Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 17:1-10, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 60
- Date: Sunday, September 13, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Basic Expectations of Faithful Disciples
I never know from day to day what questions I’m going to be asked, and not just by the children either. Somebody stopped by the office a few weeks ago and asked me what I knew about the state kindergarten standards. My answer was, “Not much.” It’s been a long time since I was in kindergarten, and when I taught, I taught high school. So I said, “We can look it up.”
We started looking at the math and language things they’re expected to learn in kindergarten in the state of Oklahoma. It was pretty simple stuff. They’re expected to know and recognize all twenty-six letters of the alphabet, know and recognize a certain number of sight words, and know and recognize the numbers one through twenty. It’s pretty basic stuff.
But looking at that made me think about when I started kindergarten many, many, many years ago. I walked into that classroom for the first time, and they had these characters all over the room representing all the letters. My favorite was the V. He had a violet velvet vest. They all had something, but that’s the only one of the twenty-six I remember. I remember the letters; don’t get me wrong. I just don’t remember the characters.
The teacher said, “This year we’re going to learn all of these letters and characters,” and I remember as a kindergartner thinking, _They expect me to remember all of this? This is going to be hard._ All through elementary school, I had these moments of panic. I had a friend who was a year ahead of me in school, and I remember getting into first grade and thinking, _We’re supposed to add numbers? They want us to add numbers? This is going to be hard._ Then in second or third grade, _They expect us to do multiplication? We have to memorize these tables?_
It’s stuff we look at as adults and say, “This is pretty basic.” I’ve looked at my kids many times when they’ve expressed those same thoughts and said, “Don’t worry, baby. It only gets harder from here. It’s going to get worse.” But in reality, these are basic things we’re all expected to learn.
I bring that up because, as we continue through our study of Luke and get into Luke 17, Jesus lays out for His disciples some pretty basic expectations of disciples. They might seem daunting, but they’re basic expectations that we’re expected to learn and practice. Luke 17:1–10 says:
Now He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to one through whom they come! It is better for him if a millstone is hung around his neck and he is thrown into the sea, than that he cause one of these little ones to sin. Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.” The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” But the Lord said, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you. “Now which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to him after he comes in from the field, ‘Come immediately and recline at the table to eat’? On the contrary, will he not say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink; and afterward you may eat and drink’? He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he? So you too, when you do all the things which were commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’”
What Jesus is doing here is laying out some characteristics of faithful disciples—some of the very basic things that are expected of us. These are not the only things expected of us. This is not the whole list. But He points these things out because they stand in direct contrast to the Pharisees He has just been dealing with throughout chapters 15 and 16.
A Contrast with the Pharisees
If you recall, we took about a three-month break to talk about missions and evangelism and only came back to Luke 16 last week. But if your memory is way better than mine and you remember back into April and May when we were looking at chapters 15 and 16, things are starting to come to a head between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees have become very critical.
The Pharisees understand the Scriptures. They see the evidence that Jesus is fulfilling Old Testament prophecy and that He has been sent by God, but they do not want Him to be the Messiah. So they have dug in and become hardened in their hearts. That’s why they attribute His work to Satan. That’s why they commit the unpardonable sin. And now they are doing things that cause other people to stumble.
As I mentioned last week, it’s hard for us to fathom because we’ve seen the end of the story. We recognize that the Pharisees are the villains. They’re the bad guys in the story. In that day, though, they were pretty popular with the people. Because we know how the story ends, that’s hard for us to understand.
We also understand that they were putting all these rules and restrictions on people that God never intended, and we think, _Why would the people like that? Why would the people put up with that?_ But they were considered the guardians of tradition. They were considered the ones who resisted the Romans—not militarily, perhaps, but culturally. They were a rallying point for the people.
Their attitudes and their rejection of Jesus were causing some of the people who were flocking to Jesus to have unnecessary questions and second thoughts. They were planting unreasonable doubts in people’s minds. They were causing people to stumble.
So Jesus, in the hearing of these Pharisees, turns to His disciples. We’ve seen this several times through the book of Luke. He’s talking to His disciples, but He’s talking in front of the crowds and the Pharisees where they can hear, so it’s for their benefit as well. He begins to talk to His disciples about what they should do, and it is directly opposite of what the Pharisees are doing.
