November 22: Luke 19:11-26
Key Verse: Luke 19:25
“Sir,” they said, “he already has ten!”
Devotion:
This is very much like the parable as told in the Gospel of Matthew, but there are slightly different circumstances. Here the man is of noble birth and is going to get crowned as a king leaving ten minas to ten servants while he is away. Once again we see one of them prosper and return great gains, another prosper and return slightly less but the third being too afraid to do anything with the money and keeps it hidden until the master returns.
I want us to think about the earthly values being talked about here instead of the parallels with the kingdom of Heaven. The master is not liked by any of the local people and they try to stop him from being crowned as king. His apparent disregard for the welfare of the servants seems to be something which is echoed in the parable in Matthew… but the servants all do different things with the money entrusted to them.
One of them manages to gain ten more minas from the one he was given, another five more. They were probably following the masters ways to gain such amounts. But the third servant talked about here had simply wrapped the money up in a piece of cloth to return it safe to the master.
The master then places the servants in charge of various cities according to how much they had earned. His response is to give to the servants what earthly riches they had gained and to kill those who tried to stop him from being king. From an earthly point of view none of this seems very nice at all! We do have to be aware of the temptation of earthly rewards instead of heavenly rewards, and our lives may not turn out like we had hoped just because we are surrounded by people seeking earthly rewards above all!
Points to Ponder:
Do you do your best with earthly rewards?
Do you do your best with spiritual gifts?