The Discipline of Serving

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When we are properly motivated with a heart to serve and a heart to love other people, God’s people can make a huge difference on the world that we live in. As you’ve just seen in the video that we shared, we don’t always think about the impact that God’s people can have. What we think about and what we see sometimes are, I come to my small congregation and we’re few in numbers and we don’t have a great deal of money and we don’t have a great deal of manpower.

But folks, God uses us and God equips us to do what we can in our little corner of the world with the lives that we can touch. And He uses His people in other churches around the world to do the same thing. And through all of that, God uses His people to make a tremendous impact on the world.

Just by each of us taking care of our portion of what he’s given us to do. I love the old saying that talks about, and I don’t remember exactly what it is, I love it so much, I don’t remember the exact wording of it, but it talks about keeping the world clean by everybody keeping their front porch clean. And you’ll notice when it came time for Nehemiah to rebuild the wall in Jerusalem, it wasn’t a massive building project of, oh, we’re going to do all these, he gave everybody their part of the wall to be responsible for.

And God does the same thing with us when it comes to our service, when it comes to ministering. When it comes to ministering to other people, God gifts and equips each of us in a certain way to do the small task that He’s given us to accomplish. And He uses us in that small task, and He uses me in my small task, and He uses you in yours, and He uses the church up the road in their small task.

And all combined, God uses it to do something incredible. Now folks, I won’t deny that there’s been a lot of bad stuff that’s happened in the world as a result of people who have claimed the name of Christ without really having Him in their hearts. Or maybe they did and they were just misguided, but who’ve twisted Christianity into something it was not supposed to be.

And whether that’s the Catholics in the Spanish Inquisition, whether that’s the Congregationalists in the Salem Witch Trials, You know what, there were some good Baptist preachers whose books I’ve got on my shelf who I found out were members of the Ku Klux Klan back in the 20’s. A lot of evil has been done by people who have twisted Christianity into something that it’s not. And that’s what the world sees until there’s a problem.

Because you see, there’s been far more good that has come out of God’s people than there has been bad. God has used His people when properly motivated with a heart for service God has used his people to accomplish great things and to turn the world upside down. And we can go back to the very beginnings of Christianity we can go back to the times of the early churches in the Roman Empire and see that slavery ended in the Roman Empire in large part because of Christian influence as it grew in the Empire that the demeaning and the degradation of women ended in the Roman Empire because Jesus came and taught something radical that women, just like men, are created in the image of God.

The murder of children by and large ended until the modern era because of the influence of Christianity. Do you know in ancient Roman times and even into the Middle Ages that when a plague would strike, people would realize that they could catch the plague. They didn’t realize it was from germs and such.

But they realized they could catch the plagues from other people. And so many times they would drag the sick and the dying out into the streets just to die and leave them there. And it was the Christians, ladies and gentlemen, it was the Christians who went and cared for the sick and the dying in the streets at risk of their own lives.

And many of them died giving care and meeting needs of people who could offer nothing in return. in the Middle Ages it was the church facilities that were hospitals, that were places of sanctuary, places of refuge, in times of sickness, in times of war. Do you know that most of the earliest universities in America were founded by Christians?

As strange as it seems today, given the culture and the climate of things, there would be no Harvard, there would be no Princeton, there would be no Yale, there would be no Brown University, You know, none of them would exist without Christians because they started as places to train ministers to preach the gospel. How far we’ve come. But their influence on society began because Christians cared about educating people in the truth.

Slavery and the slave trade were abolished in the United States and throughout the British Empire because of Christians. You had the Christian abolitionists in this country. You had people like William Wilberforce, if you’ve seen the movie Amazing Grace, who fought to abolish slavery because they saw a need.

These weren’t property. They were people created in the image of God. And their Bible taught them that, and they believed it.

And so they went out, and at great personal cost to themselves, they went out and fought this evil until it was gone in the name of Christ. And 100, 150 years ago, there was prison reform in this country where people were just stacked together like cattle. And it was the Christians, by and large, who came along and said, yeah, they may be criminals, but they’re people. There was prison reform in America because of the Christians.

We had orphanages, and we had hospitals. The Salvation Army, you may not realize it until you think about the name, the Salvation Army was started by a couple of Methodists who wanted to serve the poor who were not being reached even by their own church. The Salvation Army, the Red Cross, was started by Christians.

We’re still feeding hungry people around the globe and taking care of the sick and the dying. I recently listened to some interviews with some people who’d gone in during the last Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. You know the one that kind of spread here and was a little scary there for a little bit.

