Bible Passage: Luke 17:1-10
Pastor: Joel Jenswold

Bulletin – October 5, 2025

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of Jesus,

Wouldn’t you have loved to sit and listen to Jesus Christ teach?  Can you imagine a Bible class where Jesus himself is the teacher?  I have been blessed in my training to have many wonderful, gifted teachers.  Teachers who could take the complex and make it simple, who could take the abstract and make it concrete.  Often this ability to make the complex simple and the abstract concrete is accomplished through the skillful use of examples and illustrations.

That’s why I say it would have been wonderful to sit in Jesus’ Bible class.  He was a master at using illustrations to teach sometimes-difficult spiritual truths.  He would use birds and flowers to reach about trusting in God.  He would use farmers and fishermen to teach about how the Kingdom of God grows.  He would use wolves to teach about false teachers and he would use yeast to teach about the spread of false teaching.  He would use bridesmaids to teach about the Last Day.  That’s good teaching! He does this very thing in our text for this morning.  Today Jesus teaches about forgiveness and faith using Millstones and Mustard Seeds.

Our text does not begin on a happy note.  Things that cause people to sin are bound to come. (v. 1)  We need to spend a moment on “things that cause people to sin.”  Jesus is not here speaking of temptations in general.  The word used is skandalon.  A “skandalon” is the trigger in a deadly trap.  Think of a mousetraps.  You bend that spring-tensioned metal bar back and then after you snap your fingers three or four times, you hook that other little metal piece to hold it in place and you just barely catch it on that little tab on which you put peanut butter.  That little tab with the peanut butter is the “skandalon.”  Touch that and the trap snaps.  And it is deadly.

Jesus is saying that there are going to be deadly traps in this world.  No surprise!  We live in a sinful world!  But Jesus adds, But woe to that person through whom they come! (v. 1)  Woe to that person who traps and trips someone up in their faith!  Woe to that person who leads another person into sin to their soul’s destruction!  One commentator called what Jesus was talking about “soul-murder.”  That’s bad!

To illustrate how bad, Jesus speaks about millstones.  Maybe you have seen one of those huge, round stones used to grind grain long ago.  They are massive, weighing hundreds of pounds.  Jesus says it would be better to have a millstone hung around your neck and be dropped into the Mediterranean Sea than to trip up a little one in their faith.  Let the weight of Jesus’ words sink in!  In our Sunday School, the class with the three-year-olds is called the “littles.”  Jesus is saying it would be better to have a millstone drag you to the bottom of Lake Monona than to be responsible for one of our “littles” to fall away from Jesus!

And so Jesus adds, So watch yourselves. (v. 3)  Could I be, have I been, a skandalon to a “little”?  Have mercy, Lord!  Have my words or actions caused a “little” to sin?  “Oh, Lord, help me never to cause my little brothers and sisters in Jesus to fall!”

“Skandalon” are bound to come, says our Lord.  So we watch ourselves.  And we will not sit still if someone else becomes one.  If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.  If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, I repent, forgive him. (v. 3-4)  This is the debt of love we owe to one another.  We are to call “sin” sin!  No matter who commits it.  And when anyone repents of sin, we are to forgive them.  Can you imagine?  Someone punches you in the nose. They say, “Forgive me.”  We forgive.  Now they do it again, the same day!  “Forgive me.”  Okay.  Now a third, fourth, fifth time in one day.  How are you feeling about forgiveness at this point?  It’s a tall order!  The apostles imagine it must take super-size faith to do such a thing.  Increase our faith! (v. 5)  “Lord, super-size our faith!”

Time for Jesus to talk about mustard seeds.  If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. (v. 6)  What are we to make of Jesus’ words?  You don’t need super-size faith to do this.  It’s not about having a “great, big” faith in God; it’s about having faith in a great, big God!  And even mustard-sized faith in a great, big God is FAITH in a great, big God!  Jesus isn’t telling us to go and start commanding trees to move; he is telling us to trust our Lord and live our faith and watch what he can do.  Don’t think he can make us able to forgive those who sin against us?  We recently heard the widow of an assassinated man forgive the man who shot her husband.  I ask you, which is more incredible, a mulberry tree transplanting itself in the sea, or forgiving like that?  Both are supernatural workings of a great God!

Being able to forgive like that might make us Christians think that we are worthy of some sort of plaque or trophy.  So Jesus tells us the little story at the end of our text.  In Jesus’ story a servant serves.  The master doesn’t “ooo” and “ahh” and applaud.  Servants serve.  It’s what they do.  So Jesus ends the lesson, So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, “We have only done our duty.” (v. 10)

Does that sound cold, matter-of-fact, almost sub-Christian to speak of “doing our duty”?  But let’s remember, duty can be pleasant.  As part of my “duties” as pastor, I baptize babies and serve you the Lord’s Supper.  What joyful duty!  Serving Jesus is joyful “duty”!  We are joyful servants because our Master is the Lord Jesus, who doesn’t just expect forgiveness FROM us, but has given forgiveness TO us!  And so, with our little mustard-seed faith in Jesus, we, forgiven servants, become his forgiving servants.

Amen.