Made to Serve

Sermon Transcript (Transcript starts at 20:22)
Who do you serve? A lot of us may be quick to answer that question.

Well, I serve Jesus. Right? And that’s fantastic. Right. But increasingly in our culture, increasingly in our world, when you ask people now, people may not come out and just say this, but if you were to really examine their motives, if you were really to examine their actions, and I think when I say this, you’re going to probably agree with me, is that increasingly the answer to who do people serve?

Is themselves, right. Do we see that in the world that we live in, people serve what I’ve heard called, and I like to call it myself, the unholy trinity. Me, myself and I. Right. We love to serve the unholy trinity.

And people can be so selfish in this world. It’s interesting to me, though, that the question of who you serve is also largely connected to the question of why you serve who you serve. In fact, the second question shines a lot of light on the first one, because people serve for a lot of reasons. People serve for. Yes, of course there are people that serve for selfless reasons, but people also serve for selfish reasons.

Some people serve for recognition, right? And I’m not saying that all recognition is bad, I’m just saying. But there are some people that, they just serve others to be recognized for the atta boy, for the atta girl. And that is a motive that’s behind our service. And I think we need to ask that question of not only who do we serve, but why do we serve who we serve?

I mean, are we serving God so that God will think more of us or love us more? I mean, that’s, you see where that kind of goes very quickly theologically and how that has impacts on our beliefs. It’s not all bad. Some people serve for good reasons too, right? Some people serve for patriotism.

Some people serve for a paycheck. That’s not wrong, right? Is it wrong to serve others for paycheck? There are people in service industries that have made a name for themselves just being good servants. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

To get paid to have a great career in a service industry, and to advance in your service, and therefore advance your name recognition in that industry, that’s not bad. But sometimes people serve out of guilt. Sometimes people serve out of obligation. There’s all sorts of different motives to serving. So why do you serve?

Why do you serve who you serve? What if the purpose behind our service, behind serving God and serving others? What if the motivation behind that was connected to who we were created to be? What if in our minds, we wrapped up our serving God and serving others to our purpose, and we recognize that we were made to serve? That’s what we’re gonna talk about today.

I’ll be honest, I’m probably not gonna tell you a lot of things that you don’t already know about service today. But I just wanna point out some things that maybe we haven’t put together to understand why serving matters, why serving God and serving other people is so important in our lives and in the lives of other people. So let’s dive in. First of all, what we need to recognize is that God made all things to serve him. He made the whole world we talked about.

We can go out into the hills and the hollers, into the mountains and out into the middle of the ocean, and we’ll see God’s creation giving him glory, bringing praise to him, because it’s so wonderfully made. And this is a thought that is all throughout the scriptures. Throughout the scriptures. You see this idea of creation serving God, that it was put in place by God in order to bring him praise and worship and to serve his purposes. So we need to start with that idea from the very beginning.

God established the earth and everything in it to serve him. The psalmist says in psalm 119, if you turn about to the middle of your bibles, you’ll find psalm 119. And it’s one of the longest of the psalms, and it’s actually a hebrew acrostic that takes us through the entire hebrew Alphabet and toward verse 90, 90, and 91. The psalmist writes this about God to God. In fact, your faithfulness continues through all generations.

You established the earth. In other words, God created everything, the earth and everything in it. And it endures. Your laws endure to this day, for all things serve you. All things serve God.

Everything in this world was created. Everything that God created was created to serve his purposes, including us. And so it doesn’t take long when we’re reading our bibles to see that God created the world to bring him glory, to bring him worship and praise. We’ve talked about this before, how God created us, how he created the world and everything in it in such a way that only a perfect creator could do. And as God creates, everything that is created, reveals his goodness and his greatness innately for us.

This is true because we’re created in God’s image, we’re created in his likeness, Genesis tells us. And so these things are even more true. They’re even more real in our lives when, and in the lives of the purpose of things. When they, when they are fulfilling that created purpose, they’re fulfilling their intended purpose. For example, in Genesis 215, we read that the Lord took the man, he took Adam, and he put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden to work it, to work in the garden, to take care of it.

And once God created human beings, he gave them a purpose. He gave them stewardship, dominion over his creation so that they could live and serve him and fill the earth and work it in a way that was honoring to the character of God. Now, there’s some interesting things that we can unpack just from that one word, work. When we reflect God’s character, we become servants of God. And that also has a spiritual significance and purpose to it.

Da Carson, in his commentary, talks about how that hebrew verb for work means a lot of different things. It’s the verb abad, right? And so it’s not all bad. Right? It’s all bad.

