Turn with me this morning again to Luke 17. We're continuing our series, "Kingdom Come." We saw last week a message regarding temptation and resisting temptation. The woes to those who lead people into temptation and then the exhortation and the encouragement that if we have faith even like a mustard seed, God will do great things with those even of small faith. We're continuing now in Luke 17. And as we do it, I want to help us to remember the setting. In Luke 17, Jesus asked the disciples a series of questions. We're going to see those in a moment when we look at the text. And the questions themselves are actually a little bit tricky. They're difficult. Commentators debate and try and figure out exactly what Jesus is saying. But the key to understanding for us is to remember that in the last couple chapters, as Jesus has been teaching and telling these stories and these parables, He's doing it in front of the disciples, but also in front of another group of people. There's sort of two groups that are there. He's speaking to the disciples this morning, and yet at the same time, the Pharisees are present. And so those two groups are both there. And as He's speaking to the disciples, it's part of a broader couple chapters where He's instructing the disciples not to be like the Pharisees who are listening. So you can imagine the tension that's kind of there as these two groups are sitting there hearing these things. The other thing to keep in mind as we look at these questions is that these questions that Jesus is asking are inherently related to the cultural setting of these people. And so some of what makes the questions confusing to us when we hear them, or the answers that are assumed that seem strange, is that we're not used to their cultural setting. And so what we're going to do this morning is try and get a sense of What was that cultural setting? How would the crowds and the disciples and the Pharisees made assumptions about these questions that we might not make? And if we can grasp that, it will help us to understand exactly what Jesus is saying in this text.
So look with me now at Luke 17. We're actually going to grab verse 5 from last week's message and read through verse 10. Hear God's holy and authoritative Word. The apostles said to the Lord, 'Increase our faith.' And the Lord said, 'If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, "Be uprooted and planted in the sea," and it would obey you. Will any one 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 recline at table"? Will he not 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; we have only done what was our duty.' The word of the Lord. May He write His truth upon our hearts.
Bow your heads. Father, as we open Luke's Gospel this morning, Lord, we recognize that Jesus is addressing the disciples and he's addressing the Pharisees, but that also through the power of your Holy Spirit, he is addressing us. And Lord, we recognize that as your servants, one of the duties you have given us as your people is to hear your word and to listen to your word and be conformed to your word. And so we do that now this morning, full of faith that You will do according to all of Your promises, that Your Word will not return void, that it will accomplish all that it purposes. Lord, we ask that You would do that now for the building and strengthening of our faith and for the glory of Your Son, Jesus. Amen.
Well, I had a good buddy in high school. And he was a guy who was a lot of fun to be around. When we were together, we tended to get in a lot of trouble, not like bad trouble, but trouble nonetheless. My parents would talk about going to parent-teacher conferences and the teachers would kind of, to a man, say, he does really well in class except when he's in a class with this friend. And he was just a guy that was just hilarious to be around, but always sort of clueless about what was going on. And we would have classes in English where They'd ask for volunteers to read, and so my buddies and I would actually volunteer him to read because then he would stumble through the passages and we would all get a laugh, him laughing along with us. There was one time in particular where my buddy and I had an opportunity to help out on a farm. His dad actually had a coworker, and this guy owned some land, and he realized he had to bring in all his hay, he had to bale his hay. And so my buddy's dad volunteered my buddy and I my buddy and myself to go help this farmer. And so now having been around farms myself, I knew what to do. I wore boots, I wore jeans. It's the middle of summer in Iowa, it's gonna be humid, you're gonna be in a field. That doesn't matter, you're baling hay. You wear sleeves, you wear pants, you gotta prepare yourself for this. My clueless buddy, on the other hand, came in his mesh shorts and in his tennis shoes and in his sleeveless t-shirt. And we get there and the farmer who's hired us to bale the hay asks, Well, you guys can choose where you want to go. One of you is going to be out in the field on the wagon behind the tractor. And one of you is going to be up in the haymow taking