Sermon: Life Is Service (Part One)

Created to Serve
#1381
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 03-Jun-17; 68 minutes

Truly effective and worthwhile religion is supposed to answer the big questions of life. Unfortunately, too many people are looking for those answers elsewhere these days. Many who have been burned or disappointed or frustrated by false religions have turned to other places to look for the answers to these questions. The have looked to science. That is the big one these days, I think. But they also look to things like philosophy. Some go into some sort of spiritualism or weird New Age kind of religious type of thing.

What is popular in America to look for these answers is people like to go into politics or to think that they can get answers to their questions through politics, which is kind of silly, but they do not see anywhere else to turn so they end up frustrated and far off the mark because these substitutes for true religion are woefully inadequate to answer these questions satisfactorily. In fact, they cannot really answer these questions with any kind of certitude. And the proof we see is in the lives that these people end up living. They die, or I should say, they live pretty much amorally and selfishly, and then they die without sure answers. They die unfulfilled and without hope.

I want to go to Ephesians 2, verse 12 because Paul says something similar about the Gentiles here. But it applies to anyone who has not been called by God, those who are without Christ. I will just break into the thought here.

Ephesians 2:12 [He is talking about Gentiles in the flesh] That at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

That is how everyone is, not just the Gentiles, but even physical Israelites who have not been called. They do not really know God anymore and so they lead lives of frustration and die unfulfilled.

Now, the big questions that I am talking about are the ones like, who am I? Why am I here? What is man? What is the purpose of life? What was the first cause of things? Does God even exist? If He does exist, what is He doing? How should we live? Is there an afterlife? Those are the big questions (and not all of them). Those are only a few that I could think of off the top of my head. But those are questions that you cannot answer without somebody greater giving you an answer to it.

Thinkers have been posing these questions and trying to answer them for millennia and most have failed. Some have had the good sense to search their Bibles for the answers. But even most of those searchers or seekers, as they are called these days, have failed really to see what God is up to, failed to understand why He created mankind, and failed to grasp where everything is headed. They just cannot get it. There is an answer for this, of why they cannot get it back in the book of John in chapter 12, verse 40. It is at the end of a small passage where the gospel writer John here is showing that very few people believed Christ.

John 12:39-40 Therefore, they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: "He [that is, God] has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them."

What we find here, which Jesus quotes out of Isaiah 6:9-10, is that God admits that He has blinded mankind to these truths and He has hardened their hearts so that they will not even believe them if they are told them, lest they should turn, lest they should repent, and He should heal them. Now, that sounds strange that He would do that. But there is a reason why He has not done that at this time.

It is part of His purpose that He has, for the present time, purposely hidden the answers from them, revealing the answers only to a chosen few people whom He specifically calls and turns to Christ in order to save the vast majority of humanity at the proper time, at a later time. Because once they get this information, they have to do something with it. And if they have it and they reject it, that could be the end of them. And so He has decided that for the present time, He is only going to call a few to repentance.

But we know from II Peter 3:9 that He desires all to come to repentance. He wants everybody to be in the Kingdom of God. But He has a plan that He is working out here below, as Winston Churchill put it, and He is sticking to it despite the millions and billions of people who are seeking these answers and would really want to know them, to know the answer to these questions. But He is only giving those answers to a few at this time because that is part of His purpose. Because He could call more people to Christ and have a better success rate with them by doing it the way He is doing it rather than just opening all the floodgates to the world of all the answers to these questions.

So we have these millions and billions of people out in the world, each going his own way, each deciding for himself how he should live. And it is obvious where that is going. Just look at the world right now. Psalm 10 describes these people. We will read a little bit from Psalm 10 and then from Psalm 14.

Psalm 10:3-4 For the wicked boasts of his heart's desire; he blesses the greedy and renounces the Lord. The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts.

Psalm 14:1-4 The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one. [So the psalmist asks] Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the Lord?

Well, that is true. That is where God has put them at at this time because He has a purpose. And so we have a world that is chaotic and most people live in frustration and a kind of desperation, unfulfilled, anxious. I mean, stress is just terrible, especially these days as things get faster. And you know, things seem to be happening so quickly and there seems to be no answers. They are purposeless. And as we see in the world, in many areas of the world, they are without nobility and seemingly without worth. People just seem to be fodder, as it were, for the countless ways a person can die because they do not have any hope. There is nothing to live for. There is no standard that they live for unless it is their own.

