Again, this law of the
Creator God, delivered to Israel, represented a rich heritage for the people of
that God. However, the guardians of the
law in Jesus’ day, as far as He was concerned, were not handling it
adequately. Jesus observed that the law, rather than serving its intended
purpose, had been used as a means to draw boundary lines and erect walls around
the blessings that were associated with living according to the revealed
covenant of the Creator God. It had been used for purposes of exclusion
and isolation, thus denying the idea that their God could bless anybody but
those that were marked off as Israel---those that were properly ascribing to the
works of the law.
At the same time, the
Pharisees and the experts in the law were eagerly awaiting and expecting the
promised messiah to come forth, so as to establish the kingdom of God on earth
and to elevate His covenant people above all nations. The kingdom of the
their God, which represented the Creator God’s realm of existence (heaven)
breaking in to the realm of existence understood to be occupied by those that
were created as the image of the Creator God (earth), was what was looked
forward to as the true riches that were going to be experienced by God’s
covenant people. Here, one can think of
Jesus’ prayer that the will of His God be done on earth as it is in
heaven. Jesus, much like those with whom
He lived, expected heaven to come to earth through the Creator God abiding with
and among His people.
It was the true
riches of that coming kingdom of God, as these Pharisees and experts in the law
understood them, that caused them to be so rigid and vigilant in their
application of the required works of the law and the traditions associated with
those works. As they looked upon Israel’s history, with the idolatry (and
associated problems) and its results (judgment and repeated subjugations) that
seemed to stem from inappropriate contact with surrounding nations, their
efforts were somewhat understandable, and can even be looked upon as noble in
some respects. Jesus however, as He seems
to consider the way that these individuals understood the kingdom of God, with
their purposeful and strident exclusion of the Gentile nations and all that did
not perform according to the law and the traditions of the elders, disagrees
with their program and informs them that they cannot be entrusted with the true
riches.
This established, Jesus
can be heard to continue His dissertation against the presumption and what He
apparently saw as the kingdom-of-God-denying high-mindedness of the Pharisees
and the experts in the law. With the words that followed His telling of
the story of the irresponsible and dishonest manager, He can be understood to
be clearly painting these people in that role. This will have the effect
of winning Jesus additional supporters amongst the “commoners”, but it will
certainly gain Him little to no favor with those who fancied themselves as the
guardians of the covenant.
Jesus makes the
connection between the dishonest-though-hopefully-relying-on-his-master’s-honor-standing
manager and the Pharisees and experts in the law even more clear, as He
continues on to say, “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate
the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the
other. You cannot serve God and money” (Luke 16:13). Luke
reinforces the connection in the very next verse, writing that “The Pharisees
(who love money) heard all this and ridiculed Him” (16:14). The connection appears to be rather
clear.
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