travelmonkey4christ

The third and last servant was Onesimus, or the “non-believer working for a believer” . Here is a servant, a non-believer, who is working in the household of a Christian. Although the name Onesimus means useful he is the opposite of his name. Onesimus is quite useless! He doesn’t do his tasks with skill or dependability, he steals and he plots. Whatever Christianity he is exposed to at his master’s house seems to have no impact on his life. Eventually he executes his escape and flees to freedom – a path that coincidently leads him to Paul. We don’t know how he first heard Paul speak. Since this is around the time of Paul’s house arrest, it is possible Onesimus simply got curious about a crowd gathered at an open window and joined in to listen. The result of listening to Paul’s message about Jesus is that Onesimus becomes a Christian himself. What a transformation! He did not simply have an intellectual assent to the Message, Onesimus experienced a total life altering transformatio...

Last Sunday I spoke about the Lesson of the Three Servants. Jesus said in Matthew 20:28 “The Son of man did not come to be served but to serve!” In the Books of 2 Kings ch 5. We get a glimpse of two very different servants. The second servant was Gehazi, or the “believer working for a believer”. Gehazi was the servant of Elisha the prophet. He represented outwardly the faithful servant – putting on a show both for his master and others. He was an Israelite so he knew about the Living God. Gehazi had witnessed the power of God through Elisha. But in this passage in 2 Kings we see Gehazi’s reaction to his master refusing the incredible riches offered to him by Naaman after he received his cure from Leprosy. Gehazi was incredulous! To just say no to so much wealth was unthinkable to him. He immediately hatched a plan to gain some of the riches for himself without his master ever knowing. Of course Gehazi’s concept of God was fatally flawed. Sure he understood God’s vast, incredible ...

Last Sunday I spoke about the Lesson of the Three Servants. Jesus said in Matthew 20:28 “The Son of man did not come to be served but to serve!” The question is what kind of servant are we? Whether we are a believer or non-believer we are all servants of someone . In the Books of 2 Kings ch 5. We get a glimpse of two very different servants. The first servant is a believer working for a non- believer. When I get to heaven, this is one of the first persons I want to find. She was a girl captured on one of the Syrian raids of Israel. We don’t know whether her parents also were taken, killed or still living in Israel. What we do know is she was taken to a foreign country against her will and forced to work in the household of the commander (Naaman) of the forces that attacked her homeland. She is in this position when she overhears her mistress lamenting about her husband’s diagnosis of Leprosy. Her response is one of the most amazing I have ever witnessed. Most of us in the same pos...