Daily Bible Reading 13th November 2026 // Luke 16:1-13
1 He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. 2 And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ 3 And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ 5 So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ 7 Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ 8 The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
10 “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? 13 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.”
'All that we have is a stewardship from God' this is the theme Jesus deals with. It might almost seem as if He were pointing to the deep, underlying lessons in the story of the Prodigal, saying, 'It is this that he did not understand, and it is this that you must not miss.' The story is as follows: the factor or steward of a rich man's estate has been careless, criminally careless, and his books have got hopelessly out of order. And things caught up with him, and he was called to account. In reaction to this crisis, he took a very bold course of action. He called a meeting of all his master's clients, and began to change their accounts, marking them down in a lordly manner as if he were the master. One assumes that he did it in such a way that the benefit to them was real and irreversible. He made himself very popular that day, with these men. And this was, in fact, the point of the exercise. For he needed friends - friends that would support him in the hard days that lay ahead, so that when the crash came, he would not stand alone. And Jesus holds this man up as an example of boldness, skill and prudence - not, of course, to be copied in his dishonesty, but in the diligence and thoroughness with which he made provision for the future. What are we to learn from all this? First of all, Jesus thrusts upon men the reality of eternity. Behind and beyond the world that is seen, there is the unseen, eternal reality. 'Live, then, with eternity's values in view', says Jesus. Secondly, life is a stewardship concerning which we shall all, without exception, have to give an account. And, if we read this parable aright, this man was called very suddenly and without warning to give an account of his. It had all the force of a bombshell. He was called unexpectedly, and unprepared, to the bar of justice. Solemn lesson indeed!