Good evening, brothers and sisters. Thankful that the Lord has gathered us together again.
If you could please turn with me to Luke 19. We are going to read from Luke 19:11-28.
And while they were listening to these things, He went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.
He said therefore, “A certain nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself, and then return.
And he called ten of his slaves and gave them ten minas and said to them, ‘Do business with this until I come back.’”
And in the King James Version, it reads, “Occupy till I come.”
But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, “We do not want this man to reign over us.”
And it came about that when he returned, after receiving the kingdom, he ordered that these slaves, to whom he had given the money, be called to him in order that he might know what business they had done.
And the first appeared, saying, “Master, your mina has made ten minas more.”
And he said to him, “Well done, good slave. Because you have been faithful in a very little thing, be in authority over ten cities.”
And the second came, saying, “Your mina, master, has made five minas.”
And he said to him also, “And you are to be over five cities.”
And another came, saying, “Master, behold your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man. You take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.”
He said to him, “By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you not know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? Then why did you not put the money in the bank, and having come, I would have collected it with interest?”
And he said to the bystanders, “Take the mina away from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.”
And they said to him, “Master, he has ten minas already.”
“I tell you that to everyone who has shall more be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these enemies of Mine, who did not want Me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in My presence.”
Verse 28:
And after He had said these things, He was going on ahead, ascending to Jerusalem.
Then, if you could please turn to 1 Peter 2:16.
Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.
Luke 6:46:
And why do you call Me, “Lord, Lord,” and do not do what I say?
And finally, Revelation 22:12-13:
Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
Let us bow for a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we are so thankful to You for this time that You have given us to be in Your presence. Lord, we recognize in our hearts, and we bow before You, for we recognize, Lord, that You are in our midst.
Lord, we thank You for all of the preparation that You have done for this time that we have together. And now, Lord, we pray that You might be glorified in the speaking and in the listening.
Lord, we thank You for these words. Lord, we pray that You would open Your Word to us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
So, brothers and sisters, our theme verse for this weekend comes from the passage that we just read together in Luke 19: “Occupy till I come.”
Now, depending on which version or translation we might have, the Bible might read, “Occupy till I come,” or, as in my New American Standard, “Do business with this until I come,” or in the Darby, “Trade until I come.”
But our verse is telling us something very critical, and that is that the Lord is coming. And while we are waiting for Him, He has entrusted something to His people for us to occupy ourselves with.
It means, brothers and sisters, that in these days, He is not simply asking us to pass them with no purpose. But He has something in His heart, and He is longing for His people to lay hold of that.
As I was preparing for this conference and praying, I realized how important this is. In the song that we just sang, in verse two, the songwriter posed a very important question to us:
Consider how then you will live,
And how to spend the days and the freedom
He has won for you.
The song asks us the same question: How shall we occupy ourselves in these days?
When I was in sixth grade, I had an English teacher named Mr. Sharp. We were reading the Bible together in his class as literature. I had a classmate named Michelle, and Michelle asked him a question that I never forgot.
She asked, “Mr. Sharp, why did man have the freedom to sin? Wouldn’t it have been better if God simply made it in our hearts that we had no freedom, that we had to do the right thing? And if we had to do the right thing, then we could never fail, and we could never go in the wrong direction?”
I remember Mr. Sharp looked at her and said, “I have no idea.”
But, brothers and sisters, the Lord did give us a freedom. It was a freedom that was won for us. He was in all glory, and He came to this earth, emptied Himself, and died for our sins. When He died for our sins, He set us free.
But, brothers and sisters, the question for us today is: Why did He set us free? Would it not have been easier had He simply made us robots, with no freedom to stray away, and with no choice but to do what He said?
It would be far easier. It is the very question that a sixth-grade girl might ask when we are reading through the Bible. But, brothers and sisters, here we are today, and this is a critical question to us: How shall we occupy ourselves in these days?
