Recipients of God's grace need to be purveyors of grace themselves and God has every right to expect me to give grace to others even when they don't deserve it because He's the Master and I'm the servant. He has certainly given me grace at times when I don't deserve it.

I'm reading from an article on entitlement written by Rebecca Copeland.

Rebecca Copeland is right in her article. A lot of people who consider themselves Christians feel a similar sense of entitlement.

For the last two Sundays we have been in a short series of messages that I've called "Squashing the Entitlement Attitude." We'll continue that topic this morning. Our text again is Luke 17:7-10.

In the first message in this series I pointed out three general truths from this passage.

In last week's message I made two applications of these truths taken from this passage in Luke 17. As the Master:

1. God has every right to treat me differently than His other Servants.
2. God has every right to take back what He has given.

In this message I want to make three more applications of these principles. We'll continue with the same numbering scheme I used last time, starting with point # 3.

Since God is still the Master and I am still His servant:

Many preachers dislike preaching on the subject of giving. That's because it seems like it always degenerates into sessions of either begging for money or haranguing people for the same - two things that this preacher refuses to do.

But there is still the important issue of stewardship that needs to be taught. While sometimes the word "stewardship" to people means a period of special emphasis each year when the church leaders try to wring more money out of the members, that really isn't what stewardship is about. That is far to narrow.

A steward is the caretaker of another's property. If you were to go on vacation and ask me to watch over your place while you were gone, I would be your steward. I would water the lawn and take in the mail and feed your pets and all the other things necessary to take care of what belongs to you. If you were going to be gone for several years, it might also mean that you would empower me to use designated money to pay your taxes, pay your water and electric bill and such. You might even ask me to move in and live there while you were gone just as though the place belonged to me. As a good steward though, I would be expected by you to take good care of your things and when you returned you would want to know how it went. If I had taken the money you left and bought myself a new car and a new boat while allowing your lawn and your pets to die, and your taxes were unpaid, you would be understandably upset. Why? Because the property and money you left didn't belong to me. While I could enjoy your property during my time of stewardship, it still belonged to you. It was simply on loan to me and as your steward I was expected to deal with your property in a way that would please you.

As God's servants, we are His stewards - stewards of the things He has entrusted to us. Everything we have belongs to Him. We get to use it as though it were our own but in reality it still all belongs to Him. God wants us to deal with the things He has entrusted to us in a way that pleases Him. He has every right to expect that because He is the Master. In our text in Luke 17, a servant or slave owns nothing, though he may use things that belong to his master. He may even have some discretion as to how he manages what belongs to his master. But he must always remember that what he has doesn't really belong to him and that he is accountable for it.

God has every right to expect you and me to be good stewards of what He has given. He wants us to direct His resources to the things that are important to Him - the things that reflect His priorities. Yes, we also get to enjoy some of the benefits of being His stewards, but we must not do so at the expense of taking care of the things that matter most to Him. For instance, He wants us to feed, cloth, and care for the family He has entrusted to us. He wants us to extend a helping hand to some of those around us who are in need. He also wants us to tend to the things of His church. We often speak of our "giving" in these areas as though we were giving up something that belonged to us. The fact is we would be better to consider it as "distributing," that is, responsible disbursement of property entrusted to us by our Master.

The entitlement attitude affects us in two ways in this area of concern. First, we sometimes think that what we have is "ours" and we must, therefore resist giving it up. In the context of the church, that takes us back to the begging and haranging I mentioned earlier in some of the so-called "stewardship" campaigns. If we would take up the concept of stewardship, the tension would be gone.

The second way the entitlement attitude affects us in this area is when we look at what we have as "ours" and we are persuaded to "give it up" to one of God's causes, we sometimes get the notion that it buys us special treatment. Some years ago I had the unpleasant duty of confronting a brother in Christ who was involved in some dishonest dealings with his business. I really don't like to do such things so I started out very gently calling attention to the man's situation, hoping he would get the idea and correct what needed to be corrected without any further internention on my part. Instead he became instantly defensive and offended and began to threaten me. "Don't you realize," he told me, "how much I give to this church? If you don't lay off calling attention to this issue, I will pull myself and my family out of here to go to another church and you'll be left in a financial bind." Apparently, this man thought that his "giving" entitled him to live by a different set of standards than the rest of Christ's servants. It's more of the entitlement attitude.

God has every right to expect me to be a good steward of what He has given because He is the Master and I am His servant.