the bales as they come off the elevator. And so my buddy is basically a total city slicker. And so I suggest, you know, I really think you should go up in the haymow. That's going to be a better spot for you. You're known to be clumsy. Being on the wagon wouldn't be a good thing. He jumps at it. Little does he know I'm going to be out in the fresh air baling hay. While he's up in the stuffy haymow sucking in all the debris and dying. So we start working, and I didn't realize this, but I found out later he had never picked up a bale of hay. He had no idea how to do it. And so I guess in his mind, the logical thing to do wasn't to grab the two pieces of twine that are there and to grab it and to heave the bale. He actually bent down and bear hugged the bale with his mesh shorts and his sleeveless t-shirt. And he starts working for about 10-15 minutes and he's moved, you know, a dozen or so bales. And the farmer comes up to check on him and says, "How are you doing?" And he just— this is my buddy— he just kind of helps us, looks at him with his arms just covered in scratches and says, "This is really hard." So they had to teach him how to actually throw the bales of hay. Long story short, we worked our tails off. It was incredibly hot. We were exhausted. He got done and he was spitting dirt out of every hole in his face. You couldn't believe it. We were so tired. We were so sweaty. But the farmer was grateful. And so he came up to us and he thanked us and he actually paid us more than he had said he was going to pay us. He gave us a bonus because we had worked so hard and we got in my car and we're so exhausted but so excited. We went and blew all of the money we had just made on this massive order from Pizza Hut. More than we could possibly eat. We were so tired and so hungry, it seemed like the most logical thing in the world to do. Long story short though, we were excited because we had gotten the bonus. We had worked ourselves to the bone. We were completely tired, but we had earned that money.
Now, it's easy to carry those sorts of expectations into these questions that Jesus is asking this morning. And when we do that, we get confused by what Jesus is saying. He's talking about a servant plowing a field or keeping the sheep or baling hay. And those servants would have been just as tired as my buddy and I, but they don't have any hot shower waiting for them. There's no Pizza Hut on standby to deliver their cheesy bread, right? And their stuffed crust pizza. They're out in the fields and they're working and they're tired. And the master doesn't— give them a bonus. He doesn't even say thank you. In fact, they're not even allowed to get cleaned up. The expectation is they're going to come back, they're going to serve him first before they eat. They have to feed the boss before they can feed themselves. Now we hear that, and that sounds like a really raw deal. Like if we had gotten done baling hay for that guy and he said, I'm going to pay you, but first you've got to feed me. We would have lost it. We'd have blown our tops. And we hear these questions and we're confused by them. And yet Jesus is presenting us here with the right way to handle this situation. Well, how does that make sense?
Well, part of it is remembering the cultural situation. Jesus, it's clear from the story, isn't talking about a farmer or an individual who has just a massive estate with countless field hands. There's not workers in the field and workers in the kitchen and people who serve by the door, right? He's envisioning, He's telling a story about a man with a small farm and a man with one servant. It's just one guy doing all the work. Now, we would hear that and think, "That's not fair." But that's not how Jesus' audience would have heard this. To the disciples and to the crowds, This is completely logical. On one small farm, this servant would naturally be expected to do all of these things. And the servant wouldn't be thinking, "I'm getting a raw deal." The servant would think, "Of course I'm doing all of these things. I'm the one servant, and this is the job and the task that I have." To translate that into our modern context, none of us works from 8 to noon in the morning and takes a lunch break and then thinks, "Out of the goodness of my heart, I'll work in the afternoon too." And then expects that because you work till 5, the boss is going to come up and say, "Thank you for working this afternoon too. Can I give you a bonus for working the morning and the afternoon?" We realize naturally that you work 8 to 5 or whatever your hours are. That's the mindset of the crowds with this servant. Of course, the one servant is doing all of this work.
6 · Identifies the primary rhetorical target: the Pharisees, who had twisted obedience into a transaction that placed God in their debt
More importantly though, these are questions to the disciples in the hearing of the Pharisees. And these are an indictment of the Pharisees. The Pharisees had developed a mindset that their obedience put God on the hook. That by doing what God had called them to do, God was now somehow obligated to them.
