Faith and Thanks

Luke 17:1-19

Well, a little more than a month ago, I promised not to “hold back” in my teachings. Our passage today from Luke 17 can really be broken into four hard-hitting sections. I am going to go through these one at a time, and I guess all I can say is that you should remember Hebrews 4:12:

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. – Hebrews 4:12

In other words, prepare to be carved. Jesus’ teachings here are strong medicine. Are you ready? I would charge you with another verse, I Cor. 16:3b, which I really love in the King James version: Quit you like men, be strong! It is fascinating to me how over the centuries we have somehow turned the meaning of “quit” almost into the opposite of what it used to mean! The NIV says, “Be men of courage, be strong!” It is the opposite of quitting – it means to stand firm and take it. So get ready, don’t flinch, and let’s start with Verse 1:


Jesus said to His disciples: "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves. –Luke 17:1-3a

Now, in the Greek, there is a single word for the phrase “things that cause people to sin,” and that word is skandalon, from which we get the word “scandal.” As we come to the last two months of our presidential campaigns, we have seen plenty of things people call scandals – some real scandals, and other things blown out of proportion to appear like scandals. Now the root meaning of the word skandalon is “trap”; specifically, skandalon referred to a device for catching an animal alive.

Now, as we look at these verses, I first want you to understand that this first sentence is not implying that things come into your lives that force you to sin. What it is saying is that it is inevitable that you will walk in places where there are traps set to ensnare you. It is not inevitable that you will be snared, but there is no way to avoid the presence of these skandalon, these traps. And experientially, we know this is true. If you struggle with anger, there is no way you will be able to go through life without ever again ending up in a situation where you are sorely tempted to lose your temper. If you have an addiction to drugs or alcohol, there is no way you will never again be tempted to break your vow, such as it is, of lifelong abstinence. Skandalons are sure to come, just begging for you to spring the trap, just like cheese on a mousetrap.

But the verse goes on: woe to those who lay the traps! Now I don’t want to get too graphic here, but just imagine for a moment what it would be like to have a giant weight around your neck, and then, you are forced to walk the plank. If you have ever panicked while swimming and had water go in where air is supposed to go in, imagine just for a second what it really would be like to go down in deep water with a heavy weight making it impossible for you to go up for air. Talk about a skandalon! But Jesus says this “ain’t nothing” compared to what awaits those who set skandalons for those who are young in the faith.

Now before you quickly say, well, I never do that, let’s think about this a little more. When you swear or use bad language, you are doing this. People learn bad language only by hearing or reading bad language – there is no other way to pick it up. When you lose your temper, you are doing this. When you make fun of people you are doing this. When you gossip you are doing this. In fact, almost every kind of sin is contagious. Sin begets sin. Seemingly the only way to completely avoid doing this would be to go out and hide in a cave. But even then you would be doing it because with your actions you would be telling those around you that it is OK to cut yourself off from everyone, and Scripture is pretty clear that even this is sin.

Jesus ends His warning by saying, “So watch yourself.” Now I am not saying and Scripture is not saying that doing this is an unforgivable sin – because of what Jesus has done on the cross, confession and repentance always brings forgiveness and restoration. But Jesus is making it crystal clear that laying skandalons is a extremely serious thing! I find the thought that nearly every sin I commit is also laying a skandalon dramatically changes how I view the seriousness of my sin, and it gives me much greater motivation to be more serious about the sin in my life. If you are married, think about how many of your sins at home are laying skandalons for your spouse. If you work, think about how many of your sins at work are laying skandalons for your coworkers. And if you have children, I don’t even need to tell you how your sins lay skandalons for your “little ones,” because I am sure you have seen it.

So watch yourself. Be attentive! Especially, I would say, monitor your heart, your attitudes, because they will always betray you. If you have a sinful attitude, it is nearly impossible not to lay a skandalon. You may need to kindly excuse yourself and have a heart to heart with God, praying with Him to change your attitude, and you may need to persist in prayer until He does make your heart right again.

By the way, what I am telling you is quite powerful. Most of the time, we tend to live on “autopilot” – we don’t monitor our hearts until something really terrible happens. If you get in the habit of constantly monitoring your heart, you will change, and you will change dramatically over time. At the same time, I have to tell you that Satan knows this, and he will go into overtime throwing his own skandalons at you, hoping you will give up.