And talking about the total lack of infrastructure in some of the backcountry parts of these nations like Liberia. And the government didn’t have infrastructure to take care of the sick and the dying. And a lot of the non-governmental organizations didn’t or couldn’t or didn’t want to go in there.

People said it was the churches. It was the missionaries. It was the Christians who showed up and cared for the sick and the dying.

And that Ebola outbreak was stopped. We had disaster relief. Heard another interview with somebody whose home was flooded in Louisiana recently.

And I said, we didn’t see the government for days and weeks. We didn’t see the big companies and we didn’t see the insurance adjusters. They said, we saw the churches come in and help us rebuild.

And I say all this to you this morning to point out the impact that we can have. And you may be sitting there this morning thinking, I’m just one person. I don’t have a lot of money.

There’s not a lot I can do. If all of God’s people do what God called us to do, it adds up to something big. Back in 2013, there was a huge tornado in my hometown of Moore, and I was living in Arkansas at the time.

I was actually back home visiting my parents on vacation when the tornado hit, so good thing I didn’t have to miss that. I went home, went back home to Arkansas, just devastated about it, and our little church up there collected money and disaster relief supplies. We collected shovels and rakes and all this stuff.

And we took a team of seven, I believe seven men, back a month later to help clean up. You all have seen the devastation. If not in person, you’ve seen it on television.

What could seven people really hope to accomplish? We were there for three days, and we helped one lady clean up just the massive piles of stuff in her backyard that she couldn’t lift on her own. And we helped bulldoze one house.

teamed up with a family from Texas who had a skid steer, and they’re breaking down this house that was about to collapse, and we’re pulling big piles of rubble to the street. There wasn’t a whole lot in the grand scheme of things that these seven people, these seven Christians from a church in Arkansas could accomplish. And yet we saw churches there from Arkansas, from Texas, other places in Oklahoma, Missouri.

We saw people from the east coast and from the left coast. They were all there. And God’s people were a big part. We each did something small.

One day we just drove around handing out Gatorade to volunteers, to other people who were working. You know what? God used a lot of people to do a lot of little things, and it added up to something big.

God calls us, ladies and gentlemen. God calls us as believers, as Christians, to lives of service. We’re going to be in 1 Peter chapter 4 this morning.

God calls us to lives of service, not just to help people. I mean, it’s great to help people. Don’t get me wrong.

but it’s not just to help so we can feel like we’ve helped and we’ve been big helpers today you know my kids are sort of motivated by that can you help me clean the bathroom sure they want to be helpers it’s a good thing for us to help and it’s a good thing for us to serve people but our calling is not just to help them so we can feel like we’ve been helpers our calling ladies and gentlemen is to demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ to other people the Bible talks about us being the body of Christ talks about us being His hands and His feet that Jesus is not physically here with us in the world anymore and that’s not if you’re thinking that’s heresy Jesus is always with us okay yes He’s always with us He’s with us spiritually but He resurrected from the grave in bodily form He came back to life in his body and then he walked around for 40 days and then he said, I’ve got to go back to my Father.

And if I don’t go, then the Comforter can’t come. And so Jesus in his physical form ascended back to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit in his stead who now indwells us. And so it’s true that Jesus never leaves us or forsakes us because he sent his Holy Spirit.

And yet he’s not here in physical form to minister the way He did during those three years that He was on earth. That’s our job. Can we do miracles?

Not on our own. I can’t do a miracle. I would love to, but I can’t put my hand on your head and heal you.

I believe in faith healing, but I don’t believe in faith healers. If God wants to heal you, He can heal you, and He can do it miraculously. I don’t have the power to hit you with my jacket, and you’re healed.

I would love to, but I can’t do that. I can’t raise the dead. There are some people that I would like to go back and raise.

Except then they’d probably be mad at me for me making them come back here. I’d love to be able to raise the dead. I can’t do that.

I’m not Jesus. But as far as ministering to people and serving people and meeting needs and touching lives, He’s not here in physical form anymore. He’s left us behind with that to be our job.

We are His hands and feet. We serve, not just so we can feel good about ourselves because we’re helpers. We serve because it’s our job to demonstrate His love to other people, to show other people how much He loves them, and to glorify Him here on earth.

Starting in chapter 4, verse 7, Peter’s writing to the believers who’ve been scattered throughout Asia Minor, which is now Turkey. They’ve been scattered, and they’re about to get scattered more. Things are about to get real heavy.

in the Roman Empire. And so he’s telling them about how they are supposed to live. Because it would be really easy for them with all their problems they’re having and about to have, it’d be really easy for them to get inward focused and just focus on what I need to do today for me, to put me and my family in the best possible situation.

