Luke 17:5-10

And we are going to be in Luke chapter 17.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

Luke 17.

So you can turn there in your Bibles.

Luke 17.

We are a church that just goes basically through the Bible, verse by verse.

And we believe the Bible's written by God, that it is without error, and that it is authoritative for our life.

So if you are going to have a flow chart, an organizational flow chart, some of you come out of that world, at the top is God's word, right?

And we're downline from God's Word.

We're under the authority of God's Word.

And so we read God's Word every week, and we come into church expecting that God is going to speak to us.

Now, hopefully the pastor that's there is going to explain the text, make it plain and clear.

But at the same time, the Holy Spirit is in the room.

He knows your week that you just had.

And the Holy Spirit is able to take the Bible text that we're reading and apply it to our life.

So I'm always preparing on a weekly basis, hoping that the things that I share are in line with the Holy Spirit's work in your life.

But here, the reality is, is when I go and listen to a pastor speak, oftentimes it's just something along the path, you know, that the Holy Spirit's just taking and illuminating that text and making it alive, independent almost of the pastor.

So that's one of the reasons why we take notes.

I'd encourage you to be a note taker.

It also helps you not to fall asleep as you go along.

At least you thought that was funny.

But just be just be listening.

Not because I have something profound to say, but because the Holy Spirit wants to lead you in your life.

We go into this time, we read his word with just this anticipation that we're going to encounter you, God.

So let's read this together.

It says in verse 5, the apostles said to the Lord, Increase our faith.

He replied, If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it will obey you.

Suppose one of you has a servant ploughing or looking after the sheep, will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, Come along now and sit down to eat?

Won't he rather say, Prepare my supper, get yourself ready, and wait on me while I eat and drink?

After that you may eat and drink.

Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?

So you also, when you have done everything you are told to do, should you say we are un you should say, we are unworthy servants.

We have only done our duty.

God, we pray that you would speak to us through this text.

You know our stories, you know what's happened this week, you know the emotions that we came through the door with, Lord, you know our capacity to pay attention, Lord, all of those things.

And Lord, we pray you would just break through into our world, that you would be king of Jesus, that you would be the authority in our life, and that you would speak to us.

And as you speak to us, Lord, we pray you would speak into Baltimore City.

That the word of God would break out, that the gospel would break out in Baltimore City as you work in our lives.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So two weeks ago, we've been going very slowly through the first part of chapter 17 because it's dealing with major issues in our life.

So Luke 17, um, 5, before that, two weeks ago, we looked at the whole idea of an offense.

And Jesus says, look, it's it's better to experience an early or a premature death than to cause another person to stumble.

So it's severe.

It's severe.

And then last week we looked at the whole topic of forgiveness, which was a lot of fun.

It was a good kind of wading into the topic of forgiveness and wrestling with the difficulty, the challenge of forgiveness.

This week we're going to look at faith and duty.

Faith and duty.

So we can go back here to verses 5 and 6.

They talk about faith, and it starts with a request that the apostles make to Jesus saying, increase our faith.

Notice Jesus' response.

Jesus does not respond to this request.

Do you see that?

Instead, Jesus makes a statement about the small faith that they have being enough.

So the disciples feel impressed that they need to ask for the Lord to increase their faith.

And what Jesus does is he says, if you have a small degree of faith, it can do this powerful thing.

You can, you know, command this musk uh uh you can command this mulberry tree to be uprooted and to be thrown into the sea.

It will obey you.

And so it's the the uh dynamic here is intriguing.

And right off the bat, I I think what Jesus is saying is the small thing that you have, the small degree of faith that you have is enough.

And Jesus uh does this type of teaching in other places, where he says, small is enough.

Um so, for example, with Matthew 15, 33, you have the story of the 5,000 people that are listening to Jesus teach, and those people are hungry, and the disciples are aware of their hunger, and Jesus says, you feed them to his disciples.

And what's their response?

We don't have enough, right?