Sometimes, just kind of as a joke, my tongue firmly in cheek, I am asked, "How are you, how are you doing?" And I say, "Alive and dying." I mean, that may be a little cynical and bleak, but that response could describe the sad course of most people who are without God in the world. They are living, but they are living a life that is only leading to death and nothing greater. The life is just a slow death with nothing sure, nothing certain to look forward to.

Unfortunately, this is true for a great many people in the world. So I asked the question, What is life for these kind of people? What do they turn to? What do they look forward to? What is their goal when they are cut off from God and they are basically on their own to try to seek a life for themselves?

Of course, you would get many, many different answers, maybe a unique answer for each person. But the Christians out there, those who call themselves Christians, they might say in all sincerity, "Life is a journey on the road to heaven," and they will pursue that with all that they have. Through the home school group that Beth and I are a part of, we know some (I will just use this word with quotes around it) "saintly" Protestant people. They put us to shame sometimes with their devotion to what they think is the truth. So they try to do whatever it is that they can.

But they are not called, they are not really converted. They are putting all of their human skills and abilities into doing what they believe God wants them to do. And so they have a little bit of a solace from doing that. But they are really not sure, they cannot really be sure of where they are going because God has not revealed it to them. Because even though most churches out there in the world teach that they are going to heaven, it is not true. It is not what the Bible teaches. Heaven is not the reward of the saved.

Remember that booklet from Worldwide Church of God, "What is the Reward of the Saved?" It is not heaven. This is firmly proved in that booklet. Our reward is the earth, an eternal life with Christ and ruling here on earth with Him, not heaven. But we have got to give those people credit for at least having a "Bible based," a kind of a spiritual answer to that question.

Then there are the movers and the shakers of this world. They, just to make it general, believe that life is getting the most wealth, or life is getting the most power, or life is getting the most position, or most prestige that they can get in their time upon the earth. They think that life is living in the grandest mansion and driving the most expensive or powerful car. Knowing the most impressive people, participating in the most important events, or being the one to make the big decisions. That is their goals. Those are their goals in life. Their lives are a constant pursuit of more, bigger, better, higher, farther, faster; of pushing the envelope. Generally, because these people are pursuing material gains, they have few scruples and they care little about the people that they have to run over to get where and what they want.

Some out there pursue a place in history. They think that if they put their names in the history books they will remembered and they will have a kind of immortality because of their accomplishments that are set in print somewhere. They want to be remembered for their accomplishments in politics, in war, in science, in literature, in art, or for their charity, for their great giving. They want to leave their marks on the world, to be thought of as the greatest of all time, to see their name in lights, to see their name splashed across a book or see their name over the entrance of a hospital or some college building. And maybe if it is engraved in stone, that people in later generations just might remember them because that is all they hope for, that there will be some sort of memory of them because deep down they do not have any real or certain hope of life beyond this mortal coil.

Most people, and this is where I put the average Joe and Jane of this world, those who are not among the great, those who are not among the super-talented and the rich, as Henry David Thoreau said, "They lead lives of quiet desperation." Let me give you the full quote of what he wrote:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city, you go to the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotype but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

There is more to it than that. That is all I wanted. But I wanted to show you that in contemplating life, that is what he concluded. That there is no real hope for anything, that we just are in despair, most of us, because we really do not know. We do not know what we should be doing. We do not know where we are going. We could say that Thoreau's statement is nothing but a restatement of Adam's curse back in Genesis 3. I would like to read that again just to make you familiar with it.

Genesis 3:17-19 [God speaking to Adam said] "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': "Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

Not much hope in that statement, is there? It is a life of toil and drudgery and frustration and then death. I have described it before as a man working out in a field and he is plowing and seeding and cultivating and then reaping, and then plowing and seeding and cultivating and reaping, and plowing and seeding and cultivating and reaping. And he does that all his life and he just keeps on doing it and keeps on doing it until he dies right there in the row. That is the kind of life that the curse of sin has made part of human life. Not much good comes out of that except a work ethic which we here in America are known for. We may epitomize this the most of all people, that we work and work and work and do not vacation very much. We just want to get ahead a little bit and maybe have a few nice things. And that is life for a lot of people in this world.

