Welcome to our continuing Bible
study in the book of Luke. Those tuning in by Zoom and those
listening in by sermon audio, welcome. We're in chapter 17
of the book of Luke in our continuing study. Just to frame this in
the context of where we're at, this is kind of the last block of Scriptures before Jesus
moves on on His way to Jerusalem. And remember all of these messages
that we've been on for quite some time now. The originating
point was this breakfast that He had with the Pharisees and
His dialogue with them in the form of parables, and then His
dialogue with the disciples regarding the difference between them and
the Pharisees. So we come to this last little
bit that he is speaking to his disciples in verse 7 of Luke
chapter 17. But which of you having a A servant
plowing or feeding cattle will say unto him by and by, when
he is come from the field, go and sit down to meet, and will
not rather say unto him, make ready wherewith I may sup and
gird thyself and serve me till I have eaten and drunken, and
afterwards thou shalt eat and drink. Does he thank that servant
because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not.
So likewise, ye, when you have done all those things which are
commanded, you say, we are unprofitable servants. We have done that which
was our duty to do. And so that's the title of today's
Bible class lesson is unprofitable servants. And we're going to
look at what that means. But primarily, we need to really
look at The two entities that he's talking about here, the
Pharisees kind of representing the world and religion, and the
disciples, which are representing the church, the elect, those
that are saved by grace. And it's these side-by-side pictures
that he presents to us through all these parables and dialogues
with the disciples that bring to light these many differences. So as we look at this and we
think of it from the viewpoint of the Pharisees, They think
they're going to be rewarded for all the works that they do,
for all the keeping of the law, for all their, I did this, I
tithe, I fast, I, I, I, I. And they think that they're racking
up merit in doing those things. And the disciples, the true church, the redeemed
of the Lord say, we're unprofitable servants. So that's kind of the
two pictures that we're presented with today. So in the context of this, we're
looking at this rule of parables again, where it's saying, unto
you is given to understand, but unto them is not given. So as
he speaks these things to his disciples, the Pharisees, they
hear some things, and some things that they realize are derogatory
to them. they take offense to, and yet
don't really quite understand the spiritual application of
it. And as Jesus addresses the disciples again, these Pharisees
are kind of listening in, and so He goes into this servant
business. And really, the Pharisees should
have been servants. They were the ones, the doctors
of the law. They were the ones that had the
access to all the Scriptures. They were the ones that should
have been pointing out the Gospel. They were the ones that should
have been setting the example, and yet we find out that they
were far from it. The Scriptures in this block
kind of directly point to the goal of the Pharisees in obtaining
rewards or salvation in exchange for meritorious performance or
keeping the law or various works that they engaged in. As we mentioned
earlier, I pray all the time, and I fast twice a week, and
I give tithes of all I have, and so on and so forth. And all
these laws I've kept from my youth up. So they assumed that
they were creating a bank account of rewards or merit for those
things. And by contrast, we have the
reference to the church and their view of grace. So what does it
mean we're unprofitable servants even after doing what's commanded
to us or what's required? And I like the NET translation. It reads that we're undeserving
of special praise. We've only done what was our
duty. It's not that we're unprofitable
and that we're not of any value, but we're undeserving of any
special consideration based on what we've only done what it
was our duty. So that's the scriptural and
the spiritual view of the church. And you know, when we look at
the Scriptures, we find that there's only one servant that
was and is profitable. And that is Jesus. In Matthew 20, verse 28, it says,
Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,
and give His life a ransom for many. And in John 8, verse 29,
He that sent Me is with Me, the Father hath not left Me alone,
for I do always those things that please Him. the things that
he was tasked to do in the redemption of the church. He did those,
and those things pleased the Father, and therefore He is the
profitable servant. And it kind of reminded me of
Norm's message here on Wednesday about my wages, my 30 pieces
of silver, the wages of a servant that would be paid if, say, a
servant got killed in the Old Testament, by someone else's
doing or their animal or whatever, then they were required by the
law to pay that owner, that servant,
the value of that servant. It was 30 pieces of silver. And
that applied to the Lord there, as he pointed out in that lesson.
