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Author: Stephen Weller
657 words, 3 minutes read time

Guilty As Charged

Scripture: Luke 16:1-7

With the previous lesson we finish the section about the lost son and the compassionate father. With this lesson, we begin another parable which is about a dishonest manager.

^{Lk 16:1} “He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. ² And 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.’”

Luke 16 is a continuation of the teaching of Jesus of chapter 15. With verse 1, Jesus begins another parable (a simple story to illustrate a moral or a spiritual lesson) about a dishonest manager. Jesus introduces a rich man who had a manager. “This manager would have been the steward in charge of the estate, a trusted servant who exercised the chief responsibility for the management and distribution of the household goods. The manager would have acted as the agent for his master and would have had full authority to transact business on behalf of his master.” (Footnote for verse 16:1, p1990, ESV Study Bible, copyright 2008 by Crossway Bibles). 

The manager was, apparently observed by other servants, wasting the rich man’s possessions. These servants observing this apparently brought charges to their master who then called in his manager and confronted him with the charges. He requested the manager to turn in the account of his management for review.

^{Lk 16:3} “And 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, and I am ashamed to beg. ⁴ I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’”

Clearly the manager is guilty because he makes no attempt to defend himself and assumes his master will permanently remove him from being manager. Since the manager is not strong enough to do manual labor and is to ashamed to beg for a living, he thinks up a plan to establish a good relationship with the people who are debtors of his master.

^{Lk 16:5} “So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ ⁷ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’”

This dishonest manager immediately goes to his master’s debtors and strikes a deal with each one to pay a certain percentage of what they owe to clear their debt. Each sees the offer as a good deal and pays the required amount. In providing a way to clear their debt, they in turn would owe the dishonest manager a favor, thus assuring the future wellbeing of the manager. “It is estimated that the reduction of just these two bills would have amounted to about 500 denarii, equivalent to about a year and a half of wages.” (Footnote for verse 16:4-7, p1990, ESV Study Bible, copyright 2008 by Crossway Bibles).  

Conclusion

With this lesson we have covered 500 lessons as we traveled with Jesus along the gospel path. The signpost shows that we are at section 145 of a total 241. This gives an average of about 3.5 lessons per section. At that rate, with 96 sections to go, we will need about 336 more lessons to complete our journey. Posting 5 lessons each week, that would require about 67 more weeks. We should finish around July or August of 2020 with a total of about 836 lessons.