Well, actually, it might be good to start with some questions right now. If you've got one that's burning away, why don't you go ahead and ask it? Yes That's a great question and I need to just summarize it for the sake of the tape here. If one's working in a situation as you are with many unbelievers and able to Talk with them openly and freely about the things that are going on in their lives and all of you will find this if you commit yourself to really getting alongside people They are going to open their hearts to you and they're going to tell you about themselves and The things that they're involved in many of which will be immoral as you said in your situation is women sharing their lives and many of them involved in all sorts of immoral practices actually and in other things too. I'm sure how are we to deal with this as Christians? How do we begin to address the issue of the universality of God's moral commandments in such a situation? When is it appropriate to speak? When is it appropriate to be silent? When is it appropriate simply to seek to live the truth as imperfectly as we do in front of them? Is that an adequate summary? Okay, that's a great question and I Could easily spend the whole class on this having just said what I did about about not spending too long answering questions, but I would just say to all of you This is the kind of situation You ought to commit yourself to being in for the rest of your lives That is getting to know people well enough and Them trusting you enough But they will start sharing who they are and the things that are going on in their lives for most Christians and what we might say for the churches a whole the work place is the front line of evangelism
Not for those of you who are going to be pastors But for almost everyone in your congregations That's going to be the place where they're going to be developing the deepest relationships with unbelievers and Having the possibility of getting to know people really well now Some of you have this kind of contact with members of your family One of the women in class yesterday and the other class said that just in talking to her brother who she's doing her paper for She was very excited on the one hand to learn her brothers completely post-modern Exactly what I've been talking about in this class on the other hand It was very distressing to her to realize that that this is how he thinks about his life that he's the complete moral relativist et cetera So many of you have members of your family like this Involved in all sorts of sins sexually and In many many other ways So how do we deal with that? Say first of all pray That's the most important thing you can do because God saves people you can't so pray for them Pray for your relationship with them Pray that God will give you open doors to Communicate the truth in his time And be prepared to wait For God to open the door and to give you the opportunity Because if you try to push too hard the door will be slammed shut in your face and The people won't talk to you anymore So first pray that really is the most important thing you can do the Holy Spirit is the witness par excellence He is the one who convicts people of sin and righteousness and judgment. That's not your task That's his task To convict people of sin
Secondly, live the truth You're never going to do it perfectly But God calls you to live faithfully a Life of righteousness Before the person Thirdly Talk with them as much as you can You don't need to respond when they share with you There immorality in whatever area. Well, that's sinning against God's commandments There may be a time when it's appropriate to say that But all of you who have family members who are involved in sin of one kind another know that that's not the place where you can start communicating with them If you do they will just not talk to you anymore I Use this example about my dad before he used to swear every third word and blaspheme all the time I never talked to him about it because there were far more important things that he needed to deal with In terms of the existence of God in the first place He was a communist He didn't believe in God When he became a believer he stopped swearing and blaspheming just like that with that me or anyone else saying anything You need to discern what's the primary area Where the person needs to be addressed and And it may very well not be the particular sin in which they're involved. Let's say they're sleeping with their boyfriend or Whatever the issue is and that will be true of most of them out there That's true of almost everybody out there The sinning in that particular area, but it also in lots of other areas Just think about you see we sometimes make the mistake of questions of thinking that if you're involved in sexual sins We've got to address those instantly Everybody out out there is a materialist You don't say to them your materialistic and this is an offense against the law of God But your materialistic yourselves. It's not so easy to say it You may not be living with your girlfriend unmarried But you're sending in all sorts of other areas That's why you've got to take the B Maddie Barone. I first If they're proud and almost all of them are You don't say to them listen you're proud and God hates pride That's not the way you can approach somebody and you know that because you struggle with pride yourself and It's inappropriate for us to pick out particular sins Let's say like sexual sins as if those are the ones as a Christian. I feel compelled to address with every unbeliever When there are many other sins I would never think of addressing because it would so obviously be an appropriate To do so not that one wouldn't at some point talk about sins of materialism and pride of course you will But the the issue Is are you going to have a kind of Judgmental relationship with this person where we you feel compelled to be pointing out their sins all the time If you do no unbeliever will ever talk to you You you have to find what is the fundamental area Where you can begin to challenge this person and I before use this Image on the board and we'll talk more about it later of This area of overlap between a person's life and God's world With the issue of morality What I will always try to do Is address the area where the person does hold on to absolute moral values That is where they're still in touch with God's world with my father for example again Oh, here was a man who had passionately strong views absolute moral standards about sexual fidelity and purity and Integrity in the workplace and those were the points where we could start to talk Where he was in touch with the truth Because these things really mattered to him Now the point where I was able to challenge him as we talked further was that there was no basis for those within his Marxism so he's holding this truth in Unrighteousness to quote the Apostles words I hope that's helpful for the moment. We'll come back to this issue later. I'm sure Okay, would there other questions some last time because I know quite a few of you had your hands up at the end Yes
