Life Together: Serve One Another

We are in our second week of our Life Together series – trying to navigate life in community, to live out what God has called us to be.  Last week we encouraged one another; how did it feel to seek people out to encourage them?  I thought it was great; before I’d even left this building, I saw you rushing to encourage each other.  It was good, and I hope you keep it up. 

What kinds of things did you do to encourage others?  Did anyone come up with anything creative? Did you use words, or did you think of other ways to encourage as well?  One of the most encouraging things that I saw actually didn’t come as a response to last week’s message. Back in January, I preached a message in which I included a story from the late Mike Yaconelli, in which a young woman in his congregation, in response to a sermon about God’s unconditional love, decided they ought to have a welcome dinner for the carnies.  Well, that stuck with some of you, and you decided that we could do the same thing. 

I love that you automatically went to “how can we serve, too?” It encourages me to see you taking a message that I preached or an illustration that I shared and then running with it, allowing God to lead you to serve others.  That’s our topic today as we continue doing Life Together: Serve One Another.

In our culture, service has become anachronistic – a relic of a bygone era.  Who remembers when there weren’t “gas stations” but “service stations” – at the same place where you bought your gas, someone could also fix your car?  And you didn’t pump your gas; it was “full service” where someone came out, pumped your gas, washed your windows, checked your oil, and took your payment, right there at the pump. 

We all like good service – when we’re at a restaurant, when we’re dealing with customer service, when we’re at home, or even when we’re at church.  While there are some people who are gifted in serving one another, for the most part we experience the opposite.  People aren’t clamoring to serve.  In fact, more often than not, people are clamoring to be served.  People want positions of authority and power, not so they can serve others, but so they can have other people do that for them.  In Matthew 20, we find James and John’s mother coming to Jesus and asking him to give her sons positions of authority in his kingdom.  At that, 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.” Matthew 20:25-28

Did you get that?  Jesus ascribed greatness to those who serve.  I think we sometimes forget this; we emphasize gifted people who are pastors, teachers, or musicians, and we forget that true Christian leadership is servanthood.

Paul reminds the church in Galatia to serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (Galatians 5:13b-15). Serving one another is what it means to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus didn’t just talk the talk; he walked the walk. Jesus didn’t just tell us to serve; he showed us.  As Christians, our goal is Christ-likeness, which means we are supposed to act like Jesus Christ!  He is our perfect example of serving. Philippians 2:6-8 reminds us that Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!

Remember that Jesus did this for us while we were still sinners.  He didn’t wait until we’d gotten everything together.  Because of this, Jesus can tell us to (literally) “go the extra mile” – to even serve people we don’t know or don’t like. Why?  Because we’re not merely serving them; we’re serving Him.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a story about the end times, when He will separate people as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.  He will pronounce those on his right “blessed” 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. (Matthew 25:35-36).  When they questioned as to when they had done this, he answered,I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

It should be clear to anyone who has read the Bible at all that servanthood is central to the message of Christianity.  But there are pitfalls to avoid when it comes to service.

The first pitfall is when we miss the point.  There are people who go overboard in serving.  They are always serving, and they have a great heart for serving, but they miss out on what God has for them because they’re always serving.  In Luke 10, Jesus went to the home of his friends Mary and Martha.  In fact, we read that Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42) 

Some of you know what Martha felt like; you’re always serving, and you’ve missed the “one thing” that is needed.  You serve so much that you don’t spend time at Jesus’ feet, worshiping Him, adoring Him, listening to Him.  And what’s worse: you get resentful and mad at the people who are sitting with Jesus.

Now we’ll get to the second pitfall, which I’ll call “me.”  This comes when you serve for the accolades.  You make sure you pick the most visible area and time to serve.  Make sure it’s not the late shift; it’s got to be when everyone is there.  “Then they’ll see me working and they’ll be all impressed at how awesome I am.”  Or you serve in an area just long enough to say you’ve done it, but then you tell everyone all about it. This goes hand in hand with giving to the needy: Jesus tells his followers not to announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men.  I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.” (Matthew 6:2) Instead, we are told “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Which reward do you want?  That people know you did something good, or the reward God has for you?  Don’t make service be all about you.   Quite the contrary: Ephesians 6:7 tells us to Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men.
               
The other part of the me pitfall is when you simply expect others to serve you. We get this a lot in churches; somehow, somewhere we get the idea that the church exists to serve us.  After all, we’re the ones who pay our tithes (or, for some, our 1%), so we ought to get something out of it.  We adopt a consumer mentality and expect people to do things for us and then we’re confused as to why new people don’t come and participate.

