We Are Servants
Sermon Notes
Intro
Good morning. I’m glad you were able to join us to worship and hear God’s Word taught this morning. Currently, we’re in the middle of a series that we are calling Saturate as we explore what it looks like to fully live out the Christian faith and live as instruments of God’s grace in our world. I want us to consider that word saturate for a second. Because, for many of us, our Christian faith more resembles a towel that we used one time to dry off after a shower than one that is truly saturated with water. You know what I mean? When you dry off after the shower, the towel is kinda damp or (if you don’t hate this word) moist. You could still dry stuff off with it, it still functions like a dry towel, you just need to hang it up and it will feel dry in an hour or so. But a saturated towel is a different animal. I had some leaking issues in my car recently, and one time I came out to find multiple inches of standing water in front of one of my back seats. So, I threw a couple towels down in there to soak up the water. Those things got saturated, and they felt like completely different objects. They weighed about 5 times more, there was water running out of them like crazy. I had to wring them out just to be able to hang them on my front porch. That’s the impact we want the Gospel to have on our lives and on the lives of those around us. We shouldn’t be content to be affected a marginal amount but to become something and someone totally different.
Zack started us last week on a little miniseries within this larger series about the various identities that we have because of the Gospel. We all know how important identity is to us and the great lengths that people go to in order to figure out and cement their own identity. So, if we can understand our Gospel identity it will go a long way toward helping live our lives as people fully saturated with the Gospel. Last week we talked about our identity as family with each other and God as our Father.
This week, we are going to look at our identity as Servants (not just in spiritual or church pursuits but all of life) and we will take our example from Jesus who is our ultimate Servant King. Because if you know anything about the life of Jesus, do you think that our world would operate more smoothly if we began serving people like Jesus served us?
Context: Go ahead and open your Bibles to Philippians 2, we’ll start in verse 1. While you’re flipping there let me remind you of what was going on in Philippians. The Apostle Paul wrote this book as a letter to the church in Philippi. He was actually serving a prison term while he wrote these words and, ironically enough, he writes about the joy and security that can be found in the Gospel even when faced with persecution.
Sermon Body
2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,
Paul starts with our call to be Servants in the Gospel. He starts out with this conditional statement. Now remember that Paul is writing this letter to the leaders of a church that he helped plant, so he knows that his readers are in fact Christians that they do experience encouragement in Christ and participation in the Spirit. So, we can rightfully read these verses as “Since there is encouragement in Christ…” and so on. He is establishing that because if we know Christ there is then something that we are expected to do or act like. This is why it’s so important to get things in the right order. If you are listening to this right now and you would say that you are not a Christian or you’re a skeptic or you’re not quite sure, understand that some of this is going to be hard if not impossible for you to live out. So, if you’ve ever found yourself scoffing at Christian morality or Christian living, I can’t blame you for that. Because you first need to understand who Jesus is, what He’s done for you, and what He is doing currently in the life of those who follow Him. So please don’t get hung up on the rules or the steps it takes to grow in a Christian walk, start out by investigating if you think Jesus really is who the Bible says that He is. Today’s passage of Scripture will be a great example of who He is. Focus more on Jesus today, then worry about what that would mean for you. But for those of you that are Christians, let’s now take a look at we should be like because of the Gospel.
2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
Remember again that Paul is sitting in a first century prison cell as he wrote these words. You would think that what would complete his joy would be getting out of said prison cell. But instead his joy would be complete if the church he planted had the same mind, same love, and were in full accord with each other. We read this and hear a call for unity, that Paul wants the church to really focus on cohesion and friendliness with each other. But this isn’t a call to some kind of blanket unity where everybody shares some kind of hive mind. He is calling them to have the same mind and love for a specific idea, a specific way of living Gospel saturated lives.
3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
So, a major part of our Christian identity, something that we are supposed to hold together with one mind, is that we would do nothing from vain conceit and that we would count others as more significant than ourselves. This is our servant identity in the Gospel. That we would take the spotlight off of us and serve others. Now this is hard for us most of the time. It rubs against our American identity or our 21st century identity of “look out for #1” or idea of getting yours and building an influence. Most people can find it in themselves to help someone out every once in a while, but counting other people as more significant than ourselves? That’s a drastic step, and it’s something that is supposed to play out in every area of our lives not just in “church” life. Of course, we try to point you toward areas of service within the church, because the body of Christ needs that, whether that’s leading parts of a Missional Community Group, greeting people on Sundays, serving in a kids’ class, setting up and tearing down the stuff on Sundays, or bringing a meal to a church family when they need it. There are ample places to act as a servant in the church but think of how many more opportunities you have to serve throughout the week.
We should be displaying this kind of servant identity across the full spectrum of our lives. Think of the impact it would make if you took the time to serve and help out your co-workers or employees in an area where they really needed it. What if, during those times, productivity and the bottom line weren’t the main concern, but instead, it was letting them know that you care enough to serve and honor them? If you’re a student in school right now, what would it look like for you to, instead of taking the easy way and going with the flow, help the student that is having trouble understanding the class you’re both in or being a friend and smiling face to the kid that doesn’t have many friends because either they’re new or kinda awkward? Do you think our culture would value Christianity more over time if what they saw all the time were Christians going out of their way to meet needs and make people feel significant? Being a Gospel Servant doesn’t mean never looking out for your own interests, but it does mean actively looking for places that you can put that aside for the betterment of others.