"I'm not proud of what happened," writes Dr. James L. Wilson in an article entitled, "On Mission." Actually, I'm a little embarrassed to tell you about it, but it happened," He continues. It began as one of those days that I wanted to be perfect - my expectations were very high. I wanted Mother's Day to be perfect for Susan, which may have contributed to why I was so dissatisfied with the service. With Stephen, on leave from the Navy, the whole family had the chance to sit down and eat a meal together for the first time in what seemed forever, so I wanted everything to go right. On the way to Salinas, to one of Susan's favorite places to eat, we called from the car to see how long the wait was. It was too long and they didn't take reservations so we went to plan "B." After driving through the parking lots of several other spots, we settled for about our 5^th or 6^th choice. We were seated quickly and everything progressed nicely until the waitress came by to take our order. One mistake followed another. I asked for the same thing on three different visits to the table. She never brought it. Jamie asked for another Coke and she walked past the table without even acknowledging he'd spoken to her. She was obviously having a bad day, but I wasn't sympathetic. Partly because of my expectations for the meal, but partly because it was obvious by her attitude that she didn't care. So I did something I've never done before, I went to the front desk and asked to speak to the manager. I explained the situation to her and asked her to assign another waitress to our table, which she did. The only thing I can think of that is worse than having a waitress ignore me in a restaurant is having one come by every two minutes to get a play-by-play analysis of every bite, which, of course, is what happened. The super aggressive service combined with the feeling deep down inside that I was a jerk for complaining in the first place made the entire "celebration" unbearable. We finished our meal, I left a generous tip and we left.

While I hate to make a point at the expense of another's embarrassment, I will make an exception here and just admit that I have had similar things happen to me before and my response was no more admirable. How about you?

Think about what is behind a response like this. "I'm paying good money for this. We've earned it because it has been so long in coming. You're supposed to serve the customer, not ignore him. So… we deserve better service than this. You 'owe' it to us." We're entitled.

In the competitive environment of business, it certainly seems to have a place, but I ask you, is this a proper response for a Christian? Before you jump in and say that the waitress got what she deserved, let me ask you, are we living under a system of merit where everybody gets what they deserve or are we living under grace?

We're living under grace, aren't we? And living under grace means that we are enjoying the benefits of receiving what we need, not what we deserve.

"But what that waitress needed was someone to straighten out her lazy, bad attitude," someone says.

Perhaps. But before it was over, it looks to me like someone else's attitude needed to be straightened out. Further, how do we know what the waitress really needed? How do we know what was behind her actions? What if her husband just left her? What if she just lost her mother in a car wreck? What if she was distracted with a sick child at home? Haven't we ever had a bad day? I'm not saying she was anything less than guilty of bad service. I'm just saying that such an occasion ought to bring out our best, most gracious response, not our worst.

You and I are supposed to be ambassadors for Christ. We are His representatives on this earth. As such, we are supposed to model His grace and His attitudes so that other people will see that we are different in a good and attractive way. If our behavior in a situation like this is no different than any non-Christian, then not only is this opportunity to represent Christ in a good way lost, but we actually set back His cause.

You say, "That's not my concern." Well, maybe that's the way you feel, but if you're a Christian, it is supposed to be your concern and mine. It is certainly our Master's concern. Paul wrote in Colossians 4:6, "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned, as it were, with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person." We're supposed to be careful how we respond to each person and it is always supposed to be a gracious response.

Even if the lady in the account I shared was just a lousy waitress, that does not entitle us to treat her less than graciously unless that is the kind of treatment we want from God.

One of the obligations of living under grace is extending grace to others.

"Yes," we say. But then when someone doesn't give us our "just due," we give them exactly what they have coming?

I'm reminded of Jesus words in Matthew 5:7: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy."

I'm reminded of James 2:13: "For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment."

I'm reminded of Proverbs 19:11: "It is his glory to overlook a transgression."

I'm reminded of Paul's words in Ephesians 4:29-32:

Recipients of God's grace need to be purveyors of grace themselves and God has every right to expect me to give grace to others even when they don't deserve it because He's the Master and I'm the servant. He has certainly given me grace at times when I don't deserve it.

This is big league stuff, isn't it? We're dealing with issues that can be a problem for even the most dedicated among us. But I encourage you to hang with me as we continue.

In his book, Talking With My Father: Jesus Teaches on Prayer, the late Ray Stedman writes,

Yes, there are rewards for faithfulness, but not necessarily down here.

Just as that old, tired missionary struggled with the lack of appreciation down here for those doing God's work, those who work hard for God struggle, too. Yet when we remember Jesus' admonition to His apostles in our text, we realize that the problem is one of our own making.

Luke 17:10 "So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.'"

The entitlement attitude is a joy killer. It’s a discourager. It's a strength robber. And it flies in the face of our true relationship with God. Left unchallenged, it will ultimately reclaim our souls back for the devil unless we recognize it and squash it wherever we find it in our lives. We've seen in these messages that God is the Master, we are the servants. He is a debtor to no one. Everything we have from Him is a gift and He has already blessed us far beyond what we deserve or could possibly earn.

Therefore:

Is the entitlement attitude living in you? Will you challenge it while you can?

Footnotes: Use your back button to return to your place.

1. http://www.john2117.org/DevotionHTMLs/021002Entitlement.htm
2. http://www.freshministry.org/062203.html

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

[Archive]    [Home]   [Comments]   [Search]