Luke 17:7-10
Hear the word of the living God.
And Jesus said to his disciples, temptations to sin are sure to
come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better
for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast
into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones
to sin. Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke
him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you
seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times saying, I
repent, you must forgive him. The apostle said to the Lord,
increase our faith. And the Lord said, if you had
faith, like a grain of the mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry
tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey
you. And now for our passage for today. Will any of you who
has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has
come in from the field, come at once and sit down at table? Will he not rather say to him,
prepare supper for me and dress properly? and serve me while
I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink. Does
he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So
you also, when you have done all that you were commanded,
say, we are unworthy servants, and we have only done what was
our duty. Pray with me. Lord, again, we ask for your
help. And we come again, not because we like emptying or heaping
up empty prayers to the sky, but we come because we know that
we don’t want to listen. We know that we don’t want to
hear. We know that our heart wants to do what our heart wants
to do and wants nothing or no one to stand in the way. But
as an act of submission, we’ve come into your house to worship,
to confess, and now to hear. And so speak, Lord. Your servants
are listening, but Salt in our hearts that we might receive
this your word as exactly what it is, the very word of the living
and almighty God who speaks and that which did not exist comes
into being and that which was dead comes to life. Lord, that’s
how much help we need. And so in faith, we ask for it
now in the name of Christ Jesus. Amen. You remember several weeks
back, we considered the story of the prodigal son. And in that
story that’s so familiar to us, we often focus on the prodigal,
the one who said, give me my inheritance. And he goes off
into a faraway land. He spends it. He squanders it.
He ends up broke. He ends up feeding pigs. He ends
up wishing eat what the pigs were eating, and he finally comes
to his senses and comes home. We usually focus on the brother,
and then we spend a little time on the father. The character
we often forget is the older brother. The older brother was
out in the field, and he heard the music. He heard the dancing. And he called one of the servants
over to him and said, what is this I hear back at the home
place? And the servant said, your brother
has come. And in summary, he says this,
your father has killed the fattened calf for your brother has been
received back safe and sound. Now, what do we get from that
older brother? Do we say, woohoo, my brother’s home. I’ve missed
him. The top bunk has been empty. His place at the table has been
a sadness. No, he becomes angry and he becomes
angry often like we do. when we see other people receive
grace and we think they should receive justice. He’s angry at
the reception of his brother, but contrast that with the father,
really with the heavenly father. He saw the son from afar off,
he ran and he embraced him, he kissed him and he ignored his
plea for repentance and he put on him a robe, a ring and sandals. and he capped off this prodigal
son’s return with the fattened calf. And so when the servant
describes to the older brother what has taken place, just simply
saying the fattened calf has been killed was enough. Don’t
you know this older brother thought in his mind, that ring, that
signet of my father’s, that’s for me, I’m the oldest son. Those
sandals are for me, the robe was for me and the fattened calf
was for my wedding day. But remember what the father
said to this brother when he went out to plead with him, to
speak to him as a father would a young child. He said, son,
all that I have has been yours and everything that your brother
was about your brother was lost. Don’t we object to grace? Don’t we love to see justice
exacted on someone that we we see has done evil and wickedness. We object to grace and the brother
does that so well. What does he say to his father?
These many years, I have served you. These many years, every
command that you have given from your lips, I have kept. I never destroyed your inheritance. I never wasted it in wild living
and with prostitutes. And that’s what begins to happen
to us when our heart gets hard, when we begin to see things in
an economic way. Others owe us things and grace
is not possible. And so this brother believed
that the father owed him something. And what begins to sink into
our lives is a righteousness of our own making. We believe
that somehow, some way, We can earn and create and build a standing
before Almighty God. And so we say, like the brother
in this story, I’ve done everything you’ve said. I’ve obeyed all
of your commands. I’ve never broken a one of them.
I’ve been to supper on time. I’ve been to bed on time. I’ve
kept my shoes shined. I’ve kept my chore list complete. But this brother has done none
of that. Or we might say is the parable
teaches us that Jesus gives. We plow the fields. We feed the
sheep. We come in and we cook supper
for the master. We clothe ourselves and we serve
the master. We clean up the dishes. And when
he’s all done, then we eat our own meal. Or we might say it
in our way. I go to church. I put my check
in the plate. I read my Bible during the week.
