Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey New Life Gillette Church, we are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlife gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Good morning New Life.
Happy to be here this morning. And Pastor C.J. is teaching and preaching at the men's retreat at Cedar Canyon Camp. And so you are stuck with me.
Just joking. But seriously, CJ isn't here. So we are happy that the, the men, I think we had like 24 or 25 men go to the men's retreat. So they are having a great time finishing up today.
Women, your turn is coming up in mid April is when the women's retreat is going to be. And so registration is open for that. If you want to be a part of that, you can go and register online for that.
So today we are in the last week of the Called to Serve series.
And so we have been talking about serving for the past four weeks and I'm happy to be able to bring that to a close today.
We're with all of you. So the reason that we are talking about serving so much is as believers and at New Life, we invite everybody here to live life on mission. And so that simply means that we are serving and giving and connecting and influencing those around us. And so you'll see different sermon series based on living life on mission. And so that is what we have been doing with this series. And so we are mostly going to be in John 13 today and if you want to open up your Bible, we can follow along there. I do have to apologize. I have been struggling with a cold and my prayer for the past three or four days was, lord, don't let me lose my voice.
Make sure that I still have a voice. And I was Talking with my 14 year old son a couple days ago and I told he had listened to this, the sermon as I was writing it and so he, he knew what it was about and I told him, I said, you know, if, if I, if I don't have a voice, like you're gonna have to get up there and, and take my notes and you're gonna have to do it. And he looked at me like, that is the worst backup plan you've ever made. So thankfully I still have a voice and hopefully it lasts through this service.
But today we're gonna be in John 13 and if you have been in church for a while, you have heard this story before, it's very popular and it's one of my favorite stories just because of the meaning behind it.
So kind of where we are right now, we are in Jesus's last day. We're at the Last Supper, we're in the upper room and he is amongst his disciples. And so we've seen all these examples of Jesus serving and radically healing and helping the oppressed and all these examples throughout the gospels. Yet he is about to give his biggest illustration of serving around a dinner table. And so that's where we're going to be picking up. But to set the stage, this, this story is only in one of the four gospels, which thank you John for including it so we could have this. But reading through the other gospels, you can see what's happening right before, right before this. And what's happening is the disciples are arguing amongst them who is going to be the greatest.
And we read that and we're like, whoa, what a bunch of egos, right? But they are thinking that following this Jewish rabbi is going to bring prestige and power and they're like building up, you know, stepping up in the ranks and that they're, they're going to be something because of them following Jesus. And so this isn't the first time that the, the disciples have been arguing this same argument. You can read it in a couple different places through gospels.
And so Jesus is on his last day, this is the last day. And he's looking around and he's still seeing a lot of pride and he's seeing a lot of dirty feet. And so that's where we're going to pick up in John 13.
So we are going to read from 1 to 17.
Says before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father.
He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth and now he loved them to the very end. It was time for supper and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.
Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist and poured water into a basin.
Then he began to wash the disciples feet, drying them with a towel he had around him.
When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, lord, are you going to wash my feet?
Jesus replied, you don't understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.
No. Peter protested, you will never ever wash my feet.
Jesus replied, unless I wash you, you won't belong to Me, Simon Peter exclaimed, then wash my hands and my head as well, Lord, not just my feet. Jesus replied, a person who has bathed all over does not need to wash except for the feet to be entirely clean. And you disciples are clean, but not all of you. For Jesus knew who would betray him. That is what he meant when he said, not all of you are clean.
After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, do you understand what I was doing?
You call me teacher and Lord. And you are right, because that's what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.
I tell you the truth. Slaves are not greater than their master, nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message.
Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.
And so washing feet was a very cultural norm back then. And I'm thankful that it's not now because I don't especially like feet and I really don't like people touching my feet. So I'm glad that this isn't like a ritual that we have to do before we have a meal especially. But back in that time this was very normal. It was normal. They had open toed shoes, they were walking on dirty dusty roads also filled with other things that are even grocer.
And they. So they needed to wash their feet. And so that was, there was nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was that Jesus, their leader, was the one doing the washing. Because you see, this task was usually done by a servant. It was done by a servant or a slave. And not only that, it was done by the lowest of the slaves. And so maybe, maybe there was Jewish servants and Gentile, like it was the, the lowest of even the slaves and servants positioned to be doing the feet washing. And so the disciples are losing their minds. They're like, no, the Jesus, what are you doing? This was mind blowing to them. Um, this was so out of the norm that he would be lowering himself in this position to wash feet.
