Scripture: Luke 16:1-9
Video Link: https://youtu.be/3PdGt4m0G2M
Audio Link: Stream Sermon – 15 Mar 2026 – The Shrewd Manager by tawabaptist | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Structure:
- Introduction
- The shrewd manager
- The noble master
- The not so shrewd disciples
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
In Matthew 10, as Jesus is commissioning his disciples for a short-term mission trip, he says to them: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
Shrewd is a word which means clever, smart, astute, sharp-witted, intelligent.
The world is sometimes hostile to the Christian message, therefore we who are believers need to be shrewd or street smart. We need to manage ourselves well, without doing harm. We need spiritual insight to navigate the society we live in, without compromising our faith in Christ.
Today we continue our series on the parables of Jesus. Last Sunday Sam Barris spoke on the parable of the Good Samaritan, in Luke 10. This week our focus is the parable of the Shrewd Manager, in Luke 16, (also known as the parable of the unjust steward).
The parable of the unjust steward could be summed up by Jesus’ instruction to “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves”, although the emphasis in this parable is on being as shrewd as snakes. From Luke 16, verse 1, we read…
Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’ 3 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— 4 I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’ 5 “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 “‘Nine hundred gallonsof olive oil,’ he replied. “The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’ 7 “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’ “‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied. “He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’ 8 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
There are two main characters in this parable: the shrewd manager and the noble master. Listening to the parable are the not so shrewd disciples.
Let us begin with the shrewd manager.
The shrewd manager:
They say survival depends mostly on the top two inches. If you are lost in the wilderness, you will make it out alive if you are shrewd, if you have the right mindset and an astute awareness of your environment.
In practical terms, this means staying calm and accepting the reality of your situation. Denial wastes time and energy. The sooner you recognise what’s really happening, the sooner you can get clarity on your next steps.
Clarity on your next steps comes with focusing on what you can control and setting priorities accordingly. One of the first things you need to prioritise is building a shelter. You can go weeks without food, but if it’s cold and wet and you don’t have shelter you might not make it through the night.
The parable of the shrewd manager comes straight after the parable of the prodigal son. Both parables share some similarities.
Each has a noble master and a wayward character who wastes their master’s money. Indeed, the word ‘prodigal’ means to be extravagant, reckless with money or wasteful. The shrewd manager is essentially a prodigal manager.
Both wayward characters have a reality check. They reach a crisis point, an ‘aha’ moment about themselves, when they come to their senses. Once they accept the reality of their situation, they find clarity on a way forward.
And, in both parables, there is a merciful outcome. Each of the wayward characters is saved by the extraordinary grace of their master.
These two parables are not the same in every way though. Jesus told the parable of the Prodigal Son primarily for the Pharisees, that they would rejoice in the fact that he (Jesus) had come to seek and save the lost.
In contrast, Jesus told the parable of the Shrewd Manager for the benefit of the disciples, that they would not be naive but would be street smart and awake to the reality at hand.
The parable of the Shrewd Manager assumes a scenario that Jesus’ Middle Eastern audience would have been familiar with. A rich landowner who leased his land to farmers who paid rent by giving the landowner a portion of their harvest.
In Luke 16, verse 1, the rich man learns that his manager has been wasting his possessions, so he calls the manager in, fires him on the spot and orders him to hand over the books.
Interestingly the manager does not argue with his master. When the master asks him, ‘What is this I hear about you?’, the manager is silent. The manager is shrewd. He doesn’t react defensively in the moment. He stays calm.
The manager can see he is in a precarious position. His survival is at stake.
To argue his innocence or offer excuses, when he does not have a leg to stand on, would only escalate the situation and further aggravate the master. Best to exercise his right to remain silent while he gathers his thoughts.
After leaving his master’s presence, the manager has a reality check. He says to himself (in verse 3), ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg…
This is a moment of crisis for the manager. To his credit he harbours no illusions about himself. He quickly comes to his senses and faces the facts. Shrewd people may be a bit crafty in their dealings with others, but they know better than to deceive themselves.
The manager does not worry about what he cannot control. He focuses on what he can do in the situation. He prioritises shelter. His plan is to make his master’s debtors will feel obligated to take him in once his job is gone.
If he does them a favour, perhaps they will employ him or at the very least provide him with hospitality for a while.
The shrewd manager wastes no time. He calls his master’s debtors in and (one by one) he reduces their debts significantly.