And in that setting, Jesus says, No, you do have enough, and he multiplies the bread and the fish to feed the multitude.

Um, in Matthew 18, 2, Jesus says, whoever humbles himself as a little child will be great in the kingdom.

Again, there's this idea that you do not have to be this excellent, great, mature adult to be considered great in God's kingdom.

Being a little child is enough.

In Mark 4, 30, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a small mustard seed sown into the ground that grows up to be a big tree.

So there is this dynamic within God's kingdom, in the economy of God's kingdom, where small is enough.

And so rather than Jesus saying, I'm going to increase your faith, here it seems that Jesus wants to impress upon his disciples that they need to use what they've got, that they need to make use, they need to exercise the faith that they have.

And Jesus says, look, faith the size of a mustard seed can do this powerful thing.

Now, how do you measure faith to be the size of a mustard seed?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's an interesting, it's a fascinating interaction.

Um I believe that the big point that Jesus here is making is um not to be so worried about having more, but instead use what you've got.

Right?

And the question for us, the personal application question that I wrote here, is this.

Am I holding back from doing what God wants me to do because I don't think I have enough?

Am I saying I don't have enough faith or I don't have what it takes?

Is that what we're looking for?

Are we kind of saying that, God, you have to do more in order for me to take the next step?

And and is is Jesus' response to us, like Isaiah 30, where he says, no, no, no, God's waiting on you.

You have enough.

Like I've worked in you enough.

You have enough information.

I remember when we were praying about um where to go next, we didn't, we were paralyzed by the fact that we didn't know what city we were supposed to go to to plant a church.

We felt called to be a part of a city, to, but we were like, where?

And and I was just like fixated on like, God, I don't know what city, I don't know what city.

And then one day, after literally two years of wrestling with this, I know, terrible.

But um, all of a sudden, the Lord like spoke to me and was like, Well, what do you know?

You already know a lot, right?

You know what you're called to do, you know where you're not supposed to be at.

There's a lot actually that I did know.

Now there was still missing a location, but as I realized, well, God actually has revealed Himself quite a bit, and I do know more than I really have been, you know, acknowledging, um, I need to step, I need to um step out in faith with what I do know.

So here's here's just the the point for you and I as we engage the text.

Are you thinking you're supposed to wait when maybe you have enough, as it is?

Just ponder that.

Um the the other question we want to ask as we look at this text is the context, right?

As we study, as we study God's word, we always want to study it in its context.

So we've been going slowly through this passage, and it starts with offenses, then it talks about rebuking sin, and it talks about forgiving sinners seven times a day.

Um, and then we go into this section about faith.

And the question is, is this teaching here, did it all happen within one conversation that Jesus was having, or is Luke compiling a series of sayings that Jesus um that Jesus had said over a long period of time?

And we don't we don't know, but but I will say this it is impossible to do the things that Jesus has already taught, like forgiveness, um, like patience and forgiveness of sins, rebuking sin.

It is difficult to do those things, impossible I would say, to do those things without faith, without having faith.

One of my favorite um preachers, Charles Spurgeon, says this.

That's a picture of him.

Faith is the root grace.

All other virtues and graces spring from it.

Everything that God wants to do in our life flows from faith.

He goes on in a sermon that he was preaching to say, look, our salvation, like we don't have a relationship with God without faith, right?

We are saved by faith, right, in Jesus Christ.

So faith is the door that gets us into a relationship with God.

But then all the fruit that God wants to do, all the character development, just the fruit of our life, cannot take place without faith.

Right?

So you can't love like God wants you to love without faith.

You can't have patience in the way that God wants you to have patience without faith.

You can't be a joyful person in the way that God wants you to have joy without faith.

So again, faith is that root grace.

Right?

It's that root grace.

Um it's the only means by which we can obtain blessings from God.

God cannot work in your life without faith.