That's a good question. Would one classify somebody who's post-modern as an agnostic That is someone who's uncertain about the existence of God or as someone who is an atheist That's a good question and I'll say simply the great majority of people out there Who are thoroughly shaped by post-modernism? Still believe in God in some sense Most Americans do something like 90 92% of our contemporaries have some belief in God That doesn't stop them from being post-modern Most people out there believe in God, but they have no sense of accountability to God they have no sense whatsoever that they're going to have to stand before God one day and face what he has to say about their lives to face him as their judge
People find it almost impossible not to believe in God because it's so obvious that we're living in a designed and created universe No matter how strongly people are taught evolution and anything else They continue to Think that there must be some kind of creator there But even though they still have some acknowledgement of God Their lives are very shaped by post-modern ideas So to call to say to speak about post-modernism is not saying that somebody's necessarily an atheist Those some of them are You could say that the most consistent post-modern people are atheists But nobody is completely consistent
Post-modern people are moral relativists That is they deny that there are absolute moral standards and say that morality is simply a Matter of individual choice or the majority or whatever But all of them nobody's consistent to that. Thank God everybody Has some areas and where they lie in their life where they say there are certain moral standards standards which are clear they all think for example that rape is wrong You won't find anybody defending it They all think sexually molesting children is wrong. You won't find anyone defending that Not publicly anyway And you could take a whole lot of other areas too. Nobody's a consistent moral relativist So in describing people as post-modern one isn't saying that People have completely lost touch with the truth. They've completely lost touch with moral order or even that they've completely lost touch with God They can't in fact completely lose touch because they're living Before God they're living in a universe God made they made an image of God So there's always going to be this kind of tension in their lives There's always going to be coming back to this image the overlap here So they will have some acknowledgment of God New age people are thoroughly post-modern, but they would all say they believe in God in some sense But this is a good question Yes, other questions here before we go on or we ready to move forward met That's a very interesting question I had spoken about Post-modernism rejecting meta narratives that is an account Which claims to be the truth about the human condition and
Yet one may find in a sort of repackaged Marxism in some of the kind of culture wars that are going on between men and women minorities and the majority etc Is this the reintroduction of a meta narrative? I guess that's your your question It's a very good question You remember I said a last time or maybe the time before sometime last week in the last couple of weeks that People have idols of the mind When they stop believing in God they're going to believe in some account of reality. I Think people cannot be consistent here They feel compelled to reintroduce Some kind of story which is going to make sense of the human condition It's part of what it means to be human. We need to have some sense of who we are and where we're from and where we're going to and what we're here for And even if that Story if you like says that life is observed now it's Or if that story is one where I I adopt the sort of political motif of Marxism whether it's Warfare between this group and that group People are attracted to such things Or any kind of new age Set of ideas that someone gets involved in Claim to be a new kind of a kind of reality so It's like saying there's a got remember I talked about idolatry so I saying God there's a God shaped hole in the mind and And people are going to replace the loss of the biblical true account with some other story so that while there's this Rejection in theoretical postmodernism of a story which makes sense people are going to be reintroducing one in some way or other There's a good question in our outline we were talking about the loss of moral direction and And at the end we had been discussing whether we personally hold on to God's law Do we love God as the law giver? Do we love his commandments Are we committed to living in obedience that to him or are we becoming Postmodern like so many other people and living just simply to serve ourselves and This brings us to point C under here are we communicating in word and life the beauty of righteousness do we Live the truth In a way which commends the Lord God which commends true righteousness to people Jesus challenges us in Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 through 16 He says that we are the salt of the earth and we are the light of the world and He's talking about our lives when he says those words That your lights so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your father in heaven That's your calling in the coffee shop to live such good lives before the people you work with That they may see your good deeds and give glory to your father in heaven Now this is where the rubbin meets the road for the Christian We are called to live in the world
alongside unbelievers and before unbelievers but to live in a way which always commends the truth to them
