Doing Business

In Luke 19 Jesus tells the Parable of the Minas. It is the story of a king going away to receive his official commission, and while he is gone he gives his servants a sum of money with which they are entrusted. He tells them, “Do business with this until I come back.” The NIV says “put this money to work until I come back.” The Greek word is pragma, from which we get the word pragmatic. They were to do something pragmatic with this money; make some business with it. The point is that the man has placed into the care of these servants a generous trust for which they would be held accountable.
What makes this story so compelling is that you and I are in this story. There are only three possibilities. You are either a true servant, a false servant or you are an enemy of Christ. A faithful servant does business with the Master’s gifts and continually receives more opportunities to serve Him. The false servant has received a commission from the Lord but never applies himself to the work of His master. They really don’t care whether Christ’s kingdom comes or succeeds. They simply don’t care. Therefore, they put forth no effort at all. And the enemies figure they can simply ignore the King of glory and suffer no consequence. There are no other categories. And the King is coming. When He comes He will call you to account. The question is: what will you do while the King is away?
Late last summer, my mother-in-law had some surgery and my wife decided to go and spend a week with her. That means I was left at home alone. As tragic as that sounds, and as much as I was tempted like any man to slack off on the job, the house was still standing when she returned home. Furniture had been dusted; the floors had been vacuumed and polished; clothes had been washed, dried and put away; dishes were clean and in the cabinets; and there was an ample food supply in the refrigerator. I even managed to have a surprise for her: I stained the deck on the back of the house!
It would have been easy for me to slough things off since “the boss” was away. I could have let her kingdom fall into ruin and betrayed her trust. But there is one reason I labored to make the house as pleasing as possible: I love her and I didn’t want to see a look of disappointment on her face. She does so much for me and is so valuable to me that I willingly cleaned up after myself each day and stayed up late the night before I drove to Virginia to pick her up in order to get the extra things done.
Christians, our Lord and Master has gone away for a while. He has been crowned the King of kings and Lord of lords. He has received His kingdom and will soon return to reign in splendor and majesty. At that time He will ask us, you and me, to account for how we handled His business here on earth. He will look at us with eager eyes in anticipation of our offering to Him. As a demonstration of our love for Him we must be about His business until He returns. After all, He did say, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (Jn. 14:15).
Bill Hybels once summed up the attitude that should mark all believers: “I would never want to reach out someday with a soft, uncalloused hand - a hand never dirtied by serving - and shake the nail-pierced hand of Jesus.” Our diligent and faithful service provides us with the divine comfort of

A STEADFAST HOPE