What Jesus Expects from Disciples

Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 17. Luke 17. As you're turning there. I want to thank Daniel for preaching last week. I watched online. He did an amazing job. Hopefully we're almost through this little period of sickness that we've been dealing with. I know the flu has been brutal this year. Because of that we're not doing our normal fellowship Sunday today. We've canceled that for this month and we'll resume that next month. Luke chapter 17. I have done lots and lots of interviews in my lifetime. For a short while I worked as a tech recruiter for a startup where I just interviewed people for a couple of hours every day. Essentially the business was trusting my judgment in weeding out the worst applicants and finding the best applicants to pass on to leadership. And one of the tools that I used for that is something called a rubric. Essentially I found the key things that we were looking for. I set them up in a little table and immediately after an interview I gave a zero to ten score in each of those areas. So an applicant could maybe get a 6 out of 10 in Communication and a 9 out of 10 in Technical Ability and a 3 out of 10 in Experience. I kind of averaged them up and that was the score for that applicant. In our passage today Jesus is talking to the disciples and he is giving them a list of things that they need to have if they're going to be successful in their job of following Christ. It's almost like Jesus is giving us the rubric here. He's saying, 'This is what I'm looking for in the people that I can use. This is what I'm looking for in disciples. This is what I am looking for in Christians.’ I'd say that's useful information, wouldn't you? It's kind of like knowing what all the questions on the test are going to be before you get the test. So let's read our text today. We're going to read the first 10 verses of Luke chapter 17. > [1](#) Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! > [2](#) It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. > [3](#) Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. > [4](#) And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. > [5](#) And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. > [6](#) And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. > [7](#) But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? > [8](#) And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? > [9](#) Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. > [10](#) So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do. > Luke 17:1-10 (KJV) I think there are three things Jesus is telling us in this passage. He's telling us to: 1. Be careful 2. Be forgiving 3. Be faithfully obedient So let's look at each of those three things in turn. The first thing I think Jesus is looking for in his followers is for us to 1. Be careful ============= Look at the first two verses again and the first part of the third verse: > [1](#) Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! > [2](#) It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. > [3](#) Take heed to yourselves: Jesus is talking here about offenses. What are offenses? The Greek word there is *skandalon* and it's the word that the word scandal comes from. The word comes from a trap, literally a trap that you would use to catch a fox or catch a coyote. These traps would have a stick that you would stumble over and it would set the trap. That was the *skandalon*. Sometimes it's translated stumbling block. The idea behind the word is anything that you do that causes other people to stumble into sin. We live in a sin-soaked world. We have mortal bodies. We are sinners. It is impossible to go through this life without some sin, without dealing with the effects of sin. I could ask you to raise your hand and I could say, "How many of you have been hurt by somebody in your lifetime not acting the way they should act?" And everybody would have to raise their hand. All of us have had to deal with people who have sinned and we've had to deal with the effects of that sin. It's one thing for us as individuals to sin. What Jesus is saying here is it is another thing entirely for us to trip other people into sin. And that someday we're going to stand before God and we're going to give an account. It would be better for us that we die a horrible death than that we be the people that cause others to sin. Jesus said it would be better if a millstone were hung about our neck and we were cast into the sea. A millstone was something that would have weighed hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I don't care how good a swimmer you are, you are not swimming in the ocean with hundreds of pounds of weight strapped around your neck. It's like the old mobster movie "Swimming with the Fishes," you know? That's what's going on if you are thrown into the sea. So Jesus is saying it's better that you die this horrible death by drowning than that you be the person that's responsible for leading other people into sin. Now I don't understand what that means. I don't know exactly what that payment is going to look like, what that punishment is going to look like. I don't know if it means standing before God at the Great White Throne Judgment and being accused not just by God but by all the people that we've led into sin. I don't have to understand it to know this. It is bad. There is a worse thing than going to hell yourself, and that is leading other people to go there. Think of all of the educators who have taught children that God does not exist. Those people are going to stand before God someday and they are going to receive a terrible, terrible fate because they've tripped up the little ones. Think of all the teachers of false doctrine that have gotten into the heads of young converts, new converts, and messed them up with false doctrine. Those people are going to stand before God and face a terrible fate. Think of the pastors who fell into sin and all of their congregation was left scratching their heads and wondering what to do. Is this even real? Those people are going to stand before God and face a terrible fate. Think of those who have twisted Christianity and made it something disgusting and unpalatable, and caused lots of people to just turn away in disgust at what Christianity is. Those people are offending the little ones and they're going to stand before God and answer for it someday. There are many ways that we can offend the little ones and so Jesus says, "Watch out for yourselves." He says, "Be careful. Watch out. Make sure that you're not guilty of this. Make sure that you're not one of the people that is offending my little ones." You know church, I have young children and I'm a pretty mellow guy but if somebody was trying to hurt one of my children it would be pretty hard for me to stay a mellow guy. I think God puts inside of us a desire to protect our young children, to look out for our young children. God looks out for his young ones. He looks out for new Christians and those people that are tripping them up and causing them to sin. They are going to answer the wrath of God. So number one Christian, number one disciple, be careful. Jesus is looking for those that are careful not to offend his little ones. There's a second thing Jesus tells us here and this is in verses 3 and 4. The second thing Jesus is looking for us to do is to 2. Be forgiving. ================ Look at those verses again with me: > [3](#) Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. > [4](#) And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. > Luke 17:3-4 (KJV) Jesus started this passage by talking about offenses, about you offending other people, telling us to be careful not to offend other people. What about when people offend us? What about when people trip us up? Well in that case, our goal is to be a