Why is it so important? On the one hand, we might say that if we were forced to show affection to Him, it would have no semblance of true love. If I were to mesmerize my wife before we were married and she were forced in some way to marry me, well, this would not be true love. It is forced.
There is more value in the choosing. But, brothers and sisters, I think that this freedom is far, far more than that.
We remember that our enemy, in Isaiah and Ezekiel, saw the throne of God and the glory of the Son of God. In his heart, he grasped for these things. He wanted to ascend himself higher than the throne of God, and for this he was cast down.
When he was cast down, his heart continued to be against God. We remember that in Genesis, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they had a choice. The Lord had put before them the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.
They had always had this free choice. But they were told that if they took of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. So our enemy came to them and said, “You surely shall not die.”
And so we looked at the fruit. We saw that it was pleasing to our eyes, that it was good for eating, and so we took of it. Then our eyes were opened.
Brothers and sisters, we were set free—in quotation marks—free to make our own decisions, in the sense that we were independent of God. But we know also that on that day, the life of God that He had planted in us died.
On the one hand, this so-called freedom that we had earned meant that we had died in our life away from God. And so our enemy could say that he had had the victory, because he understands the heart of man.
He understands the fallen heart that was in him, and that is that when men are given the freedom to choose, we choose for ourselves. We choose what is best for ourselves at the least cost.
It is such a strong principle that, in the study of economics, it becomes a founding principle of the study of human behavior: when mankind is given the freedom to choose, we will choose what is best for us at the least cost.
I was trying to look up the name of this law. I could not find it, but I decided to call it the law of eBay. The reason I call it that, brothers and sisters, is because eBay could not exist if this law were not in effect. We try to get the most for the least.
It is written into the human heart. Whenever a man is given the option to choose, we choose for ourselves and minimize the cost. We fear suffering. We long for pleasure. We long for our glory.
So, brothers and sisters, when our eyes were opened and we took of that fruit, this is the freedom that we gained. But is it really freedom? It says that I am a slave to myself, and everything that I ever do because of my flesh is for myself.
It would be very reasonable for the enemy to look at our Lord and say, “The victory is mine, because now they really have their own freedom, and they will always choose me.”
Remember, the enemy went to our Lord, and our Lord said to him, “Have you considered My servant Job?” The enemy said, “That is because You have blessed him so much. You take those things away, and You will see: he will still choose me.”
You see, in his heart the enemy knows the power of that fleshly longing for self-glorification and the lifting up of ourselves. And we all know it.
Brothers and sisters, at this point, it was a point of decision. Maybe the Lord should have just said, “We should reset this whole thing. Now man has the freedom to choose, and man always chooses for man. It is in our nature.”
The enemy has some logic in what he has said. But the wonderful thing, brothers and sisters, is that rather than changing the rules, crushing His enemy, or stealing our free will, in our Lord’s great wisdom He laid down the ground rules for a complete and utter victory.
Yes, they have their freedom and their free will. Yes, their flesh would choose for themselves every day. Yes, there is a drive in their heart for the things of the world.
But, “I will achieve My victory, because what will happen is, I will set them free. And after they have been set free, they, of their own free will, will deny themselves and choose Me over you.”
Brothers and sisters, this was His plan for victory. It is the complete victory. It is built on our free will, but of our own free will.
We pose the question, “How shall we occupy ourselves in these days?” It is toward this decision that will be unto His victory. He could say to His enemy, “There will still be a people. They will choose to suffer for Me. They will choose to be cast out for Me. They will be killed for Me, and they will give up and deny themselves for Me. Then the victory will be Mine.”
So what we see, brothers and sisters, is that this question which the Lord, in His wisdom, has put before us for this weekend is a critical question in these days. It is not simply, “How shall we choose to live our days?” or, “What are the best decisions to make?”
This is a question unto His victory: How shall we occupy ourselves? It is a question for every one of us who believes in Him. How shall we occupy ourselves in these days unto Him, unto His victory?
