Luke 19:11-27

Easy-to-Read Version

Use What God Gives You^(A)

¹¹ As the crowd listened to what he was saying, Jesus went on to tell a story. He was now near Jerusalem and knew that the people thought it was almost time for God’s kingdom to come. ¹² So he said, “A very important man was preparing to go to a country far away to be made a king. Then he planned to return home and rule his people. ¹³ So he called ten of his servants together. He gave a bag of money^[a] to each servant. He said, ‘Do business with this money until I come back.’ ¹⁴ But the people in the kingdom hated the man. They sent a group to follow him to the other country. There they said, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’

¹⁵ “But the man was made king. When he came home, he said, ‘Call those servants who have my money. I want to know how much more money they earned with it.’ ¹⁶ The first servant came and said, ‘Sir, I earned ten bags of money with the one bag you gave me.’ ¹⁷ The king said to him, ‘That’s great! You are a good servant. I see that I can trust you with small things. So now I will let you rule over ten of my cities.’

¹⁸ “The second servant said, ‘Sir, with your one bag of money I earned five bags.’ ¹⁹ The king said to this servant, ‘You can rule over five cities.’

²⁰ “Then another servant came in and said to the king, ‘Sir, here is your bag of money. I wrapped it in a piece of cloth and hid it. ²¹ I was afraid of you because you are a hard man. You even take money that you didn’t earn and gather food that you didn’t grow.’

²² “Then the king said to him, ‘What a bad servant you are! I will use your own words to condemn you. You said that I am a hard man. You said that I even take money that I didn’t earn and gather food that I didn’t grow. ²³ If that is true, you should have put my money in the bank. Then, when I came back, my money would have earned some interest.’ ²⁴ Then the king said to the men who were watching, ‘Take the bag of money away from this servant and give it to the servant who earned ten bags of money.’

²⁵ “The men said to the king, ‘But sir, that servant already has ten bags of money.’

²⁶ “The king said, ‘People who use what they have will get more. But those who do not use what they have will have everything taken away from them. ²⁷ Now where are my enemies? Where are the people who did not want me to be king? Bring my enemies here and kill them. I will watch them die.’”