7 · The first major theological claim: obedience does not create indebtedness in God
The first thing, the first point we see this morning is that our obedience doesn't work that way. Obedience doesn't put God on the hook. The Pharisees argued the more you obeyed, the more God owed you. Do more right things, God has to do more things for you. You read your Bible, you memorize your Scripture, you keep the Law, you go to synagogue. You harass others with their law-keeping, right? You do those things and now God, in the Pharisees' mindset, was on the hook to bless you. He had to deliver. He had to come through. Jesus is telling the story to confront their arrogance. And He's telling it to confront our arrogance. No servant presumes that he can expect the master to thank him, or that by doing what he's expected to do, now suddenly the master is in his debt. Servants don't think that way. Jesus' original audience would have immediately understood this.
8 · Applies the Pharisees' error to the congregation through a series of rhetorical questions that surface common transactional thinking: obeying to secure promotions, healing, marriage, or other desired outcomes
The question, though, becomes, how often do we relate to God in this way? How often do we think this way? Isn't it a tempting Isn't it tempting to approach obedience as a means to get God to act on our behalf? You ever done that in your head? "I will do this because then I think God is more inclined to do this." Right? "I'll do what God requires and then I'll get the promotion." "I'll obey God in these things, I'll pursue holiness because then I'll get this thing I've been longing for." Then I'll be healed. Then I'll be married. Then fill in the blank. Because God owes us. Because we've obeyed. We've been good servants. We've done our duty.
9 · Names the theological consequence of transactional obedience: it inverts the God-human relationship, making God the servant obligated to deliver on our terms
But do you see the subtle way this twists who God is? Thinking like that, like the Pharisees, makes God into our servant, and we don't put Him into our debt through our obedience.
10 · Signals a structural shift from the first error of the Pharisees (arrogance about their obedience putting God in debt) to a second error (blindness about God's character)
Obedience doesn't put God on the hook. So Jesus confronts that arrogance of the Pharisees, but He also is confronting their blindness. He's confronting their blindness.
11 · Exposes the second Pharisaic error: viewing God as miserly and withholding, requiring arm-twisting to release blessing
They seem to imagine that God isn't just on the hook if they obey, but that He's also miserly. That He's withholding good things from them. It's almost this image of God as if He's Ebenezer Scrooge. You know Ebenezer Scrooge, the famous character from A Christmas Carol? Right? In my mind, it's the Disney version of it, right? Where he's the duck and he's sitting there at the table with all the coins piled up in front of him and just miserly, maybe giving one coin but holding all the rest of them back. That's the view of God that the Pharisees have. He's the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. To get something from God, you have to twist his arm. You have to show him with just impeccable evidence that you deserve this, and then maybe he'll slide the coin of blessing across the table to you. But God isn't like that at all. He's generous. He's open-handed. Our obedience doesn't leverage Him. It doesn't put Him in a corner and obligate God to open the checkbook.
12 · Names a third dimension of Pharisaic error: imagining God as a dealmaker open to quid pro quo arrangements
And more than this, God doesn't make deals. In the blindness of the Pharisees, there's this sense and this thought and this assumption that they can get God to make deals with them. Now, that sounds strange, but we can think of times we've thought the same way, right? If you get me out of this fix, Lord, I will do X, Y, or Z. Just help me out here, Lord, and I'm yours for the next 6 months. Right? Those aren't uncommon ways of thinking. But it's not very different from thinking, I did this for you. Why didn't you do that for me? You see the similarities? Or, "If I do this," or, "If I obey in that way, then you should give me this." The Pharisees imagined that God is a dealmaker, that they can do a quid pro quo with God, that there can be a tit-for-tat. Jesus' point is that no servant does his basic job and then expects a thank you, much less a commendation. You're a servant. This is your job. There's no special treatment for this. And yet the Pharisees think precisely this way.