To the first he says, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 “‘Nine hundred gallonsof olive oil,’ he replied. “The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’
Four hundred and fifty gallons of oil was worth about 18 months’ wages. It was a very large sum.
To the second debtor the manager says, ‘And how much do you owe?’
“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied. “He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’
The first debtor got a 50% reduction and the second debtor got a 20% reduction. However, twenty bushels of wheat (at that time) was roughly the same value as 450 gallons of oil (about 18 months’ wages). Again, it is a very large sum.
There were other debtors, no doubt, each getting a generous discount on their invoices, but Jesus only mentions two. Two is enough to give the idea.
Now the debtors don’t realise the manager has already been given the sack and is no longer authorised to write off their debt. The manager has very shrewdly given the debtors what we might call ‘plausible deniability’.
Publicly the debtors would be able to say, ‘I had no idea the manager had been fired. I thought he was authorised to make the reductions’.
But, given the manager’s reputation for shrewdness, the debtors might also be thinking, ‘This is a bit too good to be true. I have a feeling the manager is going to want his cut’. So privately the debtors might be expecting to split some of their savings with the manager afterwards.
The manager very shrewdly gets the debtors to write the reduction in their own hand. This shows the master the debtors are aware of the reductions making it a lot more difficult for the master to change the figures back without losing face. [1]
Okay, so that gives us a picture of the manager’s shrewdness. The manager knows how to survive. He stays calm. He quickly accepts the reality of his situation. He focuses on what he can control and he prioritises shelter.
That said, he has still taken a huge risk. The manager has been extremely generous with the master’s money. What if the manager has pushed it too far? What if the master decides he’s not having this? The master is well within his rights to send the manager to prison for fraud or sell the manager and his family as slaves to recoup his losses. It is to the master we now turn.
The noble master:
The master is described by Jesus (in verse 1) as rich. This raises the question of the character of the master. Is he rich because he is ruthless or is he more community minded in how he uses his wealth, more noble?
At times, in the gospel of Luke, the rich are cast in a dim light. For example, in Luke 6 Jesus says: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” This in contrast to the poor who are blessed because the kingdom of God is theirs. (Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus, at the end of Luke 16, illustrates this thought.)
But the rich are not always cast in the role of the villain. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus makes a rich man the hero of his stories. For example, the father in the parable of the prodigal son is rich but also very gracious in welcoming home his wayward son. Likewise, the vineyard owner (in Matthew 20), who pays all his workers the same, is rich but also very generous, a good guy.
The point is, being rich does not automatically equate to being bad, just as being poor does not automatically equate to being good. We know from our own experience people are more complex than that.
When Jesus said, ‘woe to the rich’ and ‘blessed are the poor’, he was making a point: the values of God’s kingdom are very different from the values of this world. What we think of as fortunate or blessed is not what God thinks of as fortunate or blessed. Indeed, there is a startling reversal of fortunes with the coming of God’s kingdom. The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
The rich man (the master) in the parable of the shrewd manager is portrayed as noble. He appears to be liked and respected by others in his community.
The parable begins with the manager being accused of wasting his master’s possessions. If the rich man wasn’t decent, the community would not be warning him that his manager was up to no good.
But there are other clues to the master’s noble character as well. In verse 2 we note the master acts in a way that is both just and merciful. We see the master’s justice in that he does not ignore the manager’s immoral behaviour. He calls the manager to give account.
Among other things, the parable of the shrewd manager reminds us that a day of judgement is coming. God is like the noble master, and we are like the manager. Everything we have, all our possessions, all our time, our talents and energy, our very lives, it all belongs to God our master.
We are merely stewards, managers, kaitiaki of what God has entrusted to us. One day God will call us to give account for how we have used what he has entrusted to us. One day we will have to hand in the ledger of our lives.
How are we using the freedom and resources at our disposal? Are we using our money and time and skill in service of God’s purpose? Or are we wasting it, squandering it, using it to our own advantage?
As well as being just and not letting his manager carry on wasting his resources unchecked, we also note the master’s mercy and grace. The master was well within his rights to demand the manager repay the losses.
If you have a company credit card and you exceed your budget, running up expensive lunches and luxury travel on the card, you expect your employer to not only fire you but also demand repayment of the excess and probably take you to court.
