And we will start also on page 289, page 289 in all the parables of the Bible. Now, Jesus had a religious problem in his day, did he not? He had problems with the religious leaders of his time, did he? All right. We have to understand that Luke the 16th chapter, they are his audience. Where is he? Where is Jesus? He's in a Pharisee's house at a big dinner. And so he's expounding on all of these parables during that dinner. And he covers a lot of subjects here. In this subject, we're going to talk about religious intolerance and dishonesty and skullduggery. And right at the end of our reading, he's going to make a statement, which I want to I want to expound on that just a little bit today. I was talking to a friend of mine on ham radio this morning for a few minutes. And he lives in Utah, way out in the outback of Utah. I tried to get Marilyn. I hollered and screamed for her to come in there to listen to this. I said, listen to this. This was about an hour he talked about this. And anyway, he lives out there in the outback of Utah. And there, you know, Brigham Young had 75 wives in it. And Joseph Smith, maybe 50. And Mormonism really emphasizes polygamy. Now, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which you see them all over here. Well, in Utah, and maybe even here, they practice polygamy. Now, in the Bible, during this period of time, they had multiple wives, did they not? Yes, that was common practice. What? The Greeks and Romans had a wife and concubines. Yeah, they had concubines. Pontius Pilate was married to Tiberius Caesar's daughter by a concubine. And they had, this was common practice, and it's common practice in Europe, even in England. They have a wife, whereby they carry on their family, and then they have concubines, or mistresses, where they do this. Now this has been down through time, and more, that's the way it has been. And in Utah, it's pretty hard to prosecute a Mormon for being a polygamist. because everybody's a Mormon, okay? And they have people that are religiously polygamous, that are Mormons, that are adherents of the church. And my friend was telling me today, he said, you can tell the difference between those Mormons that are part of this polygamous unit where he lives and those that are outlaw Mormons. He said, the Mormons may have five or six wives out there. They're all happy. He said, they live in a big beehive house. And they will come to town, the women, now they can only be legally married to one woman. Okay? But all of the other wives are sisters and they're all having three or four children. Utah is one of the states in the Union that has more welfare than any other state. Because all the other wives are on welfare, and they're all getting food stamps. Now this is among all types. We're going to get down, and Jesus is dealing with this situation right here. You understand? So we're going to get into that. But he went out there, and he said, these women that are from these legitimate patriarchs, everybody's happy. They come to town, and he said, they're dressed up in 1880s-style clothes. The women have this handmade clothing that is so beautiful. He said, you could not buy that in the store. And the man will come in and bring them, and the women go on shopping. And women go on and shop. Now, we see that here, don't we, Marilyn? Yes. But it's not from Mormonism, is it? No, it isn't. Now, we're going to get into this because the last statements that he makes in this set, this parable right here, has to deal with this, okay? And he says that, he said, you can see all these women out here, and you'll see these big homes. Now, he said, these women are getting like $1,000 to $1,500, $2,000 a month, according to how many children they have. And it goes to their husband. They all get it checked. It's electronically done to them and everything. They get food stamps. They get medical treatment, all this. But he said, there's a whole lot of difference between those real Mormons that believe this. Because he said, you'll see the women, all everything together. And then he'll see a 10 acre, a 15 acre, a 20 acre parcel out there. He said, this is a different story. They'll go out there, and one man will say that he's an adherent, or that the Mormon religion is his faith. And he'll go out there, and he'll keep getting more wives. And he'll put each wife in a mobile home, and he said, you can tell it's so easy. They have trampolines outside for the kids to play on. You'll see a mobile home, maybe just a piece of junk out there, and he'll have this woman pregnant all the time, and he'll go by every month and take all of her money. Now he's only married to one woman, okay? And they have all of these mobile homes out there with all of these trampolines around to keep him in shape and have him give him something to do. And he'll go there every month and impregnate them as he goes around the line. and take their money from them. And he says, these guys will have 10 to 20 wives. And he said, that's the red flag. That's the red flag in the legal. And they sometimes will arrest them for doing this. But he says, we have another problem with polygamy that nobody can touch. And that's Islam, the Muslims. They're gonna do whatever they want to. They will not arrest them, but they will never touch them. No way in the world. And we see this at the grocery stores here, don't we, Maryland? They come in there. They're married to one wife legally, but a Muslim can have four legal wives and all