Luke 17:7-10 — “YOU WON!”

READ THIS: Luke 17:7-10

7 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing 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’? 8 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’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 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.’”

WHAT’S THIS MEAN, ANYWAY?

Have you ever thought about what it’s going to be like when you see God in heaven for the first time? In this story, Jesus calls out the people who were thinking to themselves that when they got to heaven, God would say “You’re the best servant ever! You won! You just got promoted!” Jesus uses the example of a servant coming home after a long day to describe our own lives here on earth! When a servant comes home to their master, they aren’t going to expect to be treated like the master, right? And they certainly won’t tell their master to treat them like they are in charge! Instead, they will simply be grateful to have a place to stay and a way to take care of themselves.

This is just like our own lives and our own relationship with Jesus. When our lives are done and we are standing before God, the only way we can properly respond to Him is by saying that we are unworthy of the reward we have been given! Romans 6:23 says that the cost for sin is one thing only… death! And that’s what we do every day! Yet despite that, Jesus (our own Master) chooses to reward us with a greater gift than being fed at a table by a master or anything we can imagine here on earth. He reward us with life forever with Him! While our response should only be that we deserve nothing like that reward, God gives it to His people because He is the greatest Master ever!

THINK ABOUT IT:

1. Do you ever feel like you can earn heaven, or even that you HAVE earned it? What’s wrong with thinking this way?

2. What do you think your first words to Jesus will be when you get to heaven?

TRY THIS:

Despite being our Master, Jesus chose to humble Himself lower than us so that we could be raised up with Him! Check out how Paul describes Jesus in Philippians 2…

6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!