He starts with what will be a characteristic of a faithful disciple: we recognize our responsibilities to one another. This is a direct rebuke of the Pharisees in verses 1 through 4.
Guard Yourself Against Scandal
One of the responsibilities He outlines is that we have a responsibility to guard ourselves against scandal. We have a responsibility to one another as believers to guard ourselves and our lives against anything that’s going to cause our fellow believers to stumble. We also guard ourselves and our lives against anything that’s going to cause the world outside to stumble.
Believe it or not, people are looking at your life. Unless you are completely isolated, there’s somebody in your world who does not know Jesus, who knows you know Jesus, and who is looking at you. That’s true of every one of us. There are also people in your world who know Jesus, but you’re more spiritually mature than they are, and they’re looking at you.
You might say, “But I haven’t been a Christian that long.” Unless you just got saved today, there’s somebody who knows less about Jesus than you do or has walked with Jesus a shorter time than you have. In our series on missions and evangelism throughout the summer, we looked at several passages of Scripture that show how every one of us has something to learn and something to teach in the process of discipleship. There are people who look to every one of us, and for that reason we have a responsibility to one another to guard ourselves against scandal.
I use that word _scandal_ purposely. Your translation may say “stumbling block” in verse 1. It may say “trap” or “snare.” The Greek word is _skandalon_. It can mean all of those things, and it’s where we get our word _scandal_.
The reality is that when we’re engaged in something scandalous—when we do something that can cause problems for somebody else—we can cause them to stumble. We can cause them to be ensnared by sin. None of those translations are wrong; they just don’t tell the whole story. That’s why I’m using the word _scandal_.
We live in a world filled with those things. We live in a world filled with temptations and things that are going to cause us to stumble, cause other people to stumble, and cause people to become ensnared. They’re all around us. Jesus said it is inevitable that _skandalon_ will come. Inevitable means it’s going to happen. We can’t completely stop it.
These things are an inevitable hazard in the Christian life. It’s like going out for a walk. You’re inevitably going to come across something difficult to traverse. There are spots here in town where the sidewalk just ends. There are spots where there are holes in the sidewalk and you have to go around them, or there are bumps in the sidewalk. There are people we as a church know and love who have recently found out about holes in the sidewalk. They are inevitable.
The same thing is true spiritually. We live in a fallen world. There is sin and temptation all around us, and we can’t completely block those things out. But woe to us if we are the ones through whom they come. We don’t want to add more obstacles for someone. We don’t want to be the reason somebody else stumbles or becomes ensnared.
Jesus is saying this to the disciples, but He’s talking about the Pharisees. Here you have people who are supposed to be religious. They are supposed to be guiding Israel toward the truth—and nobody even gave them that job; it’s a job they assumed for themselves. But they have become the guardians of tradition, the guardians of religious orthodoxy, the ones who point people toward the truth, and now they are trying to turn people away from Jesus.
This isn’t just a personality conflict. They are trying to get people to reject what God is doing. They’re trying to get people to reject salvation because of how it benefits them. So, speaking to His disciples about this group of people, Jesus says, “Woe to them.”
_Woe_ is not a word we use much anymore, but basically it means it’s going to be a bad time for them. Jesus said they would be better off having a millstone tied around their neck and being thrown into the sea. This is not a threat that He’s going to tie millstones around their necks and throw them into the sea. It’s a warning that they are going to have to answer to God for what they have done in leading people away from Jesus. It’s a sign of judgment.
For us as believers, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We don’t have the same fear of being cast into the judgment of God. But the Bible does say we’ll give an answer. We all want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I live in fear of hearing, “Boy, what were you thinking?” There’s probably going to be some of that.
We as believers don’t want to cause anybody to stumble away from Jesus. Yes, we have freedom in Christ. Yes, we can walk in freedom and walk in that light. But we don’t use our liberty as an opportunity for offense. We don’t knowingly do things that are going to cause other people to stumble.
I heard somebody talking recently about being on a trip and stopping at a buffet at a casino. As far as I can tell from Scripture, there’s nothing that prohibits eating at a buffet in a casino. Where we lived before, there was a casino not too far outside town that advertised this incredible-looking steak. I’m sure it wasn’t the size of the billboard, but it looked pretty good on the billboard, and I would have loved to go try it.
