Well, good morning. Welcome to
our continuing Bible study in Luke. And we're beginning at
chapter 16 today. And this whole chapter is really
focused centrally around one thing. And just to set the stage
for what's been going on all of this, where we've been for
quite a while, came about as the result of the
Pharisees inviting Jesus to this breakfast on the Sabbath day.
And then while He was there, He issued some parables to them
and some things that they clearly didn't understand. But the disciples
were there. And so in chapter 15, he gave
them the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the
lost son. Today begins chapter 16. In my Bible it's called another
parable, but I don't know that it really falls into the category
of a parable because of certain things. And we'll look at that
in a minute, but we'll read through it here, chapter 16. And He said also unto His disciples, There was a certain rich man
which had a steward, and the same was accused unto him that
he had wasted his goods. And he called him and said unto
him, How is it that I hear this of the given account of thy stewardship? For thou mayest no longer be
steward. And the steward said within himself, What shall I
do? For my Lord taketh away from
me the stewardship, and I cannot dig, and to beg I am ashamed.
I am resolved what to do. that when I'm put out of the
stewardship that they may receive me into their houses. So he called
every one of his Lord's debtors unto him and said to the first,
How much owest thou unto my Lord? And he said, A hundred measures
of oil. And I read that that quantity
might have been upwards of like 900 gallons of oil and quite
a bit. And he said to him, Take thy
bill and sit down quickly and write fifty. And he said to another,
how much owest thou? And he said, a hundred measures
of wheat, another large volume of wheat there. And he said, take thy bill and
write four score. And the Lord commended the unjust
steward because he had done wisely for the children of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light. What
a scathing commentary. So he says, I say unto you, make
unto yourselves friends of the man of unrighteousness that when
you fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.
And he that is faithful, in that which is least, is faithful also
in much. And he that is unjust in the
least is unjust also in much. If you therefore have not been
faithful in the unrighteous, ma'am, who will commit to your
trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful
in that which was another man's, who shall give you that which
is your own? No servant can serve two masters,
for he will either hate the one and love the other, or else he
will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and mammon." And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard
all these things. So he was speaking to the disciples,
and these Pharisees overheard what he said to them, and they
derided him. And he said unto them, Ye are
they which justify yourselves before men, but God knoweth your hearts,
for that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in
the sight of God. And the law and the prophets
were until John. And since that time the kingdom of God is preached,
and every man presseth into it, and it is easier for heaven and
earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail. Whosoever
putteth away of his wife, and marrieth another, committeth
adultery. And whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her
husband, committeth adultery." And then we go into the narrative
of the rich man and Lazarus. I'm not going to delve into that
portion of it today, but these are all tied together to the
same thing. So as we look at it, it's helpful
for us to kind of keep that in mind. It's kind of like those
three parables in the previous chapter. They were all focused
on this central issue of the Pharisees. Today our lesson is called, Unrighteous
Mammon. What really is that? How is it
used in this text? What do we do with it? It's kind of a two-part picture
here. What did you do with that which
you were trusted with? unjust steward was kind of not
doing his job and was not responsibly handling his his master's goods
and Doesn't say whether he was embezzling or whether Whatever
he was doing he wasn't he wasn't properly doing his job there. And so, you know, this scripture
seems to have a lot to do with money, and money is so intrinsically
tied with religion nowadays, and it was even back then, that
that kind of becomes a focus. But it's really a deeper spiritual
subject here, deeper than more mere money. And then we have
this part in verse 9 where Jesus says, "...make friends of yourself
with unrighteous men." Has He given us bad advice that seems
to be contrary to the rest of His instruction in the Gospel? The key verse there in chapter
16, verse 9, where he says, make friends to yourselves of
unrighteous mammon. That word there, that word of,
in the Greek is ek. In the Greek it's translated
a number of different ways. A lot of the commentaries say
that they propose that it means by means of, so you should make
friends by means of unrighteous mammon and therefore you be received
into eternal habitations. And that kind of seems to fly
in the face of the gospel of grace to me. And you know, we
find that word translated differently in many scriptures. Dr. Hawker mentioned that, and
kind of set me on digging into this a little more deeply, that maybe a better rendering of that
word would be detached from. And you know, we kind of ran
into that in Luke chapter 15. where he says, what man of you,
so if there's a group of men, he singles out one out of them. He says, what man of you, having
a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, and that of is the
same word that we make friends of the unrighteous mammon. He says, if he loses one of them,
doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go
after that which is lost till he find it. So you couldn't very
well take that word of in this case in Luke and say, which one
of you if he loses by the means of, it wouldn't really fit there. But if you apply that in this
scripture, If he loses one of them, in Luke
15, it kind of showed it as this one sheep is detached from the
flock, and the man is detached from this other group of men.
