Luke 17:5-10

We are beginning to close the circle here on how to produce fruit. We have seen we cannot just stand still; we have got to take action. If we are producing fruit, I can guarantee you we are getting the leaven out and we are overcoming sin. I chose this example because it involves faith, and without faith there will be no fruit.

I want us to notice here that it does not say that the servant is sinful, he is merely unprofitable. Remember at the beginning, Jesus showed us that it was not good enough just to be cleaned up and that being cleaned by God actually leaves a person in a state of vulnerability. The lesson here involves understanding the state or the position we are in relative to God after we are cleaned by the blood of Jesus Christ. We are totally obligated to Him; we do not have a life of our own.

Please think about John 17. When we are cleaned by the blood of Jesus Christ, we are totally obligated to Him. We know longer have a life of our own. We belong to Him. I want us to get this because if we do not understand the position that we are in relative to Jesus Christ, relative to God the Father, we are not going to be able to increase in faith, and if we do not increase in faith, we are not going to grow.

We are dealing with something that has to do with increasing faith. "Lord increase our faith." His answer seems so indirect, but it is not indirect at all. It is very direct. It has to do with recognizing our total obligation to Him. We do not have a life of our own. When the master comes in, what does he say to the slave? "Oh, why do you not eat first." No, the slave's life does not belong to him, it belongs to the master. He is totally obligated, so the master says, "Prepare something for my supper." "But sir, I just came in from the field and have been working since sun up and I am tired, I am dirty." The master says, "You don't have a life of your own. Fix my supper first and then we will see if we can find something else for you to do."

Is that the basis of your attitude toward God, that He has every right to demand of us that we never stop serving Him, ever? That we are obligated to Him in every circumstance? There is never a time that we can walk off the job. There is never a time that we are free to do our own thing. Is that the kind of attitude that you have toward your Savior? Jesus is saying that this is the foundation of growing. We are totally obligated to Him. We do not have a life of our own. We are His slave. We are totally at His beck and call. He has absolute authority over our lives.

This is not all of our relationship with Him, but He is answering the question, "How do you grow?" I think many times we do not have much understanding of this aspect. What Christ is doing is showing us that our duty, our obligation to God never ends. We are never off the job wherever, whenever, or whatever the situation might be. We are called upon to serve Him and no past work that we have done, no past obedience absolves me from what I am now called upon to do.

Paul said that we are to forget the things that are behind and to go forward. When we complete one thing with God, what is God's reward? It is more work. When He gives us a responsibility and then rewards us because we have done that responsibility, the reward is greater responsibility. You see, we have no claim on God! Do you understand that? This is the foundation of our working relationship. Jesus is saying that if we want to grow in faith, we have got to understand where we are in relation to God.

You see, there is subtly, most of the time (and sometimes not so subtly), working a pull on us to declare our independence of God. Do you know why those people in Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8 sinned? Even though they were doing something that was normally their right to do, it was lawful to do, because without realizing it they declared their independence from God. God, who says your first responsibility is to your brother in this case, … . . .

Luke 17:10

2. We have the wrong mindset regarding what we are before God.

There are two lessons here that God wants us to get out of this in regard to duty and responsibility. First, we should get it out of our minds that even keeping the Commandments perfectly will somehow put God in obligation to us. No, it does not. God owes us nothing. Everybody is required to keep the Commandments, converted or unconverted.

The second lesson was part of this mindset. It has to be mostly with understanding what a servant or a slave is. Jesus used the term doulos and that means a slave.

The definition: "A slave is one who is in a permanent relation of servitude to another, his will being altogether consumed in the will of the other." The relationship here is from us to God. We are His slaves. We are bought and paid for at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. We owe God for our life. Since we are His slaves, He requires of us certain things. However, human nature does not want to be a slave in that way. It wants to fight against it all the time. But a slave has to have a mindset. That mindset is that his will belongs completely to somebody else, and that somebody else is God. Therefore the true servant's or the true slave's mind is so fixed on performing his duties that when other things occur, he does not look upon them as being setbacks. They are something simply that his owner has required, designed, or allowed. Therefore, he is to bear up under them and do the best he can with them.

That kind of a mindset does a great deal toward getting rid of any feelings of self-pity or being put upon, which would disrupt the carrying out of our responsibilities.

Luke 17:10

Now notice that the word acceptable occurs twice in this short paragraph. The first time we see this it indicates that our offering of ourselves to God is pleasing to God. And the second time, at the end of verse 2, it indicates that when we do this, we will find God's will for our lives to be pleasing, sound, and perfect. So how could it be otherwise if God is all wise and all good? He must will what is good for us. That our offering of ourselves to Him should also please Him when we know ourselves to be weak, ignorant, and half-hearted even in our best efforts, is astonishing. The Bible tells us that at our best we are to think of ourselves as an unprofitable servant.

Luke 17:10

And during this pre-Passover time, we must actively examine our heart with God by our side and measure it solely against God's heart measure, His holy heart. The comparison of our heart against His creates a proper spiritual bankruptcy. It recognizes that we are nothing. We can do nothing of spiritual value without Jesus Christ's enabling Spirit. When we are poor in spirit, we know that we are unprofitable servants, even at the best of times, as we read in,

We know that we never even come close to doing everything God commands. Every single day, each of us falls short against the commandment to love God with all our heart, brethren.

Luke 17:9-10

And then comes this instruction regarding doing our duty. Pick it up in verse 9.

We are going to begin to close the circle here on how to produce fruit, how to overcome, and how to get the leaven out. I think that it is interesting to begin here by noting that He did not call the servant sinful. He called him unprofitable. He was not producing anything.

Keeping the commandments is our duty. And, even if we do a very good job, we are only doing what is our duty to do! We could be compelled to do that. And, so, there is no thanks, you might say, for doing what everybody on earth is responsible before God for doing.

Luke 17:7-10

Notice the use of the word "duty"—it was imposed by God externally. God created us. God commanded the Law, and so duty came upon us externally and we are expected to do it.

The point of this story by Jesus is to put us in the right frame of mind regarding responsibility, and there are two points that He gets across here. Number one is that we should get it far from our minds that keeping the commands, even perfectly, will somehow put God in our debt, like He somehow owes us something. He does not owe us, when it is just our duty to do these things anyway. You see, it is our duty to keep the commands.

Luke 17:10

When we are poor in spirit, we know that we never come even close to doing everything God commands. Every single day we fall short in our heart, brethren. The poor in spirit know that we are unprofitable servants in the eyes of God.