The Kingdom Delayed
Scripture Reading: Luke 19:11-27
Key Verse: Luke 19:11b
He (Jesus), told them a story to correct the impression that the Kingdom of God would begin right away.
Our Scripture Reading for today is very clear on why this next story was told by Jesus.
There was a misunderstanding that Jesus was bringing the Kingdom of God immediately to this earth. Jesus did set up what some have described as the “Partial Kingdom”, which is made up of Believers living out the Kingdom principles in this world. Jesus, here in this passage, is speaking of the “Completed Kingdom”, when He comes back to take His Believers to their eternal home.
Jesus’s story was a parable about a nobleman who was called away to a distant empire to be crowned the King of that land. Before this nobleman left, he called some servants together and gave them all equal amounts of money to invest for their master. After this man was crowned King, he came back and brought the servants before him to give an account of how they did while he was gone.
The first two servants did well. They took the money and invested it wisely bringing their new King a high return for this money. The third servant brought back to the King only the original amount that he was given. He gave the King a lot of excuses why he didn’t do better.
Jesus concludes the story with the fact that those who are faithful will receive great rewards for their faithfulness while Jesus is away. But for people who know about Jesus and do nothing about that knowledge there are horrible consequences.
The lessons to remember are twofold. First, God’s Kingdom is delayed because God wants to give everyone a chance to respond to the Gift of Salvation that Jesus provided by dying on the Cross. The Apostle Peter made this very clear: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
The second lesson from this story is about our personal responsibility to use the talents that God has given us to help fortify and build His Kingdom. All Believers are given a gift of equal importance to the Kingdom.
Each one of us are responsible to use our gift to help get God’s message out to all people, mostly one person at a time. We’ve studied the “value of one” in previous devotions, which reminds all of us that even if we only help one person take steps toward Jesus, God will reward our faithfulness to that very important, eternal soul we helped!
Father, as you help me, I will be faithful to help the people around me to know they are dearly loved and wanted by you! In Jesus’s Name I pray, amen.