So we just have this picture of the perfect, profitable servant
that takes care of everything. Therefore, we have no basis to
try to claim any merit or any special consideration for anything
we've done, because He's done everything, and we are the beneficiaries
of it. Turn with me to Philippians chapter
2, and we'll read a couple of verses there in Philippians chapter
2, beginning in verse 5. And he's writing to these Philippians
and he's kind of talking to them about being this servant business
and he says, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus. Take your mind and kind of aim
it down the same track as Jesus. He says, who, being in the form
of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made
himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of men. Think about that humbling
thing where God Almighty gave up his glory above and came down
and took on himself the form of a man, became a servant. And
boy, that just goes contrary to our nature, doesn't it? We
want to be the high up. We want to be the master. We
don't want to think of ourselves in terms of being a servant. And it says, "...and being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross." Humbling ourselves is
just something that goes against our old nature. And just as these
Pharisees, They're like that old Mac Davis
song, Lord, it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every
way. Can't wait to look in the mirror
because I get better looking each day. And that's how they
viewed themselves, you know. And when we find when we've been
born again, we have an entirely different view of ourselves.
And we're not that shiny anymore. And we're like what the prophet
said, after all these things, when the Lord gives you the new
heart, and the heart to know Him and to love Him, and then
you'll look at your own ways which were not good, and you'll
loathe yourself. But He takes care of that too.
He gives us the oil of gladness for mourning and takes care of
all those issues. In this connection then with
being an unprofitable servant, that we recognize that whatever
duties or works we perform are not to be construed as having
any meritorious worth or effect. They're not done for those purposes.
We're just doing what was our duty. determined our duties from eternity,
and then He inclines our hearts to engage in them, and then He
determines the outcomes. So often in religion, they're
always trying to put it all on you. You have to do this, you
have to do that, and you're responsible then for the outcomes of it. That's why you need to keep beating
up all your relatives and your friends. You're going to go to
hell believe, and all those things that they can't accomplish on
their own, and all those things that only God can accomplish.
It's all your fault if you don't witness enough. It's all your
fault if you don't give enough. It's all your fault. And it just
lays a burden of higher intensity every time they talk to you,
and there's no end to it. But in reality, we have a duty
And we're to show forth the praises of Him who called us out of darkness
into His marvelous light. We're to show forth the praises
of Him that did these things. We're to show forth the Gospel.
What Christ did for us that we could not do for ourselves. What
Christ did for us that we didn't want to have happen. All those things that He caused
to happen when we were even at enmity with Him. So God determines
from eternity our duties and inclines the outcomes. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians,
he says, in chapter 4 verse 5, For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves servants for your sakes
and for Jesus' sake. He said their job was preaching
of the gospel. And he says that all the time.
He says, when I came to you, I determined not to know anything
but Christ and Him crucified. And I came to you not with enticing
words of man's wisdom, and I was just faithful in declaring Christ
crucified. And over and over and over, he
brings that to their attention. And he said, I used to come to
you with wisdom, of the Gamaliel. I used to come to you with the
Pharisees' doctrine and the traditions of the elders. I used to come
with you and all those things and try to convince you that
the way to eternity was through keeping the law and good works
and all those things. But He says, I found out that
was all worthless. And when God chose to reveal
His Son in me, all that became of no use. And so all my works up to then,
all the things that I had put in my bank account of good works
and keeping the law, got erased. And then I came to see myself
as an unprofitable servant. You know, when we were talking
a minute ago about how God has determined our duties from eternity,
our works, whatever He has purpose for us to do, He's determined
all that. And then He makes us willing to do that. My people
shall be willing in the day of thy power. And so we find out
that He He causes us. He's the driving force in us
that causes us to want to do those things. And we think we're
responding to various stimuluses or whatever it might be from
our own motivation, but really, when we find out later, well,
God was working in that and caused that to happen. And in Ephesians
2, verse 10, It says, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk
in them. There's a mouthful. There's quite a message right
there in that one sentence there. We're His workmanship, and He's
ordained from eternity the good works that we should walk in. And many times, probably most
times, the church in this world don't even recognize that walk.
We're just doing what we're motivated to do according to our own impulses
and motivations, we think, and then later on we find He was
working it all for his purpose. And not only do we not sometimes
know that we're doing what he's foreordained, but we don't keep
track of it. We don't keep score on it. We don't try to accumulate a
bank account of merit by doing them. And most of the time, we
really don't realize we are doing what He has before ordained. In Matthew 25, it kind of goes
into that at the judgment time when He has the sheep on the
right hand and the goats on the left. In chapter 25, verse 37,
Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord, when
did we see you hungered and fed thee or thirsty and gave you
a drink? We don't remember doing that. And he said, well, as much
as you've done it unto the least of one of these, you've done
it unto me. And then that's the unprofitable servant
speaking there. I didn't do anything. And I didn't
do anything meritorious of salvation or any rewards or anything. And then the Pharisees, on the
other hand, they're the ones that say in Matthew 25, 44, then
shall they, those on the left hand, those who try to establish
their profitability with God, say, Lord, when saw we thee hungered,
or thirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or imprisoned,
and did not minister unto thee? We did all those things. We did this and we did that. We marched down in front of the
post office with our sign and we went to the hospital and did this and the prisons and
did that. We kept track of all of it because
he says, When saw we a hungred, or a thirst, or a stranger, or
naked, or sick, or in prison?" They had all those things down.