And so in John 13:15 it says, I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. This is not literal. I'm not saying today we're to go out and wash people's feet. People nowadays don't need their feet to be washed necessarily. There's, you know, sometimes has to happen, but not the typical. So Jesus isn't saying like this is a commandment, you must Go wash feet. He is showing this as an example of serving those around you.
And so when we are talking about serving, we of course, are talking about just meeting practical needs. And when we are doing Christlike serving, we are serving out of love, right? Like you can serve and not be a Christian. And so what, what, what is that difference between just serving and serving like Jesus served? And so we have walked through a lot of that within this, the last three weeks of this sermon series. We've talked about what serving is and serving the world and serving inside the church. And so if you miss those messages, go back and, and listen to them. But today we are going to be focused on serving those right where you are in everyday relations.
You.
And so when we're talking about serving people with love, the great commandment comes to mind.
And it has been very, very popular to kind of shorten that up to love God and love people. You might have heard it said that way. And I love that it shortens it up. It's easy to remember, right?
And that comes from the great commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And. And so one of my favorite examples when I think of, of that in my life is I used to do Bible study out in the lobby when we did women's Bible study.
And I love Bible study.
I think that's one of the biggest ways that I have grown closer and grown in my relationship with Jesus. And for a season, I was called to do childcare during that Bible study. And so I wanted moms, other moms, to be able to come and partake in the Bible study and learn and grow. And I would watch their children.
And one day I got there and a lady that I didn't know very well showed up with a pot pie for me and my family. And I was just so taken aback. I was so surprised. I didn't know her very well. We hadn't talked previously. Like, she didn't ask me, like, hey, would it be a blessing if I brought you dinner one day? Like, no, she just did it.
And so in that moment, I felt so loved and so seen. I felt seen by her, right? Like, I thought I was coming to church, coming to this Bible study to serve the moms that were attending this Bible study. Yet she saw me and was serving me and my family. And so I saw. I was felt seen not just by her, but also by God. Like, God sees what I am doing and, and he. He knows intimately what is going on. And so I Just felt so seen. And we all want to feel seen and loved, right?
I got to grow closer to this lady and we became. She became one of my best friends and we got to do ministry together.
And for five years we got to do a ministry where we got to love radically on single moms and. And I got a front row seat to what it looked like to meet practical needs.
Over and over and over again.
This friend consistently kept showing up. She consistently kept loving her neighbor, whether it was making a meal, starting a meal train, helping move a friend, meeting this need, meeting that need, practical needs being met, but not just that, loving those around her. And so people that are around her can't help but see, see Jesus. She exemplifies what it means to love God and love people. And so my friend Lacey has shown me so much about what it means to be obedient to serving God by serving others.
It also might mean that if you make a pot pie for me, I will love you forever.
It can be both things if you want to show love, like, food is always the way to go.
And so that is a great part of the story as well.
And, and a pop high might, Might not seem like a big thing, right? I'm sure she didn't think it was probably like this big, huge defining moment. I don't even know if she would say, like, she remembers doing that or remembers that being the start of our friendship. But you see, in the kingdom of God, the little things are the big things.
The, the little things make such an.
Are serving others. And so when we, if we want to look more like Jesus, we need to serve like Jesus. And this is not about guilt, right? If we get to the end of this series and you're just thinking, well, I should probably serve more because I kind of feel guilty that I'm not like, that's only going to last so long, right? We want to get to the point that we are stepping into service because of what God has done for us. You know, if we have radically experienced the love and mercy and compassion of God, then we want our response to that to go to others who need to feel that from God and see that from God as well through us.
And so today, as we, as we wrap up this series, it has. It was called Call to Serve. And when I think about Called to Serve, I think about the verb like, go and meet a need, right? Serve. And oftentimes even that saying, like called to serve, I think of like a mission trip, which is great, right? We heard about a mission trip that's coming up. I've done mission trips. Me and my family are going to Guatemala on a missions trip. That is a great way to serve, but that's only a part of what God is calling us to. When we were talking about serving and maybe you think about maybe fulfilling some time slots at the soup kitchen or a non profit or even here at church on a Sunday morning, again, great ways to serve, but we today are talking about the next step. And so instead of the verb serve, I want to talk about changing that to a noun which is servant. And we are talking about being a servant of God, which means that we are stepping into that character of a servant and we are making that our identity. It's not just going and doing, it's being who we are.
