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Continuing our studies of Luke 12, this week are considering verses 35-48. Please read them every day this week and, if possible, use a different translation each day, asking God to open your eyes to fresh revelation from His Word.
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Luke 12:45-46 (NIV)
‘But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.’
I hope you don’t think I’m crazy by saying this but have you ever thought something and then immediately wondered whether you’d actually said it out loud?
There have been quite a few occasions where I’ve been walking back to my desk at work deep in thought and I look at my colleague unsure as to whether I’d actually verbalised my thoughts. I spend quite a lot of time in thought and there have been a few times where I’ve actually spoken to myself out loud. Sometimes, speaking my thoughts out loud helps crystallise the thoughts and help with concentration.
One person told me that he speaks to himself regularly because his wife stopped listening several years ago! I trust you’re not like that but I think it’s safe to say that most of us, if not all, have at one point or another spent some time talking ‘to ourselves’.
Our verse today starts with the phrase ‘the servant says to himself’. One older translation puts it like this: ‘The servant shall say in his heart’. The implication from this is that there is nothing being outwardly spoken. In other words, it’s something that the servant is thinking and that he is being serious about those thoughts.
Very often we see in the Bible that what someone says ‘to himself’ is as important as that which is said openly. I’m sure you remember the story of the lady who was subject to bleeding when she pushed through the crowd to meet Jesus. Matthew 9:21 says ‘She said to herself, “If I only could touch his cloak, I will be healed”. Earlier in this chapter, the teachers ‘said to themselves “this man is blaspheming”’ and the verse goes on to say that Jesus knew their thoughts.
Perhaps you think that what goes on inside your head is your own little private world. It could be that you consider your thoughts to be a private matter and can’t harm anyone. Well, if we can learn anything from our verses today, it is that our thoughts are not our own and can be read by Almighty God and in fact, we will be judged for them. The Scripture is clear when it says that ‘out of the heart of man proceeds evil thoughts’. What kind of thoughts was this servant thinking? They certainly were not pleasant, fun things! His thoughts are full of violence and drunkenness. He’s entertaining thoughts of beating up the servants, throwing his weight around and revelling in the excess of food and drink.
The catalyst for these thoughts is ‘My master is taking a long time’. The servant thinks that he’ll have time to do all the things that are in his heart and then change his ways before the master returns. This is the same theme as a couple of days ago, but this time it is being a little more forceful. My prayer isn’t that we keep our thoughts to ourselves, it’s to do what His Word says we should do: “Whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely – think on these things”. May we always strive to keep our thoughts in check and desire good things.
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