Well we're in the 17th chapter now of Saint Luke as we're rushing through this gospel.
I'll be reading this morning verses one through ten. I would ask the
congregation please to stand for the reading of the word of God.
Then he said to his disciples it is impossible that no offenses should come,
but woe to him, through him they do come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around
his neck and he were thrown into the sea than that he should offend one of these little ones.
Take heed to yourselves, if your brother sins against you rebuke him and if he repents forgive
him. If he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times in a day returns
to you saying I repent, you shall forgive him. The Apostle said to the Lord increase our faith,
and so the Lord said if you have faith as a mustard seed you can say to this
mulberry tree be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea and it would obey you.
Which of you having a servant plowing or tending sheep will say to him when he has come in from
the field come at once and sit down to eat, but will he not rather say to him prepare something
for my supper and gird yourself and serve me until I have eaten and drunk and afterwards
you will eat and drink. Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him?
I think not so likewise you when you have done all the things which you are commanded
say we are unprofitable servants. We have done what our duty was to do.
Again in this day we've had the unspeakable privilege of hearing a word
from God Himself from the lips of His only begotten Son whose people we are
and whose bride we are. Please receive this word this morning as from your Savior. Be seated.
Let us pray. Again our Father and our God we ask you to send help that we might come
to a deeper understanding of these things that have been revealed to us from the lips
of Your Son and transferred to us through the supervision and inspiration of Your Holy Spirit
whose presence we ask today and through this word we ask that You will prepare our hearts
for coming to Your table for the most intimate fellowship we enjoy with You in this lifetime,
for we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Chapter seventeen of Luke begins
with this word from Christ given to His disciples saying it's impossible
that no offenses should come. Some of you may have a different translation here which
reads it's impossible that no temptations should come, but woe to him through whom they do come.
What our Lord is acknowledging at this point is in this world until the Kingdom of God is fully
consummated we still struggle with sin. We still struggle with offenses that we
commit against God. We still have temptations with which we must wrestle.
Jesus acknowledged this to His disciples that that's the way things are
but having acknowledged that he then pronounces to them an oracle of doom where He says but woe
unto him through whom that offense comes. It would be better for him that he have a
millstone hung around his neck and be cast into the sea than to offend one of these little ones.
This is a tremendously important point that Jesus makes here when he pronounces this ghastly oracle
of judgment. It's one thing He says for you to sin, but the judgment of God will come even
greater on those who tempt others to sin. In His letter to the Romans when Paul gives a list
of the most egregious offenses given against God at the end of the first chapter of that book, he
says knowing that God hates these things and will condemn those who do it, people not only do them,
but they encourage others to do them as well.
I don't know how many there are for sure, but my guess would be in metropolitan Orlando, there are
probably a hundred churches or pastors that tell their people that premarital sex is part of normal
puberty and growth, extramarital sex is acceptable to God,
same sex marriage has His approval and God is not offended by abortion on demand,
whole main line churches have adopted these positions as part of their official sanctions.
Woe to those people who encourage others to commit these egregious sins
against God and Jesus. It would be better for that person
if they had a millstone hung around their neck. Well what's that, Jesus is referring to the
agrarian society in which the people lived and on the threshing floor when grain was to be ground
they had two large circular stones on the ground. One on top of the other with a space between them
and the top stone had a hole in the center where they poured the grain in so that then the ox would
move around in the circle and the larger stone would grind the grain against the bottom stone.
A human person was not able to do this task unless it was Samson as he was
forced to do in the Old Testament to replace the work of an ox. The weight of that stone was so
great that if you were to put it around your neck as a collar and thrown into the depth of the sea
you could only have one possible destiny. You would surely perish.
As He gives this great warning, He goes on to say at the same time
take heed if your brother sins against you. Not if he just simply encourages you to sin
with him but if he sins against you rebuke him. If he repents, then you must forgive him.
If he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times in a day returns to you saying,
I repent you shall forgive him. Now there's a point here I don't want us to miss. There's a
widespread misconception among Christians that the idea is that if somebody sins against us
we're duty bound to give them unilateral forgiveness whether they repent or not.
After all Jesus gave us that example when He prayed for the forgiveness of His executioners
while He hung on the cross, but the Bible doesn't teach that we are required before
God to give automatic unilateral forgiveness to anyone who sins against us. That's why there's
a whole complicated structure for church discipline set forth in the New Testament.
He said if we are sinned against we are to rebuke that person and if they repent then forgiveness
is not an option. If a person offends us and says they're sorry and acknowledges their sin against
us it's not only that we may forgive them we must forgive them no matter how difficult it may be.
Jesus goes on to say and if that same person commits the same sin fifteen minutes later
against you and comes and says I'm sorry you have to forgive him again and if he does it
the third time, the fourth time, the fifth time, the sixth time, the seventh time, and he comes
and repents you can't say to him no, no, no, no that's number seven too late you're done.
No, it doesn't matter how many times you've been offended if the party who offends you
repents then we forgive and we have to stand ready to forgive people at any time
at a moment's notice. Following this admonition,
Jesus gives something of a strange and unexpected story in response to what the disciples said
after they told him, they told they had to forgive seven times seven, they say oh if we're
going to do that, Lord, we need more faith than we have, so please increase our faith. He says,
you don't need a lot of faith to do that. If you had the faith of the grain of a mustard seed,
you said you can talk to a mulberry tree, pluck it up out of the ground and plant it in the ocean.