In Genesis 215, it’s similar to other verbs that describe later on in the Pentateuch, in the first five books of the Bible, in the law, the Torah, all the same thing. It describes what the priests did in the temple in service to God that the Levites did when they were offering sacrifices in the presence of God in the most holy place. It’s the same word elsewhere. It’s the root that comes for the word worship, for the word to guard, in other words, those who ministered and guarded over the entrance of the tabernacle and later on the temple after it. It’s the word serve.

It’s all contained in that hebrew word abad. And Carson summarizes that Adam had a priestly role to protect this garden sanctuary, that God had put him over as a steward, and he was to do it according to the character of God. In other words, for us serving and working and worshiping, they’re all related to one another, at least according to the Old Testament. We see that all of these ideas are related to one another, and they work together for God’s glory in our lives. We do all things in the presence of God, and when we do them for the purposes that he has set forth for us to do, when we live according to God’s purpose in our lives, then we’re serving God, we’re worshiping him, we’re working on his behalf, we’re guarding what he’s created.

It’s all the same in God’s eyes, and that’s what it means to be a servant of God, at least in the Old Testament. What about the New Testament? What’s the New Testament have to say? We can fast forward to the apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians, and he summarizes how all of creation serves under the authority of Christ, under the authority of Jesus. Paul says in Colossians 116, for in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

Whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. Created through whom and for whom? Christ. For Jesus. We’ve been created by Jesus through Jesus.

John one tells us that Jesus was there in creation and that he was there in that act of God creating the world. Jesus is the word, and he was there with God, and he was God, that he is God. And so when we serve Jesus, we’re fulfilling our purpose. Paul says that all sorts of powers, whether visible or invisible, in this world, were created through Jesus. And for Jesus.

Now, Jesus authority. If you read the Bible and you believe what it says, which I do, Jesus authority is unquestionable. He has all authority that’s been given to him by the father. In fact, he said that to his disciples, that all authority had been given to him. I mean, he’s God after all, right?

Jesus is God. He’s our creator. He is fully God and fully man, and so all authority belongs to him later on or elsewhere. In one Corinthians chapter eight, the apostle Paul writes about us as Christians. He says, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and whom we live.

And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. What’s Paul doing there? He’s equating Jesus with God. Now, Jesus, we’ve talked about this before. We talked in previous weeks how the Trinity, Father, son, and Holy Spirit are, how we understand God, that the father is not the Son, the Son’s not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s not the father, and so on and so forth.

But Jesus is God. He’s the one through whom and for whom all things were created. He is the one who all powers and all authority answers to and serves. He’s the one for whom and through whom we live. As we follow Jesus.

So who do you serve? If we want to serve Jesus, then it makes sense that we follow in his footsteps, that we follow him, because all of these statements are true. And it makes sense that we should look to Jesus to learn how to follow him. We should look to his example. And that’s because of another truth, that the God that we serve came to serve us.

Now, that is a mind blowing statement. Let’s just sit here in a minute. In that truth that the goddess whom we serve, the creator of all of creation, of the whole world and everything in it, who has all authority and all power, that God came to serve us, that’s mind boggling, isn’t it? Why would God do that? And inside me there’s this.

I kind of had this, this tension with that, right? Because I’m like, Peter, you know, you think about when Jesus went to wash the disciples feet, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But Peter protested because he’s like, no, Jesus, you shouldn’t be washing my feet. I should be washing your feet. And yet, how did Christ respond, unless I wash you, you have no part with me.

And so Jesus is the God who came to serve us. He’s the one whom we serve, but he came to serve us. And that is the gospel. That’s the good news, because we serve a God who doesn’t just sit high on his throne, although he has every right to just sit there and receive praise all day long. God could do that if he wanted to, couldn’t he?

Yet that’s not all that he does. He sends his son Jesus, to serve. To serve us. And that is the gospel. So how did Jesus serve?

How did the God who served, who serves us, come to serve? Jesus continually serve those in need. He fed the crowds. You think about this. The people that were following Jesus around, most of them lived in abject poverty.

They were starving. And so Jesus fed the crowds. But it wasn’t just about feeding a physical hunger. He also came to meet a spiritual hunger and thirst. He served that need as well.

Jesus served those who were ill by healing the sick. He served those who had lifelong disabilities by helping them be able to walk and see and talk. And Jesus served those who were marginalized in this culture, who were pushed aside, humiliated by lifting them up out of that humiliation, by treating them as children of God, showing them compassion and grace. And if we are called to serve as Jesus served, then all of these things are certainly not off the table. We should definitely consider how we can serve like Jesus served in these ways, as followers of Jesus.