So while serving is something you do, being a servant is who you are.
And it feels kind of in our time of day to day.
Sounds weird to call ourselves servants, right? But if you look through scripture, a lot of people that we know throughout scripture were called servants.
Paul and Silas in Acts were called servants of the most high God. A lot of the big hitters, Moses, Abraham, David, called servants of the Lord, servants of the most high God.
And then we get all the way to the revelation, all the way to the end, and every single believer is called servant of the Lord. And it's also very popular, you know, that we for our wish for when we come face to face to God, that we will hear what we will hear. Job well done, good and faithful servant. And so today we are going to talk about not just serving and meeting a practical need, but becoming a servant of the most High God. And so I listed out some characteristics of a servant of God. And most of these are in areas that God has had to gently, and maybe not so gently remind me of what a characteristic of a servant of God looks like. And then we'll relate it back to this passage. And so of course, the first one is humility, right? This whole story is talking about humility. Jesus, the teacher, the leader, the rabbi is lowering, physically lowering himself to wash feet at the lowest position. He is being a humble servant. And so as we start serving, it becomes very apparent that it becomes not about me, but about we. That's like serving 101, right?
And I often have had to walk through learning and being reminded that it's not all about me, right? It's not about my opinions, it's not about how I think something should be done. And so when we are humbly being a servant of God, it's Not about me. It's about who we are serving instead.
And so pride has a sneaky way of getting into serving. Serving is a very outward expression, right? Like we go and we do. And so there's a. There. It's very easy for pride to kind of sneak into serving. Maybe it's pretty subtle and oftentimes I don't think we think about it. But are we serving for recognition? Are we serving so we can post about it? Are we serving for approval?
Are we serving because we're a people pleaser? Are we serving because we want somebody to like us? Or are we being a humble servant of God that is serving out of genuine love because of what God has done for us?
And so that's a little, a little check. Of course, pride is the opposite of humility. And, and I, Pride is just something that we don't really talk about a lot.
And it's, it's, it sneaks in a lot of different areas.
And I'm going to take a small little detour here because there's something that, when we're talking about being humble that I don't think we talk about enough. And that is we, of course want to be humble enough to serve, right? We, we don't want to let our pride get in the way of serving, but we also need to be humble enough to be served.
And this is hard. We, we live in America where we are proud of our independence. We live in Wyoming where it's like, pull your, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And so it's hard to ask for help. It's hard to accept help, right? And when we're coming across those things, it's pride.
And so I, we recently went through something that kind of bumped up against my pride. And we were in a financial situation that we were not expecting and was maybe unjust, unfair, but it is what it is. And so we were working through it, and I was, I was talking to a friend, and she took it upon herself to rally together a group of people that radically love me and my family.
And they came together to help ease that burden from our family, which is great and wonderful. But when you are gifted something extravagant, when you are gifted something like that, it bumped up against my pride, you know, the lies that I start to hear of. I should be able to handle this on my own. I don't want to be a burden on anybody else. But you see, God was calling them to serve me. And so who am I to say, no, I don't, I don't need to Be served. And we see that in this. In this scripture, right? We see Peter telling Jesus, no, no, you will never wash my feet.
And so when we. When someone is called to serve us and we are denying them that opportunity to serve us, it is like telling Jesus, no, no, you don't need to wash my feet. Like, I will serve you, Jesus, but I won't allow others to serve me. And so as. And it takes vul, right? It takes vulnerability to allow people to serve us. It takes vulnerability to allow people into our house when we haven't been able to be there and wash our house or clean our house or cook for our family, all these things. It takes vulnerability. Yet God is calling people in your everyday life to serve you so that you can see Jesus more and more. But we have to be humble enough to allow it. So we have to be humble enough to serve, but also humble enough to be served.
The next characteristic of a servant is availability.
And we live in very busy lives, right? Like, the schedule is stacked up and there's a lot going on. And it's very easy to just go on our lives and kind of have blinders on not being paying attention to what's going on right in front of us. And so I think in this story and all throughout the Gospels, Jesus shows us that it is important to be intentional and interruptible.