the concubines he can afford. Just go look at some of these big homes in this area. Those women are drawing money from your tax dollars. Those people over there are drawing money from your tax dollars. And all of it is a religious fraud. It is religious fraud. Now why won't the police or sheriff's office in Utah arrest a Muslim for having four wives? Because immediately they will holler Sharia law, number one, and they will have protests all over the place. Because that's their religion. OK? Now, they can go and they can prosecute these guys that are using this system. And we have that in the gangs in Bakersfield, in Fresno, and all over. These big companies, like these dairies out here and everything, they'll get these illegal aliens coming up here. Now, if you're an illegal alien and go out to Cal State, you can get free education. Citizens won't. The illegal aliens. They're going to get free legal advice. They get WIC. They get all of this stuff. They get medical, and they get housing. And so the gangsters come up here. They go to work. They come in here on that. This is what happened from El Salvador and stuff. They'll come in here, and they'll get their women, their mamas, whatever you want to call them. And they'll go there, and they will plant one here, and plant one here, and plant one here, and plant one here. And there are now, the welfare system is supporting all of these illegal aliens, but the gangster illegal alien that's in the gangs. We have a problem with this today, don't we? And California is absolutely immersed in it, isn't it? And it's in Utah, and they don't know what to do about it. They know what to do. They'll leave the Mormons alone because they're not bothering anybody if they have four or five wives. If they're living their religion. But the ones that are abusing the system with ten wives, and they're living off of them, and they don't work. Okay? They don't work. And we see all of this in the Islamics. Empire in every one of these states in the Union they do it and nobody was going to say anything about if they prosecute a Mormon They ought to prosecute a Muslim shouldn't it? Shouldn't it? Well, there's fear there is fear and in Jesus time. There was great fear among the people because of the manipulation of the Pharisees the Sadducees the Herodians of Sakkari and the Hellenist, all of these different groups of Judaism. And what was the first enemy of the Christian church? Judaism, the first enemy of Christian church. Now, as we've got all of this down, we have problems today with this, don't we? Do we? You like supporting all these gangsters and people? You are. Wherever you are, you're supporting it. Also Jesus said to the disciples, there was a certain rich man who had a manager of his estate and accusations against the man were brought to him that he was squandering his master's possessions. Squandering his master's possessions. And he called to him and said to him, Now this is what we call a difficult passage. This is a very difficult passage. I could get books and read many, many books trying to explain this passage to you today. And he called to him and said to him, what is it that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, of my affairs, for you can be my manager, what? No longer. Guess what Jesus is talking here. What did Jesus do in his ministry? What did he do? The administrators of the Kingdom of God at that time were what? Under the law, the Jews were supposed to bring people to God. They were supposed to point them to Christ, the King that was to come. And yet, when their Christ King came, what did they do? They murdered him. Now, it says in these verses, the law and the prophets were unto what? John and after that the kingdom of heaven suffers what violence violent individuals pressing into controlling the kingdom of God so we have all quite a story here don't we in this difficult passage we saw we see skullduggery we see a thievery dishonesty remember when Jesus healed the blind boy that had been blind all of his life And the Jews in the synagogue where the boy was, they went and questioned his parents and tried to make him say that that wasn't their son. They said, he's our son. And so they kicked him out of the synagogue. And they questioned the boy. And he says, who did this? I don't know. I don't know. I just know that he did it. I was blind and now I see. All right. Persecution. Persecution. And he called him and said to him, what is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management of my affairs, for you can no longer be my management. Did the Jews hear these words? I will go to the dogs, to the Gentiles. In Genesis, the ninth chapter, verses 24 onward, it said that Japheth would dwell in the tents of Shem, because Shem would be no longer worthy of carrying on the administration of God's kingdom. And the manager of the state said to himself, what shall I do, seeing that my master is taking the management from me? I'm not able to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg. I have come to know that I will do this, so that they, my master's debtors, may accept and welcome me in their homes. When I am put out of the management, what's he going to do? He's thinking. So he summoned his master's debtors one by one. And he said to the first, how much do you owe my master? Now what does the word master there mean? What's the word master mean? That's a head shot. That's the owner. He's the owner of all things. He's the owner of the whole