So if you applied that to this Scripture in Luke 16, it would
really make more sense, because make friends from yourself detached
from unrighteous mammon. and thereby you'd be received
into eternal habitation. So I think that clears up a lot
of that. But it also in this chapter tells
us that we're charged with doing correctly, and this unjust servant
is kind of the antithesis of that. He did what was unjust
in another man's property, and therefore was relieved of his
charge. There's a lesson for us here
in what the Lord gives us to work with and what we do with
it. And it's no coincidence that
there's kind of three elements of this thing. He brings up divorce
in the middle of it, and then he gives us this narrative of
the rich man and Lazarus. And they're all three tied together
over this central thing. And in the middle he says, the
Pharisees, which were covetous, They overheard these things and
they derided Him because of this story that He had related. And I think maybe it was a true
story that the Lord knew that maybe these Pharisees knew too. And it kind of flew in their
face and therefore when they heard it, They kind of turned
up their nose at him. So, quickly, I want to review
the rule of parables because I think that plays into this.
In the rule of parables, in Matthew 13, 10, the disciples, after
the parable of the sower, the disciples came and said unto
him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? And he answered
and said unto the disciples, because it is given to you to
know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is
not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall
be given, and he shall have more abundance. But whosoever hath
not from him shall be taken away even that which he hath." And
on a spiritual level, those ones that he was given the parable
to, they seemed to have a religion. They had the words, but they
had no understanding. They had kind of the husk of
the situation, but they weren't getting the bread of life out
of it, as we mentioned last time. The words will actually do them
no good in the final analysis. You just can't say the words
and abracadabra yourself into eternal bliss. So he says, therefore
speak I unto them in parables, because seeing they see not. In hearing, they hear not, neither
do they understand." So there's the reason that he spoke unto
the unbelievers, these Pharisees, in parables. But he said, unto
you it's given to know. And then he would always explain
to them the spiritual meaning of the parable. But to the others,
they didn't get it and didn't want it. And so we have that
issue with parables. And so we find that in the beginning
of this, it says Jesus was speaking to His disciples. So it wouldn't
seem logical for Him to speak to them in a parable. He would
just tell them, what's going on, what the truth is. So he
wasn't speaking to the Pharisees, and it makes a point of pointing
that out in this chapter. They overheard it, but he was
speaking to his disciples. Another thing that's interesting
in this chapter is He mentions the name specifically
of Lazarus in a lot of the parables. It just talks about a certain
man or a certain this or there was someone, not specific. But in this he names someone
actually. And you know in John 10 it says,
he calleth his own sheep by name. and leadeth them out." And clearly,
Lazarus is a sheep. He's one that's said in this
chapter, when he died, he went to Abraham's bosom and was comforted
and all that. But he says the rich man is not
named. So we kind of fall into that.
I know my sheep. and you're not one of my sheep
because you believe not. And so those things that we find
in John chapter 10. And as all this relates to this
rich man and Lazarus, you know, back in Matthew, this Lazarus, he was lame from
his mother's womb and he was brought to the gate beautiful
every day to beg. And this rich man went by him
every day Ignored him and and probably actually kind of went
out around him. So he wouldn't have to be too
close to him because he was Beneath his status and someone that he
would not associate with and and in in Matthew says I Was
a hundred and you and you gave me no meat And this man was begging
crumbs and alms and didn't get any from this rich man. So in
our case here with the steward and the unjust steward, he calls
him to give an account. He got caught. Somebody turned
him in. Somebody ratted him out and says,
you know, I paid I paid my 100 measures of oil, but only 75
of it seemed to make it back into your warehouse. What happened
to the rest of it?" He says, I want you to give an account
to me of all your dealings on my behalf, because this man They
had managers to take charge of their various business things
that they might not have time to attend to themselves, and
stewards were very common in that age, and certainly we have
them today, they're called managers and executives that perform those
various tasks, but just give an account of what you've been
doing, you know, give an account. And boy, it just made me think,
you know, in the difference between worldly
accounts and spiritual accounts, we have our great high priest
that makes intercession for us. And our account is we're covered
by the blood. We're guiltless, we're without
spot, without wrinkle because of what He did for us. So, boy,
thank God we have that ability to give that account of ourselves
because certainly, as the other scriptures point out, even our
best intentions, like Paul said, the things that I want to do,
I don't seem to be doing those. And the things that I don't want
to do, That seems like what I end up doing. He says, thank God
I don't have to give an account of that. Thank God He took care
of that. He says, how is it that I, in
Luke 16, He called him and said, how is it that I hear this of
thee? Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest
no longer be steward. Boy, being fired was no joke
back then, and if you had a reputation for being crooked, It would probably
be a little bit difficult for you to seek employment somewhere
else. And he couldn't even kind of
go down to the next rung of work, because he says, I can't dig. Probably a little rotund and
out of shape, so shovel work was probably not in his cards.