So maybe this is in the context of the passage, but another possibility is that this is um a parallel passage with Matthew 17, 14 through 17, which says, When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him and said, Lord, have mercy on my son.

He said, He is seizures and he's suffering greatly.

He often falls into the fire or into the water.

I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.

You unbelieving and perverse generation, Jesus replied, How long shall I stay with you?

How long shall I put up with you?

Bring the boy here to me.

Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, Why couldn't we drive it out?

And he replied, Because you have so little faith.

Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move.

Nothing will be impossible for you.

So Luke's account and his statements that we're reading this morning could be a parallel to this teaching, or it could be that Jesus taught the same thing because he kept traveling, like he went around, traveling and teaching in these different cities.

It's that's and that's what I would think.

I think Jesus is continually impressing upon his followers that just a little bit of faith is enough to accomplish quite a bit.

There's also Matthew 20, 21, same thing.

I just want you to see some of these passages as we're going through.

Jesus replied, uh, truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what is uh done to this fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea, and it will be done.

So a similar language, this whole idea of like commanding something, really, really kind of having this authoritative relationship towards creation.

Do you notice that?

Here's what's challenging to this.

Um, I'll get into this in just a second.

Okay.

Um was the disciple's request for increased faith wrong?

Because you note in this text that the disciples ask the question, but Jesus doesn't respond to this question.

Do you see that?

Right?

So, um, and I put it up here.

No, the answer is not that this was wrong, because in these four passages here, we see um a value in faith growing or being strengthened in faith, or a man full of faith, um, Acts 16, 5, strengthened in the faith.

Literally, faith is so essential to Christianity that if you one of the ways the body talks about the doctrine we believe, the teaching that we believe, it's called the faith.

You put a preposition before it, the faith.

It's what, it's the object of our belief.

So it's not wrong for the disciples to request this, it's just Jesus decides to uh make a different point here.

So how do we how do we deal with this today?

In the world that we live in here, kind of Western Christianity, there are two extremes when it comes to faith.

You have one crowd or one camp that kind of is like Christ the Christian TV version of faith, you know, poofy pink hair is that crowd, right?

And and that group, not all, but some have what we call the prosperity gospel.

And what it says is that God wants you to experience perfect health, to become wealthy in your life.

Health, wealth, success.

And the way to get that is through faith, to just claim it in the same way that Jesus here is talking about claiming this mountain to be cast into the sea.

You're to claim your health, you're to claim your wealth.

Have you seen that teaching?

You're familiar with that teaching?

Existing.

Okay.

Here's what I would say to you.

This camp has the right ingredients in the wrong order.

You will experience perfect health.

You will experience wealth, but not here.

Not necessarily here.

When we get to heaven, we are going to have new bodies that are absolutely healthy.

When you get to heaven, Jesus has already told you that he's gone to prepare a place for you, a mansion where you're going to live.

That you now, as you're obeying him, you're storing up treasures in heaven.

And so there is health and wealth that is promised to us as believers, but not here on earth.

In fact, Jesus promised his disciples that they would experience what he led in.

Jesus said, Follow me.

And what was his path?

His path was to the cross.

Right?

He died on the cross.

Our King suffered, and he told his followers, you too will suffer.

And so uh, and and when you look at the prosperity gospel teaching, they take faith and they put it as if faith is leading God, right?

That faith is going to direct God, rather than faith being a response to what God has said he wants to do.

So it's right ingredients, wrong order.

And you just can't do that, right?

You can't go and put the wrong ingredients, you can't just throw the icing for the cake in with the batter and expect the right cake to come out, right?

You you you just gotta you gotta follow the directions.

And so um the reason why, like TBN and other Christian TV stations, why it sounds like that sounds right, it's because those um uh those pieces, the ingredients, again, are taken out of order and their the verses are kind of picked and choosed.

And it's just the wrong, it's the wrong order.

So that's one camp that's not getting faith right.

The other camp is this other extreme, which is I would call like the sour and dour crowd.

