The Daily Audio Bible
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The parable of the shrewd manager
16 Jesus said to his disciples, “Once there was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were laid against him that he was squandering his property. 2 So he called him and said to him, ‘What’s all this I hear about you? Present an account of your stewardship; I’m not going to have you as my steward anymore!’
3 “At this, the steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do? My master is taking away my stewardship from me! I can’t do manual work, and I’d be ashamed to beg . . .
4 “ ‘I have an idea what to do!—so that people will welcome me into their households when I am fired from being steward.’
5 “So he called his master’s debtors to him, one by one. ‘How much,’ he asked the first, ‘do you owe my master?’
6 “ ‘A hundred measures of olive oil,’ he replied.
“ ‘Take your bill,’ he said to him, ‘sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’
7 “To another he said, ‘And how much do you owe?’
“ ‘A hundred measures of wheat,’ he replied.
“ ‘Take your bill,’ he said, ‘and make it eighty.’
8 “And the master praised the dishonest steward because he had acted wisely. The children of this world, you see, are wiser than the children of light when it comes to dealing with their own generation.
9 “So let me tell you this: use that dishonest stuff called money to make yourselves friends! Then, when it gives out, they will welcome you into homes that will last.”
Teachings on stewardship
10 “Someone who is faithful in a small matter,” Jesus continued, “will also be faithful in a large one. Someone who is dishonest in a small matter will also be dishonest in a large one. 11 If you haven’t been faithful with that wicked thing called money, who is going to entrust you with true wealth? 12 And if you haven’t been faithful in looking after what belongs to someone else, who is going to give you what is your own?
13 “Nobody can serve two masters. You will end up hating one and loving the other, or going along with the first and despising the other. You can’t serve God and money.”
14 The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this, and mocked Jesus. 15 So he said to them, “You people let everyone else know that you’re in the right—but God knows your hearts. What people call honorable, God calls abominable!
16 “The law and the prophets lasted until John. From now on, God’s kingdom is announced, and everyone is trying to attack it. 17 But it’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of an ‘i’ to drop out of the law.
18 “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a person who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.