Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: Christian Calling · Talk No. 3
Called to Service
Sunday, 24 July 2005
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In the academic world the watch cry is publish or perish. If you do not publish research papers or journal articles at frequent intervals you are destined to have a very short academic career. It’s a good thing that I’m not an academic or my career would have been quite short lived. If you don’t count the column I used to write for the local rag in Mt Magnet or the weekly blurbs in our news sheet, I’ve only had three things published in my life. While I was out with BCA I wrote two articles which were published in “The Real Australian” BCA’s quarterly magazine and back in 1985 I had a one page article on Christian servant hood published in “On Being” a national Christian magazine that was popular at the time. They even had a photograph of my happy smiling face looking an awful lot younger than I do now. When I set out to prepare this morning’s sermon on the Christian’s calling to Service I dug out that article and what I am about to say is based mainly on what I wrote then.
The Christian, according to the Bible, is the one who has become a slave of Jesus Christ. If I call Jesus “Lord” then I am implying that he is my master, I am his slave, I am subject to his will and not my own. We like to water down the concept of slavery to servant hood because we don’t like the idea of being subject to someone else’s will.
Rather than having it clear in our minds what an enormous favour God has done for us, that’s grace, we tend to have some sort of idea that we have done God a favour by becoming a Christian. It’s OK to serve him provided it fits in, and doesn’t interfere too much, with all the other things we want to do.
The most common word in the New Testament translated Slave or Servant is douloV and which way you translate it is really just your choice. In 1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23 the Apostle Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians that they are now Christ’s slaves. They have been bought with or at a price. In Romans 6:15 to the end of the chapter Paul speaks of Christians being slaves of righteousness and slaves of God.
The primary characteristic of slavery is that the slave has to do what the master tells him, and in our modern lifestyle we find this offensive. I remember one woman commenting on this saying, “I don’t want to be told what to do. It’s mediaeval.” But in Philippians 2:7 we’re reminded that the Heavenly lord has taken upon himself the form of a slave. Jesus has become a slave for us. He came not to be served but to serve, and our response to this should be our own willingness to be his slaves and serve him.
Actually the reference in Matthew 20:28 to Jesus coming not to be served but to serve goes on to say “and give his life as a ransom for many.” We tend to think of ransom in the context of kidnapping but ransom is the redemption price of a slave. The money the slave has to pay, or someone pay on his behalf, to set him free. On the cross Jesus paid the ransom price to set us free from bondage to death and sin and so he now owns us. So we must ask ourselves: Whose slave am I? Do I really recognize Jesus as my Lord and Master? Can I say I am no longer my own, I belong to him?
To become a Christian is to acknowledge Jesus as our sovereign master, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, and to confess yourself to be his purchased possession, his slave. If we don’t acknowledge this our service of him will be a burden, a drag. Our reaction, instead of being willing obedience and glad service, will be resentment and rebellion. So is Jesus really your Lord? Are you serving him out of the obedience you owe him or are condescending to do him or the church some sort of favour.
Now let’s have a look at some of the characteristics of the slave of Jesus.
1. the slave is humble
Jesus humbled himself to be born a helpless infant in a stable; to live as a manual labourer in one of the smallest vassal states of the mighty Roman Empire. He humbled himself even to death on a cross, the ultimate humiliation. If our proud spirits shrink from humility, remember our mighty Lord, co-equal with God, went before us. There was no false gentility keeping him from mingling with the common herd, no fastidiousness which made him shrink from contact with the diseased and outcasts of society.
Jesus invites us to enter into a relationship of lowly, humble service with him. In Matthew 11 he invites us to “come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and my burden is light.” Jesus is not offering us freedom from all toil, but for us to be yoked alongside him. To serve with him. Although he is our master and we are his slaves, he is so humble that he is ready to serve alongside with us.