Jesus not only led his disciples through an example, he also taught them how they were to serve others, including one another. One of my favorite stories about Jesus teaching his disciples a lesson on servitude comes in Matthew 20. And just to set this up a little bit of context, in Matthew 20 we see the mother of the sons of Zebedee. So James and John are, are. And James and John are there too, right?

So their mom comes up to Jesus and asks him a question. He says, well, ask whatever you want, right? And he kind of received the question. Obviously, Jesus knew what the question was going to be, but she asked Jesus, when you come into your kingdom, when you come into glory, can one of my sons sit at your right hand and one of my sons sit at your left hand? Now, this story to me is hilarious.

One, because I am a self proclaimed mama’s boyenne, right? So I love that they like, now, again, Mark’s gospel is like, James and John were there, but they sent mom to do their dirty work. That’s what’s happening here. I just want to be really clear about that. Right?

That’s what it sure seems like to me, anyway. They’re like, mom, go ask him. He can’t say no to her. Surely Jesus is going to say no to her. And so they send their mom to do their dirty work, right?

And she asks the question, loving mother loves her sons, right? And ask that question. And Jesus turns to them and says, asks, can you drink the cup that I’m going to drink, that I have to drink? Can you be baptized with the baptism that I must be baptized with? And what Jesus meant by that was that, yes, one day Jesus will come into his glory.

He’s already through the resurrection, he’s already entered into that glory, and he’ll return again in that same and even more spectacular glory. But Jesus will enter into his glory. But the path to the crown for Jesus is a path that leads through the cross. And so Jesus was teaching his disciples that for him there was no glory without self sacrifice, there was no crown without the cross, that the path for Jesus was a path that he had to take for our sake in order to take away our sin. And that is the servant heart of Jesus.

And so Jesus responds in this way. And the other reason I love this story in Matthew 20 is because as the disciples, the other ten, they hear the question that James and John were asking through their mama, right? And they hear it and they’re indignant. It says they had indignation. Right.

And I love this because it reveals what’s really going on. I don’t think they were indignant because the two disciples, James and John, asked the question. I think they were indignant because they didn’t think to ask it first, because it’s really clear that under the surface, all of the disciples were jockeying. They were fighting for position in the kingdom. They were fighting to serve themselves, to put themselves in positions of power over one another.

And so Jesus then uses this indignation of the disciples at the asking to explain the upside down economy of God’s kingdom, wherein the servant is considered great. In Matthew 2025, Jesus called them together and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave. Just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, Jesus says that self service, that selfishness, has no place in his kingdom.

That’s what the pagans do. That’s what those who don’t even believe in Jesus, that’s how they live their lives over one another.

They try to subject one another to their rule, and therefore this has no place among disciples of Jesus. Instead, God’s people should follow his example by being servants. But Jesus takes us to another level. The word translated as servants here is the same word where we get the transliteration for the word deacon. So if you know what a deacon is, it’s somebody that kind of, in our church is somebody that masters service, right?

They’re there to beat the drum of service in the church, right? Just constantly serving. That’s what our deacons are called to do. But Jesus isn’t talking about someone in a position here. He’s not talking about an office.

He’s not talking about someone that’s appointed. Instead, we need to back out our thinking. We need to realize that Jesus is talking to all of his disciples. And so, as we read this in the context of Matthew 20, what we need to understand is that every disciple of Jesus is called to be a servante, every one of us, despite a title. Now, yes, there are those who are called to be masters of that service, right?

And to lead others into that service, and we call them deacons. But what Jesus is teaching us here is that everyone who wants to follow the heart of Christ will serve as Christ served, because that word that we translate as deacon, it simply means a servant of a master. So who do you serve? Why do you serve?

Jesus isn’t talking exclusively to one crowd or another. He’s talking to all believers. All followers of Jesus are called to become servants of Christ and of others. But Jesus takes that idea even to another level.

He doesn’t stop with the idea of a servant of a master. He goes as far in verse 27 to say, whoever wants to be first in the kingdom of God must be a slave. Now, in our culture, in our world, we’re probably really uncomfortable with that idea of becoming a slave, aren’t we? Rightfully so. But what is Jesus doing here?

Craig Keener, in his commentary, writes that Jesus is inverting the role of master and slave. And this was so radical of him to do this. Even the few masters who believed that servants were equal in Jesus day, they would have thought that maybe theoretically they were equal, but they would never go as far as Jesus does here to tell people that they should become a slave.