Peter says the same thing in first Peter 2 verse 12. He says live such good lives before the pagans That they will glorify God
What do people see when they look at your life? Do they see? The ugliness of self-righteousness a person who thinks that they're Right in everything and whose condemning them it comes back to the first question Who's constantly pointing out other people's faults? Or do they see somebody who lives a life of genuine beauty? Righteousness is beautiful and
First Peter 3 verse 7 Peter writing to women whose husbands are unbelievers and his words apply to anybody Who has family members? Who are non-Christians? People who know you really well if you have a brother or a sister or a father or a mother or a spouse or a child or a close uncle or aunt or grandparents if you've got members of your family and People you've known close friends for many many years Peter says this win them without a word By your behavior Those are the words of scripture win them without a word By your behavior when they see the beauty and Reference of your lives That's how Peter Addresses women whose husbands unbelievers Win them without a word By your behavior. He's not saying you're forbidden to speak He's saying but especially in a relationship where somebody knows you really well Your primary calling in that relationship is not words, but your life Are you Demonstrating the beauty of righteousness? Paul says the same thing in Philippians 2 15 through 16 He says that which is shine like stars in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation And does your life shine like a star if you think about Where you live in your neighborhood and the unbelievers around you places where you work Where there are non-Christians there in the workplace is your life shining like a star. Well, it's called to or Paul and Titus chapter two verse 10. He's talking about workplaces very explicitly there and He says make the teaching about God our savior attractive by the way you work What sort of model of integrity? Do you have to people see you as somebody who works faithfully who works hard and Not just when somebody's watching you when Paul talks about this in Colossians 3 22 through 24 No one just somebody's got their eye on you But because as a matter of obedience to God and delight in serving him you always work Hard and you work with integrity For those if you're in a position of authority in your workplace What would people under your authority say about you? That you're a jerk that you're demanding that you're difficult to work for that you're never pleased You're impossible to please Well, if that's what people say about you you have Betrayed the gospel if people look at you and say well Yeah, we've got to keep this guy on but he's actually just he's lazy. He Sleeps on the job. He's always gossiping with people Well, he's taking stuff home from work. Well, you have bought discredit on the name of Christ
We're called to live Righteously and Righteousness is beautiful Now your life needs to shine Like the life of Christ Sean he was enormously attractive to people Because true righteousness is beautiful and when we communicate righteousness to people do we communicate it is something beautiful? Or do we communicate a set of kind of Just a lot of rules About the way we think people should live So are we living and communicating God's commandments as something truly beautiful And that brings us to main point three here the loss of relationships and community and We spoke about this the breakdown of community in our culture and Fundamentally how while there are maybe all sorts of sociological reasons for that Know from the existence of cars to many other things and the way we live in suburbs et cetera Now at the heart of the breakdown of community is Our culture's insistence that the individual lives just to please themselves And wherever you have individuals living just to pursue their own happiness as Their fundamental goal you're going to have the breakdown of community If that's your approach to marriage your marriage will end in disaster if that's how you treat your children you know, they will leave home as soon as they can and You will destroy the possibility of any depth of relationship with them the pursuit of happiness of the individual is completely destructive of community in Every context whether it's marriage the family or any other part of our society Now let's think about the challenges that this causes to us the church is criticized for its lack of community one of the most common criticisms of churches is that they are simply programs and I used this figure before but between one third and one half of all people who come to churches and join them leave within a year and their primary criticism is the lack of relationships in The church lots of programs lots of business But that it was difficult to get to know people Everyone was so busy Filling their slot doing their thing running their program nobody had time for relationships
churches are criticized as just preaching points My one of my own sons only moved here after church One Sunday we were driving home and he was sitting in the back of the car He was about 14 or 15 years old and he was He had tears rolling down his face and I said to him. What's the matter? And he said I miss the familyness That was his comment about our church that There was no depth of relationships. He did not feel Like it was a family of which he could be apart That there were just clicks among the kids depending on which school they went to or weren't prepared to really talk to anybody else and to get to know them And at the time I pled with a couple of our students who were leading the youth group in that church. I said please Make a personal effort to try to get our sons involved and What they got was a card through the mail not any kind of personal truly personal attempt to Involve them in the community of the church. It was the thing they found most difficult. I'll say that for myself coming here When we moved here 12 years ago The most difficult thing for my family was becoming part of the community of the church and And that was with a good will and a longing to be so but that's what my kids found really really difficult It's not a criticism of any particular church That's just a general problem that new people in churches have the very hard time Really entering into the community life of the church and this is a major barrier for