WE have now reached chapter 16., and it is a serious chapter. We have been, in one sense, on very happy chapters in the last two, and seen how the Lord visited our world, and how we are to visit His world; how nothing in our world pleased Him, and everything in His own. It should be so with us. If we are right-minded we cannot find a home here. Man's apostate condition has built this world, and it is a painful thing to build a house and not be happy in it, yet it should be so with us. You have built a house here, and Christ has built a house in the heavens. Do you cultivate the mind of a stranger in this world, and of a citizen in the heavens?
Having gone through this wonderful moral scenery, we enter on chap. 16—a continuation of the same scene. If there is a serious chapter in this gospel it is chap. 16. The Lord begins by the parable of the unjust steward, and before we go further let me call your mind to the word " wasted," in the case of the prodigal. It was just what he had done, and it is the business of this parable to show that the elder brother may do just what the younger did. He may be a very respectable waster-. there are hundreds of thousands of such in the world, and high in the credit of the world they stand-but, weighed in God's balances, they are just as much wasters as was the dissolute prodigal. If we do not carry ourselves as stewards of God we are wasters. If I am using myself, and what I have, as if it were my own, in the divine reckoning I am a waster. This lays the ax deep at the root of every tree. The elder brother thought he was not a waster; but let me ask you, if you are living for this world, and using what you have as if it were your own, are you not an unfaithful steward, and if so, are you not a waster? Here is a steward. We are not told how he spent his money, but it is enough to know that he was not faithful to his master. Then we see how the Lord goes on to draw out the reasoning of a man like that. He lived for this world, laid plans about his history in this world, and not in the next. The moral is beautifully laid to you and to me. As that man laid out his plans for this world, so do you lay out your plans for Christ's future world. If you live to yourself', do not you deny your stewardship to Jesus? Then the Pharisees who heard Him derided Him. To be sure they must It was a heavenly principle, and they were covetous. Covetousness is living for this world, and we are so far covetous, as we are laying our plans for this world. Now when you find corruptions in yourself, what do you do? Do not let corruptions lead you to give up Christ, but to put on your armor. The Pharisees derided Him, and what did the Lord say to them? "Ye are they which justify yourselves before men." This is just what we were saying. The elder brother may be highly esteemed among men, but " that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God."
We are now introduced to the parable of the rich man. Tell me, has this passage been rather repulsive to you than attractive? There seems something rather repulsive in it, but let us look at it. Observe the difference between the rich man and the prodigal. The prodigal "came to himself" before it was too late, the rich man after the door was shut. The prodigal was dissolute and abandoned, and when he came to himself he thought of his sin. The rich man came to himself in the place of judgment, and did not think of his sins but of his misery. The prodigal came to himself in the midst of his misery here, the rich man in the midst of torment there.
That is all the difference. The prodigal said, " I will go back; what a sinner and a rebel son I have been 1" There was nothing of that gracious stirring in the spirit of the rich man, when he lifted up his head in flames. The prodigal had not to finish the first sentence; his father answered him on the spot, and put on him a ring and the best robe, and killed the fatted calf; but the rich man cried again and again. It was too late. Here is the end of the respectable waster. Why do I call him a waster? Will you tell me he called himself a steward of God, while he was living sumptuously every day, with a saint of God lying at his gate? I am bold to say you and I are just the same if we are living to ourselves. This man died a respectable waster, full of honor and gratification. He had no misery to call him to himself. Have you ever contrasted these two pictures? It has changed this scripture from repulsion into attraction.
In the opening of chap. xvii. the Lord applies all this. "It is impossible but that offenses will come, but woe unto him by whom they come. It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, then that he should offend one of these little ones." I call upon each one to listen to this. To offend one of these little ones is to be on the way to the judgment of the mill-stone. In chap. 18 of Revelation, we see Babylon under the judgment of the millstone; and here the Lord sees, in the offending of a little one, something that savors of the same thing. Now what is it to offend? Beloved, the church of God is His little one-a cypher in the eyes of the world, but everything in the sight of God, and you and I ought to take care of any course of conduct that might stumble the little one. So far as I am living in the world, I am savoring of offense, having gone back to that out of which the grace of God had called me. Do you and I go through the circumstances of each day in the spirit of service to everything around us? That is the spirit of the little one. That is the beauty of the church of God, and of every saint in the world. The moment you act as if you were privileged to dispose of circumstances after your own pleasure you are an offender. " If thy brother trespass against thee rebuke him, and if he repent forgive him." That is serving his soul. We should seek for grace to walk through circumstances as serving Christ and our neighbor. Christ is to be our Lord as well as our Savior. He is a Savior inasmuch as He saves for eternity-a Lord inasmuch as He demands our time. This beautiful combination is exactly what Peter talks of, " Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." There were some (2 Peter 2:11But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. (2 Peter 2:1)) who talked of Christ as. a Savior, while denying His lordship practically. The Spirit is fruitful in revelations of grace, and in admonitions of holiness. They cry out "Lord, increase our faith-this is a terrible demand on us; " and the Lord says, " Ah, faith is the very thing that will do it for you." Faith is the very thing that brings God in, and then all things are possible. You might pluck up the roots of nature, and send them to be planted in the distant sea, in mortifying the flesh. There are two beautiful virtues—of faith here. While it is a principle of power, it is a principle of self-emptying. " When ye shall have done all, say We are unprofitable servants."
If I can meet a temptation with the Lord Jesus, I have the stronger man with me, and I overcome, and then come back and say, " I have done that which it was my duty-to do." There is an import in this chapter that makes it infinitely valuable.