estate. Now who is this master? a big God. What had Israel done to the things of God? They merchandised it. They made it little. Jesus walked into the place where they were having money changers and buying and selling and what he did. You have made my father's house a house of prayer into a what? A den of thieves. Difficult passages. And he said a hundred measures, about 900 gallons of oil. And he said to him, what kind of oil is that? Olive oil. That's worth more than gold. 900 gallons of oil. And he said to him, take back your written agreement and obligation and sit down and quickly write down 50. About 450 gallons instead of 900. Half. That's a lot of money right off right there. I remember going down here to a restaurant, down here, and I was listening to one of these proud, boisterous dairymen down there and said, I don't pay taxes, I pay politicians. And they better not bother me, they've said that the dairies are causing all the pollution here and they came out here and they got Channel 23 TV out there and everything, and I have put those supervisors in their place with my money. And they better not mess with me. I better not be on the news tonight. He wasn't. I'm a member of the California Dairy Association. We bought our way. We bought it. I remember when they cut our throats here, when the dairies came in here, when the people voted them out. And they came in here, and we were going to subdivide 50 acres of our land and would have had enough money to live for the rest of life on that 50 acres if they'd allowed us to do what we needed to do with it. We're going to make $5 million off that 50 acres. $100,000 an acre. We had already paid thousands of dollars to have it subdivided and everything, and they had five supervisors, and two of them before us, and then one guy stands up there and said, I won't let these dairies do that. But he was running for sheriff, and the dairies gave him $25,000 apiece for his sheriff campaign. And when it came time to vote whether we could subdivide our land, he got there, he says, dairy's bringing too much money to Kern County, I have to vote against this. And he told us he wouldn't. The other two had already been bought. And by the way, one of those that weren't bought was a Mormon. He was a pretty good old guy. He was honest. And I'm not building up Mormonism here. That's what happened. And we lost. We lost it all. They destroyed us financially. That's what happened back here. They can make you or break you. After they said one to another, and how much do you owe? And he said, a hundred measures about 900 bushels of wheat. And he said to them, take back your written agreement and obligation and write down 80. About 700 bushels. People are saving a lot of money here, aren't they? And his master praised the dishonest, unjust manager for seeing shrewdly, for acting shrewdly and prudently, for the sons of this age are shrewder and more prudent and wiser in relationship to their own generations, that is, in their own age and kind, than the sons of the light." Church, learn a lesson from this. He said, these are the scoundrels we're observing. He said, know this. know this. Another guy down here was going to put in a solar plant down here, and this supervisor stood against him. He was one of the dairymen. And they were going to stop him. They wouldn't let him do it with his land. And he was in partners with me before on the other one when they cut our throat. I told him, I said, go down there and tell so-and-so did this, and so-and-so did this, and how did these dairies get in there, and where did they get the permits to come in here when the people voted them out? And guess what? He got to go do what he needed to do, didn't he? They shut up, and he got down there and supported him. Yeah, they did. I just let them blow the whistle just a little bit. They won't want to hear this. They won't want to hear this. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon. that is deceitful riches and money and possessions, so that when it fails, those who have favored may receive and welcome you into the everlasting habitations and dwellings. Make friends with the rich. I've told this story before. I was very poor when I grew up. And so poor that I hardly had any clothes to put on my feet. No shoes to wear, period. Except for school. We had to wear shoes in school. Except when they came out with those thongs, and we had thongs. And you could buy a pair of thongs for about a dollar, or 25 cents. But shoes were more expensive. When I came up, I worked hard all my life. I worked on this farm picking cotton and bucking hay out here when I was hardly big enough Any other kids have been sitting down watching TV. Well, we were poor. We were watching, or Marilyn was watching a television program about Richard Nixon and the family that he grew up in was very poor. And I said to her, I said, they are not poor. They have a house and they have windows and doors on the house. We didn't. We had a shack made out of scrap wood and a dirt floor. That's poor. And when you don't have a refrigerator, and when you don't have electricity and running water, that's poor. That's poor. See, I lived like that. When I got up and I became a preacher, I had a hard time taking money for preaching. A lot of times I just wouldn't do it. And God was slapping me around a little bit. Anyway, I went down there and I got acquainted with my friend, Fotios Kuriakopoulos. He owned a fleet of restaurants down there, and he