And they are a group that do not believe that God's individual will is knowable.

In Ephesians it says that God has prepared good works for you to walk in, that God has a plan for your life, that God knew you when you were in your mother's womb.

God loves you, he has a plan for you, he knows you intimately.

But this sour, endower crowd does not believe that you can know God's individual will for you at all.

And so when they look at the stories in the Old and New Testament of God's direction, they see those stories as more just historical and not normative.

Right?

They're just um good stories that we can enjoy but not expect to have happen in our own lives.

The problem with their teaching is that the Bible does not seem to be written just as a historical document, but in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says, these things are written for your example.

So what we read in the Old and New Testament is something that we should anticipate in our own life.

The fact that God interrupted Abraham in the middle of his life and said, You, Abraham, need to move your family to a land where I will show you is a historical event, but it is also something that we can anticipate that God will do in our life.

You see, it's a pattern that plays itself out.

The reason why we see in Hebrews chapter 11, God speaking to people and them responding in faith is because God wants us to live by faith.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

So, which leads into the next um Jesus, well, to finish that off, Jesus trains his disciples to follow God within the parameters of biblical principles, but with specificity.

So we so we anticipate God's word, but we don't go outside of what the Bible says.

God's never going to speak to you and tell you to do something that the Bible doesn't say.

But I do believe that God can direct you in your life.

Now, that crowd comes along with logic and they go, well, if God has an individual will for you, that means you're supposed to marry like one specific person.

If you th marry the wrong person, you've thrown off the fabric of the universe, because then nobody can, it's like this domino effect, right?

And so they kind of like rule God out of being able to direct us individually, because what if you get it wrong?

And and for me, I feel like I just look at the cross, and that that is man getting it wrong, right?

The worst thing humanity ever did was to nail God in the flesh to a cross.

And yet, what did God do with that mistake?

He brought He intended it and brought about the salvation of all humanity.

So If God can do that with humans' biggest mistake, I think God's sovereignty is big enough to be able to handle my mistakes.

Um the fabric of the universe isn't going to be thrown off, in other words, right?

So the next question is so how much faith, right?

How much faith?

How much faith are we to exercise towards God?

And this is what you need to know.

As a follower of Jesus, as a follower of Jesus, our faith is to be to the degree of God's revelation to you, right?

It's not like you've got to pull your bootstraps up and be like, God, you know, I want to just impress you with my faith.

No, you're called to have as much faith as God has shown you he's going to do, right?

It's a response to the revelation of God.

So maybe God has shown you something very specific.

Well, if he's shown you very something very specific, then you need to believe him to the degree of that specificity.

But God's not going to be like impressed or like give you what you hope you're you what you want just because you kind of have great faith.

No, faith is this response to what who God is.

Um and that's all we're called to.

Like, so so great faith is just believing God for what he said.

Um this is where I want to kind of finish off.

Hebrews 11:6 says this.

Hebrews 11:6

Without faith, it's impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

In your own personal life, you may be tempted.

That depends on your personality.

It depends on your personality.

Like, are you tempted to be kind of like the charismatic, like, I'm just gonna live by the seat of my pants, you know, God could do whatever he wants, you know?

Or maybe you're kind of the guy that sits on the sidelines with your arms crossed and you're like, uh, you know, God has to really like hit me across the forehead with a two by four in order for me to obey.

It depends on who you are.

Here's the thing.

I would rather be, and I think what God wants for us is even at the risk of getting it wrong, to live by faith.

That's always the fear.

It's like, what if what if what if I get it wrong?

What if I trust God?

And and maybe God's like speaking to me and saying that I am supposed to um share the Lord with my um co-worker, right?

And then I share, I step out to share the Lord, and they get angry at me.

And it's like, oh no, maybe I wasn't supposed to do that, and I'm beating myself up.

Here's the thing.

I would rather be, you and I ought to be people who are just trusting the Lord, right?