And he said, we did all those things. That's the version of
the Pharisees. That's what their view of their
relationship with God was. That we will do all these things
in our mind. We are convinced that we've done
them. and therefore you are under obligation
to us, you owe us, because we're profitable. we've earned recognition,
we've earned merit, we've earned salvation based on what we've
done, not based on what the perfect profitable servant did in our
behalf. And, you know, we read that verse
from Ephesians 2.10 where it says, where his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto good work, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them, Well, it's important to note
that that comes right after verses 8 and 9 of Ephesians chapter
2, where it says, By grace are you saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves, but it's a gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast. And then he goes on to say, God
has ordained the good works that you're going to walk in after
you've been regenerated, after you've been born again. And so what that tells us is
boasting is entirely excluded in grace. And the true church,
the true believers, the true ones that have been born again
from above, they attribute all the blessings, especially salvation,
to Christ completely and entirely. And they say, I had nothing to
do with that. I don't know how it happened. Consequently then, because the
perfect servant, Jesus Christ, the perfect profitable servant,
perfectly served the Father in fulfilling all the Scriptures,
in perfectly keeping the law of God, in perfectly satisfying
the righteousness of God the Father, in perfectly redeeming
the children whom the Father gave him in the covenant of grace.
I think we read that scripture from Isaiah, I think it's 18,
where he said, Behold, I and the children whom thou has given
me. And then he goes on to say, therefore a testimony to your
grace, and paraphrase there. Consequently then, because the
perfect servant has done all those things and accomplished
all those things, there remains nothing, no good works, which
we can claim, which we can perform, which could have any bearing
on our salvation or our relationship with God. Call your attention
to Romans 9 where he said, the children being not yet born,
neither having done any good or evil that the purpose of God
according to election might stand, before they had done any works,
anything good. It was all dependent on God's
eternal electing love. And because Jesus, that perfect,
profitable servant, has finished all the work which was required
and more, the Scripture says we're complete in Him. All of our completeness comes
and is within Him, not because of anything that we've done.
Not of works of righteousness which we have done, but according
to His mercy and grace, He saved us. And so on. The Scriptures are just so replete
and repetitive in that context. It's hard to imagine that anybody
gets that wrong. He told Nicodemus, unless you're
born again, you can't see the kingdom of God. You just can't
see it. All you can see is, what do I need to do? All I can see
is, what works do I need to do? How can I obtain my own righteousness?
What can I do? Can I say this? Can I pray that?
Can I do, can I do, can I do? What can I do to be saved? And
the Lord always tells them that most of the time they say, well,
not doing that. They're like Naaman the Syrian.
Not going to go down there to that river. Not doing it. In John 17.4, Jesus said, I've
glorified thee on earth. I, capital I, underlined, have
finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." The perfect servant, the profitable
servant, imputed to us, and us is the church, the elect, the
sheep, the children that He calls Him, My little children, and
My little flock, and My sheep, My elect, My church. all that's required, He has done
and more. And that we're then presented
to God, a glorious church, not having any spot or wrinkle, and
glorifying God, not us. In Psalm 115, it says that, not
unto us, not unto us. We're unprofitable servants.
We haven't done anything to deserve grace. And in that, the very
definition of grace is unmerited favor. It's not caused by merit. It's not caused by good behavior. It's not caused by good works.