became pretty good friends with me because I had guided him hunting in the mountains years before, when I was only about 18 or 20 years old, and he remembered me. And I was barely making it down there. I had a little Dawson 510 station wagon, and the engine was so worn out, it would hardly start. I had to put a heater on the engine so it wouldn't get too cold and plug it in. So if it got too cold, it didn't have enough compression to start. Later on, I finally found out that the valves were getting too tight on it, so I loosened them up and it ran a little better. But I came in there and it was chilly down there. It wasn't bad, but I said, I need to plug my car in because I was helping him on the restaurant. I was cooking for him and working on something. I worked on his house. Because he said, you can fix anything. And his wife used to look at me and she'd say, you can fix anything. He can't fix anything except make money. That's all he knows how to do, make money. He can't fix anything. And I fixed everything. Anyway, Tony saw I was having trouble with that car, and he said, Jim, you're a priest. Well, he's a Greek Orthodox, and they look upon their priest with great high esteem. And he said, you are greatly well You have given your life to study and all of this. He says, you go down and you go any car dealer you want and buy yourself any new car you want. Anyone. Whatever you want. Tell them my name. Give them my phone number. Here. And he said, you will get any car you want. I said, no. He said, why? Why won't you let me do this for God? I said, I don't. I'll take care of it. He said, Don't you realize that God is making me feel bad and want to help you? He told me this. I said, that's all right. So I sinned and did not do that. God put him in my life to give me a car. And I sure could have been driving a new car and not having to worry about making that old piece of junk go. The camshaft finally broke in two on it and died. I had to buy another car. And today, Foddy still reminds me of that when he wanted to buy me a new car. Today, I'd say, yeah, Foddy, where do you want me to go? I'll do it. I know better now. I know better. This is part of the story, isn't it? God can help you along your life in ways. I tell you, make friends for yourselves of the rich so that when you get down and out, they can help you. Verse number 10, he who is faithful in very little thing is faithful also in much, and he who is dishonest and unjust in very little thing is dishonest and unjust in every ways. If a man is a thief, he's a thief. He'll steal a penny or a hundred dollars. Petty thefts, Marilyn. Petty thefts. You went through it with your mother. The man had plenty of money and that woman would go out there and steal something. In every restaurant, she'd steal a dish, a glass, a fork or a knife, go into every store and steal cosmetics, whatever she could lay her hands on. And she didn't need it, but she was a thief. The bottom of her heart, she was a thief. And she would have stole big things if she can't. She just kept trying to find a boundary, but she found no boundary. She just kept stealing, stealing, stealing until she got too old to do it. We see this dishonesty in a little bit and dishonesty in much. And therefore, if you have not been faithful in the case of the unrighteous mammon and deceitful riches, money and possessions, who will entrust you to true riches? These Jews had control, didn't they, of the whole system. They had control of the whole system. Let me ask you, Brother Roger, was Herod a Jew? Herod the king, King Herod, was he a Jew? Half, part? Maybe a tiny bit. But not by blood, was he? No. Anthony and Cleopatra put him on the throne. Joseph should have been on the throne, Jesus' earthly father. But he wasn't on the throne, was he? And why did the Jews accept him as their king? Because they built him a fine, beautiful palace and a temple and made Jerusalem look like a Roman city with a hippodrome and a horse race. And if you have not proved faithful in that which belongs to another, whether God or man, who will give you that which is your own, that is true riches. No servant is able to serve two masters." Now all of these, he's in a bad place here. Marilyn tells me when I preach that I ought to wear, what Marilyn? A bulletproof vest. Because I say things sometimes that She thinks for sure somebody's gonna try to kill me. Well, I have I've been under the gun for ever since you've been married to me Haven't I somebody been trying to kill me? 820 years of that no servant is able to serve two masses for either he will hate the one or love the other he will stand by and be Devoted to the one and despise the other now where's Jesus. I He's right in the house of one of these scoundrels. He's in the house. He's in their territory. And they're listening to him. And they're figuring some of this stuff out. Parables do what? They enlighten, turn the light on things, and sometimes they turn the lights out, don't they? And I think their lights were out, but they could see through some of this. You cannot serve God and mammon riches, that is, and anything in which you trust and which you rely. Now the Pharisees... Look at this. This is funny. This is funny. What does it say? Now the Pharisees who were covetous lovers of money heard all these things taken together and they began to sneer and ridicule and scoff at him and that's not all. They began to lay out a plan, a contract on his life. They're going to kill