We remember in the Old Testament that there are two examples to consider. We remember the story in Exodus of the Hebrew slave. We have heard this story many times.
The Hebrew slave, after working for seven years, was set free. He was, in essence, an equal to his former master, and he could choose whatever he wished. He was free.
But if that slave loved his master and loved his master’s house, he would say to the master—and the master would bring him to the side of the door and pierce his ear—that of my own free will, though I can go wherever I choose, I choose you.
We remember this vivid example from Exodus.
We also remember the example from the New Testament in Philemon. Philemon was a wealthy man, and he had a slave whose name was Onesimus. Somehow, Onesimus escaped.
When he escaped, he found his way into the presence of Paul. The poor guy finally escaped, and then he finds his way into the presence of Paul. Paul was under house arrest, and Onesimus began to spend time with him.
Paul was not a free man. Every day of Paul’s life, he had a chain around his leg; he was chained to some immovable object. Onesimus, objectively, had more freedom than Paul had. He had the freedom to walk wherever he wanted. It was not like today, where you would be followed because of your credit card. He was free.
But when he looked at Paul, after a while he saw that this man was chained, but in his heart he was more free than Onesimus would ever be.
And so he said, “I want to know this Lord that you have.” When he found who this Lord was, of his own free will, he decided, “I am going to go back to Philemon.”
He knew very well that Philemon might make him a slave again. But he chose, of his own free will, “If this is the risk, I will bear it.”
What we see, brothers and sisters, is that freedom was given so that we could choose to be slaves to the Lord. In this choice—how we shall occupy ourselves in these days—He will achieve His victory.
Now, brothers and sisters, in these days this topic is a hard one to share on, because many people would say, “This is so legalistic. We were set free so that we could make our own choices, go where we want, and do what we please.”
But Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2:16:
Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.
And in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul said:
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win the more.
Perhaps we should turn to Galatians 5:13.
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
So what we see is that this question of how we shall occupy ourselves is deep in the Word. It is not against the freedom that we have won. In fact, it is the purpose of the freedom we have won: that we choose in our hearts to be bondservants to the Lord.
And so we come to this parable that the Lord told in Luke 19. If we could keep a finger on that page, we will be referring to it. But, brothers and sisters, let us have in our hearts the question: How shall we spend this freedom that we have won? How shall we occupy ourselves in these days?
This parable is the last parable that the Lord told before He ascended into Jerusalem. It was as if, after the Lord had spent three and a half years with His disciples and with those who followed Him, He wanted to crystallize one last thought for them before He left.
It is a story of a nobleman. He had authority over a smaller area, a city, but he was being called away to inherit a kingdom. Within this kingdom would remain this small city.
In the city there were citizens, and these citizens were not fans of his. When he was called away to be king, the citizens sent a delegation after him to tell him, “We want nothing to do with you. Do not come back. We do not want you to rule over us.”
The man also had ten servants. In the Darby translation, it is very interesting because it reads, “He called his own servants.” These ten servants belonged to him. They were owned by him and purchased by him.
As we read through this parable, it is very easy to see that this king represents our Lord Jesus. Our Lord Jesus is being called away to inherit a kingdom, and there are ten servants who belong to Him. They are owned by Him.
As I was reading about this parable, I listened to several old messages from our brothers from ten years ago, and I learned something very interesting. In the Bible, when it speaks of our position of grace in the family, we are called the children of God, and so we are. We praise the Lord and bow before Him.
But when the Bible speaks of our responsibility—the responsibility of the children of God—we are given parables and stories about being bondservants. Here we see that there are ten servants, owned by Him and purchased by Him, and we are given responsibility.
He gives them ten minas. Each of them takes one mina. A mina was worth about three months’ salary for an agricultural worker. It was not a lot of money, but it also was not a little money.
