" 'IN' THE GROUP FOLLOWING JESUS "
Look Up: Matthew
25:31-40; Philippians 2:1-7
Sermon preached by Dr. Wayne
Poplin, Senior Pastor of
Carmel Baptist Church, Matthews, NC
INTRODUCTION:
As we come to the
fourth word in our Ministry Focus, SERVE, I am not going to give you some pep
talk and enlistment speech on serve. I don’t want to be a recruiter or a
cheerleader today. Rather, as your pastor, I want to help us grasp this
thought today: “I am a servant”—“I use a towel.” If we
understand that, the serve part will take care of itself, because servants
serve. I won’t have to rev up your motor and heap guilt on you to
get you to serve.
Let me tell you who the Bible says is a true servant—one
who wears and uses a towel. A servant is a person {1} who has received the
gift of God’s grace and {2} who is a follower of Jesus. [A servant does things
out of love that are costly to themselves but aim to bring temporal and eternal
benefit to others].
First, listen to what Paul said. Here is a man who
thought that he was serving God when was persecuting and imprisoning Christians.
But he wasn’t. He became a true servant upon receiving the gift of
God’s grace.
I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s
grace given me through the working of His power [Eph. 3:7].
He didn’t
become a servant because a preacher got him excited about serve or
somebody put him on a serve guilt trip. It wasn’t because Ananias goaded
him. He became a servant by the gift of God’s grace. Your
serving shouldn’t be tied to some pep talk I give but to what God did for you.
So how many today qualify on the basis of the gift of grace? If, you qualify as
a servant, then understand that servants serve. You should be using a
towel.
Secondly, a servant is a person who is following Jesus.
When God the Father wanted to send His Son here, Jesus said, “I’m willing to
go.” And He took on the very nature of a servant….
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 [Phil. 2:6-7].
Now, beginning
in the first verse of that same chapter, what does it say about us? If you
have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if you have any comfort
from His love, if you have any fellowship with the Spirit, and if you experience
any tenderness and compassion from Him—then—your attitude should be the same
as Christ’s. How many of us have any encouragement from being
united with Christ, any comfort from His love, etc.? All those who have
experienced these things should have the same attitude of Christ—who took on
the nature of a servant. If you qualify, you should be using a towel.
I want you to know that once Jesus took on the nature of a servant, He kept it. He was not just a servant in His earthly life. He is forever
the servant. Look at this verse.
It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when
He comes. I tell you the truth, He will dress Himself to serve, will have
them recline at the table and will come and wait on them [Luke
Jesus came and took on the nature of a servant. He was our servant when He
went to the cross. He is going to be our servant when He comes again. He
doesn’t stop being a servant. Neither do those who are following Him.
Neither do God’s graced people and changed people. They are always
servants. They don’t put it on and off. They are always servants.
You can spot servants. They use a towel. They do nothing out of
selfish ambition. In humility, they consider others better than
themselves. Each of them look not only to their own interests, but also to
the interests of others [Phil. 2:3-4].
They are
humble. They serve with no need of applause or awards. They do not
get upset when someone doesn’t serve them, when people don’t cater to their
ego, whims and ideas.
We find that kind of servant in Matthew 25, where Jesus says to those on His
right, “’Come, you who are blessed by my Father….[vs. 34]. Those He
addresses respond this way:
Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you
something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or
needing clothes and clothe you?
By their
astonishment, they show how far their thoughts were from merit. They were
so unassuming. They had forgotten their works. They trusted in His
grace and had become servants by His grace. Serving was natural for them.
And they ask, “Lord, when did we see you thirsty, sick, in prison, a
stranger, needing clothes,” etc.? Jesus said, “Well, it wasn’t
literally me. But when you served even the least, you served me.”
A servant understands the sphere of service. You use the towel everywhere.
He doesn’t consider the one being served.
E.g. We do chores around the house. The work is in the field.
As servants we do chores in here [have assignments—I want everyone to have an
assignment] and we do work in the field. Use your towel in here and
use it out there.
Jesus wanted His disciples to understand that they were servants. They
were a little slow getting it. The night in the upper room when He used a
towel [John 13], He was the only one willing to use a towel. The disciples
were still in “rival” mode. Mrs. Zebedee had not helped there any with
her requests for her sons [Mt. 20:20ff.]. It was a pride-saturated room.
Here is a service Killer. They thought of themselves as a little better
than the others. They weren’t going to humble themselves and wash the
other’s feet. When Jesus started doing it, they thought, that would have
been a good thing to have done. But it was pride again, because they
relished the attention they would have gotten. Pride makes it hard to
serve and hard to accept being served. The problem with kingdom work is
that the great I AM is surrounded by little I ams. That night, they did
not view themselves as a servant. But they eventually understood it.
And later on, they were spotted using a towel.
You can spot a servant. They carry and use a towel.
You don’t have to tell them to be a servant. They just are. They
have the attitude of a servant. They are the ones who pick up a piece of
trash on the carpet, rather than pointing it out to someone. They are the
ones who pitch in without anyone saying anything. [Trash in WC—coffee
cups in rooms—this is your house, your church, your room]. And they are
always a servant, regardless of where they are.
So many of you understand that you are a servant.
What would happen if we all used a towel? Wow! Every need in
this church would be taken care of. Every post would be covered. And
the witness of Christ to our community and world would be powerful. That
will happen as we grasp who we are.