13 · Synthesizes the theological corrective to Pharisaic distortions of God: He is not begrudging, stingy, or holding back—He is lavishly generous
More than all of that, though, God doesn't relate to us in this way. He's not some begrudging deity who has His arm twisted, and only with the twisting of His arm does He bless and help. He's not stingy with His blessing. He doesn't hold back mercy and compassion from his people. He's lavishly generous. The question as we hear these questions from Jesus, as those questions press against us, isn't, "Man, how dumb can those Pharisees be?" The question is, how do we perceive God? If we expect that obedience puts God on the hook, If we imagine we can make deals with God, if we think of our relationship with God as being entirely a tit for tat, I do this, he does that. If that's how we think of God, we're as blind as the Pharisees are, completely oblivious to the enormous generosity of our heavenly Father. That's what these questions are driving home to us. Obedience doesn't put God on the hook. We can't make deals with God. But beyond all this, Jesus also wants us to realize that serving and obeying isn't a means to an end.
14 · Returns to the primary text to expose a tone easily missed: verse 10's confession is not begrudging but saturated with satisfaction and humility
When we serve and we obey and we do our duty as these questions are driving home at, Part of his point is you're not just doing this so that at the end there's a certain result that happens. We don't serve so that we can get. We don't merely obey so that we avoid bad outcomes and punishment. Listen again to verse 10. So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded Say, we are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. Now that's a statement Jesus says. He puts it into the lips of faithful servants and it's a statement just dripping with humility. Jesus commends these faithful servants because they recognize who they are and they recognize what their duty is and there's not a begrudging, okay, but there's a sense of, We've done our duty as unworthy servants. We've done what You called us to do. If you listen and you read verse 10, there's a sense in how Jesus puts it of profound satisfaction in the duty of the servant serving the master. The faithful servant doesn't begrudge his duty. For the faithful servant, it's not a chore.
15 · Applies the intrinsic-value-of-duty principle to contemporary service contexts where the expectation of recognition and applause reveals that identity categories have been reversed: we've forgotten we are servants and God is Master
Do we think about obedience and duty in those categories? Probably not often, probably not naturally. But Jesus' point, Lewis' point is that there's genuine joy to be found in serving God. And that's part of the point of Luke 17. When we serve, and it's all serving with the expectation that there will be attention. I'm going to serve and people will notice. I'm going to serve and people better notice. If I serve and they don't notice, I'm going to stop serving. Or when we serve and we expect there's going to be adulation and there's going to be congratulations. The point of Luke 17 is that we've forgotten who we are and who God is. God is the master. God is the master and we are his servants. We are his bond servants. We are his bond slaves. This passage literally reads. Now, God is the most generous, kindhearted master who's ever existed. But He's still the Master, and we have the profound privilege of being servants of the King of Kings. If you can't serve, if you can't embrace obedience, if you can't do your duty with joy, you're missing the most important element of your service.
16 · Expands the application through a rapid-fire series of concrete service contexts (cleaning crew, lawn care, children's ministry, worship team, sound tech, laundry), all driving toward the single question: Who are you really serving? The answer reorients all mundane tasks toward the privilege of serving the King of Kings
Who do you really clean the church for if you're on that cleaning crew? When you're cutting the grass, who are you really cutting the grass for? When we dismiss the children's ministry workers, who are they going down into the basement to serve? When the worship team gets up early and they come and they assemble at 8:30 and they start practicing, and for the members of the team, when they're practicing on Saturday night and becoming familiar with the songs. Who are they doing that for? As the guys on the sound and the overhead are working on their pieces. When a mom is at home and she's doing laundry and it's the 10th load of the day, and she's in the middle of the 10th load and the baby just blows out a diaper. Guess it's not the last load. Who is she doing that for? Yes, we serve one another. But ultimately, Jesus' point is we're serving God. And to serve God is to have the honor of serving Almighty God, the King of Kings, the triune God. And so to serve the triune God with our gifts and our talents and even our lives is the highest privilege imaginable. It's not, I can't believe Jesus is calling me a servant in this passage. When we think that way, We've mixed everything up. We're so quick to think more highly of ourselves than we should. And it creeps in. The thought that, well, I can serve, but I'm not gonna serve in those areas. That's kind of below me, right? Or that our gifts, my gifts, they're really too significant for that role. Or we get slowly bitter. "No one's noticed. They had a deal a couple weeks ago and Dave honored a bunch of people. He forgot my name! Doesn't he remember what I did?" Right? I don't think you forgot anyone's name, Dave. Those attitudes Reveal where our heart is. And it reveals a heart that has forgotten who we really are. The point of Luke 17 is you are not a big deal. If you do it the way you're supposed to, at the end you get called an unworthy servant. Wow. But it's Jesus humbling us and adjusting us in front of the Pharisees. Not because Christians are so special and Pharisees are so bad, but because he knows his disciples need to hear this because the same temptation, the same inclinations exist in their hearts that exist in the Pharisees' hearts. You are not a big deal. You aren't. And yet God has given you, he's given us, he's given me the honor of being his bondslave. I love Psalm 84. The opening passage: "Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere." It's a famous worship song, right? It's been sung on loop pretty much for the last 20 years. "Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere." But the context is what draws out the sweetness of that passage. Better is one day in your courts surrounded by everybody else worshiping you than a thousand elsewhere. That's what we think as we sing the song, right? Psalm 84:10, better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere. Give me one day in Your courts in all eternity to be Your servant. To serve the Most High God. What a profound privilege.