I don't know too many of us that can actually do that but Jesus is saying it doesn't take a world
of faith to forgive somebody who sins against you, but then comes the story which is unexpected.
When he says in which of you having a servant plowing or tending sheep will say to him when
he comes in from the field come at once and sit down to eat but will he not rather say
to him prepare something for my supper, gird yourself and serve me until I have eaten and
drunk and afterwards you will eat and drink. That sounds funny coming from the lips of Jesus
who tells us that we are to be servants who washed His disciples feet on the night on which He was
betrayed who said I didn't come to be served but to serve and give My life as a ransom for many.
You would expect in this story when He tells us of a man who has a small
farm that's tended by a single servant and that servant labors all day in the hot sun
hoeing the crops, feeding the livestock and comes in exhausted at the end of the day
you would expect Jesus to say if that is your servant tell him to sit down and take a break
and say I'll go and prepare your meal for you after all you've done in the
heat of the sun this day. That's not what he does. Now there are other occasions and other situations
where Jesus would tell a story like that to inculcate within us this idea of servanthood
but that's not His point in this particular parable. Here He's addressing something else.
He's addressing the situation where a man does what he's commanded to do,
not a single thing more than that. He does all that he's responsible to do
and when he comes in at the end of the day he still has further duties to perform in addition
to those that he's done during the day. It's now time for him to prepare his master's dinner.
The master is not going to say to the servant hey sit down. Put your legs up. I'm going to
cook you some food, pop a cork of our best wine and treat you to a lavish dinner. He's not going
to say to him thank you so very much for doing what you've been commanded to do. Jesus said
does he thank that servant, I think not. Now here's the point of the parable,
so likewise you. Now he's speaking to us, so likewise me, so likewise you
when you have done all those things which you are commanded say we are unprofitable servants,
we have done what is our duty to do. We have added nothing to the assets side of the ledger.
If you have lived a life of perfect righteousness, if you have obeyed every commandment that God
has ever given which you haven't but if you have Jesus is saying big deal, so what, all you've done
is what you were supposed to do. Didn't your creator make you in His own image, didn't He
call you to mirror and reflect His own character, didn't He say to you be ye holy because I am holy.
Do you get it? If I live a life of perfect holiness, I've done nothing of merit. I've added
nothing to the weights and measures of the Kingdom of God because I've simply done what was my duty
to do, but we have millions of people in the church who still hold on to the idea
that what they've accomplished in this life is what will get them into the Kingdom of God. The
Muslims have a view that if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds you'll go to heaven,
but if you're bad deeds outweigh your good deeds, you'll go hell.
Whereas Christianity says if your whole life has nothing, but good deeds and you have no bad deeds
without the righteousness of Christ, you'll go to hell forever because there's nothing
that you could possibly do to earn your way into the Kingdom of God. You can't go to the
judgment seat of Christ and say I went to church every Sunday for thirty years. I was an elder.
I was a minister. I was a deacon. I tithed my money. I fed the poor. I ministered to the sick.
God will say well that's what you're supposed to do.
Why should I give you a reward for doing your duty?
One of my favorite hymns ever written was written by Augustus Toplady.
You know the hymn. Rock of Ages Cleft for Me,
Let Me Hide Myself in Thee. In that hymn there's a line that just gets me every time I hear it. I
want to do what some of you did this morning and go like that when I hear it. When the
line goes like this nothing in my hand I bring simply to the cross I cling. Nothing in my hand
the hand is empty. It's a vacuum. It can put nothing on the table.
The only thing I bring to the table is my shame and my guilt and my need
and so when you come to the table this morning
you bring nothing in your hand, Foul, I to the fountain fly,
Savior, wash me or I die. All that has been done to get me into the Kingdom of God
is done by Christ. He and He alone is the profitable servant.
We reap the benefits of His prophet. He takes the prophet that He has achieved and He pours
it into my hands and now when I stand before God I've got everything. I've got the whole
world. I've got perfect righteousness in my hand, but it's His. It's not mine.
I don't add a cent to the profit that is won for me by Christ.
What do we have to boast of before God?
Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord we are told who fills us hand and foot
with the righteousness of Jesus, so we bring nothing to this table of our own
except our need. On the night in which He was betrayed
the Apostle Paul said that Jesus took bread and when He had blessed it, He broke it and he said
now this is my body which is given for you and after they supped, he took the cup, and He took
and He said this is now the cup of a brand-new covenant. A covenant that is made in my blood
which is shed for the remission of your sins. Drink it for as often as you eat it and drink
it you show forth my death until I come, so come for that which is not bought with human money.
He invites his people to come to His table to feast upon Him. He's here this morning
to feed you, but He also warns that if you're not a believer then avoid this table like the
plague because if you come not discerning His body you eat and drink under damnation. We live
in a nation that hates exclusivity but this is an exclusive event for those who belong to Christ,
for those who have repented of their sins, for those who have thrown away any pretense
of earning their way into the Kingdom of God then come with nothing in their hands except His cross.
Let's pray. Now we ask O Lord that you would by Your Spirit consecrate these natural elements,
bread and wine that they may be for us signs and seals of that new covenant shed
in your blood for the remission of our sins for we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.