Luke 17:7-10 (NASB) 7"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'? 8Would 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'? 9Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "
Life is demanding, whether the demands come from our work, from being married or being single, dealing with money and time, or from that little voice in our head that constantly nags us with the next thing we have to do. Life isn’t easy. And what if that is the way God wants life to be for us, for our life to be difficult, demanding, even filled with dull drudgery? Listen to what Jesus says. "So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.'"
As we hear these words of Jesus let us not miss the smile on His face, because in the background are the grim faced Pharisees who were always embroiled in arguments about what a person had to do for God and whether or not enough had been done, leaving those who felt they had done enough feeling smug, and those who felt they had not measured up feeling like mud or perhaps feeling rebellious against this all expectant God.
Jesus calls “slaves” those people He is setting free, and He does so still. In a world where we are captured by the demand for “my rights” and trapped by the disdain that says “that’s not my job,” the call to duty sets us free for a renewed commitment to the common task. In a world where we hear proclaimed “I’ve done my part,” the call to duty robs us of superficial self-satisfaction that we might be led into deeper levels of fulfillment. In a world where we are searching for maximum enjoyment in return for minimum effort, the call to duty lifts us from lives that are soft and flabby in mind, body, and spirit. In a time when we complain about being “caught in the rat race,” the call to duty gives direction to our life as we do the next thing God has given us to do. Duty, when done out of a sense of responsibility to God, is the drudgery that sets us free.
Is that not the truth we have seen with our own eyes? When we think of the lives of the finest people we have known are they not men and women who have simply lived their lives as best they know how, doing their duty without much fanfare and in a way that has made their lives deeply satisfying and literally carefree? Do you hear the freedom?
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope August 12, 1990
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
No comments:
Post a Comment