And he says, and I'm ashamed to beg. I don't want to do that. that the sons of light, as they're
referred to in this chapter, they say, you know, we're unprofitable
servants. We just did what was commanded
us to do and it didn't seem like much extra. So fortunately, we're
covered there because of grace. And Paul said, I take you to
record this day that I'm pure from the blood of all men." He
said, I gave the gospel out. He said, I spoke nothing to you
but the gospel. That which I received I gave
unto you. And again in Matthew chapter 25 when
he's speaking His Lord said to him, well done thou good and
faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I'll
make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of the
Lord. And they always say, when did we do that? I don't remember
doing that. I didn't keep track of that.
And whatever good I did, it was because it was ordained. Those
good works it says in Ephesians, we do good works that were before
ordained by God. We can't take credit for any
of the good things that we do, and we don't have to give an
account of the other stuff. Grace is so wonderful in that
respect. As we look at this scripture,
Does God give us riches as a test to see if we pass so He can give
us further rewards? Does that make sense? Is God
reactionary if we don't do good with it? If we don't do this,
then does He do that? And He puts us in this kind of
quid pro quo relationship. That's not His way. And so we
don't find that fitting in with the Scriptures. And so the right
application of using what God has given us is demonstrated
in Matthew chapter 25. If you want to turn there to
Matthew 25, and we'll just read through that real quick. Seeing how this chapter talks
about using this relationship between unrighteous mammon and
then being received into eternal habitations. Here in Matthew
25, 31, it says, When the Son of Man shall come in His glory,
and all the holy angels with Him, then He shall sit upon the
throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations,
and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth
his sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on his
right hand, but the goats on the left, and then shall the
king say unto them on his right hand, come ye blessed of my father,
inherit the kingdom prepared from you from the foundation
of the world, for I was a hungred, and you gave me meat, the bread
of life. I was thirsty and you gave me
drink. I was stranger and you took me in naked and you clothed
me. I was sick and you visited me
and I was in prison and you came unto me." All those things can
be found in the Old Testament as we've time and time again
gone back and looked at those. Then shall the righteous answer
him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee a-hungered, and fed thee,
or thirsty, and gave thee drink? And when saw there we a stranger,
and took thee in, or naked, and clothed thee? And when saw we
sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the king shall
answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as you
have done it unto Lazarus, or one of the least of these my
brethren, you've done it unto me. And then shall he say unto
them on the left hand, depart from me, you cursed into everlasting
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was a hungered,
and you gave me no meat. I was thirsty, and you gave me
no drink. I was a stranger, and you took me not in. Naked, and
you clothed me not. Sick and in prison, and you visited
me not. Then shall they also answer him,
saying, Lord, When saw we thee a-hungered, or a-thirst, or a-stranger,
or a-naked, or a-sick, or a-imprisoned, and didn't minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch
as ye did it not to the least of one of these, ye did it not
to me. And these shall go away into
everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." So what has all that got to do
with unrighteous mammon, and doing the right thing, and doing
the right thing with what the Lord provides us? Well, to start
with, in regeneration, so many things change when the Lord gives
us the new birth. We were just talking this morning,
unless you have the new birth, you can't see the Kingdom of
God, and many things don't make sense to us. until we're born
again. And we can't see Jesus, we can't
see the Kingdom. So many things are changed. And in regeneration, our perception
of mammon has really changed. Where before it's kind of all-consuming
and it's the driving force. You know, Paul said he was steeped
in mammon back in his Pharisaical days. And I think he was fairly
representative of those Pharisees that we see in this narrative
that we're looking at today. He says, the things that were
gained to me, Those I counted loss for Christ, but that did
not happen until after the new birth. That did not happen to
Him until Christ was revealed in Him. He says, "...Yea, doubtless,
and I count all things, but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge
of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss
of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ."