The third pitfall to service is manipulation.  Simply put, you serve someone just to get something.  You want them to behave in a certain way, so you go out of your way to be nice to them.  You do stuff for them, you go out of your way to serve them, and then you get really mad when they don’t change.  I hear that all the time when it comes to divorce; one member of a couple works their tail off to serve the other, only to see their partner continue doing the same thing they’ve always done.  And the reaction by the partner who is going out of their way to serve?  They’re devastated.  They’ve got these expectations: “I’ve done all this for you; I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty, couldn’t you at least…”

We don’t serve people to manipulate them, to get them to do what we want them to do.  Our service isn’t predicated on how they react. 

Instead, as 1 Peter 4:9-11 reminds us: Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve one another, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.  If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God.  If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.

When it comes to serving one another, hospitality is how Peter describes it.  Some people talk about “Southern hospitality” and I’ll be honest; when we lived in the south, we found this: people are really nice to you on the street, they’ll stop and talk to you in the grocery store, but don’t expect to be invited over to their house.  Southern hospitality only goes so far.  I’ve found this is true in the church as well.  Most of you already have your family and friend structure around you; you don’t need someone else in your circle.  My sister used to call it “breaking into a church” – you’ve got to be an insider to be inside.  This just isn’t a biblical model of hospitality or of serving one another.  I know people who still feel like they’re outsiders after living in town for years and years – because small town hospitality only goes so far. 

Some of you have benefited from the hospitality of others, and you’ve never reciprocated.  And worse, you’ve never even said “thank you” to those who have been so generous.  This is the command for all of us; to offer hospitality without grumbling.  And Peter goes on to say this: whatever gift you have, use it to serve one another. 

In other words, for the Christian, every single gift should be used to serve one another.  It’s not to pad our egos or to make us rich or famous.  That’s not God’s call whatsoever. The goal is this: so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. 

When we serve people, and when people see us serving, they’ll probably initially think “those people are just really nice people” but then they’ll realize that, yes, you are nice, but there’s something more.  They’ll realize that the reason we serve is because of who Jesus Christ is – and our service will reflect our God.  The Holy Spirit is always working to glorify God, so if your service is truly godly service, empowered by the Holy Spirit, that’s what it will always do: glorify God.  Not us. 

Many people have turned away from Christ and from the church when they’ve seen us inward focused and having forgotten to serve.  In his book Forgotten God, Francis Chan asks an important question: “On a scale from one to ten, how much do you love the church? As you look around at your sisters and brothers, do you think to yourself, I love these people so much. I pray God empowers me in some way to encourage these people toward a deeper walk with Him? How much do you care? The Holy Spirit has given you a supernatural ability to serve the people God has placed around you.  If God cares enough about His church to give you this Spirit-empowered ability, shouldn’t you care enough about the church to use that gift for the same purpose?” (p. 86)  He goes on to ask this: How would you be missed if you left this place?  What would change? What difference does your presence here make? What would the church look like if everyone was as committed as you are? If everyone gave and served and prayed exactly like you, would the church be healthy and empowered? Or would it be weak and listless? Forgotten God, p. 91

So, how would we be without you?  Or if everyone served like you do?  God calls us to crucify the flesh – to choose the way of the Holy Spirit.  To realize that we were not meant to be ruled by our fleshly desires and passions (like anger, self-indulgence, immorality, etc.), and we allowed God, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, to remove the central role that these things had in your life.

That’s why Paul can write this in Ephesians 5:21: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Christian service is always submitting to one another.

You might be wondering how to do this: First of all, service starts in your home.  If you are married, your first commitment, after your devotion to God, should be your spouse.  Look for ways to serve your spouse this week.  Maybe it’s just something little, but look for those ways.  If you are a parent, you already serve your children – sometimes you feel like a slave instead of a parent.  If you are a child, (and I’ll define that as “living in your parents’ home”), find some way to serve your parents this week. 

Secondly, service continues in your church.  Many of you already serve in awesome ways, in front of the crowd and behind the scenes. If you’re not serving, find an area where you can.  Find people you can show hospitality to.  Maybe someone who is new in the community or the church community.

Third, service must move outside the walls of the church.  If we were meant to be a closed little group, limiting our service to only “us and ours” would be fine.  But we were meant to be a light in the darkness – to share Christ with the world.  When people look at the Church, they are supposed to see Jesus.  This is why our food pantry is so important.  This is why it’s important to participate in Vacation Bible School.  This is why serving at the Foundation Dinners is important.  Because people won’t usually just see Jesus in a vacuum.  They’ll see Jesus when they see His people serving them, showing them His love.

As we go, let us serve one another – as God commanded us.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas Eve: Jesus is Hope, Love, Joy, Peace

Life Together: Live in Harmony with One Another

The Lord's Signet Ring