Luke 16 is a chapter about money, faithfulness and the afterlife, and it is one of the most searched passages in the Gospels for small groups. This page gives you questions and leader’s notes for the whole chapter. Use it for a Sunday class, a midweek group or personal study, working through the questions in order or picking the ones that fit your time.
Luke 16 at a Glance
Jesus opens with a parable about a manager caught wasting his master’s property, who then reduces his master’s debtors’ bills to win friends for himself. Jesus draws lessons about faithfulness with small things and about the impossibility of serving God and money at once. The Pharisees, who love money, mock him, and he answers that God sees the heart. He then turns to the law, to divorce, and finally to a second parable about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus, which ends with Abraham declining to send a messenger back from the dead.
The chapter moves from a story about shrewd management, to teaching on money and loyalty, to a rebuke of the religious leaders, to a warning told through the rich man’s afterlife. Keep this arc in view as you lead, because the questions below follow it.
Observation Questions
Start here so the group agrees on what the text says before anyone explains it. Keep these questions factual, and let people point to the verses they are reading from.
Luke 16:10
He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much. He who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
(WEB)
Read this verse early in the session because it names the principle that runs through the whole chapter. Let the group hear it slowly before the discussion about small faithfulness begins.
Luke 16:13
No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. You aren’t able to serve God and Mammon.”
(WEB)
This verse is the clearest statement of the chapter’s central choice. Reading it aloud helps the group hear the word “serve” and the word “master” in the same breath.
Luke 16:15
He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts. For that which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.
(WEB)
Reading this aloud shifts attention from outward appearance to the heart. It gives the group a chance to reflect on how they judge others and how they want to be judged.
Luke 16:19-21
19 “Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. 20 A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was taken to his gate, full of sores, 21 and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores.
(WEB)
Hearing the description of the rich man and Lazarus in one reading sets the stage for the second parable. Pause afterward so people can picture the two men side by side before moving on.
Luke 16:25-26
25 “But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in the same way, bad things. But here he is now comforted, and you are in anguish. 26 Besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from here to you are not able, and that no one may cross over from there to us.’
(WEB)
Reading Abraham’s words aloud gives the group the weight of the warning. Use it to lead into the discussion of how present choices shape the future Jesus describes.
Memory Verse for Luke 16
A Closing Prayer for the Group
Father, thank you for speaking clearly through the words of your Son in this chapter. We confess that we are often more careful with our money than with our hearts, and that we want to serve you with honesty and not just with appearances. Teach us to be faithful in the small things you place in our hands, and help us to see the people near our gates the way you see them. Turn our loyalty away from anything that competes with you, and give us a deeper hunger for the Scriptures we have read together. Amen.