But he reminds them, starting in verse 7, but the end of all things is at hand. Be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves.

That word charity there means love. The Greek word there is agape, meaning God’s kind of love. A self-sacrificial, I don’t care what you can do for me, I’m going to do this because I love you and even if you can’t do anything for me in return.

A self-sacrificial love, he says have fervent charity among yourselves and he says have that above all. Your first motivation, your first instinct, your first thought in the morning is not how can I protect myself How can I put my family in a better position to deal with the struggles that are about to come? He said, your first thought, your first motivation is love amongst yourselves.

What can I do to serve you? What can I do to demonstrate the love of God? He says, charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

Use hospitality one to another without grudging. We know what this is. Sometimes you have people come over to visit your house and you offer them whatever you have to offer.

And I like to show hospitality when I can. If you ever come over to my house and you leave hungry, it’s your own stinking fault. Because I will cook way too much to make sure that you are not hungry when you leave.

There are some times, though, that people will come over. My family will come over and we’re going to do hot dogs, we’re going to do hamburgers. I don’t necessarily want to share everything that I have.

And there’s sort of a running joke with Charlie’s mom that when we’re having hot dogs, I don’t put out my good Whataburger mustard that I bought from Walmart. I put out the 98-cent bottle of stuff. I don’t want to share that, okay?

I like that. Bring your home. So if you come and I put that out, feel special. After something was said about it, though, how can you never let anybody have the Whataburger mustard?

I started putting it out so I didn’t look like a bad person, but I didn’t want to. I gave hospitality grudgingly. I didn’t want to share that.

Now that’s just a teeny tiny example. But what he’s telling us here is to love other people and give generously and give sacrificially and take care of each other and don’t do it because I’ve got to or nobody else is going to, so I guess it’s my job. We should take joy in giving generously and taking care of one another.

As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Now, if you’re like me, you’ve read this passage up to this point and you get to verse 10 and you say, the gift, what gift? Because the phrase the gift sort of implies that he’s referred back to it.

So I’m digging all through chapter 4 and could not find, what is he talking about with the gift? So I go look at the Greek with my very, very elementary understanding of the Greek. And it doesn’t say the gift.

It says as every man has received a gift. So when he says here the gift, he’s not saying that, okay, there’s a gift I’ve already talked about and as you’ve received that, as everybody has received this gift, use it. What he’s saying here, what Peter is telling these believers is that God gives each of you a gift.

See, the gift here is not the gift that oh, you’ve all received the gift of hospitality. Use it. No, God has gifted each of us in some way and it may not be the exact same gift.

Now I love showing hospitality if I know you. If you’re at my door to sell magazines, I may not answer it. But I love if I know you or have some connection, I love to show hospitality.

Some of you may think even if I know you don’t come to my door, I don’t want to see anybody. Some people don’t have the gift of hospitality. Some people have the gift of teaching, others not so much.

Some people may have the spiritual gift of mercy. I don’t feel like that’s one of mine. I have to work at that one.

God has gifted each of us in specific ways. And as we’ve received our gift, whatever it may be, as every man has received the gift, even so minister the same one to another. So the idea here that Peter is putting across is that God has gifted each of us with something, at least one spiritual gift, at least one way that God has equipped us for ministry and we are supposed to take that and we are supposed to use it not to enrich ourselves, not to better our lives, but we are supposed to use that gift to serve other people.

And it’s that simple. Minister the same one to another. We’re supposed to serve.

He says, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Now here the word manifold means in many ways. That we are to be good stewards of the grace that God has given us in many ways.

We think of the grace of God as being salvation. I ask my children about grace and they talk about Jesus dying on the cross. Because that’s what we’ve talked to them about.

But we also talk about, I’m going to give you grace. I should wear you out for lying to me. But I’m not going to this time.

I’m not going to give you what you do deserve. I’m going to give you more than I’m going to give you better than what you deserve. That’s grace.

And there’s not one of us in here who has not received the grace of God in that way. I guarantee you God has blessed you beyond what you deserve when he says the wages of sin is death that means that what I earned for my sin for my behavior, what I earned from God what I deserve from God is for him to strike me dead and one day I will die but I will have deserved death a whole bunch more times than that, I will have deserved death every day and yet my heart is still beating, that is the grace of God I have a loving wife and beautiful children. That is the grace of God.

I have a wonderful church family. I have a home. I have a vehicle.

You know what? Even the poorest among us are more blessed than most people in other countries. God has given us tremendous grace and Peter reminds them, be good stewards of it.