And and we might get it wrong, but here's what Hebrews 11 6 says.

This pleases God.

It pleases God to be a person of faith.

Right?

Be a person of faith.

Be trusting the Lord that God's gonna direct you in your own life.

Now, let's finish off with verses 7 through 10, because it's an interesting passage about duty.

Suppose one of you has a servant ploughing or looking after the sheep.

Uh, will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, Come along now and sit down to eat?

Won't he rather say, Prepare my supper, get yourself ready, and wait on me while I eat and drink?

After that you may eat and drink.

Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?

So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, We are unworthy servants, we have only done our duty.

This is an issue of roles, right?

It's an issue of roles.

Imagine if the cart pusher at Walmart decided that he was going to begin to give directions to the CEO of Walmart down in Arkansas, right?

That's so absurd.

That's what that's the absurdity that Jesus is trying to point out.

He's trying to say, look, there's the role of a servant, and there's the role of a master.

You and I take on the role of a master.

We are called to play the role of a servant and to only do our duty.

John the Baptist said this very thing as he was talking to his disciples.

Follow along with this.

It says this an argument developed between some of John's disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing.

They came to John and they said to him, Rabbi, that man was with you on the other side of the Jordan, the one who testified, uh the one you testified about.

Look, he is baptizing every and everyone is going to him.

To this John replied, A person can receive only what is given them from heaven.

You yourselves can testify that I said, I am not the Messiah, but am sent ahead of him.

The bride belongs to the bridegroom.

The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice.

That joy is mine, and it is now complete.

He must become greater, I must become less.

You know, um, again, just thinking about Christianity in our day, there are Christians that think, and I probably have fallen into this myself, there's Christians that think just because they're a Christian, they're better.

That they just deserve a pat on their back because they've, you know, done God a favor by giving him their life, right?

And then, even worse than that, there are some Christians that think, like, because they do good things, that they deserve a pat on the back.

But the reality is that we're just servants.

We have a specific role.

We are cartpushers in God's kingdom.

And pride, the pride in our heart wants to kind of leap up and wants to kind of, we want to pat ourselves on the back and be like, God, look at the good guy that I am.

And Jesus is training his followers to understand that you play a role, you play this simple role of following me.

So we're called to live a life that is faith-filled, just doing our duty.

Really simple.

You know, um, with with just just our culture, we love, we love to um create celebrities, right?

We love to just kind of, we have the ability, especially with the internet, just to just to celebrate people.

And and Jesus celebrates people.

It's just important that we're celebrating the cart pushers, right?

It's just important that we're celebrating the ones that God celebrates, not the ones that are, I don't know, have pink poofy hair.

We we want to just line our life up with the king, the values of God's kingdom.

Amen.

Just and and and and there's really our reward is in heaven, right?

We're not we're not in it to get a pat on the back.

We're in it to store treasures in heaven.

Um so I mean, you guys bless me.

Like I look at our church, I don't I don't feel like anybody in our church is really trying to like be the celebrity Christian.

You guys encourage me.

I'm I'm uh like I want to be this.

I want us to be this.

I want to be a people that like we've trusted in Jesus and and we're like doing our duty.

Like we're people that that have bought in as Jesus' followers that we we just want to see Jesus glorified in Baltimore.

And that's why I wanted to turn your attention to John the Baptist.

Like, there was no greater prophet than John, right?

No greater prophet than John.

And yet John is telling his followers, like, I just need to decrease.

I need to decrease.

He needs to increase.

I'm not even worthy to untie his shoes.

That's that's gotta be our heart.

That's the heart that we want to have.

Let's um let's pray and then I want to just recap just a little bit about the church.

Lord, we um these these truths are um real basic um as followers of you.

I mean the faith is what what saves us.

As we trust in you, we're saved.

Lord, I pray that you would just we'd be clothed with humility, the beauty of of humility.

Um that we would just do our duty as a servant does.

Uh Lord, that we would trust in you.