And where before He said, I profited much in the Jews' religion. this
and I was that, and I was well respected, and I thought I had
much knowledge, and I had all these things that I counted on
and that my whole life was based on, and then after Christ was
revealed in me, they didn't seem so important anymore. They didn't
occupy the position that they did before. And he says, they
were worthless. It didn't amount to anything.
And isn't that the lesson that Christ is always teaching all
through? Remember when He sent out the
70 and the 12, and He says, don't take any script, don't take any
extra shoes, don't take a coat, don't take any food. I provide
all your needs. And isn't that what He did with
the Israelites when they came out of Egypt? How long did they
wander about? in the desert, and nothing wore
out. And they got manna bread to the
full in the morning, and quail by evening. But they seemed to be attached
to that unrighteous man. And they said, man, we want to
go back to Egypt. And the Egyptians gave them a
lot of mammon when they left. Jewels and gold and stuff. And the first chance they got,
they turned it into a golden calf that they worshipped. So
that tells us something about unrighteous mammon. Matthew 6.19. It says, Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasure
in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves do not break through nor steal. for where your treasure
is there, there will also your heart be. The light of the body
is the eye, and that just means that whatever you're focused
on, that's where your heart's going to be. If you're focused
on mammon and things of this world, that's where your heart's
going to be. If you're focused on Christ, that's where your
heart's going to be. He said, If thine eye be single,
thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be
evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. Therefore,
if that light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness! No man, and he says the same
thing that we find here in Luke, no man can serve two masters.
He'll either hate the one and love the other, or he'll hold
the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. So we really need to kind of
examine what this mammon, this unrighteous mammon is. And as
we mentioned that coming out of Egypt, they carried much unrighteous
mammon from the Egyptians and made a false idol from it. And we mentioned those 70 and
the 12 that were sent out, that nothing wore out for them. When
they got back, he says, well, did you lack anything? No, sir,
nothing. So that was the lesson for them. So really unrighteous mammon
is that which is worshipped instead of God. It's that which is where
your heart is focused instead of God. And conversely, righteousness
in any form is really only found in Christ who's worthy of worship. He's called the Lord our righteousness. in Jeremiah 23.6 and 33.16 where
He says, this is the name whereby He shall be called, the Lord
our righteousness. And then when it talks about the church there
in chapter 33, it says, this is the name whereby she shall
be called, the church, the Lord our righteousness. And all those
things that come from Him are righteousness, and all those
things are imputed to us through Him. So focusing on the mammon, the
unrighteous mammon, it just becomes all-encompassing. Matthew 16, 26 says, What has
a man profited if he shall gain the whole world? and lose his
own soul. What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? There's many, many stories about
the rich young ruler and all the ones that said, well, I'm
so successful I had to build a bigger barn for all my goods. And he says, tonight thy soul
shall be required of you. And what then? And so your focus
is, your focus in an unregenerate
state is all on the wrong things. And it's in how, even in religion,
how convenient for the prosperity evangelists to say, make friends
with that unrighteous mammon and send some to me so that we
can do good things with it. Then they show up in their limo
and their silk suit and all their bling and everything. You just don't find that in the
Scriptures. So, love of money above all else,
that's just unrighteous mammon. And you know, the money itself
is really, it's inanimate. It's a tool of whoever possesses
it. But nevertheless, when we think
about it, it's really a product of the fall. It's really a product
from the fall in the garden, in the atom. And every atom of
everything in the world that was impacted by that adversely. And we're going to look at an
interesting scripture here in a minute that really brings that
to the forefront and makes us think about that. But really,
hardly ever find a case where mammon was used for good stuff
in the Old Testament. And because of of that, you know, Jacob was
thrown in the, or Jacob was a supplanter and he, rookie dude, brother
out of his inheritance, and Joseph was thrown in the pit. So let's
sell him. We can make a profit on this. We can get some unrighteous
mammon. If we just kill him, we're out
a brother that we don't really care about, but we're out money.