17 · Marshals Old Testament examples of the greatest patriarchal and royal figures—Abraham, Moses, David—who despite their monumental roles in redemptive history are repeatedly called 'my servant' by God, and who receive this title not as diminishment but as honor
You think of the big heroes of the Old Testament, right? Now we know our Bibles. We know how to read our Bibles, so we know the heroes of the Old Testament aren't all that heroic. Feet of clay, right? But you think of David and you think of Moses and Abraham. These guys are a big deal in the Old Testament as far as it goes. God's promises are delivered to these men and then they come to the people. Abraham is Father Abraham, the one who receives the original promise. We are all by faith children of Abraham, right? Moses is the prototypical prophet, the mouthpiece of God. David is the king. Jesus is a Messiah from David's line. King, deliverer, prophet, the titles that are given to these huge figures. Yet all of those men, David and Moses and Abraham, with noteworthy frequency, do you know what they're called? My servant David. My servant Moses. My servant Abraham. When David hears that, he's not thinking, "Ugh, doesn't he remember that I'm the king?" No, he hears that and he thinks, "Oh, to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God." Oh, my servant David, there is great delight in our duty. There's joy in our obedience.
18 · Brings forward 1 John 5:1-3 to establish New Testament confirmation of the principle that God's commands are not burdensome and that obedience itself is an expression of love
I love how the Apostle John puts it in 1 John 5:1. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. So you think of the context of our passage, right? Faith as small as a mustard seed, rip up a tree and cast it into the sea with that faith. Faith as small as a mustard seed and you move a mountain. The point we looked at last week is the smallest morsel of faith is all that God needs to seal that person in Christ. So here John says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. John heard that sermon. Everyone who believes with a mustard seed of faith that Jesus is the Christ, that person with the mustard seed, they are born of God. And then in verse 3, this is love for God, to obey his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. This is love for God. If I asked you to fill in the rest, if you didn't know the passage, would it be your instinct to think, "This is love for God, to obey His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome"? John knows. David knows. Peter knows there is a sweet duty. There is a reward in the obedience itself, to love God and obey what He has called us to. And what He's called us to, it's not burdensome.
19 · A personal story about teaching his children to read—currently perceived as tedious duty by the children—illustrates how present discipline contains future delight
I think of teaching our kids to read right now. We're going through this process of— Case is at the point now where he's reading chapter books. So that's a big deal. These books don't have pictures and there's actually chapters that are 3 pages long with words that take up half the page, but they're chapter books nonetheless. So he's learning to read it. And with Sadie, we're slowly teaching her how to read just these really basic books that have 3 words and they all rhyme on the page, but she's learning to read. We're telling them they have to. There's times when they come home and they're coming in from the backyard and it's time to read. That's the typical response. You think we're pulling teeth. We're teaching them to read because we know this is for their good. This is a blessing. I think of Case reading, and I think of Sadie reading, and I think of, oh, think of the books they'll read one day. Think of the literature that's gonna be at their fingertips. There's gonna be a time, Case, when you get to read Lord of the Rings. Do you know that there's going to be a time when you get to read history and you get to read poetry? There's going to be a world of information at your fingertips because of this duty right now. There is delight in the duty. That's the point of 1 John. His commands are not burdensome. Like a parent teaching a child to read, knowing there's going to be a world that opens to you. You. It's not just that the child doesn't want the kid to be dumb. Oh, you got to read so you can actually go somewhere in life. No, it's— there's joy, there's depth of living beyond this duty, in this duty, in the same way God's commands to us.