But as I said, that is life under the curse of sin cut off from God. It is a frustrating, futile search for meaning and you cannot have any answers that you can say, "Yeah, that's right." But when God intervenes in a person's life and reveals His purpose, it is truly like a light shining out of darkness. Life suddenly has significance. It has a purpose and it has a goal, a stupendous goal, one that we could never have realized just thinking on our own. We could not have figured it out. It is far greater than just heaven, which is actually kind of a murky idea of what the afterlife is like.

Catholics say that it is the beatific vision. You sit and stare into the face of God for eternity. That seems, even though it would be wonderful, it seems like there is not much going on. But you get the truth and the fact that God is a creator and He is creating sons and daughters to create with Him and continue creating, and to rule and govern and expand throughout all time, and there is a lot to look forward to. There is a lot to work for.

Once God unveils His truth, life, even as a human being, becomes truly worth living. It is no more that you are going to just die in the row and that is it. You may die. Yes, you will die. It is appointed for all men once to die. But there is something beyond that that is far greater than anything that people in this world have imagined that is humanity's purpose.

But, as we will see in this sermon, this great purpose and the great goal that we have for us, kind of flips the normal humanly-assumed template of how life should be lived. We think we have this great purpose and this great goal before us and the normal human mind would think that we have to do other things than what God wants us to do in order to prepare ourselves for that. You will see what I mean in a minute.

Several of the sermonettes that we have had during this 50-day count to Pentecost have mentioned that the 50 days symbolize our converted lifetimes. This is the time between our calling and the time that we die and await our resurrection. It is the time when the first green ears of barley grow and mature into the fully developed heads of grain, or if you want to put it in terms of your Christianity, it is the time between your calling when you are babes in Christ to the time that you die in Christ and you have matured along the way and overcome. This is the time that we become firstfruits. It is the time that we develop into firstfruits to be accepted before God.

During this time of sanctification, we are instructed in places like II Peter 3:18 to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Jesus tells us in the parable there in Matthew 13:23 that those who receive seed on good ground, which I am assuming you are all good ground, and I hope you are, but He says that if you receive seed on good ground, you should bear 30, 60, or 100-fold, which implies a life of growth in overcoming and development and producing fruit. That is our marching orders, to bear fruit worthy of our calling. And just as an aside, this in itself blows to smithereens the "once saved, always saved doctrine" or the doctrine of eternal security. Because that says that you are saved basically no matter what you do.

But that is not the way God works. Yes, He does save us by grace. But then He expects fruit to be produced in overcoming and growth. Let us go to John 15, verses 4-8. This is where Jesus talks about the true vine and the producing of fruit. I just want verses 4 through 8. And I think this may be the clearest statement in the Bible of this idea that we need to be producing fruit from the mouth of our Savior Himself.

John 15:4-5 [He says] "Abide in Me, and I in you. [meaning continue, keep with Him] As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. [So the only way that we can truly bear fruit is to be part of the vine, to be attached to Christ or as the New Testament often puts it to be "in Christ."] I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; . . .

So that is the way the relationship works. If we are working with Christ and Christ is working in us, then we are going to produce fruit. We cannot help it. If Christ is in us and truly working in us, then because of who He is, He is a creator, He always produces fruit, always produces good things, and that is going to transfer on to us because we are in harmony with Him doing His work. So we will bear much fruit, not just one or two or three along the way, as He said, 30, 60, 100-fold. We are going to be bearing a lot of fruit.

John 15:5-6 . . . for without Me you can do nothing. [He makes all the difference in the world in terms of producing fruit.] For if anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned."

This is pretty dire. If God calls you and then you are attached to the vine but you do not produce any fruit, you do not go any further along the line here, you are cut off, withered, and burned. That is not good. God says essentially here, Jesus says, "I don't want anybody who's not going to produce fruit." Because that is what God does. God produces fruit. He is a creator. He produces more and grows.

John 15:7 "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you."