We recall in Matthew 22 when the people came to challenge the Lord and asked Him what He thought of paying a poll tax to Caesar. The Lord said, “Bring Me one of these coins, and tell Me whose face is upon this coin.” It was Caesar’s.
Our Lord responded, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.” So this mina, this currency, was given to the servants. On the face of it, it must have had the face of a man, meaning that this mina was useful in the world.
It was useful in the world, but it was given to the servants of God to be used for His purpose. They had a choice. They could take the minas and say, “Forget about him. I can go out and buy a new cart or a new set of oxen.” It would work toward that end because it was useful in the world.
But our Lord meant for them to have the choice: “You can do business with these for Me, or you can use them for yourself.”
Why does He care? For someone who is going to inherit a kingdom, let us say that one mina is fifteen thousand dollars. Why would a king care what happened with one hundred fifty thousand dollars? It is a lot of money, but it is not that much money to a king who owns so much.
Why should He care about such a small thing? Because what we see, brothers and sisters, is that when we are challenged to occupy ourselves, it is not just gigantic things. It is daily things.
The Lord gave them something to do business with, something to occupy themselves with daily, for a purpose.
At this point, the Lord departs. We see very much that this is where we are. For a while, the Lord is separated from His people. He is at work and doing something great, but in these days we are separated from Him.
We have been entrusted with these minas. How shall we occupy ourselves? The storylines separate for this period of time, but eventually they come back together. The landowner is now the king. He has inherited the kingdom, and the servants are called to come back.
One thing is immediately noticeable: seven of them are too ashamed to even come. They were given a mina, but they lived in a world where the citizens were saying, “We want nothing to do with you. We are going about enjoying ourselves, and we want nothing to do with your rule.”
If we were servants, purchased and owned by him, but he was gone and the citizens were telling us that he was never coming back, we might say, “This mina can be used for things in the world too.”
And so seven of them were too ashamed to come before him when he returned. They loved the world more than they loved their master. They were ashamed to come forward.
Brothers and sisters, there is a little bit of this whispering to us every day. I think we all sense it.
I remember when I was a freshman in college. I was having dinner with a new classmate whom I had met. His name was Charles. I told him that I was a Christian, and he was a Christian too. I was so happy to meet him.
Then another one of our classmates came and sat across from us. We were talking to him. I knew him already, and he was not a Christian or a believer.
Charles asked him, “Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?”
And I was petrified. I was ashamed. I remembered, as he was saying this, that I could not enter in.
Why did that happen? It is because in my heart I loved the world more than I loved my Master. It was very real to me when it happened.
One of these days, when I meet my brother in glory, I will look forward to seeing him because he encouraged me. But, brothers and sisters, there is a little bit of this in every one of us: we love the world more than we love our Master.
But we do not want to be ashamed when He comes back.
Another servant came back, and he had taken the mina, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and buried it. He took good care of it in the sense that it would not get dirty, but it just stayed there. He forgot about it and went on living his life.
But he knew that mina was always there. When the king came back, he remembered where it was, dug it up, and went before the king. He presented it and said, “This is the mina that you entrusted to me.”
He said, “I know that you are an exacting man. You pick up what you did not lay down, and You reap what You did not sow.” He still came before him, but it was just one mina wrapped up. What he had been given, he returned.
Then there were two, and they came before the Lord. They pulled out before Him and said, “Master,” or “Lord,” “here is Your mina, and here are ten more,” or, “Here are five more.”
They came before Him to make an accounting of what had been entrusted to them. What did the king respond? The king responded, “Well done. You were faithful.”
Then He said to them, “You were faithful in small things. You will be in authority over ten cities,” or, “You will be in authority over five cities.” Then He said, “Take the mina from the servant who had one and give it to the one who had ten.”
This is the story. How did those two slaves come before Him? When we read this parable, brothers and sisters, who do you want to be when He comes back?
What was it about those two that allowed them to occupy themselves with the things of His heart?
