This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I'm glad you've joined us for day two of week four of our look through the book
of Luke. That means we're in chapter 17, and that means we're continuing our
discussion on stewardship, what it means to manage the things that God has put
into our lives. Yesterday we talked together in chapter 16 about the stewardship
of money, of our things.

Today we focus in on the stewardship of our example, we focus in on the
stewardship of our faith. First, at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus talks
about the stewardship of your example. Listen to what he has to say to his
disciples beginning in verse one.

Jesus said to his disciples, "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come,
but woe to that person through whom they come. " It would be better for him to
be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to
cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves.

If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins
against you seven times in a day and seven times comes back to you and says, "I
repent," forgive him. This is a stewardship.

God has given us many things to manage, and one of the things we have to manage
is our relationships. So this is a stewardship of your example. Jesus is saying,
"If your example, either the way that you teach or talk or the things that you
do, your example is not only in what you do, it can also be in the things that
you say.

" And some people who think they're giving a great example, they're so negative
towards others, they're so legalistic towards others, they're actually pushing
them toward sin by criticizing all the time, by being negative all the time, by
putting them down all the time. Jesus says, "Watch out that you don't become
that kind of person," and obviously he's warning about the Pharisees here who
were on the outside very clean, but on the inside filled with selfish
motivations. How do I know if my example is bad, if it's not obvious on the
outside?

Look inside and see how many selfish motivations there are. See how much there
is in it. It's just all about you.

And Jesus goes on to say, "When it comes to your example, watch yourself. You're
going to be involved with people who sin because guess what? Everybody sins.

You sin. Everybody in your family sins. Everybody in your small group sins.

Your pastor sins. I sin. Everybody sins.

" How are you going to handle that, Jesus says? If someone sins, Jesus says,
don't ignore it. Point it out.

Rebuke him. Now the word rebuke has love in it. You love someone enough to say,
"This is wrong and it's heading you down the wrong road.

" If someone's going the wrong way on a freeway, what do you do? You see them
coming down the on-ramp, they're going to go the wrong way. And somehow you're
in a position to tell them.

You roll down the window and you yell out, "Wrong way! " That's a rebuke. And
you do it because you care about them.

You don't want them to get hurt. If that's happening, rebuke them. But if they
stop sinning, if they repent, stop rebuke them, Jesus says.

Don't hold it over them. God doesn't hold it over you. Then you forgive them.

In fact, Jesus says, if it happens seven times in one day and they come back to
you, keep on forgiving. That's how gracious you need to be. That's a stewardship
of your example with other people.

Jesus goes on from this to talk about the stewardship of your faith. And he
talks about faith a lot, obviously, to his disciples. But in these verses, I see
him talking about our faith and he says, what you need to do is you need to
manage your faith like a mustard seed.

In verse 5, the apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith. " Jesus had just
said, "Forgive them seven times if they sin seven times. " So in verse 5, the
apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith.

" Jesus replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to
this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea and it will obey you. '"
How do you manage faith? You don't try to have more faith.

You just have faith as small as a mustard seed. Faith is not a matter of more.
Faith is a matter of where it's placed.

There's a lot of people who try to build up more faith. And they either feel
like, "Until I have enough faith, I can't do that. " So they never place their
faith.

They never plant their faith. Or they feel like, "I've got more faith in that
person next door. " And so their faith becomes pride.

Jesus says, "Just be honest about it. Your faith is as small as a mustard seed.
And it's not the size of your faith that's so important.

It's where and how and when you plant your faith. Where are you planting it
right now in your finances? Where are you planting it right now in your family?

Where are you planting it right now in your schooling? " That's the point, Jesus
says. You manage it like a mustard seed.

And when you do that, Jesus says, "When you do that, you could say to a tree,
'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,'" if that was God's plan, and it would do
it. It would obey you. It would obey God's power.

Faith as small as a mustard seed, Jesus says, that enables you to do great
things. But he reminds us of something. When you do great things, Jesus says,
you do great things as a servant.

After saying this, he tells a bit of a story, and at the end of that story, in
verse 10, he says this, "So you also, when you've done everything you were told
to do, you should say, 'We are unworthy servants. We have only done our duty. '
Do great things, Jesus says for me, but do them as a servant.