So this is very clearly put into this section of Scripture to say, "Hey, you can come to Me and ask for help." If you do not feel like you are producing the kind of fruit, you do not feel like you are close to Christ enough, you do not feel one way or the other, whatever it is that you need help with, if you abide in Him, you can go to Him and ask Him for that help. If you need wisdom, you can go ask for wisdom. If you need drive, you can ask for drive. If you need perseverance, you can ask for perseverance, you can ask for strength, for faith, whatever it is, and God is going to give it to you because He wants you to produce fruit. There is no reason why we should not be producing fruit if we are in Christ. And so if you lack something, ask for it and He will give it to you because He is interested in the same goal that you are, in producing fruit. Finally, He says,

John 15:8 "By this My father is glorified, that you bear much fruit [So if you want to please God, you will be wanting to be producing fruit through your connection to Christ. And this does another thing. It says here at the end of verse 8]; so you will be My disciples."

This production of fruit is what causes us or proves that we are truly His disciples because we are doing what He does. He produces fruit. And if we produce fruit, then that is proof that we are with Him and we are part of His group, part of His entourage, if you will, that we are on the road to that. So if we truly desire to please and to glorify God, we will bear much fruit and prove to every and all observers that we are His people, we are truly disciples of Christ. So that is the goal to live in such a way as to make God happy, to please Him, to glorify Him.

Here in John 15, just a few verses down, we are instructed right after this about bearing fruit. He says love one another.

John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

John 15:17 "These things I command you, that you love one another."

Well, there is one of those things that if we love one another and produce the fruit of loving one another, that is going to please God. He is going to be very happy that His people are showing love for one another and are doing good for one another, are being kind to one another. That pleases God. Jesus then says in there that we are His friends if we do whatever He commands us. That also pleases God. When we do what He commands us, we are friends with Christ. Being faithful pleases God, edifying one another pleases God. Enduring to the end, pleases God, helping the widow and the fatherless, that pleases God too. Remaining free from sin and resisting the Devil, that pleases God a lot.

I am sure we could think of many other acts, many other traits of character that please the Father and hopefully by those acts and those traits of character that we are growing, producing fruit, and we will be, if we do those things properly. But in a way, those things that I just mentioned are all pieces and parts of a godly life. They are not the full picture, you may say, of how I would describe a godly life. It is not a unified description of the life of a Christian.

So I ask, what has God made us to be right now? What is our overall purpose in this life? What word describes what we should be doing? One overall, overarching term that all of these other things can fit under very nicely. Let us go to Romans 12, verse 1, if you will, and we will find this term here. I was here in my last sermon and there is a lot that can be unpacked from just these two verses of Romans 12, verses 1 and 2. And I only want the first one here. So Paul says to the Romans here, after he had given them a long series of doctrinal questions and answers that brought them to this point. And he is turning things around into a more practical discussion of what Christians should do. So he says,

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore [meaning since we have all these doctrines firmly founded and firmly understood, he beseeches them, he begs them, he gets down on his knees and he implores them], brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Our living sacrifice, the giving of our lives to God, to be transformed, as he says in verse 2, into the image of Christ. He calls it a reasonable service. What he means there is that it is only logical after all these doctrines that he has just said in the first part of Romans in the first 11 chapters there, it is only reasonable and logical and rational after what God and Christ have done for us that we spend the rest of our time in the flesh in service to Him. And think it through. He is our Master, does it not say there in the gospels that you call Me Master and Teacher, and so it is. (I think that is in John 13.) He is our Master and all that that entails. We are His doulos. We are His bond slaves because He is our master.

Masters have slaves in this culture that we are talking about here. So if we have a master/slave relationship, it is only reasonable that a slave should serve his master. Is that not right? If you are a slave and you have been properly purchased, which we have, we have been redeemed through the blood of Christ. He paid the most awesome price there ever was to purchase us as His, to redeem us from this world, to cover us from our sins and buy us back from the way of this world and from Satan the Devil, who was our master before.

So we owe Him our lives. He bought and paid for us with His life. And so we have this relationship with Him that is based on the master/slave relationship. And it is a relationship in which we must serve. We do not like that as Americans. We do not think service is a good thing. We like it when other people serve us and they do it with alacrity and cheerfulness. But normally the American mind is not set very well toward service. We want to be our own man or woman. We want to be the one calling the shots.