So are you still there? You cannot say I didn’t warn you – these verses are not about pretty little birdies and flowers and trees. They attack the core of who we are apart from Christ. I hope you are ready for more, because there is more, a lot more. Let’s go on to the next section.

If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him." 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." – Luke 17:3b-6

Now the first thing I want to point out about these verses is that they go together. So often I hear the “faith as small as a mustard seed” verse apart from any context. So let’s look at these verses as a unit.

The first part: If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. Note that it says your brother. It does not say to rebuke a stranger. Now what does “brother” mean? The Greek word, adelphos, is a lot like our word for brother, in that it can refer either to your physical sibling or to someone unrelated to you by blood but close to you in relationship.

Most of the time, the way this works out is that the reason you know your “brother” has sinned is that his sin has affected you. He might have sinned directly against you, or you are feeling the repercussions of his sin, or perhaps you have experienced his skandalon. And so this verse says to rebuke him. This doesn’t mean that you are to get all angry and in his face and shout about how evil he is. The Greek word can mean to speak seriously or warn, and I think that it is in this sense that the word is used. We should do all things in love. So you tell him what you yourself have seen. Be careful not to try, judge, and convict based on an accusation of someone else. Also be careful not to get mixed into someone else’s problem. If someone tells you someone else did something to him, but the accused is not your “brother,” this verse doesn’t apply to you. Who does it apply to? The person who told you! You should tell this person to go talk to his brother.

I realize many situations are a lot more complicated than I am presenting here, where there are special issues or repercussions. But what I am describing should be the normal, default way that this should go.

Now there are other verses in Matthew that describe what to do if your brother does not repent. We don’t have time to go into that here. This passage solely focuses on what to do if he does repent, meaning that he agrees he has sinned, he feels remorse, and he is changing his thinking about it. The Greek word is metanoeo, which literally means to change one’s mind.

Now there are other possible outcomes. He might explain to you that you had only a partial understanding of what was going on (or maybe you had no understanding), and that he in fact has not done anything wrong. Then in love you should apologize if in fact you jumped to conclusions or didn’t believe the best in him. When I think about this I turn to I Corinthians 13, the “love chapter.” From verse 5, love is not easily angered. From verse 7, love always trusts and always hopes.

So now suppose your brother has in fact told you, “I’m sorry! I’ll try hard not to let it happen again.” Jesus then wields that double-edged sword and thrusts it into our hearts by saying, even if he does that, if six more times that very same day he does it again, and six more times he says he’s sorry and he’ll try hard not to let it happen again, you need to keep on forgiving him.

If you hear this and say, “No problem,” I would say that you haven’t experienced it. I don’t know if I have made it to 7, but I think my kids have come close, and I totally agree with the disciples who, when they say, “Increase our faith,” really mean, “That’s impossible!” Again from verse 5 of I Corinthians, love keeps no record of wrongs. No record. The number seven is not some magical limit, that if you get to eight, then you don’t have to forgive anymore.

In fact, this is exactly what Peter thought when he talked to Jesus as recorded in Matthew 18:21-22:

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seven times seventy.” – Matt. 18:21-22

Again, I agree with the disciples: That’s impossible! Increase our faith! We cannot possibly do this on our own. And our faith is too weak to imagine that we could even with Your help!

This is the context for the next verse: 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." Is Jesus saying we should actually tell trees to pick up their roots and go jump in the sea? (By the way, the roots of the fig-mulberry tree, ficus sycomorus, actually do have particularly wide and twisted roots, so they are especially difficult to dig up. A mature tree is absolutely impossible to dig up without modern heavy duty machinery.) And what about the similar passage in Matthew 17:20 that says the faith of a mustard seed is sufficient to move a whole mountain? Are we supposed to try to do these things, or things equally crazy? I don’t believe that is what Jesus meant at all. Again, remember the context, forgiving over and over, and actually meaning it. It means persisting in forgiveness once you have made the decision to do it even when your heart betrays you 10 minutes later, or the next day, or the next week, or the next month.

