"In the Sevice of the King
" Sermon Transcript for July 1, 2001 By Reverend Mike BeckScripture Reading: Luke 17:7-10
I was so proud of Reverend Dan and his message last week. And when he came in to church this morning, I reminded him this was his one year anniversary here at Grace. How fortunate we are to have him serving with us. How much it means to me to have Dan sharing in ministry. I really like what he did with putting the empty chair up here last week. So throughout the remainder of the 50-Day Adventure where we’re talking about "Seeing the Unseen Christ", when you see that empty chair would you be reminded that the risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is right here worshiping with us today.
I’ve been impressed with the profound truths of this year’s adventure. That we see the unseen Christ in genuine worship. And if you want a litmus test of sorts of whether you are truly entering in to an attitude of worship, you are doing that if you are not very conscious of things around you. If you’re not watching your watch or thinking about the baby that may be crying two pews over, but you are simply caught up in the reality that we are in the presence of God. That we see the unseen Christ in that way. The second week we were reminded that we see the unseen Christ when we love others. In fact at the end of each day no matter what we may have done has been in vain if we haven’t genuinely sought to love other people including those who don’t love us back or aren’t as easy to love. And then, I don’t mind telling you Reverend Dan put me under conviction last week also. To remind us we’re going to see the unseen Christ when we renounce evil and embrace righteousness. And as I reflected on that this week I was reminded why that is true. For God is a Holy God. Such that whenever we are embracing sin or evil, we’re not going to be able to find God there. For God is a Holy God.
This morning, on Sunday number four, we want to explore this biblical principle--that we will sense the unseen Christ when we adopt an "Attitude of Servanthood". In fact, this empty chair over here, if we take the scriptures seriously, really ought more accurately to be a kingly throne. For I would remind you as you read through the scriptures, to see how often God is referred to as Lord and King. But isn’t it true that in our day we have difficulty relating to this image of a king. Or the relationship between a master and a servant. We have difficulty understanding in its fullest sense, the lordship of Christ. And therefore, we struggle understanding our call to servanthood.
To help set the stage for the message today, I would like for you to listen for just a moment to Reverend Mike Slaughter, Pastor of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, for what he has to say about this matter of servanthood and lordship. He says it so well. Watch this.
VIDEO CLIP: ...And one simple creed. Three words--Jesus is Lord. Now the Western church has really lost site of the meaning of the word "Lord". The church at the time of Jesus, it was a very clear word that was used often. If the word was used with a capital "L", it was used in relationship to Caesar. Caesar was Lord. It was the greeting on the street. "Hail, Caesar is Lord." It meant the one with absolute authority. If it was used with a small "l", it was in relationship of a slave to master. It meant owner. So the word Lord at the time of Jesus meant "absolute authority/owner". Now to many in the church we have a volunteer mentality. There’s no better example than in our Methodist Church on the Nominations Committee every fall when we’re calling asking people to help out in small ways. "We would like you to serve on the Mission’s Committee." "Well, what’s involved?" "Not much, not much." Right! "Just attend one meeting a month." We’re learning at Ginghamsburg Church that if you ask somebody to take out the trash and they ask, "What’s involved?", we need to say, "Everything!" Because Jesus is Lord. The biblical model is not volunteer. The biblical model is slave. Jesus said to His disciples, "So you also who have done everything you were told to do should say, ‘We are unworthy slaves. We have only done our duty.’" Sometimes it really blows my mind in the church when we kind of with pride say, "I chose Jesus to be my savior", and we give some date. Jesus looks at us, the church, and says, "You didn’t choose me. I chose you and appointed you and you should go and do my work! And you should go and bear fruit! You didn’t choose me, I chose you!" You and I are use to a democracy. You know, in a democracy it is nice. We participate fully in the decision making process. We get to choose what we are involved in or not involved in. Jesus didn’t come proclaiming a democracy! Jesus came proclaiming a kingdom. A kingdom has a king! A king doesn’t ask for my consent. A king decrees! Volunteer is the language of a club. Slave is the language of the kingdom of God.
Mike often laughingly shares, you retired pastors will appreciate this, that his greatest spiritual gift is the gift of irritation. That he reminds us all too clearly of some truths of God’s word that we really don’t want to hear. For we often come to worship or approach the church with an attitude, let’s be honest, "What’s in it for me?". Was your attitude as you came to worship today one of the "customer" to be served, or that of a "servant" coming to get your marching orders on how you can serve your Lord in this coming week! In fact, the last time I had the chance to hear Mike, boy he really hammered home! He said in the church most of our members don’t understand what baptism means. Here is his definition of baptism - "Dead, buried, and out of the way"! In other words, what I want really isn’t all that important. What does God want to do in and through me as His faithful servant?
In the book that some of you are reading, "The Unseen Guest", are these quotes. The author says, "A true servant of a good King doesn’t spend priority time thinking about whether the ruler is making him as comfortable and fulfilled as he feels he should be." His first question isn’t, "During this Sunday visit with my Lord, will all of my needs be met?" The author goes on to say, "If we can distance ourselves from the routine of church attendance to examine our motives for being here, we may discover self-centeredness to be our attitude." He concludes by saying "for many church members how they can serve Christ is the furthest thing from their mind when they come on Sunday morning". And, I don’t know about you but I have to kind of say, "Ouch!"