But that is why I said earlier that this flips the normal human template about how we should be living. We think we should be free to do whatever we want. But, and this is where it ties in with my last sermon on freedom, God says, "No." When you are free, like He has freed us, then the response is service to Him because He is our master and He paid for us.

Deuteronomy 10, please. This idea that we owe Him our lives and that we are supposed to serve Him has always been a part of the plan.

Deuteronomy 10:12-13 "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you [Now he is going to list his requirements of Israel], but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?"

Deuteronomy 10:20 [he repeats] "You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast and take oaths in His name."

As I said, this has always been the case when God makes a covenant with His people, whether it was Israel in the past, whether it was Abraham before them, whether it is us under the New Covenant. This idea is always a major tenet in the covenant. God promises to provide and protect and to guide and to rule His people, among a lot of other things that He has taken to Himself to do for His people. And the people in turn reciprocate by doing these things that He says here: by fearing Him, reverencing Him deeply, by obeying Him, by walking in His ways, by loving Him, and by serving Him. To serve God is to respond to Him as a servant, that is, whatever He says to do, we say, "Yes Lord!" and do it.

It means to participate in His work that He is doing, whether it was back then in the work of the priesthood or work of putting up the Tabernacle or even the work of crossing the wilderness. That was part of what He was doing at the time. For us today, it is doing different things, but we must always be willing and ready to do His will. And of course, it is also part of service to God that we help His people. That we, as Jesus put it in John 15, love one another, that we help one another, that we put one another before our own interests. That is also a part of service.

John the apostle says that if we say we love our brother and do not help them or do anything for them, then we are really hating them. We are saying we hate God. We really do not love God if we are not loving His people and serving them and helping them.

Let us go into the New Testament and I want to see variations of the same instruction from Deuteronomy 10 in a Christian context. I Thessalonians, the first chapter. He is talking here about the Christians that Paul knew in Macedonia and Achaia. And he says,

I Thessalonians 1:9 For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

So we too, like these Macedonians and Achaeans, have come out of this world. We have repented of our idolatry and our many other sins to switch masters so that now, rather than serving those idols or serving ourselves or serving whatever it was that we served before God called us, we now serve the true and living God.

Let us go to Hebrews 9, verse 14. He says something similar here. I will just start in verse 13 to get a running start.

Hebrews 9:13-14 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Very interesting that He said that we are purged there. Our conscience has been purged from dead works. The things we did before when we were serving other gods or serving ourselves or serving whatever it was that we served, those were dead works, they accomplished nothing. They were futile, they were worthless. But now we have been turned, we have been changed by God's calling and the giving of the Holy Spirit and all of this that Christ did for us here, and now we can serve God and our works are worth something. They mean something. But that is what He did. He turned us from this worthless work of service we were doing before so that now that we can do good, productive, and potentially amazing things as we serve God.

Back to the book of Romans, if you will. Romans the sixth chapter starting in verse 16. I went over this in my last sermon, but it is worthwhile to read it once more.

Romans 6:16-19 Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.

That is what we have been called to do, to serve.

On to the book of Colossians. This is all through Paul's epistles. He uses this metaphor a lot. Colossians 3, verses 23 and 24. He is actually talking to servants, those who were slaves back at that time. While they were in the church they were real manual slaves. He says,

Colossians 3:23-24 Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance [there is the promise that has been placed before us]; for you serve the Lord Christ.

And that applies to all of us whether we are truly slaves or not, that our service is done to Christ, for Christ.

Then back to Hebrews 12, verse 28. At the end of this, just tremendous bit of prose here, he says,

Hebrews 12:28 Therefore [concluding his thoughts], since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken . . .

It is a sure thing, it is a certain thing, it is out there on the horizon and Christ will come back and we will set it up and He will give it to us. We can be sure of that because that is the way God is. If He promises a thing, it is going to be done. If His Word goes out, it does not come back to Him empty. So it is going to happen.

Hebrews 12:28 . . . we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace [That is what has happened here. We have been given grace, we have been given the opportunity through Christ, which we do not deserve.], that we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

That is why we have been given grace. That is why God keeps bestowing grace upon us, so that we can serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. So that is the marching orders. And so, in the Bible, we have those who follow God and Christ and do His work called most often, servants. They are servants of God or servants of Christ or servants of the Lord.