him. What was that old woman, they called her Hatchet something, that went into all the saloons and chopped them up and doing prohibition, and this is pre-prohibition, and went in and closed all Lisa's saloons. I can't remember her name. Carried a hatchet with her wherever she went, chopping up and destroying things. Well, Jesus didn't have a hatchet, and he was right in the den of thieves. But he said to them, you are they who declare yourselves just and upright before men. But God knows your hearts. I know your heart. For what is exalted and highly thought of among men is detestable and abomination inside of God. Until John came, there was a law and a prophets. Until John came, the law and the prophets were until John. The law and the prophets were until John, okay? You got that? And then, the good news, the gospel of the kingdom of God is being preached and every man, everyone strives violently. Who is each one striving violently? How does a kingdom of heaven suffer violence? By those violent, wicked men. Those violent, wicked men. And they want to grab the kingdom. Why did they want to crucify Jesus, Brother Roger? He's going to take our religion away from us and he's going to do what? He's going to obstruct our religion. Let's kill him. Thou shalt not kill. What does it say in Hebrew? Thou shalt not keep on murdering. Thou shalt not keep on killing. Thou shalt not keep on coveting. Thou shalt not keep on bearing false witness. Now look at this. Thou shalt not keep on committing adultery. The last thing he says to them, let's see what it is. Now they were polygamists, weren't they? But these people were terrible polygamists. They would divorce their wife for any reason and marry another woman because they didn't want to have to support her. They wanted her off, off of their bank account, off of everything. They wanted to get rid of those women and start over with another woman. Younger, prettier, more agreeable, whatever, you know. They'd start in and they'd do that. And then kick the other, divorce the other one. And the last thing that Jesus says now really slaps them in the face. And the priests and the high priests were all doing this. And the Pharisees, they were all practicing this. The King of God is being preached and everyone strives violently to take it by force rather than God's way into it. Yet it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than one dot or one tittle of the law to become void and fail. Eighteen, here we are. They were all adulterers. They were all adulterers, all of them, every one. Because they had been practicing this, and the Mishnah and the Talmud allowed it, didn't it? Did it not? And they came up to Jesus, and what will the born of saints say? Is it not lawful for us to divorce our wives for any reason? Isn't it? Isn't it all right for us to divorce our wives for any reason? And Jesus said, what? And he repeats it here. And this is what they were doing to their wives. Because a woman had no property, did she? Even here in America until about the 1960s, a woman didn't have any property. It was all in a man's name. A woman, a man, when he died, he could leave his property to somebody else. He didn't have to leave it to the woman. Whoever dismisses and repudiates and divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. See what I said? Now, does the law of Moses allow for divorce? Does the New Testament allow for divorce? Yes. It does. It does that. But not the way they were doing it, not the reason they were doing it. And he who marries a woman who is divorced from her husband, what? He commits adultery and he makes her to commit adultery. He commits adultery and he makes her to commit adultery. Because they're not doing it God's way, are they? They're doing it their way. They had rewrote the law. For what? To their advantage. They were the wicked men, the wicked servants, the wicked what we call administrator of the kingdom. They were administrators of the kingdom, weren't they? But Jesus had taken the reins away from them and called out that little old sickly, weakly church that he said the gates of hell should not prevail against. Now let's see what our writer says here. On page 289. This parable is peculiar to Luke. And it's still a parable of a hard interpretation. The simple word also in 61 indicates that the parable before us was addressed particularly to Christ's disciples and its message was also meant for the rich among the scribes and the Pharisees as well as among the publicans and the sinners who had chosen to become disciples of Jesus. Pay attention people, he said, pay attention. that the parable stung the conscience of the money-loving Pharisees evident from their reaction to it. The Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things and derided him. The word covetous here, used by the Paul in 2 Timothy 3 and 12, literally means to sail around and grab everything. I remember my boys had a little game one time called the Cookie Monster. They'd run around eating everything, or what's another one? that just ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate, that reminds me of what that word means, to sail around and grab and eat everything. To be a glutton. Lovers of money. Those Pharisees felt the force of Christ's parable and showed visible signs of scorn, which he met with forceful rebuke. A little grain of conscience made them sour. Love of money. And not money itself was not evil, but the love of money is the root of all evil in