Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Psalms 143-145
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Luke 17:7-10
Jesus: Imagine this scenario. You have a servant—say he’s been out plowing a field or taking care of the sheep—and he comes in hot and sweaty from his work. Are you going to say, “You poor thing! Come in and sit down right away”? Of course not! Wouldn’t you be more likely to say, “First, cook my supper and set the table, and then after I’ve eaten, you can get something to eat and drink for yourself”? And after your servant has done everything you told him to do, are you going to make a big deal about it and thank him? I don’t think so! Now apply this situation to yourselves. When you’ve done everything I’m telling you to do, just say, “We’re servants, unworthy of extra consideration or thanks; we’re just doing our duty.”
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
We get pretty disturbed today with a story like this one. Slavery is not something we think very highly of and we fought an internal battle that almost destroyed our fledgling democracy with the question of slavery as one of its major issues. Today slavery still goes on in the world. I’m not sure we will ever stop it as long as there are people who want cheap labor and there are people that can be exploited to perform that labor.
We talk a lot about human rights and anti-slavery laws both in the United States and internationally, but it still happens. Thousands of women and young boys are sold into the sex trafficking world every day and become slaves to their masters. Imprisoned by fear, drugs, abuse, they cannot escape their plight without considerable help from the outside. But those the hope that it will come is dim because the people that buy their wares are not interested in seeing them freed. They just want their own desires satisfied.
So we cringe as a society when we hear this story. But in Jesus’ day, as in most of the world two hundred years ago, slaves were a common sight. Men, women, and children belonged to others as property. Sometimes they became slaves voluntarily to pay the debt they owed and it was the only way they could relieve themselves of the debt. Sometimes it was the price of one king conquering the military force of another. The subjects of the vanquished became the slaves of the victor. But whatever the cause, men, women, and children found themselves subject to the commands of the master who owned them.
We might get a glimpse of what Jesus was talking about if you think about going to your favorite restaurant instead. You’ve sat down at a booth and can see the hot line from the kitchen. The waiter brings you a glass of water and a menu. He takes your order, but then sits down at the table across from you and begins to eat his lunch. In a few minutes the chef puts your food on the hot line under the lights to keep it warm and signals your waiter that your food is ready. But instead of getting your food, he keeps eating, pulls out his smartphone and reads a few messages. He sends a few texts and then goes and gets a piece of pie for dessert. All the while, your food is getting either nice and soggy or overdone under the warming lights.
Would you tell the waiter he was doing a good job? Would you leave him a generous tip? Would you ask specifically for his table the next time you come because he has become your favorite waiter? No, of course not. If you haven’t already said some choice words to the young man, you’ll probably want to see the manager on the way out and give him your opinion of his worthless wait staff. You might even ask for a refund on your meal since you had to watch it ruin under the warming lights while your waiter enjoyed himself eating on your time.
The waiter should have served you first, right? Customers first in the customer service world, right? Pay attention to those who are paying your salary, right? The waiter obviously didn’t get the memo on what his duties and responsibilities were. He should have been happy to have a customer sitting at one of his tables. It meant money was coming into the restaurant. It meant he would get paid for doing his job and if he did it well, he would probably get a tip from his customers. Besides, he took the job. If he didn’t want to wait tables and serve people, he shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. But he did and now he was shirking his responsibilities.
It’s a good thing he wasn’t a slave. He’d be beaten or sold or just killed. As a waiter, if this was a normal pattern, I expect he won’t be a waiter very long. He’ll probably find himself on the outside of that restaurant pretty soon. But if he wants to keep his job, he’d better shape up.
So what about our responsibilities as Christians? We have duties and responsibilities God gave us when He commissioned us to go make disciples. Should we complain about it? Take a lesson from the slaves and the waiter. If you don’t like what He asks you to do, remember who He is and who you are. That should put things in perspective pretty quickly. It’s time to serve, you can eat later.
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