But we are not naturally humble. We are naturally proud, naturally ambitious. On the way to the upper room for the last supper, the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest among them. Jesus tells us that in his Kingdom the first shall be last and the last first; the leader is the one who serves. Then he gave them the object lesson of washing their feet. One of the most menial, lowly tasks done for them by their Lord. The disciples were arguing about greatness, not humility, and here Jesus gives them a dirty great dose of humility saying, “If I then your lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you then also, ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you. Truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master.”
2. THE SLAVE IS LOYAL
Loyalty is not exclusively a Christian virtue. Suicide bombers in Iraq are loyal to their cause, and we would consider them to be wrong. At the Nuremberg war crimes trials after WWII, loyalty to superiors was not accepted as valid justification for doing things that were wrong. Loyalty must stand or fall on whether the person, cause is just. And right. Loyalty then to some extend falls to the ground because the just or right cause merits support in its own right. Loyalty to God, to Jesus is really a positive expression of faith or trust in God and Jesus.
In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
In Matthew 8 we see the example of the Centurion “For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one,’ Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant,(There’s that word douloV again) ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” He understands that Jesus has the authority over all things. If Jesus is Lord then I must accept his authority. I’m not in a position to pick and choose, to discriminate between what pleases me and what doesn’t. There must be absolute loyalty to the plain commands of Jesus. One important thing to note is that the commands of Jesus will never require you to do something that is wrong.
3. THE SLAVE IS SELF-DENYING
In Luke 9:23-25 Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. 25What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” What is our attitude towards ourselves and our lives? Are we really concerned only for our own enjoyment, comfort, self-indulgence, wanting only sheltered security, refusing to hazard anything? Or is it Jesus first, Jesus last and Jesus everywhere in between?
Many things hold us back from the service of Christ. Family expectations, material possessions, prestige, career, pleasure, laziness. In the parables of the Kingdom in Matthew 13, the Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a treasure or a pearl where everything else is sold to acquire it and what about the parable of the banquet where those who are invite make up excuses “I’ve bought me a cow, I’ve married a wife, I must go and inspect the field I’ve bought” they put off the invitation to the Kingdom of Heaven for merely temporal things. Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.” Our Master knows our needs and he will provide.
4. THE SLAVE IS DILIGENT
We need to be careful when we’re opposing fanaticism that we are not really shying away from diligence. Or when we are supporting moderation that we’re not really defending sloth. One of the great objections the organized church had to the Wesleyan revival was that those Methodists were all so “enthusiastic” we can’t have enthusiasm – it’s just not done.
We need to watch that our holiness doesn’t become negative - becoming preoccupied with a whole string of don’ts. The Bible urges upon us a positive holiness - we’re not just told not to hater or grumble – we are rather to seek to love and be cheerful. We must be diligent – to give cheerful service to the Lord not just grudgingly out of duty.
This is particularly so in our secular employment. The most obvious sign of our Christian faith must be our diligence in our work. We must do everything as to the Lord.
Now let’s put some of these ideas together.
The Christian slave has his orders but Jesus is not a task master standing over us with a whip. We are free to be lazy. The slave of Christ is free and unsupervised. Being Christian is being free - free from the slavery to sin and legalism, but it is still slavery. The difference is that the motivation is not fear of punishment but gratitude and love.
In Deuteronomy 6 love of God is equated with obedience. In John 14 Jesus says, “If you love me you will obey my commandments.” In 1 John obedience to Jesus’ commandments is one of the true tests of whether or not you are really a Christian.
So we are slaves, we are in bondage to Christ, but it is a willing bondage – it is our own decision. In the Old Testament if you owned a slave you had to set him free after seven years. But at that time the slave could choose to remain a slave. If you chose to remain you were your master’s slave for the rest of your life. If you liked working for your master; if you liked the job security; you could surrender your freedom and enter into willing bondage. Our slavery to Christ is of the same kind. We didn’t have to choose it. It was our choice. But now we are in, we are obligated to serve. But the motive is love and gratitude, not just duty.
Let us pray.
