<p>16:9 <i>And I say to you: Make to yourselves friends by means of worldly riches; that, when they shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings</i>- The parable has been about forgiveness, following on from that of the prodigal son. But the Lord makes this parable have another meaning- concerning the need to use wealth wisely.</p><p>The Bible has a lot to say about the sacrifice of 'our' material possessions; not because God needs them in themselves, but because our resignation of them to His service is an epitome of our whole spirituality. So great is the Lord's emphasis about this, that He suggests in the parable of the crafty steward that if we use our worldly things prudently, when we spiritually fail, the fact we have used them wisely will bring us into the Kingdom. This implication that we can almost buy our way into the Kingdom is hyperbole. This is a device the Lord commonly used in His parables: an exaggerated statement to make a point. When He spoke of the good shepherd leaving the 99 good sheep to go chase the foolish one, this doesn't really mean that He does in fact leave us. He will never leave us. But so great is His love of the lost that it's <i>as if</i> He leaves us for the sake of finding them. Or the command to gouge out our eye if it offends us. This is a gross exaggeration; but our self-deprival of those things which lead us into sin requires the same self-will and self-mastery. So here, the Lord is saying that the use of our material possessions is <i>so</i> important that it's <i>almost as if</i> (in the hyperbole) we can buy our way into the Kingdom. See on Lk. 11:41.</p><p>We have nothing now, we own nothing, all we have is given for us to use wisely, so that when we fail (morally, in the failures of our lives), our use of these things may prepare the way for our entry into the everlasting place of the Kingdom. We fall so easily into the trap of thinking 'this is <i>my</i> money&hellip; <i>I</i> worked for it, saved it&hellip;&rsquo;. It's God's money. The danger of materialism is to think it is <i>ours. </i>Israel were told that every seventh year they were to cancel debts, release each other from the debt they had; and yet it was &quot;the <i>LORD's </i>release&quot;. You released a man from his debt, Yahweh released him. What it meant was that your money was Yahweh's money. He released the debt, you released it. In being generous spirited, then, and realizing 'our' money is God's, we are Yahweh-manifest. We are invited to see ourselves as the Levites- whose inheritance was Yahweh, and not anything material in this world. Relationship with God and the honour of doing His service was seen as the ultimate antidote to materialism. Eliphaz seems to have perceived this when he told the wealthy Job: &ldquo;Lay thou thy treasure in the dust&hellip; and the Almighty shall be thy treasure&rdquo; (Job 22:24,25 RV).</p><p>There is no doubt that our attitude to materialism is a sure indicator of our real spiritual position. We are to make friends of mammon riches by giving it away, forsaking all we have- the implication being that riches / mammon are our spiritual enemy, no matter how little of them we possess. And yet we are surrounded as never before by a materialistic, money <i>loving</i> world.</p>