it. Christ exposed them in this parable. He exposed what they were. Unusualness, this parable has been subjected more to any other parables to discordant interpretations and explanations. Excessive literalism has turned the parable into a maze of sublets. Fantastic theories have been exhorted out of every clause in this parable, haven't they? This is a difficult passage, isn't it? Very difficult passage. But when you take back and you go back and look at it as it is, you find out that it's not quite as hard to interpret as some people make it. Make friends of mammon, so when you need it, you've got a door. Pathetic because many of these interpretations represent the pitiable abuse of the right reverence due to the words of Christ. By his use of this parable, he was condoning a fraudulent transaction. Was it fraudulent? Yes. He was just telling them what's going on. That's what you people have been doing all the time. As a personification of truth, honesty, and righteousness, he could not use a rogue as unjust steward was to point moral and adorn a tale with it. Christ did not command the cunning deceit. but the astuteness of the steward. Butterick says that our Lord used this man as an example in resource, not as an example in point of corruption. He crowded his canvas with a motley array of types, not all of them unsmirched. An earthly story, even for the purpose of a heavenly meaning, must use earthly people, and earthly people are not Righteous people are paragons, aren't they? The gist of the parable is that a rich man, perhaps one of whom Jesus had heard in ordinary conversation, was a shrewd man who had paid close attention to his affairs and kept his agents under vigilant control. The unfaithful were promptly dismissed and commendation was forthcoming for the shrewdness and villainy. Without very severe reprehension, the steward was one who looked out for himself. Number one, huh? Looking out for number one. He was wise in his deceit and in his generation. The debtors fell in with his cunning arrangements, helping thereby their own purses. Were they dishonest too? Yeah. Can religion, can you buy your way into religion today? Can you buy way in heaven according to many religions? Sure. Yeah. They're gonna buy their way into hell, but they're trying their way into religion. Well, all of them. The Jews. In the synagogues, they buy a seat. They buy the seat. Nobody can sit on that seat but them. Am I right? Yep. Bought and paid for religion, but it doesn't work. And Jesus is telling us that the simplest explanation of such apparel is that Jesus used it to describe worldly astuteness and to teach a lesson of spiritual prudence. As to the details of the steward's clever fraud, they are of no intrinsic importance. All Jesus did was to take this man's foresight and promptitude, wicked as they were in their application, as an illustration of qualities which have a necessary place in the life of true disciples. Do people go out and lead people astray? Did Joseph Smith do that? Did Muhammad do it? Charles Taze Roth? All these are promising them And then we have this prosperity gospel that we have out here You just give money and give money to me give money to me and give me a dollar and you'll get ten Give me a dollar and you'll get a hundred just try it try God try God see if he won't do that you hear that The figure of a steward previously used by you by Jesus and Luke 1242 is used to describe the office of the Apostles and the church in it that the apostles are a place of service in the church. The apostles were placed in the church. And they are called to minister the word of God. All such are stewards of the mysteries of God and must be found faithful, 1 Corinthians 4, 1 and 2. The Pharisees as official interpreters of the law were supposed to be stewards. of all true disciples, and must function such in this capacity, but they had become what? Unrighteous stewards and accountable. But they had made their way in the world, hadn't they? They had covered their bases in every way. The master's goods must not be wasted, while perhaps the Pharisees had not wasted their substance in riotous living, yet what had they done? They may as well have, Why he called them, he told them they were living in adultery. Living in adultery. The Muslims in the world today. A man, if he gets mad at his wife, he can say, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you, three times. And then what happens? She's divorced, legally and Sharia law. And he can marry her back so many times. Marry to her. And when they marry her, they're just cohabiting again. And then if he gets mad at her and says, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you. After three times, Muhammad says, she has to go out and marry somebody else and have sex with them. And then he'll get rid of her. And then you can have her back. That's something weird, isn't it? Where'd that come? Do you think that came out of the Bible? Do you think that came out of the true God of heaven? No. That came out of that demented man's own mind. They are shown here that the goods committed to them could be wasted in other ways than in association with harlots, because they had made women harlots, hadn't they, in their own law, the mission and entitlement. Breaking down the parable then, we find our Lord condemning the Pharisees for their misuse of God's given responsibility and for their misuse of his word. They were guilty of the same sin as the prodigal, in proportion as