It's not caused by lineage, heritage, anything that we do. It's because
of, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will
have grace on whom I'll have grace. It all comes down to the perfect
servant having completed everything necessary for us. Husbands, love
your wives, Ephesians 5.25. Even as Christ also loved the
church and gave himself for it. And it all points to Him and
what He did, that He might sanctify it and cleanse it with the washing
of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a
glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
but that it should be holy and without blemish. all things that
He has done. Just another example, like in
Ezekiel, the I wills. I will do this, and I will do
that, and I will do that, and then here's the result is your
redemption. So again, not unto us, Lord,
not unto us, but unto Thy name. give glory for Thy mercy and
for Thy truth's sake." And we say that because we've only done
what was our duty to do, recognizing that He has done all for us,
and all we're doing is proclaiming that very fact. He has done it
all. We're not going to stand up here
and say, well, last week I went down and did this and I supported
this good cause or that good cause. You know, those kind of
things are, a lot of them are Those works are good. And they're good just because
they're the right thing to do, but they're not good in the sense
that you can count on those for salvation. They're not good for
you to try to put in the bank account of, well, I did these
things, so God owes me. They're just good because it's
a good thing to do. There's nothing wrong with them
in that sense. But there's everything wrong with them if you're doing
it for the wrong purpose. If you're only doing it so you
can count up your bank account. Some time ago, a guy, one of
the neighbors is a real religious fellow and He went and did something
nice for one of the neighbors, and they tried to give him a
gift coupon for $25 off at a restaurant or something. And he says, oh,
no, no, no, I can't take that because you'll take away my blessing. The guy says, well, I'm moving.
I'm not going to use this anymore. He says, it's worthless to me. You might as well have it. But
instead of being nice and saying, well, thank you very much. going
on his way, he says, I've already put this helping you in my merit
bank account, and if you give me this for it, well, that erases
it. So it's just what you do and the purpose why you do it. So what is our duty? Again, from 1 Peter 2, 9, he
says, you're a, excuse me, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a peculiar people, that you should show forth the
praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His
marvelous light. What then is our duty? What is our required service
as servants of the Most High God? Well, simply being faithful
and trusting Him completely. You know, we always define, by
grace are you saved through faith, and that's just, faith is just
nothing more than total reliance on Christ for for what He did
for us, for salvation, for Him, for all things. And we have faith
in His faithfulness, in what He has done. And our salvation
is not based on our ability to have faith or not have faith,
or how much we have or how little we have. He told them disciples
in the last lesson, if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed,
you could do this. You could pull up this sycamine
tree that has roots 600 feet deep. You could just yank it
up by the roots and stick it in the ocean. And they said,
oh, Lord, we need more faith. Give us more faith. You know,
simply being faithful then and trusting Him completely and simply
declaring that truth of the Gospel. Loving Him because He first loved
us. Not the other way around. Not
that we're bringing anything to Him. He has done it all. Let's turn
to Ephesians. It's hard to read just part of that
in Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1.1, it says, Paul,
an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. He didn't claim
that, well, I decided I would be an apostle. Last week I decided
I would be this or that. And you know, the scripture says
God sent people in the church as suited his purpose. Some apostles,
some teachers, some some evangelists, everything that's required. So
he's an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the saints
which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you and peace from
God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know what? He writes this letter to them,
and they're already saved, and they're already experiencing
grace. And he just goes through and
summarizes the whole thing. He's feeding the flock. He's
doing the work that God before ordained that he should walk
in. Accordingly as he has chosen
us and him before the foundation of the world that we should be
holy and without blame Before him and in love having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of
his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved in
whom we have been Redemption. He always says, well, here's
what Christ did, and here's what we received because of that.
And here's what God did, here's what we received because of that.
Not anywhere in there does it say, well, He did this, and then
you need to do this, this, this, and this. We have redemption
through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches
of His grace, wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom
and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will
according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself.
