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This week we begin looking at Luke Chapter 16. Please read verses 1-15 every day this week and, if possible, use a different translation each day, asking God to open your eyes to fresh revelation from His Word.
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Luke 16:1-2 (New Living Translation)
‘Jesus told this story to his disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money. So the employer called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Get your report in order, because you are going to be fired.’’
I don’t know about you, but I used to be a big fan of ‘The Apprentice’. It’s a TV programme about a number of people all trying gain an apprenticeship working for Lord Alan Sugar. Each week the candidates all complete a task and at least one person is fired as a result of their level of competence. The tasks don’t seem to be that hard and yet, time and time again, we see very capable business people being made to look very average under the pressure of trying to impress Lord Sugar and his business partners. As the worst of the candidates are lined up in the boardroom, they wait with bated breath for Alan Sugar to enter the fateful words “You’re Fired!”
I remember once when, on a Friday afternoon, I was asked to go urgently to the head office of the company I worked for. The boss called me into his office and proceeded to tell me that my performance was not what it needed to be. He told me all the worst aspects of my role and the inadequacies that he was seeing in everything I was doing. It was far from a pleasant experience sitting there listening to all that he was saying. He then asked me for the keys to the company car and that I should arrange transport to get home. That was just brutal and though he didn’t actually say the words, “You’re fired”, to be axed in such an awful way was deeply hurtful.
Our parable this week isn’t a particularly easy one to read or to explain but perhaps the key word to keep in mind is ‘Stewardship’. In the previous parable of ‘The Lost Son’, some commentators suggest that the title should be ‘The Prodigal Son’ or even ‘The Wasteful Son’. We saw that the son had been given his share of his father’s inheritance and had within a short space of time wasted it all. The parable this week talks about a man who was accused of wasting his manager’s possessions.
Every one of us has been given something to be a steward over. Some have been given possessions of our own and we have to find the best way to take care of them. Others have been given responsibility to manage the possessions of others. Both of the parables have much to teach us in the various aspects of stewardship. If we are not careful and seek God’s help continuously, we may run into trouble and end up wasting all of our possessions. That is a terrible thing to happen. Today’s parable shows that a manager is holding his employee to account over his wasteful attitude to things that weren’t even his own. We don’t actually know all the detail of what he did, but it was serious enough for him to be fired. The very brief thought for today, is to carefully evaluate what God has given us and if necessary, to adjust our behaviour to ensure we’re not wasting all that He has provided.
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