So let's turn a profit on this if we can." Okay. So 1 Timothy
6.10 says, The love of money is the root
of all evil. It's not really the money itself,
the mammon itself, it's just the love of it that gets you
into hot water. It's the root of all evil, which
while some may covet after, they have erred from the faith and
pierced themselves through with many sorrows. And he's talking
about people that are kind of tied into religion, people that
you would think that were sore in the church, They've erred
from the faith in this relationship to this. And covetous was the
issue of the Pharisees. Remember, he says, the Pharisees
also which were covetous, they heard these things and they said,
we don't like this story. And they heard all these things and
they derided at him. It means they turned up the nose. It means the literal translation
of that is, out of the snout. So you can kind of visualize
what they were doing when they derided Jesus. Out of the snout. So, not a good thing to be doing
to the Lord of glory. Righteousness really only comes
through Christ because He alone is righteousness. And in this
world, we're forced to rely on mammon for our existence here,
yet all of it really has its roots in the fall. In the old
days, you had more of an agrarian society or a bartering society
or a trading society. Money was probably a scarce commodity. Remember that in our last chapter
of 15, the woman lost this piece of silver and she frantically
searched for it because it was valuable. So in this world nowadays,
we're really forced more to rely on mammon trading, money for goods and services
more than maybe they were in the Old Testament. But really,
it's all so impacted by the fall. And in the world to come, think of it this way, that all
things will be as they're supposed to be. In the world to come all things
are going to be as they're supposed to be and probably were before
the fall. In Genesis it talks about in
the garden. There were rivers, and one of
the rivers comes out of this area that was famous for gold
and onyx and delium and valuable stones and things. But I think it helps us to keep
that in perspective. I'd like to turn to a verse in
Revelation to maybe help us think about that in a little bit different
terms. In Revelation 21, 18, when it's
describing the heavenly city, it says, "...the building of
the wall of it was jasper, and the city was pure gold, like
unto clear glass. Now when we get a gold coin or
something, it says like 99.99% pure gold. The rest of it is
corruption. If it was 100% pure like it talks
about in the Bible, it would be clear as glass. You wouldn't have any corruption
in it. And I think that this pure gold
is a symbolic picture of the pure righteousness of Christ.
Gold so pure with no corruptions, it appears like transparent glass. And you know, when you refine
stuff, you just keep heating it up until the corruption stuff
just kind of floats up to the top and gets scooped away. But
with our technology and abilities, we only have the ability to refine
it so much. And there's just still a little
bit of corruption in it. And that makes it look like when
we see gold, that's why it looks the way that it looks to us.
And we can shine it up. It's kind of a dull yellow when
it's in its natural form, but when you polish it all up, it
gets a little shinier and everything. But pure gold says it's clear,
like clear glass. Transparent as glass. So we have
that to deal with. And things that are in the world
that seem to be scarce and therefore they're of great value, in the
world to come they're just commonplace. And they only serve the purpose
that God directs them to serve. Like the city being made of this
substance that's a metaphor, a picture of himself. in the world to come, all those
things will be the norm. They'll be common. They'll just
serve the purpose of glorifying God, and not in monetary terms. And when you think about that,
you know, gold is one of our most precious
metals and monetary devices. You can't eat it. You can't take
it with you. And it only serves a purpose
here in this world for specific things. It's good for making
a lot of things. A lot of electronic things have
gold components in them because it's a good conductor of electrons
and things. But in heaven, There's no need
for that. There's no need for that purpose. You won't be buying anything
because Christ is all in all. There's no need for a light because
He is the light. There's no need for all those
things that we attribute to like in this world won't be of It
won't even enter into your thinking there because it's unnecessary
and it only serves the purpose of glorifying God, so not in
a monetary fashion. Colossians 1.16 says, For by
Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in
earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions,
principalities or powers. All things were created by Him
and for Him. And for Thy pleasure they are
and were created. So, back to Luke in our narrative
about unrighteous mammon. In Luke 16. unscrupulous steward. He says, I have to go and I'm
being audited. I have to go gather up all my
book work and show what I've done with what I've been tasked
to do and what I've been trusted with. And he says, when that
happens, for sure I'm going to be fired. So I have to do something
because I can't do real work, and I'm not going to beg. I have
to connive some way to turn this to my profit. So he goes up to
these debtors that owe a huge debt and says, I want to be your friend after
this is all over. I might want to come and live
in your extra room, eat at your table. He says, so I'll tell
you what. You owe 100 measures of oil.