God’s grace didn’t end at salvation. Now that would be enough. That would still be the greatest gift that anybody has ever given.

But God says, wait, there’s more. There’s more. And so God has given this, He’s just lavished this abundant grace on us.

And He’s equipped us and He’s given us gifts to serve and to minister. And Peter says, you be a good steward of that. You be a good steward of that.

You use that for God’s glory. He says in verse 11, if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. This is not oracles like the oracle at Delphi.

If you’re familiar with ancient Greek stories where they would go in and they would bring a. . .

They would have these priestesses who would stand there and inhale the vapors coming out of the earth. That sounds like a good idea. Inhale these noxious gases and go into these trances and they would tell people their future, supposedly.

That’s not like that. The word oracles does mean sort of a word from a deity. And so they believed that the oracles of Delphi, these women, were speaking on behalf of the ancient Greek gods.

When the Bible refers to the oracles of God, it’s talking about God’s revealed word. The Bible talks about the oracles of God being committed to the Jews, meaning the earliest Christians recognized that the Jews were given, they were revealed in the Old Testament. Those were God’s words given to the Jews, and that they had been the guardians of that.

And so when it’s telling us here, if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God, Peter is reminding these Christians and saying, you go out and you speak on God’s behalf. But don’t speak on God’s behalf and say the things that you want to say. You speak what God tells you to do.

We still have that same opportunity because we have the oracles of God as well. Now, God doesn’t speak to us in a verbal way in general and reveal new things to us. But we have the oracles of God right here.

We have God’s written word right here. And so we can go to the world and say, this is what God says. No, no, that’s just your opinion.

No, this is right here. You can see it in black and white. I’m not making it up.

It’s from this book. This is what God says. Everything in here is not my opinion.

Because there’s some of these things that are hard. There’s some things in this book. If I can just be honest with you, there’s some things in this book I’d rather not talk about.

There’s some things in this book that it’d be a whole lot easier if I didn’t have to follow. And that’s true for all of us. But it’s God’s Word.

And it’s the standard. And we’re supposed to speak where God tells us to speak. So he says, if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God.

As you go out and as you minister and as you serve, he says, don’t be afraid to tell people this is what God says. And we hear that and we think sin. We’re confronting sin.

We’re confronting sin. That’s part of it. But there’s more to it than that.

Go out and share with people the hope and the good news and the comfort and the peace that God promises. See, we can promise people the peace that passes understanding. We can promise people eternal life through Jesus Christ. We can promise people the comfort of knowing that there will be a time where He will wipe all tears from their eyes and there will be no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain.

We can promise those things with certainty because they’re not our opinion. They are there in the oracles of God. It’s what God says.

He says, take God’s word and go minister to people. If any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth. In other words, as you go and minister and serve, don’t try to do it in your own power.

God has equipped you and God has gifted you. Go do what God called you to do. There are things that I am not able to do that God has called me to do.

And then he gives me the ability to do it. I remember when I was a sophomore in college I was sitting there in an 830 class on the third floor of Kauffman Hall at OU. And one morning I felt like God was telling me I needed to go do short term mission work in Quebec.

And I was in a French class by then. I had studied it all through high school. It was my college major, but I was much better in writing it.

The speaking, I’m still kind of shaky sometimes at speaking. And on top of that, Quebec French is not like French French that I’d studied. Sort of like the difference between Southern English and British English.

We might as well be speaking a different language. But God called me and told me I needed to go there. So I called the missionary that I’d be going to work with, We made arrangements for me to go up there.

I got off the plane, couldn’t understand the people at immigration. Fortunately, they had to speak English too. So, got there, had trouble understanding the missionaries.

They’re natives from that area. And I said, I’m sorry, I had trouble understanding your accent. I told them this in French, and they said, we don’t have the accent.

You have the accent. Okay, yes, you’re right. I’m the foreigner here.

I have the accent. It’s my problem. And that was a rough few days at first. Because even though I spoke some French, I didn’t speak the language there.

I couldn’t communicate with them. But I prayed, and I prayed, God, help me do this. And I was plain sick on top of it, air sick, whatever you call it.

Miserable first couple of days. And I prayed, God, what did you send me here for? Help me do what you want me to do.

And we were going out door to door in these little villages outside Quebec City. And I noticed after about day three or four, suddenly I understood people. I understood one of the missionaries when he was talking.

And I said, did you say that in English? He said, no, that was, I said that in French. I thought I heard it in English.

I’m not talking about speaking in tongues moment here or anything, but it was like I understood him in English. And going out as we’d go door to door, there was a group there from Missouri as well, and none of them spoke French. We’d go out and suddenly I could find myself understanding people and being able to converse with them in a way that I couldn’t just based on my abilities.