I keep my table talk devotions up. I stand for the hymns. I
dress appropriately. I sit in my usual seat. I’m a
good Presbyterian, right? And so somehow in our minds,
we get this plus and minus, this scale mentality. If at the end
of my life, the good outweighs the bad, somehow God will accept
me into his heaven. And what Jesus is reminding us
of is this, we are unprofitable servants. Even at our best, even
in our brightest seasons of Christian living, we are at best unprofitable
servants. It is our task and our duty to
plow the fields and to feed the sheep and to cook the meal, to
dress for service and to make sure the master’s table has been
spread and that when he is fed, we clean and we serve, and then
we eat ourselves at the kitchen table. Oh, but we love to build
a righteousness of our own making and saying, Lord, I have done
all of this and more, you owe me a thank you. Or as our passage
says, you owe me a seat at the master’s table. But dear friends,
we need to be reminded of this. It is impossible for us to obey
God’s commandments and to be pleasing in his sight. It is
utterly impossible. Remember that we are born in
sin. We are born in sin because of
Adam’s first sin. Everyone born after him by ordinary
generation, because of our fathers, we are conceived and born in
sin, as David says. And from that original sin that
we receive, proceed actual sins. And so in our daily living, we
who remain in Adam’s sin, we build a mountain depth that reaches
to the highest heavens. And before God, no matter what
we do, He sees our filth, He sees our sin, and it’s offensive
in His sight. But by faith in Jesus, Praise
God. By faith in Jesus, that standing
can change because Jesus was the profitable servant. Jesus
was not born in sin. Jesus did not live in sin and
Jesus never sinned. He always obeyed God. And so
when we come to Jesus by faith, God sees us as if we’ve never
sinned. He sees us as if we have always
obeyed. And so Christians by grace are
enabled but also because of the change of heart. We desire to
do good works as we seek to obey God’s commandments. Now I want
to think just a few moments about good works. Good works are not
man-made ceremonies, right? We live in the South and what
do we say in the South are good works? I don’t drink, I don’t
smoke, I don’t cuss, and I don’t chew. And how does that rhyme
end? Or go with girls. that do, right? And that’s just
an example. Sometimes it’s the length of
the skirt or the style of the hair or the type of school you
go to, or some man-made Christian made up ceremony or rule. If
I live this way, I will live righteously. And that’s not the
way the Christian life works. The only good works that we as
Christians can do are the good works commanded to us by God. In fact, our confession of faith
says something so wonderful. It says, as Christians, we are
free from the commandments of men, but we are bound to the
commandments of almighty God. And so as we become Christians
and we leave our life of sin behind and we read the word,
the Holy Spirit fills us. We come to church and we are
nurtured in the faith. And as that goes on in our lives,
the commands of God become our delight. Think for a moment of
a wonderful example. What’s the longest psalm in the
Bible? It’s 119. And it’s an A to Z
psalm. So from A to Z, what does the
psalmist say? I love God’s law. I love his
commandments and I love doing them. And that’s what God does
when he changes us and makes us a new creation. By the work
of the Holy Spirit as a fruit of faith, we do good works for
the glory of God and the good of our neighbors. Now there’s
this fancy word in theology. It’s a funny word, it’s supererogation. Now this past week I had my yard
seeded. So in my mind, super-irrigation is watering, right? Irrigation,
super-irrigation. It’s not that, right? It’s not
over-watering the new seeds. Super- and then irrigation is
a fancy word that simply means you, as a Christian, saved by
God, even as a new creation, can never, ever, ever do more
than God requires. Now that’s a pop in the face,
isn’t it? Because what do we believe about
ourselves, especially as we become Christians? Well, I’m the righteousness
of Christ. I’m a Calvinist. I’m reformed. We were just down at A.R.P. Senate
and, you know, A.R.P.’ ‘s believe they are a real Presbyterian. That’s what we really believe
A.R.P. is. And so we can get kind of tribal. I live this way. I believe this
way. I worship this way. Surely God must be very pleased
with my life. I have a Reformation study Bible.
I get up at six o’clock in the morning. I read the Bible. I read my table talk. I listen
to my podcast. I mean, you could overdo it,
right? And this theological term, supererogation,
reminds us and it puts us in our place. You, can never do
more than God requires. And that’s what our passage is
teaching us. You can do your duty and you can never put God
in your debt. God is a debtor to no one. No
one can ever say to God, you owe me and you are in my debt. No, it’s quite the other way
around. And if I burst your bubble with
this, biblical and theological view of who we are in Christ
and what God requires of us and what it looks like to do good
works. Let me clean up the mess as well. Any good work you do,
it is at best tainted with your sin. Oh yes, your sin is forgiven. Oh yes, you’re a new creation
in Christ Jesus, but you have remnant sin in you and everything
you do has blood on it. Everything you do has darkness
in it. And so your best works could
never stand before the holy scrutiny of almighty God. I remind you
that our standing is not in what we do. We sing that wonderful
hymn, nothing in my hands I bring, but simply to the cross we cling. Empty come, naked, seeking dress. And we come to Christ for his
righteousness. And so our standing is not in
what we have done. Our standing is in what Christ
has done. He was not born in sin. He never
committed a sin. His desire was to do the will
of God and to fulfill all righteousness that the father had designed
in his great plan of wisdom and salvation. And so when God looks
at us, he does not see the good and the bad and put it in the
scales and try to weigh it out. He sees Christ. And that’s why
the apostle Paul says, Christ in you, the hope of glory, you
have no way whatsoever to stand before the throne of God and
say, look at me, bring me in, front door, first apartment in
heaven, front row seat in the temple of heaven’s worship. That’s
not something that we can say or claim. And so another challenge
for us as we think of this Don’t be a lazy Christian. Think of
the passage here that Jesus is saying. He had a servant. A farmer
had a servant in the field. He was plowing. He was feeding
the sheep. And when he came in, he doesn’t say to him, sit down
and eat. You’ve worked hard today. He says, cook, serve, clean. And when you’re done, you get
to eat. That just really rocks our thinking, doesn’t it? It
rocks our world of self-righteousness and self-entitlement. But we
can become negligent in our duty. And can you imagine the person
in this parable? Right? That’s a good Southernism, just, I’ve already fed the sheep. I’ve
already plowed the fields. I’ve already done the laundry.