20 · Direct application questions pressing the congregation to examine whether they view obedience as intrinsically rewarding or merely instrumentally valuable
And so there's incalculable grace here. Do we think of our obedience in that way? Do we think of obedience as its own reward?
21 · Identifies the ultimate Pharisaic error—forgetting God's grace—and expounds it through the Prodigal Son parable
Finally, Jesus confronts the greatest error of the Pharisees. They think of this tit-for-tat, right? They think they're a bigger deal than they really are. They think they are worthy of commendation. They sit in the choice seats in the synagogue, the places of honor, because they think they deserve those things. But all that pales in comparison to the fact they have forgotten God's grace. They've forgotten. They don't put God in their debt, that they are perpetually debtors of God's grace. In their equation, the servant should always get a thank you. The servant should always get accommodation. There should be a reward. There should be a stuffed crust pizza for both of the guys that baled the hay. You shouldn't even have to share it. That's how they think. After all, the servant, as the Pharisees think, has earned this. I worked for this. I put in effort for this. Haven't they done all that the master commanded? It's an echo of a story Jesus told us earlier in Luke's Gospel. A story about two brothers. About a prodigal younger brother and an obedient older brother. We know the story. It's the story of the prodigal son, but really, it's the story of a prodigal God, as Keller titled his book, of this God who's rich in grace and mercy. You've got the one son who goes and wastes the inheritance, and he comes back a beggar starving to death. And he thinks to himself, if I come and plead and ask for forgiveness, my father will make me a servant, and even his servants don't starve. And he comes and his father sees him and his father runs to him. And what does he do? Get on your knees and grovel and say you are sorry. He embraces him. The dignified old man pulls up his robes, knobby knees, and he runs and he grabs him and he embraces him and he kisses him. He puts the ring on his finger. He puts the robe on his back. He kills the fattened calf. He throws a party. All of this is symbolism for, you won't be a servant. You are my son. For one who deserves none of it. This son has earned nothing, and God, represented as this father, graciously gives it all. But the older brother can't fathom this. He's done everything right up to this point. He's followed every rule. He's worked hard. He's obeyed. He's baled the hay. He's been dirty. He's been filthy. He literally declares to his father in the parable, "These many years I've slaved for you, and I never disobeyed your command, and yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends." Like the Pharisees, this view is that God is a taskmaster, that love has to be earned, and that inheritance is purchased through obedience. There's this careful equation of karma. If I do this, I'll get that. Doesn't the servant in Luke 17, doesn't he deserve better?
22 · The central theological turn: we can never actually say 'we have done all that was commanded
In reality, none of us will ever be able to utter verse 10. We've done all that you commanded. There's no working our way into God's favor. We can't possibly obey enough to put God in our debt. If God operated on the calculus of the Pharisees, this calculus of karma, every person in this room would be hopeless. You see, it's not unfair that we're called unworthy servants. You read that passage for the first time, like, oh Unworthy servants? That seems like kind of a rude way to end these questions. Aren't you saying these are the ones who did it right? And yet that's exactly what to call them because we, all of us, mustard seed faith clinging to Christ, we are unworthy servants, aren't we? We haven't obeyed perfectly. We haven't served God in the way He calls us to. We haven't been faithful in our duty. We haven't loved God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. And every one of us, from Moses to David to the Pharisees to your pastors and community group leaders, everyone has fallen short. Everyone is a faithless servant.
23 · Pivotal transition from the universal failure of human servants to the introduction of the one faithful servant
But there's another servant described in Scripture. A biblical theology of servants and servanthood in Scripture points us to the greatest servant. This servant isn't faithless, and where Abraham and Moses and David all failed, this servant was perfectly obedient.