And yet, Jesus was on a mission to give of himself. And in doing so, he went to the cross. He came to die for our sins. Jesus died on the cross in our place because of our slavery to sin and the call of a disciple, the call of a follower of Jesus, is to leave that slavery to sin and to become such a servant of Christ, such a servant of others, that it’s like being a slave to righteousness. It’s completely flipping the script, completely turning this economy on its head.

God’s people exemplify the servant heart of Jesus by dying to themself. We talked about that last week, that believing and trusting in Jesus as a disciple means that we must deny ourselves. We must take on a new identity, a new self in Christ. We surrender our own plans for the plans of our master. We surrender our own desires for his will.

We find satisfaction serving Christ Joy in serving others in his name. Perhaps the most familiar example of Jesus servant heart was when he washed his disciples feet at the last Supper, just before he was betrayed. There used to be a statue in front of what previously was the chapel of Lincoln Christian University, Lincoln Christian College before that, where I went to school, my alma mater. And it’s called the divine servant. And the statue is actually now down at Ozark Christian College down in Joplin, Missouri.

The school, Lincoln Christian College University, gave it to Ozark when they closed down their doors. But the statue was of Jesus in servants garb, a towel wrapped around his waist, washing the feet of Peter. And for years, for a long time, that statue became the banner for servant leadership at Lincoln Christian University. It became ingrained in the culture that we were being trained to be servant leaders in the name of Jesus. In fact, for a long time, graduates were given towels at graduation.

Can you imagine the change in the world? Can you imagine the change in the church? If we had? In our mind the most prominent image of Christ was Christ washing his disciples feet, can you imagine the change in our lives if that were so? Can you imagine the change in the world if the most prominent and most prevalently used tool in our tool belts as followers of Jesus was a servant’s towel in a basin, if we were just willing, figuratively speaking or literally, however you want to take it, to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters in Christ, how would that change the world?

It would be incredible. So Jesus gave his disciples this beautiful, humble example of how he loves us. He makes us clean. He calls us to serve in washing the disciples feet, an act that was typically left for the lowliest of servants in the household. In fact, in jewish culture, a jewish servant would never wash his master’s feet.

That was left for gentile slaves only. And so Jesus used again this example to teach his disciples about serving in his kingdom. John writes in John 13, when he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. Do you understand what I’ve done for you. He asked them, you call me teacher and lord, and rightfully so, for that is what I am.

Now that I, your lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly, I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. Keep this in mind that at this moment in the scriptures, at this moment in the gospel of John, in John chapter 13, Jesus knows that the time is near for him to go to the cross.

He also knows that Judas will betray him. He also knows. And he reveals that Peter the apostle would deny him three times that very night. And yet what did jesus do? He washed their feet.

He offered them cleansing. He served them knowing full well what was about to happen. Warren Wiersby writes, even in his humiliation, our Lord had all things through his father. The father put all things into the sons hands.

Yet Jesus picked up a towel and a basin. His humility was not born of poverty but of riches. He was rich, yet he became poor. Wierzby continues later on and says, you and I as believers know that we have been born of God, that we are one day going to God, and that in Christ we have all things. Therefore, we ought to be able to follow our Lord’s example and serve others.

Why do you serve? We serve because God created us to serve. We serve because Jesus gave us his humble example of servanthood to follow. But there’s another important function that serving fills in our lives. Serving others is the fruit of our lives in which Jesus advances the gospel through us.

It’s evidence of our lives being transformed in Christ. In fact, that’s another thing that we need to look at, the truth, that serving God and others is evidence of our transformation in Christ. Charles Stanley once said that God created you and purposed in you, that creation would be reproduced, that his life would be reproduced in your life. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable, the sheep and goats. He says that in the end he’ll come in his glory and he’ll sit on his throne to judge all people who will be gathered to him.

And he’ll separate the sheep who are the good people from the goats, who are the bad people to his right and to his left. And the object that he’ll use in that judgment was their service of others. Jesus says in Matthew 25, for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in.

I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when do we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When do we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?

When do we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. The interesting thing here for me, as Craig Keener points out, is that all of the actions that are taken here are identified as what the sheep are doing by Jesus the good shepherd. These are things that they are doing for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, Jesus says. Kennard writes that this passage probably refers to those who receive messengers of Christ.

In other words, this is a glimpse of how we’re to treat one another in the church. It means that the parable of the sheep and the goats is a window into how we’re supposed to live our lives as servants of Jesus among one another. We’re made to serve, and we’re made to serve one another in the name of Jesus. Serving God and serving others, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ, advances the gospel. It grows the church.