postmodern people As they look at the church Now this brings us to our second point here under this What about me myself and what about our own church? does my church Does my life have a reality of community in it? Are we so personally shaped by the culture so busy in our own things that we have to do Whether it's in the programs of our church or the busyness of our own lives That we have no time for relationships Now we can as Christians start living for ourselves And all the things that we are doing for God and we completely forget about our calling to love our neighbors ourselves And to give ourselves to community and to relationships. I always remember This was many many years ago talking to a woman who was involved a very heavily involved in teaching Bible studies, which of course is a wonderful thing who's going to speak against that I'm sure you're all involved in teaching Bible studies, but She said to me I just got so active, you know, I was constantly involved and she had one day I was sitting in our kitchen table with my kids and with the woman who I had hired to help look after them and My little boy who was three said this to me now are you my mummy or is she my mummy and she said that really Caused me to think again about what I was doing. What is it God calls me to do? Now I'm not speaking against Mother's teaching Bible studies or against mothers working That's not my point at all. So don't be offended by what I said You can when you can use the same illustration but father father's a much more guilty of the problem here than mothers Of spending no time at all with their children
What I'm asking is this are you committed? to relationships Oh, you can do thousands of things for God preaching teaching all sorts of other things Running church programs But if you are not giving yourself to relationships whether in your own family or in the family of the church You've missed what is fundamental to the nature of the gospel Now think of how strongly the new testament puts it Jesus in John 13 34 and 35 says this Says a new commandment. I give you that you love one another and then he says this By the way, you love one another all men will know that you are my disciples By the way, you love one another all men will know that you are my Disciples and In John 17 23 23 in Jesus high priestly prayer. He prays on the night before he dies He says this that by the quality of our relationships By the unity we have
People will know that the father sent the son People draw conclusions About the truth of the Christian message when they see The reality of our lives They caught draw conclusions about what God has done to save us When they see the way we relate to each other You might say well, what's that got to do with it? You know surely I need to preach that the father sent the son and that's how people responded that of course we do but Jesus says people will know that the father sent the son By the quality of our relationships God is a community The Trinity is a community Through all eternity the father and the son and the spirit have loved each other and Served each other and sought to honor each other and to bring glory to each other and We are called as those made in the image of God to live in community too To give ourselves to honor and serve and love others Francis Schaeffer used to put it this way all the time love is the mark of the Christian love is the mark of the Christian and The New Testament teaches us that very clearly clearly if you turn to first John First John chapter four John writes about this First John four verses seven onwards Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes some God Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God whoever does not love does not know God because God is love This is how God showed his love among us He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him This is love not that we loved God that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins dear friends Since God so loved us We also ought to love one another No one has ever seen God But if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us People don't see God they see you in this life. They're never going to see God He's invisible to us until we see Christ face-to-face But they see you no man has ever seen God But God lives in us and his love is to be made complete in us and that's an amazing statement You think it was almost blasphemous if the scripture didn't say it. Oh, isn't God's love complete already in the Trinity and in the way He's loved us in Jesus Christ Well John says well, no, wait a minute God's love has got to be manifested and made complete in your life That's how people are going to find out about God by seeing the reality of love in your life and Later on down in verses 19 through 21 John adds some words We love because he first loved us if anyone says I love God Yet hates his brother. He's a liar For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen Cannot love God whom he's not seen And he's given us this command whoever loves God must also love his brother and
What is love John speaks about it in first John 3 verses 16 Dan through 18 This is how we know what love is Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for for our brothers If anyone has material possessions and Seize his brother in need but has no pity on him How can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth Is there Do we love the Trinity? Who is community Do we live the Trinity where there is love for one another and service of one another and honor for one another and Do we put that into practice in our lives so that people see a reality of the love of God in us? God Demons that that's what they be able to see
Now this brings us to our third point here Do we welcome the broken people of our postmodern culture Into our community Into our churches Into our lives Into our homes You might say that postmodern people have messy lives They're sexually unfaithful They have all kinds of other problems But it's precisely broken sinful people Who we are called to and welcome into our churches Into our homes and into our lives and To do so Gladly but we live in a generation That values relationships more highly than it values propositional truth That doesn't mean we must abandon the communication of propositional truth our Cultures dying For the loss of truth We have to communicate truth But people won't pay any attention to us at all No matter how passionately and loudly we declare the truth Unless they see a reality of relationships In fact, most of them will never come within the hearing of the truth unless They are attracted to it by seeing the reality of love in our lives