But it was a small town, and I knew someone in the church who had been saved out of a gambling habit. He would have been deeply conflicted if he had seen my truck outside the casino, even if I was just at the buffet. It could have caused him to wonder, _Is it okay to be there? Maybe it’s okay if I go back to this,_ and to return to something that had ensnared him.
So as much as I wanted that steak, I made the decision, “We’re not going. Braum’s it is.” We didn’t go have the steak. We have a responsibility to others to guard ourselves against things that are going to cause other people to stumble. The Pharisees were facing the judgment of God because they were causing people to stumble.
Guard One Another in Love
We also have a responsibility to guard our fellow believers. In verse 3 Jesus says, “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him.” Now, don’t get too excited about this verse. If you’ve been in church many years, you’ve probably known some people who were excited about this verse: “We’re going to find everything everybody is doing wrong, and we’re going to rebuke them. We’re going to call them out for it.”
This should not be something that excites us. This is a responsibility we take soberly. If our fellow believers fall into sin, we have a responsibility to call it out. If our fellow believers are walking in a way that is going to lead others to sin, we have a responsibility to call it out. That’s not me saying that. That’s not some church opinion. That’s Jesus saying that we need to be on guard, and if our brother sins, rebuke him.
A rebuke doesn’t necessarily mean a harsh rebuke. Rebukes can be harsh, but they don’t have to be. Some of the most crushing rebukes I’ve ever received—and by _crushing_, I mean the ones that really got my attention—have come in a very gentle and loving tone. It means we’re watching over one another in love to protect each other from things that are going to hurt us spiritually.
Also understand that when He says, “If your brother sins,” the word there is _adelphos_. It can mean a literal brother, but it was also frequently used for somebody you were close to. Jesus is assuming a relationship. He’s not empowering us to be the church police, see something we don’t like from somebody we barely know, and say, “I’m going to call them out because Jesus said so.”
This assumes there is a close relationship. These are people who are walking together, who know each other and love one another, and who can go to each other and say, “Hey, I think you’re headed the wrong way here.” We’re going to receive that a lot better than we are from somebody we barely know who thinks they’re the church police.
My wife can say things to me that I might bow up about if they came from other people. My wife can tell me very bluntly, “I think this is a stupid idea you’re about to take on,” where I might not take that as well from a stranger. So when Jesus says, “If your brother sins,” He’s talking about people we’re close to and walking with. Rebuke them. Call them back.
The idea is restoring people spiritually. It’s reconciliation and restoration of the relationship. That’s why He says, “If he repents, forgive him.” It means don’t keep bringing it up. Don’t keep beating him over the head with it. The goal is restoration.
Forgive and Pursue Reconciliation
Then in verse 4, we have a responsibility to forgive one another. Sometimes when our fellow believers sin, those sins can be against us. Every sin is a sin against the Lord, but some sins are sins against other people as well. There will be offenses against us. We’re all sinners, and it’s inevitable that sometimes we’re going to rub each other the wrong way if we spend any length of time together at all.
So the question is, what do we do when we’re the injured party? Jesus says, “If he sins against you,” what do we do? We forgive our repentant brother or sister. We aim for reconciliation.
Notice I said _repentant_. The question inevitably comes, “What if they don’t repent?” Biblical forgiveness has the idea of reconciliation, and that’s hard to do with only one party. Don’t hear from that, though, that we hang on to the offense and refuse to let it go. Even if there is not reconciliation and restoration of the relationship, we don’t have to become bitter ourselves. But reconciliation assumes somebody is repentant.
As believers and followers of Jesus Christ, if we offend one another, we should take responsibility for it and we should be repentant. Jesus says to aim for reconciliation. It’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about being reconciled to each other.
In fact, Jesus says to do it even if it happens seven times a day. Why seven times? Does that mean on the eighth time we get to just lay them out? That’s not what He’s teaching us.
If somebody hurts us twice in a day, if somebody offends us twice in a day and comes back repentant, that already stretches our natural ability to forgive, doesn’t it? _You’ve already done this twice to me._ I think He picks the number seven because it sounds like an impossible threshold. _You mean if they come to me repentant again, I’m supposed to forgive them?_ Yes. Forgive as many times as they come back genuinely seeking forgiveness. Forgive beyond what feels reasonable.