What is tragic is that we read this verse out of context and sadly conclude that we don’t even have the faith of a mustard seed. Is that what Jesus is saying? NO! Not at all! Jesus is saying almost the complete opposite! He is saying that even your piddly little mustard-seed-sized bit of faith is plenty for this task. Let that sink in for a minute. Let me say it again: even the smallest little bit of faith is sufficient for the task of forgiving someone who repents over and over and over!

How can this be? Because by faith we cry out to God and tell Him it has to be Him, not us that needs to do it. And if we have enough faith to cry out this prayer, He will see to it that it is answered. It becomes His job, not ours. We simply yield and let Him work His way in us.

We can do awesome, amazing things through Christ! I hope you have experienced some of this. This is really the secret to Christian growth of any kind – it is by the yielding heart that comes through faith. Not great faith, but faith in a great God. So if you struggle in the area of forgiveness, I challenge you, indeed, God challenges you to raise the standard fully to His standard. Seven times seventy. Love keeps no record of wrongs. You can do it – not in and of yourself, for that is impossible – but by faith, the faith the size of a mustard seed.

Now we come to what is, for me, the most sword-piercing of the four passages.

"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would 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.'" – Luke 17:7-10

You might hear this passage and say, “So what’s the big deal?” Oh – it’s a big deal!

Let’s make sure we understand the setting. This “servant” is a slave. Slavery is obviously – and thankfully – foreign to our culture, although there are a lot of differences between American slavery of the 1700s and 1800s and the slavery of Biblical times. We react strongly to the concept of slavery, and it can get in the way of our understanding these verses. So let me suggest a modern equivalent: work. Whether you are paid hourly or simply paid for “full time” work, sometimes your employer demands excessive hours of you. If you are paid hourly, you do get overtime pay, which is nice, but usually the decision of whether you can take or leave the extra work is not really up to you; that is, it is not up to you if you want to get good raises or even keep your job. If you salaried, they don’t even pay you extra – it simply is considered part of the job. Now, if thinking about slavery is getting in the way of your hearing what these verses are saying, think of a slave as someone who has a job whose employer expects long, long hours. Many of you know exactly what I am talking about, and some of you I am sure experienced it even this week.

In the passage we have a servant who has worked (apparently all day long) in the fields, hot, backbreaking work, no doubt. Now it is dinnertime. Just as today a paid working person is sometimes expected to do really tough things, the slave in our story was expected to keep on working as long as he was awake. At dinnertime he was expected to make dinner, and serve his master first. He of course wouldn’t expect his master to make dinner for him, and neither would he expect thanks for doing what he was told to do. It was his station as a slave to do what his master needed him to do.

Again, it is hard for us not to react against this and say, “That’s not fair!” Well, this presents us with a problem, because the slave is just an illustration. Jesus is not condoning slavery by using it as an example. Elsewhere in the New Testament slave owners are commanded to in fact be kind and lenient and gentle.

And masters, treat your slaves in the same way [that is, with respect and sincerity of heart]. Do not threaten them, since you know that He who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him. – Eph. 6:9

Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven. – Col. 4:1

And the Apostle Paul’s heart towards Onesimus in the letter to Philemon I believe reveals God’s heart about slavery. Paul pleads with Philemon to accept Onesimus, a runaway slave, apparently, (by the way, a crime that could be punished by death if the owner so desired) – Paul pleads with Philemon to receive him back well, listen for yourself:

Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. – Phil. 15-17.

Anyway, the point of Jesus’ parable is not about slaves, but about us. Just as a slave should not expect to be waited on, neither should we expect God to wait on us. Just as a slave is expected to work hard and to serve his master first, so are we. Just as a servant should not expect profuse thanks for simply doing what he was told, neither should we.

Now this is a kick in the gut to our culture. This is as foreign as a Martian to our culture. Ever since the 1960s, our culture has become infused with at least two values that are 180 degrees opposite of what this is saying. One of these values is the value that we are going to bow to no one. Not respecting authority is practically a virtue in our culture – it is a badge of honor. People who respect authority are looked down on as weak, or uncool. The other value is that we have rights! Not just the rights described in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but the right to do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want. Again, having an attitude is a badge of honor. People who don’t have that “sass” are again looked down upon. All of us, all of us, have been influenced greatly by our culture. We need to understand this. This is why these verses are so hard. We want to jump to conclusions, to say, you mean God is like a slave master? He is a tyrant? Well, I don’t want to serve a God like that!