Whether it's people you're meeting in the coffee shop or you work or anything else if they don't see a reality of love They won't ever even talk to you and open their lives to you The more you love them the more they will open themselves to you and share the brokenness as well as the joys of Their life Now what the way people should respond to our churches is like this Now I was a member of a couple who started coming to our church saying this They had lived in many different places And I said to them why are you coming to church? And they said we've lived in various parts of Africa and Kenya and Tanzania. We've lived in the Netherlands We've lived in Italy. We've lived in different parts of Britain and we lived here and there But this is we have never seen a community like this and we want to be part of it And that's how people should respond to our churches There is to be a reality of community
of the church I worship With right now is a It's a black church that meets Dan the road here And it is a very high level of a reality of community
There's a young couple who came to the church last year in April And they got married in July They already engaged when they came to the church And the women of the church did the whole wedding for them They were only there three months And everybody knew they were leaving right off their wedding And they wouldn't be back And the women of the church prepared all the food The church did the music one of the women in the church Basically took the place of this girl's mother who wasn't going to help her in any way One of the women the church became Go close to her and basically ran the wedding for her And everybody did it for nothing just for love Now that's what it means to be a Christian And that's the way our church is it to be To have that kind of commitment to community To loving one another To caring for people When my wife was Having her cancer surgery a couple of years ago And going through chemotherapy after it was just an awful time But we experienced such a high level of community From our colleagues on the faculty here And from the members of our church It was I will never forget it And it had an enormous impact on other people But when people came Nurses and doctors and visitors to other patients came past our my wife's room in the hospital
There were like 35 bunches of flowers in there You know there was so many flowers that it room for two people had to be converted to a room for just one because there wasn't room for Two beds in there with all the flowers and and people You know doctors and nurses and visitors and other patients would come in and say there's sure a lot of people who love you Now it had an enormous impact on people My pastor Bob Loggins came and spent the whole five hours with me in the hospital where my wife was having her surgery I will never forget that And people who were in the hospital saw it too
Community when it's real has an enormous impact on people's lives Kathy Chapel and Pauli Long and Mary Pat Peterson came and scrubbed our floors for six months and washed our toilets every couple of weeks When my wife was terribly ill that's community That's community and when I when I thanked Kathy Chapel one day You know she said it's an honor to do this And she meant it You know that's community That's what We are called to all of us in our relationships with one another in our churches. That's what people should see that kind of Glad service of one another which takes time and it's costly and it's very beautiful to see And it's that that is going to impact our post-modern generation that kind of reality of community Number four the loss of respect for authority
now We've spoken about the way authority is under attack in our post-modern culture And again just briefly to go through these points When we claim authority for our churches for our creeds our confessions for our teaching for our pastors for our church leaders This is offensive to people This is offensive to people people see the claim to authority is observed At the time of the heavens gate tragedy There were a series of articles in the post-the-spatch at that time About the kind of strange ideas of that cult But several of the articles said this that Really the ideas of the heavens gate cult were no more bizarre and absurd Than the claims of Christianity You know Christ is going to come again in person We're going to see him. He's going to reign on the earth and establish his kingdom
And the people writing the articles said well that's really no more No more bizarre what the heavens gate people teach them what churches teach what Christians teach Of the claim to the authority of our teaching is just considered a bizarre And absurd claim by people Iran does That's why people find Church disciplines such an impossible idea to get their minds around This means Christians too And so this is the question I want to ask us what about us are we How do we deal with authority? ourselves Are we shaped by the culture so that we are cynical about all authority as well? We already talked about this a bit But what I really want to get at here is the third point and that is this What kind of authority are we displaying in our churches? What do people see? One of the problems that we wrestle with Is that in reaction to the attack of authority in the culture There's a lot of teaching in the evangelical church, which says The answer to the problem of the culture to the breakdown of authority and the moral breakdown The answer is just have more and more authority in the church So we got this very heavy teaching of the chain of command Oh Just got to live in obedience to your husband your father your elders the state whoever it happens to be Unquestioned obedience we just submit to this chain of command coming down from God Through the authorities And along with that heavy emphasis on the chain of command and the increase of authority in our homes and our churches There's just endless legalistic teaching what we need is lots of rules telling people what to do in every circumstance Well neither of those are biblical authority in any way And they're just ugly What kind of authority are we displaying? It needs to be the authority of the servant king
