The Lord says that there will no more be false prophets in
the Land, the people will have discernment concerning such things and will not
tolerate them. Even mothers and fathers
will kill those who would prophesy falsely or in the name of another god. They will be forced to lie concerning their
wounds because these were part of the worship practices of idolaters. They will say that friends did this to
them. Finally, there will be a good
shepherd who is struck down and the sheep scattered, some will be saved but
others will not. Even the third who are
saved will be purified in the fire of affliction and suffering and emerge as the
Lord's own. There is no promise of a
general, complete salvation or of a carefree life, both those are lies.
The parable here is slightly different from the other
synoptic Gospels. When the man goes to
receive the kingdom, some of the people send a delegation to tell whoever is
giving the kingdom to him to refrain from doing so because they hated the
man. The rest of the story proceeds with
the giving of stewardship to three servants, two of whom provide a return on their
trust and are rewarded with more and one believes the master to be a hard man
who reaps where he doesn't sow and so he simply protected the principal to
ensure there was no loss. He loses all
entrusted to him and it is given to one more faithful. Then, the master orders his enemies to be
rounded up and destroyed. Are we being
faithful with what we have been given or are we protecting it by playing too
close to the vest and taking no risk?
Paul's prayer for the Ephesian church is that God will
"give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him." Is there anything better anyone could pray
for us? We should be praying it for one
another every day, that we will be a people of wisdom and knowledge of Him. Such a people would indeed reject false
prophets and would correct the notion that HE is a hard man who reaps where He
doesn't sow. We would be a people who
had true wisdom like Solomon and we would be known among men as wise. If we would know true wisdom we would keep
our eyes on the wisdom of God, Jesus the Christ.
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