No – that is our culture speaking. Reject it! Instead think about this – one of the ways a person became a slave in Biblical times was because they owed a huge sum of money and could not pay it back. They then willingly became slaves so that the debt could be paid. Is this not exactly how it is with us? Again, in our culture we rarely say it this way, but becoming a Christian is acknowledging that we have a huge debt that we cannot repay, and we turn to Christ and become His servants – His slaves – because there is absolutely no other way to repay that debt. But the comparisons with a slave owner pretty much end there. Our Master paid a huge price to purchase us – the greatest price ever paid for anything and ever to be paid for anything in the history of the Universe. Our Master did this because He loved us, and didn’t want us to pay the horrible consequences for our debt on our own. He is a loving Master, the most loving Master there ever was. And He is more than our Master – He is also our Father, and our Brother, and much more than that. But this doesn’t negate the fact that He is our Master, and we are His servants. We should have the heart of a good servant – one who does not rebel against authority, one who does not have an attitude, one who does not demand thanks for our work. God doesn’t owe us; we owe Him! As the verses say, we should simply and humbly do whatever He asks, even when it is hard. And when it is hard, we need to remember that it is hard because He loves us and knows what is best for us.

Our prayer life reveals a lot about whether we have servants’ hearts. Not that we cannot pray that God would help us or our families – we most definitely should pray this; indeed, that was a key message of the second of our four portions of this passage – but we should also pray like servants. What do I mean? We should pray things like, “Lord, what do You want me to do about this situation? Lord, give me strength of body and mind and soul so that I can serve you well today. Lord, here I am; send me!” These are prayers that show the heart of a servant.

Does anyone need a blood transfusion yet? I feel like I do! There is one more portion of the passage to go – perhaps the most familiar portion, the passage about the ten lepers.

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As He was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met Him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!" When He saw them, He said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked Him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then He said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well." – Luke 17:11-19

First note that this is not a parable – it really happened! We have read so many parables in the last few weeks it is important to notice this. Now, there are some curious details in this passage. Note the order of the events. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priests, and then as they were going they became healed! This means as they began to go, they weren’t healed yet.

Now healing from leprosy was very rare – in fact, it seems that it only happened twice in the Old Testament. It happened to Miriam, who had it for only 7 days as punishment for arguing against Moses’ leadership in Numbers 12, and it happened to Naaman, a non-Israelite general in 2 Kings 5. Naaman’s story is similar to this one in that he had to do something first before being healed – in his case, he had to obey Elijah’s instruction to bathe seven times in the Jordan river. Compared to that command, Jesus’ instruction to the lepers was pretty simple.

But it took faith. Why go to the priests if you are not clean? It’s a long way! We’ll get tired! But they obeyed, out of faith, and on the way they were all completely healed. But only one returned to Jesus to thank Him, and Jesus was clearly unpleased that the other 9 did not do the same. This almost seems like a living parable in the fact that the one who did return was actually a Samaritan. By this I mean that it hinted at the truth that the Pharisees and teachers of the Law were rejecting Jesus, but in a short time, many Gentiles would turn in faith to Him.

Why did the other nine not do the same as the tenth? What were they missing? I believe that what they missed is that Jesus desires relationship. What they did is like how some people thank Jesus when they first come to faith, but then stop talking to Him. It is almost as if they leave Him and say, “Hey, thanks. See you in heaven!”

How is your relationship with Jesus? Do you really talk to Him? Or do you only pray when you have to, or when others are watching? If Jesus were a human friend of yours, how would you compare your relationship with Jesus to that of your friends? Do you tell Him what is really going on in your life? Do you not just talk to Him about you, but about Him? This is what the former leper was doing – thanking Him and praising Him, worshiping Him at His feet. It is out of this relationship that we become willing and able servants for Him. It is out of this relationship that we can forgive and forgive again. It is out of this relationship that we become more and more able to obey Him in all things and avoid leading “little ones” into skandalons. And it is out of this relationship that we open ourselves wide to His sword of the Spirit that cuts into our flesh and leaves us more and more completely His, in His image, as we were meant to be.