The first to be called this in Scripture is Abraham. I am just going to go back to this one quickly. In Genesis 18 where he calls himself that, he recognized what was happening and what his relationship was with God.

Genesis 18:1-3 Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground and said, "My Lord, if I have now found favor in Your sight, do not pass on by Your servant."

Abraham, the father of the faithful, recognized that even though through him would come all these tremendous promises that were promised to him back in chapter 12, that he was merely a servant. If we go to chapter 26, verse 24 when God is talking to Isaac, He calls Abraham "My servant." I will just read this.

Genesis 26:24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, "I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham's sake."

So not only did Abraham call himself a servant, God called him His servant. Isaac is called the Lord's servant in chapter 24, verse 14. Jacob calls himself God's servant in chapter 32, verse 10. Moses is frequently called the servant of the Lord, not just in the Pentateuch, all through the Old Testament. Every time it seems they are referring to Moses, it is Moses, the servant of the Lord, which to me gives the reason why Paul in Hebrews 3, talks about Moses being such a faithful servant in God's house. Joshua is called the servant of the Lord in Joshua 24:29.

We could go through the Old Testament with Samuel, and David, and Elijah, and Job, and Isaiah, and Daniel, and Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel, and others that I did not name, all called servants of God or servants of the Lord. That was their title. God called them to be His servant and to do His will.

And when we go to the New Testament, whether it is the apostle Paul, the apostle John, and others, they all claim this seemingly lowly title of servant in the New Testament. How about back to the book of Hebrews. (We are doing a lot of running around here in the Bible, but that is a good thing.) Hebrews, the first chapter. I want to show you something that I think is amazing. It just never dawned on me until recently. In verse 14, in which the author of Hebrews, probably Paul originally, is speaking about the difference between Christ and the angels. But he makes a statement here that is very interesting.

Hebrews 1:13-14 But to which of the angels has He ever said: "Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool"? [He has never said that to an angel. He said that to Christ.] Are they not all ministering spirits [he is speaking about angels here] sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?

So the angels sent by God to serve those of us whom He is called to salvation have a title too. It is here called ministering spirits. That is just kind of a fancy, highfalutin way to say they are servants, they are serving spirits. They were created to be servants. From the very beginning, God made them to be servants and that is their full job title, servants of the Most High God. And they fulfill their roles wonderfully. I am talking about the righteous angels here.

Every so often we get asked why these righteous angels are not discontent about being created to serve us, these stinking, fleshly, weak, ignoble people. Why are there not more rebellions of the angels because they have to do servile work? Well, the answer is that these angels understand the glorious honor behind that seemingly ignoble title of servant, unlike Satan and his demons who chafed at service and wanted more. The righteous angels know, they understand, that service is the highest of callings. They like it. It is good, it is great work. It is fulfilling work and they do it without complaint.

How can I say this? How can I make that statement. Let us go back to the book of Acts chapter 3. (I am not going to go into chapter 2. I will leave that for anybody who wants to do that tomorrow.) Acts 3 is where Peter is preaching after he has healed the lame man there. He says,

Acts 3:11-16 Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed. So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people, "Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? [He is saying, "No, he was a servant." He was just one who is being worked through.] The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.

Acts 3:24-26 "Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days. You are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, 'And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.' To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities."

Acts 4:27-30 [this is Peter] "For truly against your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate [he is actually praying here], with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus."

So the angels were sent or were created to be servants, ministering servants, and their job chiefly right now is for us, that they serve us so that we can be in His Kingdom, God's Kingdom. And now we see that when Jesus came to this world as God in the flesh, He was God's servant, or better yet, as it is in chapter 4, Peter calls Him "His holy Servant." When He came to this earth, even though He was King of kings and Lord of lords, as Peter calls Him, "the Holy One and the Just, the Prince of life," he calls him all these titles, but when He came to this earth, He came to serve. Though He was God, though He was Creator, though He was the coming King of the Kingdom of God and the Holy One of Israel, He served. That was His job.

Let us go to Matthew 20 to see this out of His own mouth.

Matthew 20:20-21 Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from Him. And He said to her, "What do you wish?" And she said to Him, "Grant that these two sons of mine may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on the left, in Your kingdom."