First of all, I am thankful to Ben for choosing the first song that we sang: “Jesus Is Lord.” These two recognized that He was their Master, that He was the Lord. They had an appreciation of His lordship. They recognized His lordship.
We remember when Andrew was with John the Baptist and another disciple. One day, they saw the Lord Jesus. At that time, they did not know who He was. They went to meet Him and asked, “Where are You staying?”
The Lord, or at that time this man, said to them, “Why do you not come and see?” So the two of them went to be with Him for one night. The next morning, Andrew, in his excitement, went and found his brother Simon and said, “We have found the Lord.”
Overnight, His title in Andrew’s heart had changed. Something had captured him. He was not just a rabbi or a teacher anymore. There was something in him that changed so that he saw that He was the Lord.
Now, this word Lord, we throw it around very casually in these days. We say it very loosely. But what it really speaks of is that the Lord—any lord—should carry authority over the ones who call him by that name.
He should have authority. He should have ownership. There should be a belonging toward this man.
Now, to be truthful, if we look objectively, this man Jesus is the Lord regardless of how you and I feel. If we did not cry out, even the rocks would cry out. The objective truth of His lordship cannot change.
He is the King, and He is the Lord. But, brothers and sisters, in His grace, He longs for fallen men to know Him as their Lord.
His lordship is an objective truth. Nothing changes that. He is the King, and He is the Lord. But in order for the victory to be accomplished, men and women who have freedom to choose in whom they place their lordship have to see that He really is the Lord—and He is my Lord.
We remember in Matthew that there are many who will call Him, “Lord, Lord.” In those days, they will come to Him and say, “Did we not prophesy in Your name and cast out demons in Your name?” And He will say, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”
So this name, Lord, simply because we say it with our mouths, does not mean that He holds that position in our hearts.
Then we read together in Luke that there are those of us who may believe that He is the Lord, but when we come to Him, He will ask, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say?”
Maybe we do know Him as our Lord, but we do not—or cannot—bring ourselves to follow Him, to do what He says. Simply because we say it, or simply because we think it, the Lord is searching for people who believe that He is Lord in their hearts and will go with Him wherever He goes.
There is a book that some of us who are less than fifty have read. It is called My Heart—Christ’s Home. It was published by InterVarsity and written by a brother named Robert Munger.
Robert Munger took the story from a wonderful brother named F. B. Meyer, who had a dream about this. It is the story of our home, a house with many rooms, and every room has its own key.
In this short book, My Heart—Christ’s Home, it speaks of the Lord longing to have access to every room in our heart. As we grow, we say, “Lord, have this key. Have this key.” Soon we feel that the Lord has every key to every room in our heart.
But, brothers and sisters, do we have one last room? Is there one last key to one last room, where we say, “This room belongs to me. Lord, I cannot give it up to You”?
What ends up happening is that we spend all of our time in that last room because it is our own space. While we may think that He is Lord because we have given Him lordship over all the other rooms, we are still our own lord in that one last room.
There was a book I remember reading in high school—I think it was written by Camus. It was a story about how a man owned this huge house, but spent all his time in one room. He moved all his furniture into that one room because he had no use for the other rooms. His life was in that one room.
Brothers and sisters, this is the way it is. If we give the Lord all the keys to the rooms in our heart but there is one last room, what will we do? We end up living only in that last room.
F. B. Meyer said that he heard the Lord tell him, “If I am not Lord of all, I am not Lord at all.”
We see again this truth, because I know that I have hidden in that last room. Actually, I have multiple rooms, and I have hidden there away from Him. But what the Lord is searching for are bondservants, and He is truly the Lord of lords and the King of kings in our lives.
In this parable, all three of the bondservants who come before Him call Him Master or Lord. The one who brings back the one mina, the one who brings the five additional minas, and the one who brings the ten additional minas all call Him Lord.
