FBC Morning Light – March 24, 2023

Well, good Friday morning to you. You're approaching another weekend, the last weekend of March already. Can you believe that? Oh, how quickly time flies when we're having so much fun. Well, today we're reading in Deuteronomy 11 and 12, Luke chapter 16, and Psalm 60.

I'm going to zero in on a couple of verses in Luke chapter 16 this morning, and ask ourselves the question, how faithful are we in the little things of life? Just the little day-to-day responsibilities of life.

You think about that. It's easy to dismiss them as being unimportant. It's easy to be disdainful of the little things that we have to do, the everyday chores, the everyday responsibilities, the routines of life that seem to be so mundane, so meaningless sometimes.

Jesus says in verse 10 of Luke 16, he who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much. He who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. If we disdain the little things that we have to do, and we neglect them, and we're lazy about them, just neglecting them, we would be the same way with the big things of life, the big responsibilities of life.

In fact, you can probably trace it through. Look at people who have been unfaithful in the big responsibilities of life, in their marriage, in their job. What's happened? How have they been so unfaithful in these big responsibilities of life?

Look at the little things. Look at the way they spend days. Look at the way they spend certain minutes of the day, how they invest their time, or don't invest their time, how they waste their time. Where does the time go?

What do they do with those days? What do they do with those responsibilities? It's the little things. It's the little things that are important, and being unfaithful in the little things will eventually show itself up in the big things of life.

How is it that we can avoid that kind of unfaithfulness? In other words, how can we be faithful in the little things as well as the big things? Jesus goes on in this passage in verse 13, and he says, No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.

You can't serve God and mammon. What Jesus is getting at here is a key to faithfulness in every area of life is to serve one master, to realize that the God I serve is to be served in every facet of my life, in every area of my life, in the big responsibilities, in the little responsibilities, in the details of life.

This should be my approach to life, that yes, when I get up in the morning and I have certain responsibilities that I have to get done even before I leave for work, that I'm to do those in service to my master.

I need to do them faithfully, I need to do them diligently, and I need to do them to the best of my ability. I need to prepare myself well for the day. When I get to my job, whatever that job might happen to be, I do everything before the eyes of the Lord, the little things and the big things.

I remember years and years ago I worked for a painting company, and there was a particular job that we had to do that involved repainting the walls in a laundromat. One of the guys I was working with, I went to try to figure out how to paint behind the washing machines and so forth that were up against this wall.

He said, don't worry about those, don't worry about those painting behind them, nobody ever sees back there anyway. That reminded me of an earlier incident in my life, probably four or five or six years earlier than that.

I had gotten my first job at a Ponderosa Steakhouse, and I was a dishwasher in that job. That was the main work that I had to do. Then as I got promoted, got more hours, I was able to work closing. There are more responsibilities when you close up at the end of the night.

Yeah, all the dishes have to be washed and cleaned and put away, and you have to tear down the dishwasher and make sure all of the filters are cleaned out and so forth, and then you have to mop the floor.

I was working with another guy, he's training me on how to close and so forth. I was given the job of sweeping and mopping the floor. I'm doing this thing, and there was this one piece of equipment, I can't remember exactly what it was, but there's one piece of equipment in a corner that was on wheels.

I just swept around it and then got to mop around it. The guy I was working with said, hey, that thing's on wheels. I said, yeah. He said, move it, move it. Okay, I mean, what's the big deal? I moved it, and here there were a few things underneath that piece of equipment.

It needed to be cleaned up, part of the job, part of the responsibility. Now, nobody would have seen that if I didn't do it, if we didn't do it, if we just left that night. Nobody would have seen that.

Next couple days, that piece of equipment might not have been moved, but there it was. The little thing wouldn't have been done. In my first job, I was maybe 15 years of age. I started working before I was 16.

I might have been 15 years old, and this guy I was working with taught me an important lesson in that response, in that job. Do the little things. Be faithful in the little things, and then you'll be faithful in the big things.

That helped me greatly in the years ahead. Let's be faithful in the little things that God gives us to do. They're on our plate. They're part of our areas of responsibility. Let's be faithful in those things as well.

Heavenly Father, help us to be faithful in every little thing that you give us to do. We pray in Jesus' name. All right, listen, have a wonderful weekend, and I hope you can make it to God's house and be faithful in the opportunities you have to hear God's Word and to worship with God's people and to really fellowship with the Lord's people on the Lord's day.

Have a good weekend. May the Lord bless you in it.