But the noble master in this parable does not require the manager to repay his debt. He knows the manager cannot afford it. After giving the manager an opportunity to explain himself, and getting no response, the master simply fires the manager on the spot. The manager has got off lightly because his master is merciful as well as just.
Another clue to the master’s noble character is found in how the manager responds to being fired. The manager’s survival strategy hinges on his belief that the master is noble.
If the master was a ruthless man, a scrooge type character, the manager would not have risked further aggravating his master by discounting the debtors’ accounts. The manager knows his master is kind and generous and that’s why he thinks his plan will probably succeed, which it apparently does.
The manager’s strategy is brilliantly shrewd. By reducing people’s debts, the manager has made his master look like a generous hero in the eyes of the whole community.
The master chooses to show extravagant grace to the manager once again and does not contest the reductions. This act of grace for the manager is also an act of grace for the whole community. Everyone wins at the master’s expense. [2]
Does this remind you of anyone? Jesus perhaps?
In verse 8 we read how the master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly.
The master praises the manager, not for being dishonest, but for being clever and brave. Jesus is not giving his disciples license to act fraudulently or immorally here. Remember, Jesus’ disciples are to be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. The manager in the parable was certainly shrewd, but he was not innocent.
The not so shrewd disciples:
Jesus seems to lament the fact that his disciples are not so shrewd. In the second part of verse 8 the Lord says: For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.
In other words, Jesus wants us (his disciples) to be smart in doing what is right. When we face adversity or crisis in this world, Jesus wants us to respond with creativity, like the shrewd manager. Jesus wants us to use our initiative, our street smarts, to manage ourselves well and advance the gospel. He wants us to trust wholeheartedly in the goodness of God.
How might we be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves?
Let me give you some examples from Scripture of what this looks like …
Rahab the prostitute acted shrewdly when the Israelites surrounded the city of Jericho. She protected the Jewish spies and made a deal with them for her own protection. Rahab is one the heroes of faith listed in Hebrews 11.
Nathan, the prophet, was shrewd in how he confronted king David.
After David committed adultery with Bathsheba, Nathan flew under the radar; he got through David’s defences with a parable about a rich man who stole a poor man’s lamb. And when David reacted in anger at the rich man, Nathan said to him, ‘You are the man’.
Zacchaeus, the tax collector, was a shrewd manager. When Jesus invited himself to Zaccahaeus’ house for dinner, Zacchaeus saw his opportunity and declared he would give away half his possessions to the poor. Zacchaeus was being generous with God’s money, and Jesus commended him for it.
The apostle Paul was a shrewd operator too. When he was arrested without just cause, he used the opportunity provided by his arrest (and his Roman citizenship) to appeal to Caesar, so he could speak to the emperor about Jesus and thus advance the gospel.
In verse 9 Jesus goes on to say: I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
In the same way the manager had to prepare for his future because he was about to lose his job, so too we need to think about our eternal future.
This life won’t last forever and when it ends, we can’t take our money with us. If we are smart, if we are shrewd, we will invest our money in that which lasts.
And what lasts beyond this life? Faith, hope and love conceived by the gospel of Christ.
Let us pray…
Gracious God, grant us the wisdom and courage we need each day. Make us clever and kind in communicating your goodness and truth. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
- What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- Discuss / reflect on Jesus’ parable in Luke 16:1-9. Who did Jesus tell this parable for? Why did Jesus tell this parable?
- What does it mean to be shrewd? In what ways does the manager in Jesus’ parable demonstrate shrewdness?
- Can you think of a time in your own life when you were faced with a real crisis? What happened? How did you respond / survive the crisis?
- What clues do we find in the text that indicate the master is noble? In what ways is the master like Jesus?
- How might we be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves when communicating the gospel message? Can you think of examples of what this looks like from Scripture or from your own experience?
- How are you using the freedom and resources God has entrusted to you?
Bibliography:
- William Barclay, ‘The Gospel of Matthew’, 1967.
- R.V.G. Tasker, ‘Tyndale Commentaries: St Matthew’, 1963.
- Michael Green, ‘BST: The Message of Matthew’, 2000.
- Craig S. Keener, ‘The Gospel of Matthew’, 2009.
- R.T. France, ‘New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Matthew’, 2007.
- Kenneth Bailey, ‘Poet and Peasant’, 1983.
- Kenneth Bailey, ‘Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes’, 2008.
[1] Refer Kenneth Bailey
[2] Refer Bailey, Poet & Peasant
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