And then he outlines the very thing that he said he hath made
known to us, that in the dispensation of the fullness of time he might
gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in
heaven and which are on earth, even in him, in whom also we
have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according
to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel
of his own will. That, here's another result,
that we should be to the praise of His glory who first trusted
in Christ, in whom ye also trusted after ye heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed,
You were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the
earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession under the praise of His glory. So it's just a succinct
highlighting of all the things that He has done for us in 14
short verses, not all inclusive, but He kind of picked the the
cream of the crop, the low-hanging fruit, and said, here's all the
things Christ did for you, and here's all the things that you
got because He did that. And nowhere in there does it
say, oh, by the way, you need to still go get circumcised,
or you need to sign this line, or you need to send in this check,
or you need to repeat this prayer, or you need to do all those crazy
things that religion is always getting you to do. Sign over
all your property. I was reading that from the Unification
Church over in Asia where they talked people into signing over
their inheritance and sell their houses and give them all the
money and sign over all your wages for life. and on it goes and ruining people's
lives trying to get them to say well if you do that you're gonna
get merits you're gonna get You're gonna get a meritorious account
and God will owe you And meanwhile, they got like nine hundred billion
dollars revenue from various places so Just awful so the perfect
servant, the profitable servant, imputed to us, the church, the
sheep, the children, all that's required and more, and then we're
presented to God, a glorious church, not having any spot or
wrinkle, glorifying Him or not us, then all we have done is
say, here's what He did for me. Here's the gospel. Christ died
for our sins according to the scripture. He paid for all of
our sins. He's working. The perfect servant
is working all things. We read that in Ephesians. He
works all things according to the counsel of His will, according
to His purpose. When it says all things, I think
it means all things, not just some things. But He's working
all things according to His will according to His purpose. And,
you know, that's kind of repeated here in Romans, the eighth chapter,
the perfect servant working all things. He's the almighty impetus,
the force, the will, the power in all things, and in particular,
the things involved in the redemption of His people, which ultimately
is all things. There's no other purpose for
all things in the world. except for the redemption of
his people, the church. And oftentimes I've mentioned
here from this pulpit in this series, you know, you think back
to Adam, all your lineage, all your heritage, all your people
that you've been, been your family all the way back through time.
And, you know, I don't know my history back more than just two
generations, but Not religious. nothing to do with God, they're
just like everybody. But yet, through that time, through
all those people, what circumstances brought them to where they were,
to be where they were when they had my grandfather, and where
my grandfather had my parents, and my parents then had me, and
then I was intersected with the Gospel at the time that God chose,
and like Paul, when He chose to reveal His Son, It's mind-boggling all the circumstances
that had to fall into place. And we know that He worked that
all according to His purpose. And we know that all things work
for good to them that love God, to them who are called according
to His purpose. And you know, as I was just mentioning,
most of this occurs at a time in our lives in this world when
we didn't love God. So we can't take Romans 8.28
and just say, well, after I was saved, then He started working
things for good for me, and then it's kind of a reward for my
behavior of believing. But it says, He worked all things
for good from before the foundation of the world to the aim of the
salvation of each one of His sheep. for whom he did foreknow before
the foundation of the world, the ones that God gave him in
the covenant of grace, he also did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among
many brethren, and moreover, whom He did predestinate, them
He also called, and whom He called, them He also justified, and whom
He justified, them He also glorified." You know, in religion, they always
try to make that a what. It's not a whom. But whom talks
about people. Whom talks about the sheep. Whom
describes the elect, the church. And not what they will do. or
when they might do it, but it all focuses on Him whom He did
foreknow, He called. Whom He called, He justified.
And then He also glorified. So when we declare the truth
of these truths, and let me tell you, we were just talking this
morning about how often that's not happening. The gospel has just been sullied
to the point where it's just unrecognizable in many places.
And when we declare the truth of these things, we've only done
what's our duty to do. And then we say, whatever I did
was not worthy of any merit, was not worthy to be considered
for salvation, not worthy for any special attention. It's just
what our basic duty to do. And so among the redeemed, there's
just no expectation that we should receive special consideration
for merely stating the truth about Christ, the perfect servant. and His finished work in the
salvation of the church. And among the redeemed, we recognize
that within us, apart from Christ, there just is no good thing.
That's what Paul said. He says, in my flesh there dwelleth
no good thing, for the will is present in me. And the thing
that I would do, the good works that I would do, no, I don't
seem to do that. I bet he would fit in just perfectly
with, have no idea that billions of people would read his epistles
and that the gospel would be declared. Countless countless
countless sheep have been saved from Preaching in the gospel
of Paul and in his letters, but he said, you know the thing that
I don't want to do I it seems like that's what I end up doing
and to will is present with me So We see ourselves as saved by
grace and in spite of all our Unprofitable works that we engaged
in before salvation for the purpose of salvation Most certainly not because of
them. And because of Him overcoming our enmity to Him and drawing
us to Himself in love, when we by nature despised and rejected
Him, because of that He's precious
to us. And that's what it says in 1 Peter 2, verse 7, He's therefore
unto us which believe He's precious. But to the rest, He's the stone
of stumbling, the rock of offense. To those that are trying to be
profitable to earn salvation when the perfect servant has
obtained salvation for us already by His perfect sacrifice of Himself
in our place. That'll be the end of our block
here, and the next time we move on to the 10 lepers, it'll be
a couple weeks before we're back again. So, until the next time,
be free in Christ. Thank you.