But we learn something from the one with the one mina who hid it. He said to Him, “I know You.” And he did know something about Him. He said, “You are an exacting man. You take up what You did not lay down, and You reap what You did not sow.”
He was saying that if You did not plant a plant, You still come and take it. He was also saying, “You have such high demands, such high expectations. You are so austere, so exacting.”
Are these things true if we look at them from an outside point of view? Of course, the Lord has an expectation of righteousness that is one hundred percent perfect. Yes, that is true.
Is it true that He Himself does not literally plant every plant? Cephas may plant, someone else may water, and someone else may till. But in the end, from beginning to end, it is the work of God unto God.
But with outside eyes, we look and say, “You gave me this mina, and I took it. If I invest it, it should be mine. But You would come and take it. You reap what You did not sow.”
The problem with this servant, owned by Him, is that he saw his Master, but he did not understand his Master’s heart. He did not understand his Master’s purpose.
What grew in his heart was an antagonistic relationship: “I put the effort in. I should get the glory. I do not invest this for You.” Because of that, even though he knew about Him, he never knew Him.
So he buried the mina. When the Lord came back as King, he stood before Him, but he never knew Him.
I can relate with him sometimes. We have a superficial sense of our Lord, but we do not have an understanding of His heart, what He is doing, or His ultimate purpose.
But the other two, when they came before Him, what do we learn from them? I am going to use the servant who had the ten additional minas, even though both servants had this same attitude.
He came before the Lord and said, “Lord, this is Your mina.” Right off the bat, he said, “This is Yours. You entrusted it to me. It was never mine. It was always Yours.”
Then there were ten more. In the fruit, it was seen that he had occupied himself with this for his Master.
This servant also was owned by Him, and he had spent many days with Him. He had seen Him. He had seen His heart. He had seen His behavior toward others.
Yes, he had a significant sense of His righteousness. Yes, he knew that the Master Himself was not the one who did all the work. But he also knew, “This is my Lord, and all of this is unto Him.”
So when this happened, he came back and said, “This is Your mina, and now You have ten more.”
What did he have to do in order to do this? He lived in a world much like ours. The citizens were against the king. They were saying, “He is not coming back. You should live for yourself. You have the freedom to choose. You should choose for yourself.”
In this world, if we choose for Him, we are ostracized. “You are not one of us.” There was a giving up, or a laying down, of his own privilege and right in order to be occupied with the things of his Lord.
In this lordship, he saw his life in this context: “My life belongs to Him. This mina belongs to Him. What I do every day belongs to Him.” He had a true sense that He is mine and I am His.
Sometimes we think that this decision was his commitment: “I am committing myself to Him.” But when we make a commitment to Him, we still retain ownership of our lives.
What he did was surrender. It was the surrendering of his life to Him: “Everything that I am is Yours. I belong to You.” It is an ownership. I really belong to You.
To know Him as the Lord is a wonderful privilege, but it is much higher than we have made it to be. Unless we know Him as the Lord, it is very difficult for us to occupy ourselves unto His heart and the things in His heart.
Secondly, what was his motivation? When the nobleman left, he said, “Occupy until I come.” He said Himself that He was coming again.
When I was in my twenties, our brother gave a message from 2 Peter about “waiting for and hastening the coming.” There was a group of us who were totally captured by it. It was in our hearts. It was how we fellowshipped. We talked about it all the time.
I still remember that when I had that sense that He was coming, that it could have been that day, we were empowered in that hope.
Then time passed. We graduated. We got jobs. We got married—that is a great thing. Graduating is a great thing too. We had families. We paid bills. We had mortgages.
Somewhere along the line, I think we lost some of that. We started to wander, to look for things that pleased us. We chose messages that spoke of grace and being a child of God.
There is nothing wrong with this, brothers and sisters. But there was no mention of being a bondservant, nor of being occupied with the things of His heart. We longed for those easier things because they gave us peace—or so we thought.
