Monday, 7/8/19 – Pressing on…

The Lever Principle

When someone does well at their job they very often are rewarded with a promotion. A promotion is defined as “the action of raising someone to a higher position or rank or the fact of being so raised.” Hmm… “being raised in position or rank.” That usually comes with more pay, but it also typically comes with greater RESPONSIBILITY.

That’s exactly the case in the parable of the ‘Minas’ that Pastor Andrew unpacked for us so thoroughly on Sunday. The story you may recall is found in Luke 19:11-29 and briefly goes like this:

A nobleman has to travel to a far country to be crowned king and then to return. Since he knows he’ll be away for quite a while he entrusts 10 minas to 10 servants to invest while he is away. Despite complaints from the citizenry of this far country the man is made their King and returns home. He calls his servants to learn how they made out investing his money. One of the servants invested his one mina shrewdly and it earned a tenfold profit. Another invested well and made a fivefold profit, but one servant made no investments at all. He hid the one ‘mina’ that had been entrusted to him and had only it to return to the nobleman.

The servants who invested and gained a return were rewarded by being given as many cities to rule as the number of minas they had multiplied. This was an exorbitant prize– a city for a mina return on investment! But when you think of it, it makes perfect sense. This new king was looking for rulers under him to divide up his kingdom. When he saw the percentage of skill and wisdom in his servants he gave them an equal percentage of rule over his kingdom.

It’s very much simply the principal of a lever. Each servant was skilled at moving the end of his lever to a certain degree. What the king did was akin to simply extending the reach of each servant’s lever.

People have been aware of this reality for centuries. Consider these classic statements:
The 3rd century Greek mathematician Archimedes himself said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” In 1887 historian and moralist Lord Acton wrote in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And Jesus taught “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” (Luke 16:10)

What you do with the temporal ‘little’ you have been given will very much determine the eternal ‘much’ to which you may be promoted.

It should be every Christian’s chief joy to faithfully serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He has left us in this world to do just that. It is our ‘Great Commission’ to do now, during this little bit of time in which we inhabit. We will not be able to make up for our shortcomings in eternity; there will be no lost souls there to win for Christ.

“I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2)

More tomorrow…