"Occupy til I Come"

Luke 19:9 “A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this [man] to reign over us. And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.”

This is the second half of my response to questions asked about the posting “Government Ordained by God”. Sorry I didn’t get to this part sooner, but things of life prevented me from getting to this as quickly as I had hoped I would, as the things of life often do when we are working for the Lord.

And speaking of “working” for the Lord, that is the meaning in Greek of the word “occupy”, rather loosely translated perhaps. The real meaning is to be in “business”, which fits right in with the end of the above passage, where the King returns and asks how his servants “traded” or “did business with” the things he had left them with in order to take care of His business.

Before I get back to the founding fathers and our response to evil, I want to show one more scripture that uses the term “occupy” and it actually means the exact same thing:

Exodus 38:24 “All the gold that was occupied for the work in all the work of the holy [place]...”

In this passage, gold was being “occupied” with producing certain items of glory for the house of God. Is it just me, or do you see a tremendous parallel between the items of gold that adorned God’s house, and we who are “gold tried in fire”? Just as that gold “occupied” or busied itself with or traded (exchanged) itself into items adorning God’s house, so are we to be busy adorning or glorifying God. We are the gold He has purchased. When we as His gold, glorify Him in the world, we are doing His business, increasing His kingdom. We are faithful servants, occupying until He returns with the kingdom that He is to receive for Himself.

What kingdom is that? It is the kingdom that is being promulgated in this world by God, called “the kingdom of God”. It is a kingdom submitted to Him and acknowledging Him [Jesus] as Lord. When all His enemies have been made His footstool (Mark 12:36 & Hebrews 10:13), then He will have received to Himself His kingdom, and then He will turn to us and say “Well done, good and faithful servant” or He will judge and destroy the unfaithful servants, just as He does in the parable above.

Dan. 10:5 “Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins [were] girded with fine gold of Uphaz”

I think we might be the gold that adorns Jesus in this prophetic view in Daniel; we might be the “fine gold”, having been tried, purged and refined by the master refiner Himself for the adorning or glorifying of His own Son.

Exodus 35:31-32 “And he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship; And to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass...”

Exodus 35:35 “Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, [even] of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work.”

So what tool has Jesus left us to do our work with? What money has He given for us to trade with, making good investments for Him in His absence?

He has left for us the Holy Spirit and all that He supplies. All the gifts (divine abilities) and knowledge and wisdom of the Spirit, all the power to transform lives beginning with our own, all the new life of Jesus living in us as a testimony to the world of His goodness, love and power, all the light of Jesus shining through us chasing away the darkness and exposing evil til it flees. Tools intended to help us occupy in the world, while not being partakers of it; just lights in the midst of it, salt to flavor the lives of those we touch, money with which to increase the Kingdom.

How are we utilizing these tools of our trade? Do we even know that we have them? These will be questions answered in our next study on Spiritual Gifts, but meanwhile, we must know that we have work to do.

Some of us receive these gifts from God and just sit back on our hind quarters and do nothing with them, content to have received the gifts, as though it was something He owed us, not really grateful to Him, not wanting to put ourselves out or discomfort ourselves in order to “use” the gifting in the manner in which He wanted them used. In our ungrateful hearts, we view God as a Judge, and so He will judge us accordingly, according to how our own thoughts and wicked hearts perceive Him to be.

The picture I have of the disciples of the new-born church of the New Testament is one of business. Paul, for example, went on endless journeys to far-away places, in all things led by the Spirit of God. He mentioned lacking sleep and going hungry. He taught so late into the night that a young man fell out of the window, died and had to be revived by the power of the Holy Spirit who was, thankfully, fully resident in Paul. He suffered hardships during this “occupying”, this business with the affairs of the Lord. Why are there so few similarities between us Christians these days and Paul? He even had a trade of making tents to support himself, in addition to everything else!

America’s founding fathers, who spent so much time in their Bibles compared to us, took this parable and others like it very seriously as well. Thus they were civic leaders, and political leaders, and preachers (preachers who were also political leaders), and all sorts of “occupations” in the world (but never “of” it), shining the light onto the darkness, thereby chasing the darkness away, as light will do. And from what I have researched, everywhere our founding fathers went, they took the light of the Lord Jesus Christ with them, not hidden away under bushel baskets out back in their barns, but out in the open, doing all that they did in society’s realm, according to the instructions they received from those Bibles that they read, and just by being obedient to the Lord, shining light and exposing evil and bringing about reforms, both to individuals and to communities, until America became the greatest nation on earth, blessed by God upon whom in every aspect of life, it was founded.

They took obedience to the Lord a lot further than we did. We are sometimes obedient in our homes, or on Sunday at church, but again referring to that book that I mentioned earlier, who are we when no one is looking, especially when other Christians aren’t watching us? Who are we in our business dealings in this world where it is politically incorrect to speak of God the Father or Jesus Christ, His Son and our Savior and Lord? Do those we work with even have a clue that we are Christians? Not because we have “preached” to them showing them our biblical knowledge (we are often full of good talk and bad example), but because our actions and reactions are totally contrary to the world and they are curious to know what drives us? How about those in our neighborhoods and communities? Do we shine the light of Jesus Christ into the lives of those around us? We don’t all have to become famous or politicians or civic leaders, but we have to be OUT in the world, witnessing lives being transformed by the power of the Word that we have delivered in deeds, as well as speech.

I think it was St. Francis of Assissi who said something to the effect of “Go out and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, using words if necessary.”

Well, I think that’s what the founding fathers did. And it made this a great country....at least for a while. But then Christians began to stop “occupying”. They took “separate” to mean “having no involvement in the world at all,” a distortion of the Word of God.

So what are we to do in the face of evil? Are we to stand idly by and do nothing? Not at all! Never! But whatever you do, don't go out and get busy just to be busy! That isn't what I'm saying here at all.

We simply go about being obedient to God IN THE WORLD. When the world begins to take note of us, those whose hearts God has prepared will come to us, the salt that flavors life so appetizingly, and ask where they can get salt like ours. We protect, and we defend, but we do not attack. Our “attack” is in our obedience to Him in all things. Our obedience sends His angels into battle against the “principalities and powers of the air”, in spiritual realms that we do not yet see clearly. Through our obedience He fulfills His Word in us and then in the world.

We are to always and continually be light and salt to the earth. We are to shed light that exposes evil, but we are not to be rebellious or lead rebellions. We expose the evil with the light of our OBEDIENCE (the light of Jesus within us which happens only when we abide in His Word and He in us), and we let the world decide, just as the Lord did with us, whom they will choose. We do not force anything on anyone anywhere (otherwise we become like those other religions who kill or persecute those who do not conform). In Christianity, that is where “grace” enters in.

I hope this sufficiently answers the questions about what we are to do. If you want to do a little study on your own, look up every use of the word “gold”. See if you can find yourself in those scriptures. We ARE the gold of the Lord. We ARE the money the King left behind to get the work done. How much MORE gold has been brought into the coffers of the Lord in His absence?

Thanks for the excellent and challenging questions. It was a wonderful time of research, study and learning for me. I’d love to see challenging, but sincere questions like this every week from which we all can grow! Keep up the work of being a good Berean! Apply this same technique to everything you see in today’s Christian culture, sifting the truth apart from the traditions, and you will be kept from the “leaven” of the Pharisees who exist even today in our post-modern churches. See you here again tomorrow, Lord willing.