I was very thankful when I had to prepare this message because I remembered when I used to think, “If the Lord comes back that morning, I want to have prayed to Him. I want to have glorified Him.”
“When He comes back that day, I want to be able to stand before Him and say, ‘You know, I saw You this morning.’” What happened to that hope that was in my heart?
Over time, we hear messages and we think it is just the same thing. But these two servants never let go. He said, “Occupy,” and that is important. But their motivation was, “Till I come.”
It was in their hearts. When that is in our hearts, brothers and sisters, it changes how we think. It changes our motivation.
I remember one year my wife took my kids to the county fair. She told me, “I will be back at three.” I came home at my normal time and was waiting for her.
I came home a couple of hours after she was supposed to return, and she was not home. I thought that was okay. Then another hour passed, and another hour passed, and I could not reach her.
Normally, I love sports and I love baseball. I would normally look up the baseball score, check online, and read about the box score. Those are things that I enjoy doing when I come home from work.
But I was waiting for her, and I did not know when she was coming back. I could not do those other things. I just sat there at my table: “Where is she? Where is she? Where are they?”
I called the sheriff. Was there an accident on the road back? I was waiting for her. When I was waiting for her, it changed the longing in my heart, and I did not do those things that I normally would.
You see, brothers and sisters, their motivation was this: He is coming back. And I am going to occupy myself with His affairs until He comes back.
Have we lost that, brothers and sisters? This was their motivation.
They had another motivation. Their other motivation was that when He came back, they were going to stand before Him, and their ambition was that He would be pleased with them.
When we hear of ambition, brothers and sisters, as Christians we often think that it is not good because it is self-motivated. But the Bible tells us that this ambition is good: that when I see Him, He will be pleased with me.
I remember a dear old brother from Los Angeles. Many years ago, he gave a message at our fellowship, and he said, “If I were to die today and stand before Him, I am not afraid. I want to be pleasing to Him.”
He now is standing before Him, or has stood before Him. He said, “I am not afraid.” He is not ashamed.
These two had in their hearts an ambition: “I am going to be pleasing to Him. When I stand before Him, what I want to hear is, ‘Well done. You have been faithful in small things.’”
Who are we trying to please? We may be trying to please our boss, the world, or to impress people with how we look or what we have done.
But our motivation as His bondservants should be to stand before Him one day and have Him say, “Well done.” Can you imagine that? We stand before Him, and He says, “Well done.”
I had a procedure a couple of months ago. It was unexpected. When they start to give you anesthesia, you start thinking crazy things. It was a very straightforward procedure, but I thought to myself, “What if something goes wrong?”
“This is my last cogent moment, my last time to think clearly, my last chance.” I was in a weird fog of clarity. But for a moment, I prayed to the Lord, “Lord, if I am going to stand before You, I pray that I have been pleasing to You in my life.”
I made it, but I remember what I prayed. Do we have it as our ambition to be pleasing to Him?
We remember Abraham. When Abraham was moving, he built altars. Why an altar? At its very simplest, an altar means, “I want my standing before You to be okay.”
We remember Saul, who never built altars until that time. Do we, in our hearts, have the longing to be pleasing to Him?
We remember King David’s mighty men. David said, “How I long for some water from the well of Bethlehem.” His three mighty men heard this.
The only problem was that there was a Philistine army standing between them and the well. What did they do? They traveled through the army, got the water, and brought it back.
Why? What strategic advantage was there for three mighty men to go through the entire Philistine army to get water? They wanted to please their king.
When David got it, he took the water and poured it out. He said, “This is an offering of their very lives.”
What is our motivation? Do we still have it in our hearts that above everyone else, I want to be pleasing to Him? Does He have the highest place? There is no comparison. When I stand before Him, of all people, I want Him to say, “Well done.”
Finally, brothers and sisters, these bondservants did it for a reward. I do not know that they knew what the reward was, but when they brought the minas back, the Lord granted them a reward.