And again, this is not just, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” You know how little kids will say that to each other. “Say sorry to your brother.” “Sorry.” You are not sorry. There’s nothing sorry about you but your attitude. That’s not what He’s talking about. He’s talking about genuine repentance.
I do want to put a disclaimer here, because verses like this can be taken to an unbiblical extreme, and they have been. If somebody misuses this to say, “I’m going to bully or abuse somebody, and I’m just going to come back and say I’m sorry,” there is a deeper problem the church needs to deal with. If something criminal is involved, forgiveness does not mean the church sweeps it under the rug. There are still consequences, especially for criminal behavior.
Too many churches—or too many people in churches—have misused ideas like this to say, for example, “We’re going to sweep sexual abuse under the rug.” No. There is still a criminal penalty that needs to be dealt with. Jesus is talking here about offenses between brothers and sisters, where we get on the wrong side of each other and refuse to hold on to those offenses. As many times as they come back genuinely seeking forgiveness, we forgive. These are part of our responsibilities to one another.
Depend on God for Strength
When we get to verse 5, we see that these things Jesus has outlined appear very hard to us. How many of us hear all of that and think, _That sounds fun. That sounds easy. That sounds like a good time_? None of us. We may already be thinking about situations we’d rather not have to deal with.
We’re not alone. The apostles heard all of this and said to Jesus, “Increase our faith!” They don’t know if they can do this. And it’s not even just the strength to do it. It’s the faith to trust that God is going to do what God does when you step out and do the hard thing. They’re saying, “Increase our faith. We don’t know if we can do this.”
We depend on God for strength to fulfill our responsibilities because each of these things Jesus has outlined is hard for our human nature. When it comes to guarding one another, our human nature tends to lead us to unbiblical extremes one way or the other. Sometimes we’re apt to look the other way because we don’t want to get in the middle of something. I can very easily fall into that ditch. I’d rather not have the hard conversation.
Then you run into people who fall into the ditch on the other side and want to confront everything, and not necessarily in a spirit of love. This is hard for our human nature. Forgiveness is hard for our human nature too. We want to hold on to things.
Don’t you sometimes just want to be mad? There are times when I don’t want to be mad forever, but I want to be mad about it a little longer. Charla will come along and say, “It’s not that big a deal,” and try to make me feel better, and I just want to be mad. In all fairness, I do the same thing to her sometimes. There are times when we just want to be mad, and forgiveness is hard for our human nature.
Each of these responsibilities requires us to trust God enough to step out and obey Him. _God, what if I forgive them and they turn around and do it again?_ At that point, we’re no longer trusting God to handle the situation. We have to trust God enough to obey Him in those circumstances and believe that He’s going to take care of it—that all things will be put right in His way and in His time. Our job is to be obedient.
I tell you that because it’s what God’s Word teaches, not because I’ve got it all figured out or do it perfectly. I struggle with this too. But these basic things Jesus outlines in verses 1 through 4 are things you and I cannot do on our own, cannot do routinely, and cannot do in the right way without depending on Him.
To do them, we have to have a growing faith in God. We have to trust Him enough to say, _I’m going to do this hard thing that does not make sense from a human standpoint, and I’m going to trust Him with what happens._ That’s why they said, “Increase our faith.”
Jesus responded that they needed only a little faith—and they needed to exercise it. It’s one thing to have faith that God can work something out. It’s a whole different story to have that faith and actually step out and do something because of it.
He says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” which was one of the smallest seeds in circulation in that part of the world at the time, “you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” He’s trying to get them to think of one of the smallest things they could imagine.
It’s not that their words had power. This isn’t a name-it-and-claim-it thing. He’s telling them that if they had faith and exercised it—if they stepped out and did something with that faith—they would see what God can do. That’s a hard thing to do, and it’s something I need to be reminded of.
All of these things He calls us to do are hard. They’re impossible for us to fulfill perfectly in our human nature. So we have to rely on Him consistently to be able to do them.
Obey Without Believing God Owes Us
Then we might ask, “Why should I do these things? If they’re so hard and I’m going to fall short so often, why do I do it?” Because one of the characteristics of a faithful disciple is that we obey God without believing He owes us anything.
We might look at these hard things and think, _Why should I do this?_ Or we might look at a time when we’ve managed to do one of them and think, _Wow, I’ve really done something big. Look at me. I’m super spiritual. I managed to forgive him._ We might be tempted to be a little impressed with ourselves.