Well, enough for us being put under conviction. For there is good news within this message today. A first step in discovering that good news is to revisit for a moment this biblical image of "King" and "Master". For as we think about these words relative to God as revealed in Jesus Christ, we must keep firmly in mind the nature of this King. This King is not Slobodan Milosevic from Yugoslavia. This King is a loving king. This King is principled. This King is one who the words of the gospel song is true, "What a friend we have in Jesus." This King is one who invites us to address Him in the most intimate way. For Jesus said, "When you pray to your heavenly father use the word "Abbah", "Daddy"." This King is one who loves you and loves me so much that He was willing to die for us. This King is different. For when we look there in the Upper Room, we see that this King took off His Kingly garment, put a basin and a towel and went around and washed the feet of His disciples. Keep that image firmly in your mind, but at the same time don’t lose sight of this important principle. It’s in Christianity 101, "Christ does not give us the option of declaring Him Lord and King on our terms!" He is all the things that I just described. But if He is our Lord, He says, "It will be on my terms not yours."
And one of those terms is this, it’s non-negotiable, that serving Christ as our King means that we are to show the King’s love to others through acts of servanthood. In our Call to Worship this morning, I hope you noticed Isaiah’s response. First of all you saw that he encountered the Holy God and his initial reaction was to say, "Whoa is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among an unclean people." But I want you to notice where he ends. His encounter with the Holy God ends with an attitude of servanthood. The last words Dan read, "Here am I, Lord. Here am I. Send me."
Let’s examine for a moment the Scripture we read from Luke 17. For here Jesus uses the communication tool that we see often in Scripture. The Apostle Paul was very prone to use this tool. It’s the asking of a question or questions where the answer is very obvious in order to drive home the big point. And in the verses we read this morning there were three questions. Here’s the first one. Jesus said, "Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after his sheep. Would the Master say to the servant when he comes in from the field, "Come along now and sit down to eat?" And the disciples immediately knew the answer. They said, "No, no servant does that."
Question #2, Jesus said, "Would the Master not rather say to the servant, "Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink". And the obvious answer to that question is an unequivocal, "Yes." That’s exactly what would happen. Question #3, "Would the Master necessarily have to thank the servant for carrying out his job description?" And the obvious answer to that one is "No". If he got a thank you, that’s great. But the Master is not obligated for a thank you. For the servant is just fulfilling his duties. Which brings us to the main point of the story where Jesus said, "So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, "We are unworthy servants. We have only done our duty."
Now, I’d like to be able to see what’s going on in your minds right now. Because I’m sure a lot of you are thinking, "I don’t think I like this sermon." This is hard. It seems unattractive. And part of the reason for that is we live in a me-first generation that has no understanding of submission or servanthood. And it is true that in our age, if Dan and I want to get you to respond we’re not going to turn first to duty and commitment. For those are pretty foreign words, especially to people my age and younger. But hang with me now. For having said all that was said thus far, we’re going to conclude this message this morning in a very positive way. To illustrate my closing point, I’d like to be able in your minds to take you with Reverend Dan, and Steve Wakefield, and myself to a conference we attended a little over a month ago at the Willow Creek Church in Chicago. They must have had over 300 of their church members giving hours of their time to serve the needs of the 3,000 people who attended the conference. And we kind of shook our heads all weekend long for what we observed was, first of all, real sacrifice on their part. When we went to dinner, you know, they could have just had the plain table top. But somebody had gone to the trouble to put fresh flowers on every table. There was a spirit of servanthood. We were talking to one of the fellows who was at the door just answering questions of people and saying "Hi". And we discovered that he was a doctor who had taken a day off work to come stand at the door and greet people. But there was such joy among those people about being a part of a rather awesome thing that God is doing in and through that church.
In Lloyd Olgivie’s book, The Autobiography of God, in his chapter on this parable, here’s his title, "Beyond Duty to Delight". And then he begins to talk about all the ways in which it is a delight to serve God and be in His presence. And one of the verses he reminds us of in that chapter is Jesus’ words to His disciples after he’s gotten up from washing their feet. He’s given them that example of servanthood, but then he says to them, "I no longer call you servants. Instead I have called you friends." John 15:15. I’ve used this illustration before, but many haven’t heard it. It’s the best example of joyful servanthood I know. Some of you knew Dr. Richard Nay, one of the finest heart surgeons in Central Indiana. It was about 15 years ago and I was serving as the spiritual director for an Emmaus Walk down in Camp Pioka in Brownstown. And Dr. Nay was part of the team serving in the kitchen. At the last team meeting, Dr. Nay came up to me very apologetically and said, "I need to be gone for a few hours on Saturday afternoon, but I’ll get back just as quickly as I can." And he never told me why he had to leave. I found that out later. Do you know why he had to leave? He was going up to Methodist Hospital where they were naming a wing in the Cardiac Care Unit the Richard Nay Cardiac Wing. Some of you may have seen that plaque on the wall up there. He apologetically asks to be released for a few hours. But what does this man of God with such tremendous talent do when he gets back to Camp Pioka? Puts on his old clothes, puts his hands down in the dishwasher washing the pots and pans and fixing meals for the 40 pilgrims that weekend. But you see, Dr. Nay had learned the lesson of joyful servanthood. He had learned the payoff that we see the unseen Christ and experience the joy of being in His presence, not as we are being served, but as we are serving others.
We’re going to close the message today by playing "Name that Tune". Sarai’s going to play an old gospel song on the piano. You listen to the tune and see if you can name it. (Sarai plays tune.) I haven’t heard that for years. How many of you know the tune? It’s the title of today’s sermon, "In the Service of the King". Sarai’s going to play it through once more. Let me share the words with you.
I’m so happy in the service of the King. I am happy, oh so happy!
I have peace and joy that nothing else can bring. In the service of the King!
In the service of the King, every talent I will bring.
I have peace and joy and blessing in the service of the King!
Let’s stand and sing it together.
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