Matthew 20:24-28 And when the ten heard of it, they were moved with indignation against the two brothers. But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

That was his purpose. When He came to this earth, He came to serve. He had no intention of ruling over people. Not when He came as a man. Certainly we could say, "Well, wasn't He the the master of the disciples?" Yes, He was. But as He says here, in that office in which He had authority, in which He was first among them, the greatest among them, He served them. Even though He was their master, He served them, which we find is the essence of godly leadership. That is what leaders are supposed to do under God, not to be served but to serve.

So when He came to this earth, He personified the perfect model of human life and that life is to serve. And as it says here, to perform acts of sacrificial love for others. And He left the perfect example of that of all time.

Now to Philippians 2, verses 5 through 11. This kind of jumped out at me within the last few weeks, since just before the last sermon. We go through this set of scriptures quite a bit, speaking about various things, but this is about Jesus Christ and His divesting Himself of a great deal of what it was to be God in order to come to earth as a human being. But I want you to notice the way Paul puts this.

Philippians 2:5-11 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God [He thought equality with God was not something to be grasped at, as one translation put it. He did not cling to it because He had a greater work to do in becoming a man.], but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Verse 7 is the one that I am mostly concerned about here. And this is the fact or the idea that jumped out at me those few weeks ago. And that is, that just as the angels we saw in Hebrews 1:14 were created to serve, just as Jesus humbled Himself to serve humanity and us individually, so mankind, in the lowly physical state that we are in, made of flesh that is corrupt and will die and have all those faults, was made to be servants.

Notice what he says here: that Christ lowered Himself. The theological term is that He condescended to become one of us. And what did becoming one of us entail? He had to take the form of a servant and come among us as a man. Paul, in verse 7, essentially equates three things here. There is basically three phrases that he strings together in parallel.

The first is being "of no reputation." That is, being no great shakes, not much to think about, not worth much. Basically nothing. That is kind of what having no reputation is or being of no reputation. It means He went from the greatest thing in the universe to being nothing. Hold on to "nothing." The second thing is that He took "the form of a servant." That is the second point that he is stringing together here in parallel. And of course, the third thing is that He came "in the likeness of men."

So you put these three together and it describes us. We are nothing. We are servants. We are men. What this tells me is that just like the angels, human beings were made to serve. That is the life that we have been called to, especially the life under God. Our current purpose as human beings is to serve. But, as we saw with the angels and as we saw with Christ Himself, service, if it is done God's way, is a wonderful, fulfilling, magnificent life. It is the path, as Paul says here, of Jesus Christ Himself, who came to serve. That was His job.

And where did that path lead? Well, yes, it led through the death of the cross. But where did it go after that? It led to God highly exalting Him and making His name above every other name so that everyone would bow at that name. Through a life of service is glory and exaltation and authority too. Did not Jesus call Himself "the way, the truth, and the life?" What was the life that He lived? He came to live as a servant, the holy Servant of God, as Peter called Him there in Acts 4. That is the Model we are to follow. And that is what John tells us in I John 2:6. "He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked." And He walked in constant service.

Let us conclude in Revelation 2. We do not often go to the letter to the church of Thyatira. They are called the corrupt church in my Bible here and they had their problems. They definitely had a problem with a too-intimate familiarity with false teachers and false doctrines. But it has a great deal here of commendation to the people who are faithful in Thyatira. And remember, it always tells us in each of the letters to take heed to the things that are said to the churches. So this does not apply just to Thyatira. It can apply to us as well.

Revelation 2:18-19 "And to the angel of the church in the Thyatira write, 'These things says the Son of God [Jesus Himself], who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet like fine brass: [He says] "I know your works [and He mentions then], love, service, faith, and your patience; and as for your works, the last are more than the first."

God Himself, Jesus Himself, commends them for godly works: love, service, faith, and endurance. Those are wonderful characteristics for a Christian to have. And it is no wonder that He pats them on the back for that. And it is also interesting that in the same letter, as it gets past their problems that He says,

Revelation 2:26 "And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations."

The same path that Jesus took, as we saw there in Philippians 2.

So, if I can just sum up what I have said today: those who live a life of godly service, learning to lead as Christ leads through service, will have a great reward in the Kingdom of God.

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