Good and Faithful Steward

Joshua Kirstine (0:00)

Good morning, church family. Grab your Bibles and turn with me to The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 19 Looking forward to our time in God's Word together this morning. As we turn there, I'd like to pray for us. Father, I thank you for this day, for the opportunity to push aside everything else that's calling for our attention, to do battle with the fleshly longings of our heart. There are never satisfied in the temporary victories, satisfactions that we taste. But to see and savor you, to gather with your people, to cherish the opportunity to lift our voices together, to consider the truths of who you are. As Vic shared with us, as we've sung, as we are about to study from your word. Lord, I pray in particular this morning for anyone who is just feeling weary.

The realities of a fallen world and sinful people and broken economy and bodies and the plague of sin on this world is real.

And we need you to be our hope and our peace, to be our guiding light. Yeah, there are days where the crashing waves and the strong wind seems to be knocking us over and taking our attention. And I just pray that our eyes would be fixed on you, our bloody champion, our victor, our forerunner of resurrection. That our eyes would be on you, the perfect and holy God, righteous, almighty, worthy to be trusted, to be praised. And that we would grow from our tendency to make our faith compartmentalized. Or in certain moments of our day, we love you, we trust you, we walk by faith despite what we're facing. In other moments, we're caught, we're tripping, we're living out of the flesh. And I just pray, Lord, there'd be a work of the Holy Spirit in us to grow our steadfastness. You are faithful, as we just sang. Praise your faithfulness, Lord. And I praise you for your patience with us when we're not. But also that you don't leave us there, that you give us the work of the Spirit, the power of Christ to have a desire in our hearts to want to glorify you.

And so do that work in us today. Sanctify your saints and to save the unbelieving. Do that work, Lord, in such a way that you allow us to rise to the rest of this day, to a new day tomorrow if you ordain it, with good and faithful purpose management stewardship of these days, these short days that you entrust to us for your purposes, for your glory. In all those moments where we're just done, we're just over it, that we'd remember it's our hope, our joy is not about those circumstances of that day. It's about you. And so Lord, show us you today.

Do your work as we continue to work through this gospel testimony of Christ, life, death, and resurrection. Do your work in our hearts. We submit ourselves to you in Jesus name, Amen.

Before we turn to the text and pick up where we left off last week today, looking at verse 11 through 27, we're about to read a parable that Jesus tells. And I want to remind you the fact that Jesus uses the parables to help people consider spiritual truths, eternal realities in the midst of our temporary circumstances. And to do this, he would often draw very relatable context for his parables, for his stories, common experiences that people would go through. The story we're about to read is this as well. The circumstances and the players in Jesus' parable that we'll study this morning have great similarity to experiences that the people of Judea, and very specifically the people of Jericho, where they're at when this is told, have had. To help us see this, let me remind you, in the time of Christ, Israel is an occupied nation under the rule and authority of Rome. The Romans ruled their conquered lands through regional leaders and rulers. Herod the Great, who was the governor of Galilee, became the king over Judea. And after Herod the Great's death, Judea was divided into four territories known as the Herodian Tetrarchy. In this, his son, Arculaeus, was made the ruler over Judea. And seeking to intimidate his new subjects, he slaughtered 3,000 Jews. And not surprisingly, the people hated him. And when he went to Rome to have his rule officially confirmed, a delegation was sent to appeal to Caesar to not make him their ruler. By way of compromise, Arculaeus was granted the right to rule, but not to use the title of king, until he had gained the favor of the people, which of course he never did. Arculaeus' harsh rule created chaos. The Romans eventually removed him from power. They replaced him with a series of governors, of which Pilate was the fifth. It is this incident that all of Jesus' hearers on this day, when they hear this parable, they're very familiar with the context of this story, as it provided some relatable experience to what they had gone through. And Jesus uses that to set the stage to point them to spiritual and eternal realities. With several verses to cover, in a larger text this morning, let's jump right into our opening verse, as Luke sets the context for Jesus' next parable. Verse 11, Luke 19, 11 As they heard these things, connection to what was just said, he preached, he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So Luke connects what Jesus is about to say in the parable he's about to give to what was just said. What was just said to the crowd in the prior verses, Jesus had just declared, salvation had come to the house of the most notorious sinner in Jericho.