forgiving Christian. If you’re going to be a faithful Christian then you have to be a forgiving Christian. People are going to hurt you. People are going to let you down. People are going to offend you and your duty is to forgive them. Jesus says that when somebody trespasses against you, when somebody offends you, we are to rebuke them. Now I think this is a loving rebuke. I think it is an honest and truthful conversation with people. Our goal in that rebuke is not punishment. Our goal is to bring about repentance. If somebody repents, if somebody says, "I did wrong. I shouldn’t have done that to you. I’m sorry," then we forgive them and we keep forgiving them. Jesus said even if this happens seven times in one day, we keep forgiving them. It is not our place as believers to worry about other people and what other people do. Our job is to be forgiving. You cannot control what other people do but you can control your own heart and you need to forgive others. This is not an easy thing. This might be one of the hardest things that God calls us to do. Sometimes forgiving other people goes against everything in our nature. And yet this is what Christ wants from us. We need to be careful that we don't offend other people and when other people offend us we need to be forgiving. Now there's a third thing that we see that Jesus is looking for out of his disciples in these 10 verses. We've talked about being careful not to offend other people. We've talked about forgiving others when they offend us. Let's look at this third part. When Jesus told the disciples they need to be forgiving, they said, "Increase our faith." I think they understood how impossible it is to forgive, like God calls us to forgive. They said the only way this is going to happen is if we have faith to do the impossible. Notice Jesus' answer here. Verse 6. > [6](#) And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. I don't think Jesus is talking about people literally moving trees with faith. In the whole history of Christianity there's not one record of that ever happening. That's not what he's talking about. I think he's talking about the nature that refuses to forgive, the nature that wants to be angry, that sets its roots down deep into our hearts. How can we possibly get rid of that? Well if we want to get rid of that, if we want to be forgiving as God has called us to be forgiving. It takes faith. Faith that looks to Jesus and understands that we have been forgiven. Faith that understands that we have been the recipients of God's mercy, that we deserve far worse than we've gotten. That we are the recipients of God's grace, that we have been given far more than we deserve. Faith that understands that God is going to work everything out, that everybody is going to get what they deserve, that God is just. And if we have that faith, even if it's a little bit of faith, then God can use it to remove the tentacles and the roots of bitterness from our heart and the roots of unforgiveness from our heart and allow us to be forgiving Christians. If you are struggling to forgive, I'm going to tell you the solution, okay? You're looking at the wrong thing. You're looking at the other person or you're looking at yourself, and neither of those things are going to help you forgive as Christ wants us to forgive. If you want to forgive and be a forgiving Christian, you have to turn your eyes on Christ. You have to look to God. You have to consider what God has done for you and that is the source of your forgiveness. We need faith to do big things but that's not the main application of our faith. Jesus is gonna give that to us here in verses 7 to 10. Let’s look at those verses again: > [7](#) But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? > [8](#) And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? > [9](#) Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. > [10](#) So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do. This is one of those passages that is so foreign to us that we have a hard time understanding it. Remember in Bible times most people were some kind of slave, some kind of indentured servant. When you were a slave, when you were an indentured servant, the person that you worked for owned you. I mean they literally owned all of your time. And so Jesus is asking a rhetorical question. He's saying, if you have a servant and that servant is out in the field, working in the field, and he's worked all day and he comes in, are you going to say to your servant, 'Hey, have a seat, take it easy'? No that's not how it works. You're going to say, 'Hey, take care of me, fix my food.' And then after I've eaten and drunk, then you can have a break. When you have a servant you don't praise the servant just for doing its job. That's the whole purpose and duty of a servant. A servant works all day for his master. He doesn't get special praise for that. That's his duty. That's the minimum. That's the table stakes. And here's what Jesus is saying: he's saying as Christians we don't get special recognition just for working for the Lord; that is our duty. We can work for the Lord and still be just unprofitable servants. This is just normal. This would be like if somebody that you manage at work came to you and said, "I think I deserve a raise. I think I deserve a bonus because I show up every day when I'm supposed to and I work the full eight hours that I'm supposed to and I don't cause any problems so I deserve a raise." And your employer is thinking, or you as the manager are thinking, that's just what's expected. That's just the baseline. For Christians: - Obeying God - Living by faith - Being forgiving - Not causing other people to sin That's just the baseline. So… 1. Be careful. 2. Be forgiving. 3. Be faithfully obedient. ========================== We are in desperate need of recalibrating how we see baseline obedience to Christ. In desperate need of recalibrating what it means to be a regular Christian. We look around and we see people that read their Bible every day, that try to live a holy life, that try to live outside of sin, that give faithfully, that try to serve the Lord, and we think those are the super-Christians. And Jesus is saying to us here, "No those are not the super-Christians. Those are the regular Christians." That's baseline Christianity. The best Christian you know is probably just a regular Christian. Conclusion ========== So this is what Jesus is looking for in disciples: - Disciples that are careful to live a life that doesn't trip others up, that doesn't cause other people to sin - Disciples that forgive others when they've been tripped up, when they've been offended, even doing it seven times a day - And disciples that are faithful in their obedience to the Lord, understanding that this is just the basic thing that God asks of all Christians. The beginning of the message I talked about doing interviews. Well that's not the only time in a work where you have to use a rubric. There's also something that you have to do called a self-assessment, sometimes where you have to look at your own performance and see how am I doing. I hate self-assessments. Jesus has given you his rubric. Jesus has given you what he is looking for. How do you measure up? Listen, almost none of us are super-Christians. I know I'm not. I am barely, if even, making the baseline. How about you? This might seem like an impossible task but Jesus gave us the key to the impossible here. It's just a mustard seed of faith. Just a tiny amount of faith in the right person, in the right direction, can help us. I want to close today by asking you: look at yourself. See how you honestly measure up against Jesus' expectations for you. Don't get discouraged. Look to the Lord. Look in faith at Jesus. That's the answer.

What Jesus Expects from Disciples

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Ryan Hayden