But Jesus puts these things in the proper perspective for us. In verses 7 and 8, He’s the master and we’re His servants. He speaks in terms of a master-servant relationship.
We need to understand that the master-servant relationship is not the entirety of our experience with God. God describes our relationship with Him in other ways too. He describes Himself as our Father and us as His children. If you belong to Jesus Christ, you’ve been adopted into the family. You have that Father-son or Father-daughter relationship with the Creator of all things.
Jesus also called us His friends. We’re called to come boldly into His presence. We’re called to walk with Him and enjoy fellowship with Him. All of those things are part of the relationship. But we cannot neglect the fact that one part of that relationship is the master-servant relationship. He commands, and we obey.
Jesus reminds us of that with this story. The servant doesn’t come in from the field and immediately sit down to eat. First the master says, in effect, “Clean up, make yourself presentable, and make me something to eat.” Is God saying that’s the way the world ought to work? No. He’s saying that’s the way it did work in their world. The servant came in and took care of the master first.
What Jesus is reminding us is that God sets the agenda for us. He gives the orders, and our responsibility is to obey readily. The obedience He calls us to isn’t a special effort. It’s the basic expectation of a servant.
In verses 9 and 10, He says the servant isn’t thanked for doing his duty. Jesus is not trying to present a harsh version of God. He’s not saying that God doesn’t notice what we do in His service or that He doesn’t care about us or what we do.
He’s helping us understand that when we do these hard things—these things that look hard to us—what He’s calling us to do is not advanced Christianity. Being on guard over ourselves, being on guard over one another, forgiving one another: this is not AP Christianity. This is kindergarten. This is the basic stuff.
These are those letters that we look at and think, _How am I ever going to learn this? How am I ever going to master this?_ And this isn’t even as hard as it gets. This isn’t a separate level of Christianity for the super-spiritual people. This is the basic stuff we’re all expected to do.
Shaped by the Gospel
The reason He calls us to do these seemingly hard things—to be on guard over ourselves and our testimony, to be on guard over one another and one another’s testimony, to be willing to forgive, to do all these things that fly in the face of our human nature—is that, if we belong to Jesus, we are a people who have been forgiven because of the gospel. We are a people who have been transformed by the gospel. It’s important that we show that transformation and forgiveness to other people.
As I said at the beginning of the message, there are people who watch each of us. You may have friends or neighbors. You may have co-workers who don’t know Jesus and are looking to you. There may be people in your own family. There are people in this church who look to you.
I am so thankful that multiple times a week I’m able to bring five tiny humans I’m responsible for into this fellowship, and they get to see real people who aren’t Mom and Dad believing and living out these beliefs. They get to look to you as an example.
Don’t forget: there’s somebody looking to you. There’s somebody looking to all of us, and it’s our responsibility to demonstrate the gospel with our lives. We forgive because we’ve been forgiven. We guard ourselves and guard one another because we have been changed, because we serve a God who guards over us and calls us to holiness.
This is not given to us as just a set of rules. It’s given to us because we are people who have been shaped by the gospel, if we belong to Jesus.
The Gospel That Shapes Us
If you’re wondering what that means—what it means to belong to Jesus, what it means to be shaped by the gospel—the gospel is very simple. Each of us has sinned against a holy God. Sin is anything we think, say, do, or don’t do that displeases God. Sin is any time we fall short of His glory and His standards.
We’re all guilty. The Bible says it. You can watch the news, and experience says it. We’ve all fallen short. Our sin leaves us separated from God, not only in this life but in eternity.
We could be separated from God for eternity, but God loved us in spite of our sin enough to make a way for us to be forgiven. Because He’s a just and holy God, He can’t simply ignore sin or write it off. We can’t ask Him to be okay with something that goes against everything He is.
Instead, Jesus Christ came and willingly sacrificed Himself after living a perfect, sinless life. He took responsibility for my sin and for yours. He was nailed to the cross in our place, and He shed His blood on our behalf to take all the punishment we deserve so that we could be forgiven. Three days later, He rose from the dead to prove it.
If we will simply believe that He died for our sins, stop trying to earn our way to heaven, stop rejecting God altogether, and trust Jesus as our one and only Savior, we’ll be forgiven. We’ll have a relationship with God and eternal life in heaven because He’s promised it.