This issue of reward is also very tough to share about, because so much of what we share about today is the gift. The gift is unearned. It is by grace, and we thank the Lord for the gift.
The wonderful thing about the gift is that it is irrevocable. It cannot be taken away. It is ours and belongs to us.
But many times in the Bible, it speaks of a reward. A reward is based on merit. It is earned.
This is a tough thing for us to think about because we ask, “Isn’t all of Christianity just grace?” But as we see in this parable, they came before Him, and He gave them a reward.
Now, what is the reward? I have to be honest: I was going to skip this because I did not know the answer. Even until last night, I was asking the brother with whom I stayed, “Do you know the answer to this?”
I thought I would write it down on a white piece of paper and tuck it in the question box for Brother Kong to answer. But then I was worried that Dana would assign it to me, so I thought I had better look and try to figure it out.
In the old days, we had to mention something called a bema seat. I think many of us have heard this term before. The bema seat was a raised platform during the Olympics. It was a place for the handing out of reward.
The analogy I thought of, in my growing-up-in-the-eighties mind, is this: if you are around my age or you have seen Star Wars, the bema is at the end of Star Wars. Princess Leia is standing on that platform, and they come up and there is a giving out of a reward.
It is a place where reward is given. It is not the place of condemnation or punishment for sin. It is a place of reward, and it is very real.
Why the minas? The minas were small things. We said perhaps fifteen thousand dollars. It is not a lot. Why did it make any difference to the Lord, when they brought them back, in His riches as King? It did not.
But what it showed Him was that these bondservants recognized that He was their Lord. They were motivated because they knew He was coming back. They longed to stand before Him, and they longed for Him to be pleased.
For these servants, when they came back, the minas were simply a representation of their hearts. And He said to them, “You will be in authority over ten cities.”
The problem that I could not get over was, “What if I do not want to be in authority over ten cities?”
But as I looked into this, I realized that in Revelation 22 He said, “I am coming, and My reward is with Me.” This reward is His. It is something of Him, precious to Him.
It speaks of authority. It speaks of responsibility. It speaks of rule. It speaks of kingdom.
Sometimes it is hard for us to fathom these things. I do not know what that really looks like. I cannot think of an appropriate analogy because there is no analogy. This is a huge thing, but in our human minds we cannot comprehend it.
How can we long for and love this reward?
In 1 John 3:2, the Bible tells us that when we see Him, we will be like Him.
What I know is that my Lord loves His bride. He loves His bride with a love that we will never know. We cannot fathom it. It is more than the greatest love, all our greatest loves combined. It is much more.
In His eyes and in His heart, it is so real. But in our hearts, we have a glimpse of it; we do not know its fullness.
I think, brothers and sisters, that in this kingdom, unto this bride, this reward has to do with governance and responsibility for His dreams in His heart. But we cannot capture the whole thing.
When He comes, we will see Him. All of us, no matter what we did with the minas. When we see Him, we will be made like Him.
When we are like Him, I think we are going to have a glimpse. And when we have this glimpse, brothers and sisters, you and I are going to want the reward.
It will be too late to change whether or not we occupied ourselves. But this reward, brothers and sisters, is worth it.
Even though right now we cannot see it in full, one day we will. But when we do, it will be time for it to be handed out. We will want it, long for it, and treasure it.
So what we see, brothers and sisters, is that this question in these days—how do we occupy ourselves?—is so important.
It is important for eternal things. It is important for victory. And it is in the Lord’s heart.
May the Lord cover us in these days as we look into this question: What shall we do with the freedom He has won for us? How shall we occupy ourselves?
Let us occupy ourselves for this reward, waiting for Him when He comes.
Let us bow for a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we thank You. Thank You, Lord, for Your love for us. We thank You, Lord, for Your love for Your house. And Lord, we thank You for letting us play a part.
Lord, we pray that our hearts would be unto You, for Your glory and for Your purpose. We worship You, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.