and to connive and to steal to side with mammon to oppress other people to make money for ourselves but Father that we would use money to build relationship and I pray that You would increase wealth for everyone one of us Father that You would show us give us Your wisdom to increase wealth not for ourselves but to accomplish Your purpose through us in the Kingdom Father I pray blessing upon each person each couple each family watching today Father that we would be sons of light not sons of darkness as it pertains to money in the name of Yeshua Amen