Of Jesus says about himself He came not to Be served but to serve And he's the Lord of the universe
Though he was the disciples lord and master He washed their feet He was a servant and he calls us To serve in the same kind of way those two passages Matthew 20 Verses 25 through 28 where Jesus says He came to serve And he calls us to serve as well Matthew 20 Verses 25 through 28 And he's challenging his disciples when he says this because they're Restling with each other about who's going to have more authority This is something you find a constant theme in the gospels The disciples arguing with each other About who's going to have the places of greatest power because when they think about authority They think about power and status So they grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left and your kingdom This is the mother of James and John Oh those of you who are mothers and fathers know you want positions of status and authority for your kids Well, she was no different and Jesus words are very challenging The other ten are indignant about this Because they they want the places themselves. It's not that they're The they are just critical They're saying that you you tried to get in first here. Well now I want to get my word in Um, there's several accounts in the gospels of this kind of argument among them And Jesus says this you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lauded over them And they're high officials exercise authority over them not so with you instead whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant And whoever wants to be first must be your slave Just as the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many Oh, all of you are here because you feel God has called you To ministry of some kind the word ministries a problematic word actually Uh, it used to mean in English Being a servant We tend to forget that that's all that ministry means to be a minister means to be a servant And we've turned it into a title of status and power
I can't tell you to abandon the word But we need to remember what it really means And we have been called to be servants Whoever wants to Whoever feels called by God to a place of teaching or leadership among God's people Has got to remember what Jesus says you're called to be a servant And over a little further in Matthew chapter Uh, let's see 23 Jesus talks about how our attitude should be to positions of authority and leadership in the church Matthew 23 verse Five he's talking about the scribes and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law they make their factories wide in the tassels on their garments long They love the place of honor at banquets And the most important seats in the synagogues They love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them rabbi Now that's happens very easily in our churches We have special seats of honor For pastors and people in authority We like to be greeted It's one of the temptations you're all going to face Those of you who become pastors or in a position of leadership Do you like to be greeted in public places as pastor makes your chest swell a little bit And you feel good about yourself Do you like being Have an important seat, you know, where if you get invited to a church dinner somewhere Everybody's got to look up to you. Well That's what Jesus is talking about But you are not to be called rabbi If you have only one master and you are all brothers And don't call anyone on earth father for you have one father And he's in heaven. No you to be called teacher For you have one teacher the Christ The greatest among you will be your servant Whoever exalts himself will be humbled And whoever humbles himself will be exalted And we don't pay much attention to this biblical passage But we should Whether you like the title pastor or teacher or whatever else it is or counselor or anything else You know just junk it That's what Jesus says Yeah, you're called to be a servant You're not going to go around rebuking people for calling you pastor or teacher. That's not my point The issue is what's going on in your heart
And do you like that? Do you kind of swell with pride when people say this to you
Well, don't Jesus calls you to be a servant And then in John chapter 13 verses 12 through 17 This is after Jesus washes his disciples feet There he is crawling around the floor with a jug of water and a bowl collecting the dirty water as he Goes around just in his loincloth and a towel wrapped around his face Yes around his waist just stripped down And you can imagine that quiet it got And setting up to Peter of course who Wasn't very good at keeping quiet in any circumstance whatsoever But then after it's all over Jesus says this Do you understand what I've done for you? You call me teacher and lord and rightly so for that is what I am Now that I your lord and teacher have washed your feet You also should wash one another's feet I've said to an example that you should do as I've done for you I tell you the truth no servant is greater than his master nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent them Now you know these things will be blessed if you do them This is what it means to lead the church in any way You're called to be a servant You're called to wash people's feet And that may be literally When we were out in California just recently I had to Wash my father-in-law's feet because he you know he's getting elderly he can't bend anymore He can't wash his own feet You may end up washing somebody's feet But of course Jesus means you take the place of lowliest service Wherever you are If you're married with your wife your husband with your parents with your children With your friends in your church With people you work alongside your call to be a servant To serve them That is what Christ calls us to this is the kind of authority We are to demonstrate Now I say to our students here. I may have said this in class already I don't mind repeating this one If I come to visit you if you invite me to come and speak in your church sometime Where some of you guys are going to be pastors Now I'm not going to go and ask people What kind of preacher are you? I'm going to go talk to the janitors and the secretaries and say what's it like to work for this guy
What kind of a servant is he?