Now, that’s just a little example. But God sent me up there and I thought, God, you’re crazy. Don’t ever tell God he’s crazy, by the way.

I thought, God, this is crazy. Sending me to Quebec, I can’t communicate with these people. Well, he opened that door.

He made it possible. Now, if I went up there on my own now and tried to do the same thing, I’d probably embarrass myself. But the point is, He says here that if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth.

Don’t trust your own abilities. Don’t limit your service of other people to just what I have the ability to do. I’m really good at this, so God must be calling me to do that.

Not necessarily. If you’re trusting in your own abilities, you’re only going to get as far as you can go. But if God’s called you to do something that you can’t do, if He’s really called you to do it, trust Him to give you the ability to do it.

God will equip us. I may at some point preach a series of messages or teach lessons on Wednesday night or something about spiritual gifts, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. My understanding of spiritual gifts has changed from what you’re good at to what motivates you.

That God will put motivations in our hearts, that this is what really excites me. I may not be the best teacher in the world, but it really excites me the thoughts of sharing God’s Word and the truths in it that I’ve found with other people. and God I think motivates us and then God equips us and it has nothing to do really with our abilities let him do it as of the ability which God giveth that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom be praise and dominion forever and ever amen our service the ultimate object of our service is to bring glory to God through Jesus Christ it is to show people that Jesus loves them to show it in a tangible way that they can see.

We can tell people all day that Jesus loves them, but it’s a totally different thing to show them that Jesus loves them. To let them see how much Jesus loves them because they can see how much we love them and that He’s our motivation. We’re called on to do this to bring Him glory.

You want to talk about changing the world. You want to talk about turning the world upside down and start focusing on giving God the glory and serving in order to do it. The world does not live its life to bring God glory.

The world lives in rebellion against God. Why is there so much ugliness in the world? Why is there so much war and disease and evil and poverty?

Where was God on 9-11? Where was God on April 19th? Where was God this and that?

Again, don’t blame God for this. You want to see why there’s so much evil, why there’s so much hatred and everything else in the world? It’s because the world has rejected a loving God.

Because the world lives its life to rebel against God. When we start living to glorify God, it takes that world and it stands it on its ear. And folks, we change the world when we bring glory to God in it.

This example is given so many times I almost hate to say it. But when you’re in total darkness, it doesn’t take a huge spotlight to change the total darkness. You can go into a dark room and you can light a tiny candle.

And the only thing you’re going to see from every corner of that room is that candle. Is that little bit of light. God can use individuals and God will use individuals who are committed to serve Him.

Who are committed to serve others in His name. And by serving God’s people, one by one, can change the world. God didn’t call us just to sit and soak.

God equips us with gifts and with understanding that we can use to serve people. And there are, we couldn’t even count the needs that there are in our little community. And we open our eyes and we start looking for needs in our community that we can meet.

And we start saying, how can God use me to do something here? We may not be able to transform Seminole I on my own may not be able to transform Seminole but God can use me to touch one person’s life. God can use me to maybe kick the door down and shine a little light into a dark room.

And God can use you to do the same thing. And God can use you to do the same thing. And as we all take care of our little thing that God has called us to do suddenly it adds up to something really big and by serving God’s people can change the world.

In the last 30 years we’ve gotten to the mindset that we can change the world by voting. and for a lot of years I preached that as a matter of fact next month is going to be supposed to be a series is that the sign that I’m done? out of time?

next month is supposed to be a series on voting not talking about the candidates themselves but talking about the kinds of things that we should look for in leaders as we get closer to it I’m not sure that I even want to talk about that everything I’m going to say is biblical It has nothing to do with politics. But the closer we get to it, I think that may not be the direction we need to go. Because I’ve taught for years, it’s our responsibility as Christians to vote.

We’re not going to change the world by voting. We’re not going to change the world by boycotting Target and shopping at Hobby Lobby. Hear me?

Now, I’m not a. . .

I just don’t. . .

I like Hobby Lobby. And I like Chick-fil-A. But we’re not going to change the world with all these silly boycotts and things.

We’re not going to change the world by throwing a fit because they try to take Duck Dynasty off the air. And I like Duck Dynasty. You’ll see me drive around with my gallon of tea sometime.

All these little things we focus on, and they really are little things, they’re not going to change the world. The little things that we should focus on that can change the world are serving and finding people to serve and looking for ways that we can show the love of Jesus Christ to our community in ways that we’re not just telling them how much we love them, but they can actually serve.