Like I said earlier, this isn’t an easy thing to do and it doesn’t feel natural for us. What I love about the Bible, though, is it doesn’t ask us to do these things in a vacuum or under our own power. Paul knew this to be true, so he pointed the Philippians to the ultimate example of servant living, Jesus himself.
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, (Emphasize the connection “in Christ”) 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
Paul holds up Jesus as the ultimate example of the servant identity of the Gospel. What’s incredible about this passage is that it should have been harder for Jesus to do this than it is for us. As prideful as we are sometimes, we know we’re not perfect, we know that we screw things up, we know that we are weak when we want to be strong sometimes. This isn’t and has never been the case for Jesus. He is fully God, all powerful, all knowing, worthy of all worship. He exists in the form or being of God. But he didn’t take that as an excuse to grasp onto it and never serve others. I love the image of grasping here. I think we confuse this word sometimes, because we usually think of grasping as an action of reaching out for something that we don’t already have. This isn’t the case with Jesus. Grasping for Him would have looked like a white knuckle, “you’ll have to pry this from my cold dead hands” grip on His power and position. But that isn’t what He did. Let’s see the alternative that you and I can also strive for.
7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Instead of holding on desperately to what was already His and leaving us to our deserved fate as selfish sinners, Jesus let it go in order to take on the form of a servant. One who for eternity was in the form of God took upon Himself the form of a servant. And he took it on to the extent that He was willing to die a terrible death on the cross for sinful people (sinful against Him by the way) like you and me. I think Jeff Vanderstelt says this really well.
“Jesus refused to grasp for the authority that was rightly his so that we, who continue to wrongly grasp for authority that is not rightly ours, might be forgiven. Jesus humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant, so that we, who have become slaves to sin through our rebellious pride, might be set free to serve God once again.”
This is what makes the work of Jesus so incredible. Because he would not have been wrong to simply hold on to his authority and power and punish us for our sinful lives. He had every right to do that. But, instead, He chose to serve us, so that we could be freed from sin and begin to serve Him and others again. He could live out what He said in Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Because He knew that we so often flip this dynamic and become indignant if people don’t serve us that way we want and give very little thought to how we can meet the needs of others. But let’s look at the end result of this servant mind and identity.
9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
What we so often fail to remember and disregard about the Christian life is this point right here. That Jesus’ highest honor came after His lowest act as a servant. That in the Kingdom of God the way up is down, that the greatest leadership is sacrificial service. It’s true of Jesus and it is just as true for us. If we truly wish to grow to be more and more like Christ, then our lives will need to reflect this same kind of selflessness. Our eyes won’t primarily be looking for places to increase our own power and influence but will be more and more attentive to the needs that we can meet around us. What Jesus did for us; He wants us to do for others. This is one of the primary ways that we worship and serve God. Paul said in Acts 17 that God is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything from us. So instead, He calls us to serve Him by serving His people. Let’s take a look at another biblical example. Let’s turn over to Matthew 25:34 and we’ll see what the evidence of following Jesus looks like.
34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers you did it to me.’
We actually see both aspects of our identity that we’ve talked about over these weeks. We see our identity as Family in the terms of inheritance from the Father, only family gets that. And we see the close connection of family. When someone serves a family member of yours, it feels like they’ve served you as well. And we also clearly see our Servant identity here. Since, God doesn’t need us to personally serve Him, He chooses to be served by seeing that His people are served. How gracious is that, that God would share in His glory and service by seeing to it that people are blessed in His name? If you’re a person that struggles with how to grow in your faith or how to best serve God, you need only to look around for how you can love and serve people. That’s how you serve God. Let’s talk through some of these ways practically and directly.
Material needs: We see the call to serve material needs. Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked. If you’re like me, you instantly start to think about the homeless person that you see at various stop lights around town. That’s a great place to start, but it’s not the only place. You can look closer to home as well. If you have kids in school, you can be on the lookout for classmates and families that have needs. Maybe there’s a child who would love to play in your football league, but the family just can’t swing the fee or afford some new cleats for their child. It’s an easy thing for you and some other families to meet that need and open a door to the Gospel coming to that family. It’s a simple service, but it may require many of us to pay more attention to our surroundings and look outside our normal circles to see the opportunity.
Social needs: Welcoming the stranger. Visiting the sick and the prisoner. Does your new neighbor feel welcome and know that you’re there for any questions or needs they have? Has the new hire at your job been invited to lunch or to hang out after work with you? Does the single mom in your neighborhood or community know that there you’re there to help her and that there are men around who would joyfully act as a surrogate father for her child to grow up with? Does that person around you who may be on the complete opposite side of the political/social/religious spectrum of you still know that you care about them and are willing to help with whatever needs they have? There are social needs all around us that some Gospel Service could have a massive impact on.
Spiritual Needs: This is the highest need we can meet and the one we most want to meet. But it often requires meeting some of the other needs in order to build that bridge.
Big Idea
If you and I want to lean into our identity as servants, we have to begin to see the world like a servant. We need to be vigilant to look for things that are out of place according to God’s will and move quickly to redeem them. (possible Downton Abbey reference, time permitting) The Big Idea for today is this: The work of Jesus’ service for us gives us no excuse to not live as servants. (Repeat).
We don’t need to guess or go searching for an example to follow. Jesus lived it out fully right in front of us. When we fail to live that out, we are rejecting His clear example and command. Kacy and I have been hugely blessed by the servant hearts of Christians in this church and elsewhere and I know many of you in this room have been blessed in similar ways. So, if we know that impact that it can have, let’s commit to open our eyes even more to the opportunities around us.