Get out your debt book and just change that to 50. And I'll change
it to 50 in mine. And afterwards, I may need a
favor in return. And the same with the wheat.
He goes to the other one and says, you owe us a lot of bushels
of wheat. Write, you owe 100 measures a
week. Write four score. We'll settle
for 80. But in return, I'm going to want to stay at your house
sometime, or maybe you give me a job, or something along those
lines. And then the Lord gets told about
this. And he says, that guy is pretty
shrewd. Good thinking. You're still fired. But that's probably what I would
have done. The Lord commended the unjust
steward because he had done wisely. Here is the scathing rebuke by
the Lord that's kind of one of the points of this whole deal. He said, the children of this
world, this unjust steward, in their generation, they're
wiser than the children of light. They spend all their, they spend
110% of their resources focusing on this mammon, this unrighteous
mammon. Excuse me. And he says the children of light
don't spend that much effort towards the gospel. towards promoting
the kingdom of God. He says the children of this
world, they're way above in focusing on the riches of this
world more than the children of light are. And so he says
to make friends of your The mammon of unrighteousness, that when
you fail, or when you die, that's what that word is. Some of the
commentaries change the ye to it, to focus on the money, so
that when the money runs out, you still have friends. It says ye, and in the Greek
it's ye. Make yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness that when ye fail, or in that word
pretty much means when you die, they may receive you into everlasting
habitations. And so it kind of begs the question,
When you get into heaven, is anybody going to ask you what
your bank account was, or how you wangled more dough out of
the world? Who was it that told me the gospel? Who was it that preached to me
the gospel? Who was faithful in that? Who was faithful in
giving me the words of the Lord in salvation? Who was faithful
in that? A guy like Philip going down
to that Ethiopian eunuch, and he didn't know what he had, spend a lot of money going all
the way to Jerusalem to worship and everything. Then that turned
out to be a dud. And then Philip comes up to him
and preaches unto him the same Scripture in Isaiah and preached
unto him Christ. Or for another example, in Acts
we find John and Peter They're going up to the temple and here's
this lame man from birth there asking alms. And they said, you know what?
Silver and gold have we none, but such as we have, we will
give unto you. And they said, in the name of
Christ, rise up and walk. And that was much more of value
than just flipping him a shekel or two and say, get on with your
begging. It just had a temporary result
that didn't have any eternal long-lasting consequences, but
what they gave him actually did. So that's kind of our... part on unrighteous mammon. And
then as we see this applied, we didn't quite make it as far
as I had hoped today, but in the middle of this, he has this
thing about divorce and things, you know, and how that's tied
to John and how that's tied to these Pharisees and right in
the middle of this. And then you go right into the
rich man and Lazarus and, you know, the Pharisees boasted themselves
and they're keeping the law. And he says, there's not one
jot or tittle of the law that has failed. The tittle means
it's a, it's like a little, like if you drew the letter A, the
little mark at the top, the little peak of it, that's just called
like a tittle. There were that little, that
little stroke of the pen that makes that, peak of that letter,
the smallest part of it. He says, not one part of the
law is going to fail. And then he goes into divorce. And it's interesting that John was killed because of that. John the Baptist was beheaded
because he pointed out to certain someone that it's not lawful
for you to have your brother's wife. And no matter how you connived
about doing that, it's not legitimate. And those Pharisees and the elders
and the lawyers, they had kind of tweaked the law a little bit
regarding divorce. And where Moses said, you know,
for adultery it's permissible to divorce. But then they kind of changed
it to suit their needs. Like, well, my wife puts too
much salt in the cooking. Or I saw this person in the marketplace
that was much more attractive than my wife. So I come up with
all these other plausible reasons why I can be rid of my current
wife and get a new one. So he kind of points that out
to them. and then goes on. So we'll stop
here for today and pick up with Richman and Lazarus and that
great gulf that separates us from them in Luke 16. So thank you for your attention
and as always, be free.