they had failed to use what was entrusted to them for his glory and the good of other men. They were selfish. As stewards not only of the mysteries, but of the money and the privileges, God has blessed the Jews with money, hasn't he? He has. That's one of the blessings. But they have misused it, haven't they? In Hollywood? All over. They have used it. They probably, the American Indian is probably the most abused people in the world. Genocide was against them. This whole country was ours. And we don't see that every day on the television. But I'll tell you what, the Holocaust has been on there over and over and over again. But there were more Polish killed than there were Jews. You don't hear them hollering because they don't have control of the media. But God gave them control, didn't he? And are they worthy of that control? Are they worthy as being stewards in God's world today? No. Further in the first section of the parable, our Lord teaches that wealth and influence may be employed that should reverses come and poverty come, those helped in days of posterity will act as friends in time of adversity. As my friend told me about those girls over there in Mormon country, those polygamous girls, that these men would go out and get them and take them off the streets as prostitutes and bring them in there and make them slaves, sex slaves. Not wives, but sex slaves. Is slavery alive in America? to Mormonism and to the Islam, slavery is alive and well. And I remember the first time I said that in my Sunday school class about five years ago, they had a fit. Slavery's not in America, and I said, oh yes it is. The only religious group in the world today that practices slavery all over the world is Islam. That's a practice, accepted practice. Any civilized country in the world does not practice slavery today, does it? But that, wherever nation they're in, they practice slavery. And those guys have learned over their loopholes, because they're back in that polygamous country, that they can marry 10 or 15 or 20 wives and get $30,000 and $40,000 and $50,000 a month without working. All they're doing is lust and abuse of these women and make slaves out of them. God requires truth and uprightness in all dealings with his stewards and servants. It's only thus that the reward can be theirs when the final accountant or account is rendered. The transaction of the steward with his master's debtors revealed his true character. He was a scouter, and it revealed the true character of the Pharisees, didn't it? And then into the last thing, he said, you're adulterers, and you've made women adulteresses. Women of the night because of what you've done. He was destitute of integrity and fidelity to his office as Israel was. Destitute of integrity. To ingratiate himself with the debtors by lowering the debts they owed his master, this wise steward had no regard for the interest of his master or of his just claims on the debtors. Israel was the steward and administrator of God's kingdom until John preached. Until then, what? The kingdom of God then suffered violence from then on. And it has to, to this day, hasn't it? False religious systems in all of these today. Today, men are guilty of lowering the claims of God in regard to holiness and truth by their assertion of false estimates of divine requirements. Men may praise us when we do well to ourselves, but what the world may highly esteem may be an abomination in the sight of God." In our Lord's application of this parable to his disciples, he told them to learn a lesson. from the prudence and the foresight, he often exercised by successful men of the world. Make yourselves friend of mammon, he says, of unrighteousness, that when you fall, they may receive you into our everlasting habitations. What exactly is meant by mammon? In the Syriac version, the word means money or riches. It is used in contrast the service of worship of money, with which is due God in Matthew 6, 24. Mammon, the symbol of wealth, was they possessed by the rich man in the parable, but mammon of unrighteousness. Unrighteousness being the absence of goodness. Can a man earn much money righteously? Can they? Yes. They can do that. They can have good businesses. and hire Christians. I know people that do this. They hire Christians and they pay them well. John B. Stetson was probably one of the greatest men in the history of America. Back in the North, they were enslaving families from children from five years old were working in factories. They had to go to work to support themselves because they were getting such meager wages. He raised the wage. of all of his employees, because he made hats. I won't buy anything but a Stetson hat today. Besides that, nothing else would fit me. My head's too little. Stetson makes hats big enough for us little idiots, even. He had profit sharing. Nobody made him do that. He had medical insurance. He provided doctors. He provided schools so the children didn't have to work in factories. They could get an education. He even built colleges for them. That's a lot of man. That's the man that fathered the American dream. And he made a lot of money. He was dying with tuberculosis when he went out to Colorado to breathe better and to die away from that bad air back east. Saw all the humidity and everything. He came out there and started making hats. and went back here in the cowboy hats of America, that's where they come from, John B. Stetson. I told that story in second grade one time and