Because that'll tell me far more about the genuinely Christian Ministry you have Than anything else that people in the church could tell me
Because if that's not there it doesn't matter what else is you're not imitating Christ And you're not faithfully Communicating the gospel. That's a great question. How do we respond to The appeal to act chapter six and say well actually the apostle soon got past this and No longer waited on tables and just appointed deacons to do that Because they didn't have time for such things They only had time to preach the word and to pray I would say first it's a misreading of the passage to say that the apostles are Drawing the conclusion that it's inappropriate for them to be servants any longer the point of the passage is simply that they had become so involved in overseeing the distribution of food And in serving people in that practical way That they were beginning to neglect the ministry of the word and prayer What's interesting to notice is the kind of people they appoint to the task
They look for people who are filled with wisdom and the holy spirit Several of whom are later described as preachers and evangelists and teachers in the church and leaders of the church to fulfill this task of serving at tables and overseeing the distribution of food Now it doesn't mean that the apostles stop being servants you can just think of the way Paul Describes his own ministry over and over again he says I cared for you as As a mother cares for her children Well, I served you I will gladly not only Expand everything I have for you but expend my life as well Let's have Paul describes his own ministry
And No matter what the press of teaching and preaching is and prayer You are never to get beyond the point of being a servant Now obviously there is so much service practical service in any church That you could spend your whole time doing nothing but that And you would end up having no time to teach and preach etc at all And that's not right if God has called you to minister his word to people But you never grow beyond being a servant Now you say well now I'm the pastor of a church this size. I don't have to serve anymore Well Jesus is the pastor of the whole church And he washed his disciples feet And what's beautiful about that passage you read John 13 it says at the beginning of the passage He was determined to show them the full extent of his love And then what he does is wash their feet And All of us what Luke's gospel teaches us is that when we come into the kingdom And sit down at the marriage supper of the lamb at Christ's banqueting table It says he's going to service again Now he's never going to get beyond service That's what it says in Luke 12 Christ will serve us at the fulfillment of the last supper Just as he deserved served as disciples So you don't you don't get beyond it ever And yes, you're going to give yourself to The ministry of teaching and preaching if that is what God has called you to and prayer for his people But if you stop being a servant both in the attitude of your heart How you think about yourself and also practically in what you do You know then there's something wrong You know if people never see you waiting at tables If they never see you serving your family If you're always there, you know, I've seen pastors who Say why have such responsibility for teaching the word I get up At 930 in the morning and my wife takes care of the family and does everything and I go out and I Minister the word of God to people and I come home and I'm waited on Like a baronet like a lord and You know, I do nothing in my home. Well, that's not biblical
It's not biblical I hope that if I visit any of you guys are going to be pastors in your home. I see you serving your wife and a serving your children And all sorts of practical ways and doing it gladly every morning of our married life I have Got up first and made my wife a cup of tea in bed and made breakfast for her Every single day basically for 33 years and I do so gladly And that's how we're to be in our churches Oh, yes, God can We'll call you to lots of teaching Those of you who are called to be teachers But don't you ever stop being a servant because if you do you betray the gospel Yes, sir Yeah, what about serving people who have the wrong attitude and to unfit perhaps to For communion to receive the Lord's supper or for Christian fellowship. Well You know, there are only unfit people out there. Let's put it that way There aren't anybody else Jesus served these guys around this table and just think about it Every one of them was going to deny him that night and he knew that You know, they were his closest friends he called to go to the garden of Gethsemane with him and watch and pray with him and they fell asleep And then they're boasting Lord, you know, even though all the rest deny you I won't You know, I'm strong. I've got it together. I'm an upstanding faithful believer And disciple of yours and they all denied him. I never knew the guy Now we're called to serve always unfit people now. There's a different question here in terms of Whether everybody should be welcomed to the Lord's table a communion and scripture is quite plain that there are issues of sin Which we have to deal with there but in terms of service practical service we are called to serve people whoever they are And you know, you're going to have lots of broken people Coming to your churches into your lives into your homes from a postmodern culture People filled with awful sin and you need to serve them gladly Yeah, even if they don't say thank you Even if they don't appreciate it Even if they don't love you back you serve them gladly That's how Christ has served us When we were unkind and ungrateful and took my attention at all I had no attention at all to him. He died for us and we are called to serve in the same way