The Son of Man’s Journey to Jerusalem (9:51-19:27)

After explaining to the Pharisees and Scribes why He was eating with sinners, Jesus turned to His disciples and explained how they should view faithfulness and honesty in regard to money.

The Shrewd Manager (1-9)

In the parable, Jesus told of a rich man’s manager accused of squandering the rich man's resources (1). The rich man confronted the manager and fired him (2). The manager thought himself to be too weak to dig, too proud to beg, and wondered what he could do before he handed the books back to the rich man (3). The manager then conceived an idea that would gain him friends so appreciative that they would want to care for him in days to come (4). He schemed to summon his master's debtors one at a time and ask how much principal each of them owed the master. 

Background is necessary here. Jews were not supposed to lend money at interest (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:36-37). To get around not charging interest, they would lend money for oil and wheat at an amount to cover the interest. 

The manager then had the bills rewritten to represent just the principal amount still owed to the rich man. If in oil, then the oil payment was reduced to represent only the money amount the man had borrowed from the master. The manager did the same with those owing wheat. In handling the debt in this way, the owner would suffer embarrassment, even accusation, if the manager mentioned he was gouging others with interest in a deceitful way. For the whole scheme to work, a rich man had to have a manager who would go along with the scheme, while pretending no interest was being charged (5-7).  

The rich man, or master, ended up commending the dishonest manager, whom he had fired, for his shrewdness. Jesus commented that the sons of the world were more shrewd in money matters than the sons of light (8). While Jesus did not endorse the ethics of the manager, He was pointing out that the dishonest and unethical manager understood the need to use money to build relationships, a principle lost on the sons of light. 

Jesus did not tell this parable to encourage dishonesty but to contrast how even an unethical and unprincipled manager better understood the proper use of money than Jesus' followers (9).

Faithfulness in Little (10-13)

Jesus then explained what faithfulness looked like so they would not confuse being shrewd with being unfaithful with money. 

Jesus' concept of money was fairly strict. He didn't view it as something people were to own but something belonging to God for them to steward or manage. 

Jesus listed out four essential principles of faithfulness: 

• Those honest in little things no one cared about could be trusted with big things everyone thought important (10).

• If they could be faithful in times when not treated righteously, justly, or fairly, then they could be trusted with true wealth (11).  

• If they could be faithful with what could prosper another person, then finally God could entrust them with things they could steward for themselves (12).  

• Faithfulness is an exclusive activity. No slave was ever owned by two masters, for a soul can only be devoted to one master as the absolute ultimate and center of life. Jesus warned His disciples that money could take the place of God as the absolute center of one’s life (13).  

Jesus' Teaching on Money Ridiculed (14-18) 

When the Pharisees heard this teaching, they mocked Jesus (14). The religious leaders, especially the Pharisees, viewed money as a blessing and a justification by God of their righteousness. This was a mindset almost immovable among them. Pharisees did not view money as something to steward that belonged to God but as something they owned. 

Jesus confronted them straight on and told them it was an abomination in God’s sight to justify their wealth as representing God's approval of them (15).  

Jesus attacked their charges that His preaching dismissed the Law and the Prophets. He told them the Law and the Prophets had their place until the time of John, but with the coming of John, what the Law and Prophets could not do, the gospel could. The Law and Prophets had not lost usefulness or become all-of-a-sudden invalid. The Law and the Prophets stood in approval, applauding Jesus, the gospel, and what they could do in the new Heaven and new Earth.

Jesus taught that the gospel enabled people to force their way into the Kingdom by a radical faith and thus faithfulness in God as the ultimate center of their lives. Jesus said “force” because followers faithfully “force” everything out of their lives that does not revolve around Christ (16). Jesus then affirmed that the gospel would accomplish all the Law and Prophets promised, while the Law and the Prophets were presently applauding the work of the gospel (17).  

Jesus threw in an example from the law of faithfulness in marriage. Jesus showed the Pharisees how the gospel took marriage deeper than the Law and the Prophets were able (The Law, Exodus 2:14; The Prophets, Malachi 2:14-16). The Law taught not to commit adultery; the Prophets taught not to be unfaithful. Jesus showed the deeper sin in the heart through the gospel. To divorce and remarry was committing adultery. Jesus was not doing away with the Law and Prophets; He was telling the Pharisees that He was fulfilling the heart of the Law and Prophets. Jesus’ point: what He was teaching about money was affirming the heart of the Law and the Prophets and fulfilling God's will for money. Even in the Law and the Prophets, money was seen as a stewardship to care for the poor. The gospel would lead a follower to be a faithful steward of money, and to Jesus, that was the ultimate fulfillment of the Law and Prophets (18).  

Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (19-31)

Jesus finished up his teaching on faithfulness with a parable about a rich man and Lazarus. In the story, a rich guy had to step over a poor guy just to enter his estate. The poor guy was described by Jesus as not only poor and filthy but also diseased. He was sleeping outside the rich guy’s gate, hoping to be given a leftover bone, a bone even the dogs didn't want to gnaw on (19-21). The poor man died of starvation, and when the death angel came, he was told to stand aside while God's angels carried him into the same place Abraham had been taken (22).

As fate would have it, the rich man died suddenly, and when the death angel came, no one claimed his body, so he was taken to Hades. In Hades, he was tormented but could see Abraham and was shocked to see Lazarus with Abraham—the two all chummy (23). The rich man called out for mercy, pleading with Abraham as his father to send someone with a touch of cold water to cool his agonizing tongue (24).

Abraham then reminded the rich man of his life—rich—and Lazarus' life—poor. He contrasted their afterlife roles and how they had reversed (25). It is important to keep in mind that this is not a picture of the afterlife, but a parable to make a point. Jesus was not trying to explain what things would look like after death and before the consummation of the Kingdom. 

Abraham continued by explaining the impossibility of getting anyone over the gulf that separated them (26). As the rich man mused some more, he begged Abraham to resurrect Lazarus and send him to his father's house and his five brothers and warn them lest they end up in the same torment (27-28).  

Abraham told the rich man that if Moses and the Prophets could not convince his brothers, then someone from the dead would not be able to either. The rich man couldn't conceive of his brothers not listening to a resurrected Lazarus, but Abraham was insistent (29-31).  

Jesus knew the Pharisees were not moved by Moses and the Prophets, who were all pointing their fingers directly at Jesus. They weren't convinced by sinners, who were dead to God and had come back to life in God either. They were not going to be convinced by Jesus, who would be executed and falsely accused as a criminal when He came back to life. 

The overarching lesson: those who serve and love money and treat it as their own will abuse it in the face of suffering poverty and can become so hardened against following God as their ultimate that nothing can convince them. This parable was meant to bring the Pharisees into some sober reflection, but in the end, few ever gave their lives to Jesus, much less Yahweh.