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Part two of three parts on Luke 17:1-19: Serve Above and Beyond
Luke 17:5-9, Romans 13:8-10, I Timothy 6:9-10, 17-19, John 15:11-14
In the Luke passage, the disciples asked Jesus to give them more faith. You can sense Jesus' frustration when he said you don't need more faith. You either have faith or you don't and you exercise your faith muscle with every action you take as you go about living.
Jesus then tells the story of a servant who knows what he is to do in his work but still comes to his master and asks, "What do you want me to do?" Jesus is explaining to the disciples that the servant should not ask, the servant should do what he agreed to do when he started in his position. Jesus is saying to all of us that we have the 10 Commandments given from God and we have the new teachings from Jesus like, love your neighbor as yourself.
Your faith will grow as you do what you know to do. We have talked recently about what a faithful life looks like. A Godly person is humble, sensitive to the pain of others, gentle, trying to do the right thing, compassionate, keeps a pure heart, is a peacemaker and willing to suffer for the cause of Christ. From Paul, in Galatians 5:22-25 we see that a person walking with God will have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Jesus expects all of us to know these things and live our lives with these qualities. This is the basic bar he sets for all of us. When we take the entire New Testament as our instruction manual we see that not only is God's basic expectation of us counter to our human nature, God comes to us in the form of Jesus and challenges us to take on more. Jesus raises the bar.
What Jesus says here about money is challenging. Jesus was speaking to Jews who knew the Old Testament teaching that requires they give 10% of everything they had to God. That means one of every nine sheep, one of every nine acres, etc. Now Jesus comes along and demands that we give more and that we should know that 10% is the baseline. If you are not giving to those in need then God can't bless you. If your heart is so hard and so stingy that you can't feed the hungry or cloth the naked, God will simply let you shrivel up. It's your choice. Give beyond the required 10% and thrive or be ordinary. We don't know until we trust God with what we have what he will do.
If Christians do not step up to lead and to be the best at what they do, how are we different from people who don't seek after God? Jesus says with this passage that we are to take initiative and not only do what is expected but to exceed the expectations of God and of every person we touch.
Are we to be driven to greatness? Yes. If you are average, you can't lead. However, there are warnings about making celebrity, power or money your motivation. If, as you seek to excel, you follow the Christ teachings, you will bring others along with you. The people God has put in your life will benefit from your achievements and you might become wealthy which means everyone around you becomes wealthy. It is selfishness and greed that spoils the life of a top-producer in any field.
In Romans 8:10 we read, "You can't go wrong when you love others." In I Timothy 6:9 it says, "The lust for money brings nothing but trouble." And, in the verse 19 it says, "be rich in helping others and be extravagantly generous."
And, the most audacious instruction from Jesus comes in John 15:11-14 where he says, "be willing to lay down your life for friends."
You are called to greatness and greatness is a team sport.