But we do have to be careful because we’re not only called to serve others in the church, we’re also sent to serve those outside the church. And in order to learn that, we only have to look at the example of Jesus again, who crossed religious and cultural borders to serve all of God’s children. In fact, James in his letter writes, religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless. Is this to look after your own right? That’s what James says.

Just to look after other christians. Is that how that reads? No, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Although the book of acts and in Paul’s letters, we do see a special consideration given to believers and widows in the church. We’re not called to only serve those inside the church.

It’s not limited to just other believers. Instead, when we serve one another and we serve others outside the church, the church grows. You were made to serve. So who do you serve? If you say you serve Jesus, are you following his example of serving others?

What does following the example of Jesus mean? For us today, where do we start? How could serving in your God given purpose, how could that change your life? When we serve like Jesus, we see lives transformed and we grow in our own faith as well. I can tell you countless stories of brothers and sisters in Christ who started serving others and serving.

I can tell you my own story about serving in the church and how they found this transformation to be real. We could look at statistics. Years ago, Christianity today did a survey of church leaders and volunteers, and according to their survey, over 60% of the people that responded said that the number one result of serving others is a sense of maturing discipleship. Among those who serve 60%, another third of the respondents said that one of the most prevalent results of service in the church was that people who were previously apart from the church became part of the church. In other words, people came to know Jesus.

Do you want to grow in Christ? Do you want to grow in your faith? Do you want to grow in discipleship? Do you want to see the church grow and grow in our God given purpose? Then we need to serve.

Serving God and serving others is evidence of our transformation, our transformed life in Jesus. It’s fruit that we bear from Christ in us.

Jesus went to the cross in order to serve the world by taking away our sin. We serve others because he first served us, and we serve God because that is our purpose for which we were created. So how do we serve Jesus? I want to give you a simple statement. If you’re going to take anything away from today’s message, it should be this, that we serve Jesus by serving others in his name.

We serve Jesus by serving others in his name. Maybe you’re thinking, Paul, I do a lot. I’m really busy. I even serve a lot. And I understand that.

And so I want to address that really quickly. Maybe you’re serving too much. Maybe you’re doing too much overextending yourself. Maybe you’re feeling burnt out on serving. I’ve been there.

So what do we do then? You have to fill the cup first. That’s one of the reasons, like I mentioned earlier, why I go out to a retreat every year to fill the cup, to sharpen the saw. You weren’t meant to pour from an empty cup. And so the first step that we need to take is a step toward Jesus.

We have to seek him first in order to be able to serve others without burning out. As my friend Jason French says, you have to sharpen the saw. You never waste time sharpening an axe. And so we have to sharpen ourselves think back to last week when we talked about the mountaintop. I have a cup, a coffee cup that says the mountains are calling.

And that’s kind of become my way of saying I need to go spend time with Jesus. Right? How many of us need to spend time on that mountaintop with Jesus so that we can go and serve in the valleys? Remember this also, your good deeds aren’t what saves you. So seek Jesus first, because he’s the one who saves you through the cross.

But how does that help when we find our joy in our Jesus first, then from the overflow of that joy, from the overflow of that fulfillment, we will find an abundance of ability to serve others in Jesus name. There are so many practical ways that we can do that starting today. And so I want to give you just a few. But I want to encourage you to pick just one. Pick one place to start serving God.

Here’s a few ways that you can serve. You can serve at home, see the needs of your family, and meet them in the name of Jesus. You can serve your coworkers at work by seeking unity and purpose and encouraging your coworkers instead of putting them down or going behind their backs or gossiping, you can serve them in that way. If you’re a student, you can serve at school. Look for the kids at school that don’t have any friends, that don’t have anyone supporting them, and then go be their support system.

There’s so much hurt walking through the hallways at our high schools and junior highs and our elementary schools. And so we can be a change in those places out in the community. We can serve just simply by seeing the needs of people and meeting them on the spot. You can serve here at the church. One way to do that is through our website, centrallive.net serve.

If you got the sermon handout today at the doors, that link is in there. You can find ways to serve here at the church. You can join a community that serves a small group. You can join in lifeline meal packing today. We’re going to talk more about that at the end.

You can join rooted and learn the importance and the purpose of serving as one of those communities. You can do one of those things today and imagine a church full of servants who are serving according to the heart of Jesus. Now imagine the transformation all across the world that would take place if people’s lives were changed because they saw the light of Jesus in us. There’s so much to do, but it just takes that first step. It starts with one loving act and then another and then another.

So my challenge for you today is to start today. Close your eyes. Think of one person who you can serve with the heart of Jesus today. Remember, Jesus served us first, so we serve like Jesus because we were made to serve.