24 · Identifies Jesus as the one servant who can truthfully say 'I have done all that the master commanded' and expounds Isaiah 53's Suffering Servant passage, showing how the faithful servant bears the punishment for unfaithful servants
This servant can utter, verse 10, 'I have done all that the master commanded.' The prophet Isaiah Jesus speaks of this servant as a suffering servant. In Isaiah 53, this famous passage, He talks about this servant who is Jesus and says, "He, this servant, this one faithful servant, He was pierced for the unfaithful servant's transgressions. He, the faithful servant, was crushed for the unfaithful servant's iniquities." The punishment that brought the unfaithful servants peace, it was upon Him. And by His wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him, the faithful one, the iniquity of us all.
25 · The central theological claim of the gospel resolution: God is not a harsh, transactional master but a gracious Father who sent His Son into the world as a servant
God isn't a harsh master. God is a gracious Father. We're in the middle of Advent. We're celebrating the fact that Jesus was sent into this world. The eternal Son of God, holding together the world by the word of his power, was clothed in flesh and became a baby. He sent Jesus into the world to take the form of a baby, the form of a servant, so that that baby, that servant, could become obedient, even obedient to the point of death on a cross.
26 · Expounds the scandal of grace: the Master will not only allow servants at His table but will Himself serve them—first in the foot washing at the Last Supper, then on the cross, and finally at the eschatological wedding feast of the Lamb
And where the crowds understand no earthly master would ever allow his servant to eat at his table, no earthly master would ever allow the servant to do that. You just don't do that in an honor and shame culture where there's this great divide. The crowds don't fully grasp the amazing grace of God. You see, Jesus doesn't just serve us in His death. At the end of Luke's Gospel, he's going to show us a foreshadowing. Jesus, in the Passover, is going to come into that room and He's going to take off His robes and He's going to put on the clothes of a servant. And He's going to wash the disciples' feet. And He's going to serve them at a table. And all of that serving them at the table is pointing forward. It's pointing forward to the fact that Jesus is going to fulfill Isaiah 53 in a few days' time. He's going to be the suffering servant hanging on that tree. But a day is coming when He will actually return. He will return as the resurrected Lord, as the High King of heaven. And when He returns, He's going to invite everyone who has believed in Him with a mustard seed of faith, everyone, to come to a great banquet. It's the great banquet of the Lamb. Jesus is going to invite us, His servants, to eat and drink at His table. He's going to violate Luke 17. The master is going to eat with the servants. He's going to welcome us to come and sit and recline at His table. But more than that, Jesus, just like at the Passover, the Last Supper, is going to clothe himself as a servant. And at the great banquet, the great wedding feast of the Lamb, he, the High King of heaven, will again serve us. And he will meet our needs, and he will bind up our hurts, and he will satisfy us with himself.
27 · The doxological climax
And on that day, no one will think, "Doesn't God owe me a little bit more?" With one voice, all of His unworthy servants clothed in beautiful robes will confess, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ the true servant with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places." In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, through the faithful servant, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him, the faithful servant, we have redemption through His blood, according to the riches of His grace. Oh, me more! He's given us His Son. The riches of His grace which He's lavished upon us. In Him, Jesus Christ, the faithful one, we have obtained an inheritance so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever. Forever and ever.
28 · Closing prayer that functions as both confession and petition
Would you bow your heads? Oh Jesus, we confess we are unworthy servants. From the moment we woke up this morning, we have been falling short. Our obedience is not complete. We don't take delight in our duty the way that we should. But Lord, with our mustard seeds, we come into your presence clinging to Christ. And so we ask that you would help to shape our hearts. Protect us from what tempted the Pharisees. Protect us from scorning service. Protect us from thinking we're more important than we are. Protect us from thinking we have to earn or that we can put you into our debt. But Lord, we pray that you would do this by reminding us of your enormous grace to us in the gospel. Help us to see and rejoice and be satisfied in the servant, your Son Jesus. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.