the little kids just loved it. Material wealth. The lesson at this point on the next page, page 291, the possession of wealth and influence and position, leisure and opportunity are so to be used here on earth as never to be forgotten in the eternal state. God's bountiful stewards will never lose a reward. Friends for eternity will be theirs because of the wise use of the temporal means. That man, Stetson, was a great man, a great leader in America. Henry Ford started that after that, and then he turned on his employees and began to enslave them. We have all of these rich men in America, the Carnegie's, the Rockefeller's. Rockefeller was a Baptist. Oh, what a scoundrel he was. Rockefeller? Rockefeller, yeah, John Rockefeller. Part of the oil companies? Yeah, the oil companies. He was a scoundrel. They walked on people, they used their lives up, the steel industry, the banking industry by these big people and they used. And then when they got older and they got all these millions, they began to be philanthropists because they got guilty for all the millions of people, hundreds and thousands of people that they had used and abused and killed in their quest for money. And so we had the Rockefeller Foundation. All of this, the Carnegie, the libraries. Carnegie went to his pastor and he said, he was president attorney, he went to his pastor and he said, what in the world can I do to turn around what I've done to America? He said, build libraries so the kids can go and get free books to learn. They had a bad conscience, what they did. We, in our families, we need to give good examples to our children when we pray for missionaries. when we pray for one another in our churches, and we really give to them. That's more than just lip service. Please help them, and then we won't help them. They need something, and you can do it. Do it. Do it. Be a philanthropist with what you have, even if you don't have it. Share what you have. Give. What you gave here in this world, it's laying up treasure in the future. One little boy was listening to his dad pray for the missionaries and told his dad later on, he said, you know, dad, I'm your accountant. You could help the missionaries a whole lot better than you do. Motives. Love of possessions and love of your own pride and what you have used for the glory of God, whatever it is. Our Lord's final lesson on page 298 is that the manifestation of common sense and prudence is the test of faithfulness. And what we have, whether much or little, faithfulness is the most important thing that we have. Faithfulness. Be faithful to God. Your fidelity to Him. In Revelation 2 and 10, it says faithfulness is to be the basis of all our rewards for all eternity. What you've done with what you have. Our Lord commends fidelity, seeing it produces and directs prudence. Disciples are to act all times as an under-responsibility of the Divine Master as if He was looking at them always. Then in eternity, those who benefited through our ministry, our money, our both, will form their joy and crown of rejoicing. They that be wise and astute as this steward shall shine in brightness of the firmity, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars of the stars forever, Daniel 12 and 3, gifts and graces used as unto God bring a present satisfaction and go to build a memorial in the ages to come. And I'll never forget how I took from that man, not that car. And I have kept him from that blessing all his life. Because I know now God would have blessed him. And I've asked God to forgive me for many, many times for that. And I've used that as an example because I was unrighteous in not allowing that man to do to me, for me, what God had put on his heart. That was wrong. Do you have any questions or comments on this message? No, I remember you mentioning that. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any comments, anything? Mary Lynn, you have a question? Well, I think you can be blessed with little things, even buying a parking spot. That's right. We ought to be praying when we go into the store. And when I find what I need and find it at a real good price, I say, thank you, Lord. And every little thing, you know, I lost my checkbook the other day. And I lost my wallet. And I'll pray and pray and say, Lord, help me find this. You know, we need beepers on everything anymore, don't we? If you set your phone down, you can call the phone and you'll hear it ringing if it doesn't run out of battery. We need that for our retainers, your false teeth, your glasses, whatever. You need it for everything. And every time we find them, we say, thank you, Lord, that it didn't walk off someplace else. When I was up in Nevada by myself for two weeks up there and several weeks last year in wintertime, I had nobody to blame than me. Now down here, it might move. I went into my radio room, but I found out things had moved all over the place. And I saw a lot more things moved in my bedroom. But we know what our job is in this world, don't we? Our job is to be good stewards for what God has given us. Let's have a prayer, and I'll turn you loose on the world. Sharon, would you dismiss us in prayer, please? understand on the deep level what you're trying to say to us. And Lord, I just ask your blessing on this house that's been so generous to have be open for these teachings. And Lord, I just ask you bless everyone here. And just thank you for this opportunity to learn your word. In Jesus' name, amen. A lot more wickedness.