Don't be overly impressed with yourself as a servant, because that's the very
opposite of the spirit of a servant. We are unworthy servants. We've only done
our duty.

'" In your relationship with God, in my relationship with God, I am a son. And
you live in that family relationship. That is where your identity comes from.

Not your ministry, not the things that you do, how great, how little they are.
Your identity in your relationship with God is that you're a son of God. You are
a daughter of God.

And in your work for the Lord, you are a servant. When I serve, I do what he's
asked me to do. Rather than serving for the sake of a relationship with him, I
serve because I have a relationship with him.

Rather than serving to impress myself or others, I serve simply because he says
this is what I should do. Don't try to find your identity in your service. Find
your identity in your relationship with him, and then serve out of that.

That's what Jesus is saying here. The stewardship of your faith, the stewardship
of your example. And now, Jesus is headed toward Jerusalem.

And as he's heading toward Jerusalem in the geography of Israel, he reaches the
border of Samaria and Galilee. Samaria is in the middle section of Israel.
Galilee's to the north, Samaria in the middle, and Jerusalem, Judea, where he's
headed, is in the south.

So he reaches the border of Samaria and Galilee. You might remember that the
Jewish people hated the Samaritan people because way back in history, they
intermarried with other races. They weren't pure Jews.

And so because of that, there was continued hatred. Listen to what happens.
Listen to the experience that Jesus and his disciples have beginning in verse
11.

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and
Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They
stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on
us.

" When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests. " And as they
went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back,
praising God in a loud voice.

He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan. Jesus
asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?

Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? " And
then he said to him, "Rise and go. Your faith has made you well.

" A Samaritan thanks Jesus. And so in the Gospels, we have the Good Samaritan,
and we also have the Thankful Samaritan here in these verses. And Luke telling
us these stories, telling us this teaching and this experience of Jesus, is
making sure that we know that the good news is for all people.

While the religious establishment is growing more and more angry with Jesus, the
Samaritan thanks him for doing a miracle. The prostitute worships him for who he
is. The tax collector follows him.

The good news is for all people. Jesus is headed toward Jerusalem. He's headed
towards the cross.

When he's headed towards the cross, his disciples, all the people are thinking
about the kingdom, the kingdom of God and what it means. And to them it meant a
Jewish king sitting in residence in Jerusalem. And Jesus is headed toward
Jerusalem.

So they're excited about what might be happening. They're not sure. Jesus hasn't
been really clear about it, but they're excited about it.

So Jesus is going to teach us more and more in these coming chapters about the
kingdom and what it really is. Here's what he has to say beginning in verse 20
about the kingdom. "Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of
God would come, Jesus replied, 'The kingdom of God does not come with your
careful observation, nor will people say here it is or there it is, because the
kingdom of God is within you.

' Then he said to his disciples, 'The time is coming when you will long to see
one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you
there it is or here it is. Do not go running off after them, for the Son of Man
in his day will be like the lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from
one end to the other.

But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. '" We
try to make the kingdom of God a matter of our calculations. The Pharisees tried
to figure it out by observation.

Jesus reminds them it's a matter of your hearts. The kingdom of God is first of
all making sure that God is king of your heart, king of your life. We try to
make the kingdom of God something that we can time.

When's the right time? When's it going to happen? Many times so we can get our
act together before the kingdom of God comes.

And Jesus says it's not about timing. It's about God's plan, his eternal plan
for the universe. We try to make the kingdom of God something that we chase
after.

Here it is, there it is. We go running after it. We chase after something that
we're lacking.

Jesus tells us it's a matter of trusting him now. That's what the kingdom of God
is about. Oh yes, there's a heaven, there's an eternity, but you want to know
what the kingdom of God is about for my life, for your life, right now, today?

It's about trusting him now. Let's pray together. Our Father, that's what we
want to do.

We want to trust you and we want to trust you now. And you know for us how
difficult that is when we take it into our own hands, we want to trust
ourselves. When we take it into our own hands, we want to wait to trust you.

Lord, you are trustworthy. Lord, you will never fail us. So I pray you would
give us the faith, faith as a mustard seed, to trust you now with that
relationship, to trust you now with that temptation, to trust you now with that
financial decision, that business decision, that school decision, to trust you
now with our lives.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.