Looking for an ROI!
LifeTeam, I did not choose this Daily Word. I usually don’t, it’s given to me. But when praying and asking God what to read, I was given “Luke 19”. So I obeyed. This is what the Lord wanted me to see in this chapter.
I’m not sure how long this post is going to be so bear with me and we’ll get through it together. I didn’t post yesterday because I was really having a hard time with this post. I knew it was the next post to come but it’s not an easy one to communicate. There’s just no easy way to say it. Listen, my last post was about spiritual gifts and how we have all been given them. I wanted it to be interactive, but I only heard back from one Team Member. Y’all, please reply to that email. This post, however, was not planned when I wrote that post but it follows in the Lord’s perfect timing. Let’s just examine the Scripture here and go through it together.
- The King calls together ALL his servants.
- The King distributes His precious treasure to them.
- The King commands them to invest His treasure while He’s gone.
- He leaves and trusts them to do what He’s commanded.
- He returns.
- At some point after His return He requests a report as to what they’d each done with the treasure they’d been given.
- Some were fruitful and multiplied.
- Some of the servants used what they were given and
Went.
Healed the sick.
Casted out demons.
Raised the dead.
Made disciples.
- These servants were praised & rewarded
- Some didn’t.
- These were chastised & stripped of the treasure they were given.
How much more clear can we get with this passage?! I don’t want to dwell too much on the actual passage because I think those who are Spiritually discerned will see what I’m saying here in this passage. It’s powerful and we need to all remember it! There are blessings or chastisings with each of our decisions on how we use the gifts we were given. But this only scratches the surface of this parable.
Let’s Look Deeper
What else can we see here. What does it mean “taking what isn’t yours and harvesting crops you didn’t plant“? This doesn’t seem like an accurate representation of our King, does it? Look here. And here. Genesis 10 & 11 will give us the ‘Table of Nations’ and we will notice that Israel (Deut. 32:9) is not listed in this table. What does all of this mean? Look at Psalm 82. Now let’s look at 2 Cor 5:7. We are a ‘new creation’, just like the ‘nation’ of Israel was a ‘new creation’ even after the Table of Nations had already been created and established on Earth as it was in Heaven.
So how does this work? Well, let’s look at Colossians 2:13-15. It looks this short passage is a mirror of sorts to Psalm 82. You see, He said that the gods would “die like mere mortals”. And in Colossians we see that we were dead and under control of the unseen realm but that God disarmed the spiritual rulers who oppressed us and set us free! So what I see in this passage is the the Church (The word translated “church” in the English Bible is ekklesia. This word is the Greek words kaleo (to call), with the prefix ek (out). Thus, the word means “the called out ones. However, the English word “church” does not come from ekklesia but from the word kuriakon, which means “dedicated to the Lord.”
So we, as the Church, were ‘called out [ones]’ who are ‘dedicated to the Lord’. Seems exactly like Israel, who were called out of an already established nation who was assigned a god but then claimed by the God of gods for His portion. “The King takes what wasn’t His and harvests where He didn’t plant”.
Gotta go for now and there’s a lot to ponder here, so … to be continued.