I’ve already been to work. I’ve already listed out. We have to burst our bubbles
sometimes, don’t we? And say life is just the next thing,
right? We work, we do our chores, we
get it done. There’s no thank yous. There’s
no special honors. There’s really no rewards. And
we often get the leftovers of life. We’d rather eat at the
dining room, but we are left eating at the kitchen table with
the servants. And Jesus is trying to put in
our face, don’t be negligent in your duty. You feed those
sheep. You plow those fields. You cook those meals, you serve
the master, you do everything that is required of you, and
you do it with great joy. Isn’t it wonderful to show up
to church today and the chairs are out, the floors were vacuumed,
the flowers were arranged, the sound system works, the hymnals
were placed, the bulletins were printed, the toilets were scrubbed. The coffee was made and you start
to list all these things and you say to yourself, and I didn’t
have to do any of it. What a joy it is to be served. What a joy it is that others
see these needs and they delight in doing them. And the same could
be said when you’re at work. Are you a cheerful employee?
Do you go to work and do you serve as unto the Lord Christ
as if he were the boss? Is your home a happy place that
though the chore list never ends, the laundry stays piled up? The
floors get dirty, the stuff gets tracked in, the cars need washing,
the oil needs changing, and we, right? Or do we serve with great
joy? And I know there’s hard times,
we’re weary, and other people don’t help in those things, I understand
all that, but the point is this, we need to serve the Lord with
joy and gladness. We need to see needs and meet
needs, and do it with a smile on our face, doing as unto the
Lord. but also for the good of our
neighbors. And Jesus says at the end of
this passage, you do all that you’re called to do and there
won’t be a thank you. And you’ll even say, I am an
unprofitable servant. How does this fit in with humility?
I mean, this is really offensive, isn’t it? To our human nature.
This is very offensive to our everybody gets a trophy culture. You can go outside these doors
and you can do nothing and get a pat on the back. You can do
nothing, and because of the way our society is, you can get a
job. And you can get government handouts, and you can get all
these things and do nothing. But what of those who work hard?
What of those who want a little recognition? Well, that recognition
will come. And let me tell you how. Jesus
is the only profitable servant. He is the only one who’s lived
and served and obeyed God in righteousness. He desired to
do God’s will. He was born. He was made under
the law. He knew the will of God. He completely did every
bit of it, obeying God perfectly. He took up the basin and the
towel and he served his fellow disciples. And then he stretched out his
arms and died for our sins. And guess what it says in the
Bible he will do for us. This passage doesn’t stand alone.
It reaches back to chapter 12, which we would have studied several
months back. Those of us who live by faith
and who trust in Jesus alone for our forgiveness and salvation,
who desire to do good works because we are new creations in Jesus,
flip back in your Bibles to chapter 12. In chapter 12, of Luke’s gospel. Jesus is speaking
of being ready and not being found idle. Not being found. I gotta do my Christian service.
But notice what he says in verse. 37 of Chapter 12. Blessed are
those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly,
I say to you, he will dress himself for service and he will have
them recline at table and he will come and serve them. Friends,
your reward is not in this life. It is in the next one. You may
serve without a thank you. You may live a thankless life
and you are a zero in the eyes of the world or even a zero in
the eyes of your family. They take, take, take, take,
take. Never a thank you. But Jesus will thank you one
day as you go to heaven and you recline at his table. And it’s
not one of Jesus’ servants who will serve you. It is Jesus himself
who will provide for you the banquet food. And so don’t lose
heart as you serve him in this life without thanks. Whatever
it is you do, whatever it burdens you day by day, you just remember
this, Jesus will bless you. together. Our Lord and God, we
come to your throne of grace now weary. We come living in
a world that doesn’t thank us for what we do. In fact, they
often revile us for what we do. Our families, our loved ones,
our neighbors, our coworkers, those whom we serve. It’s often a thankless world,
but we recognize that one day the Lord Jesus will remember
all that we’ve done. And not because of our good works,
but because we’re his children in whom he delights, he will
serve us. And so let us look with great anticipation to that
day in hope and in faith so that we might keep serving in Jesus
name we pray, amen.