You know, we think of Jesus and the children coming up to Jesus and the disciples are like, no, no, we don't have time for. You don't don't want the kids around Jesus. And he was like, no. And he. He talks to the children. Or maybe it's Jesus being intention, intentional about going the long way around. And he goes to Samaria to talk to a woman at a well that is a. The long way around. And. And he is being interrupted. And. And the disciples don't understand. Over and over we see this example about being intentional and interruptible. And even in this story, you know, we talked about that this is Jesus's last day on earth. We are he. He knows what is coming. This is his last time with his disciples grouped up together.
And so you would think that this is the time to be like, going over the game plan, right? Like, I've watched Band of Brothers. Like, this is where the captain is rallying the troops, telling them the game plan. This is what we're going to expect. This is what we're going to do. Because Jesus is about to take this ragtag group out and send them out into the mission field. And so, like, this is the last moment that he is having with them. Yet he is intentional about changing up his schedule. He's looking around still seeing that pride is an issue and teaches this lesson about serving one another.
And so do we have room in our schedule to be interrupted? Do we have room to be intentional? I hate to tell you but when, when things come up and people need your help or people need to be served, it's not always convenient, it's not always on my schedule for people to, you know, have an emergency or to be, to need something. Like it's not always scheduled in right. Are we flexible enough to make ourselves available to be a servant of the most high God?
The next one is generosity. And I don't just mean financial generosity, which of course is part of it. You can use your finances to bless somebody. But this type of being a servant means that it is going to cost something.
This type of serving is not the feel good serving. There is feel good serving in the world. Like you can go and serve and better someone's life or help fill a need like, and it feels good, right? And that's great.
We need that kind of serving as well. But the kind of servant that we are talking about is in the trenches serving in the trenches.
And it doesn't feel good. And so we need to remember what our motivation is, otherwise we're going to quit type of serving.
And we see this example through this story. Because Jesus had loved his disciples during his ministry. It says that at the beginning and then it says that he washed all his disciples feet, yet he knew who would betray him. And so he washed Jesus or Judas's feet.
Jesus knew that Judas was about to betray him, yet he still served him.
Can we say the same for us?
Can we say that we are going to serve in such a way that it's going to cost something?
And not only that, Jesus goes on to tell the disciples later that one of you is going to betray me. And the disciples are looking around like who could it be? Who could it be? Because Jesus had loved each disciple so much that they had no idea that it would be Judas that would betray him. Do we love the people around us so much that it we still do it even if it's going to cost us something.
This is hard serving. This is the type of serving that we need to remember. The why we are being obedient to the call to usher in heaven. We know that we are doing this because Jesus is calling us to do this. Because somebody needs to know about Jesus. Because we are ushering in heaven, kingdom Come, your will be done. We have a job to do. And it's not always going to feel good. I know that doesn't sound motivational, but the most times that I have grown in Christ or seen this kind of generosity in serving is in the hard places that it has cost us something. You know, our, our family did foster care and adoption and we went into that fully knowing it is going to cost something. Right? And many of you have walked through seasons with different people in your life that you are, it is going to cost you something. And so we know that if we are going to radically love and serve someone walking through addiction, it's going to cost something.
We know that if we're going to radically love and serve our child that is turning their back on us, it's going to cost something. We know that it's going to cost something to radically love and serve people we don't agree with, but we do it anyways because Jesus has given us this example, do as I have done.
The last one is community.
And really I chose this word because I needed it to end in an ity like the rest of them. So you know, we have humility, availability, generosity and community. So for the note takers, it's nice and pretty for you.
But what I mean about community is who we are serving. We talked about this a little bit before, right? We're not talking about the check off the box serving. This is serving those in your community, in your everyday spaces. And, and Jesus gave us this example even in this foot washing teaching today. He did not take the disciples out to say a leper colony and wash feet out there and say, see disciples, and this is what I'm doing. Do as I have done. Go and serve. No, he is serving the people that he has a tight knit relationship with. The people that he is, is in his close relationship, his everyday relationships. And so that is the people that we are talking about being a servant of the most high God to. And quite honestly, those are the hardest to serve, right? It's easier for me to go and serve for 30 minutes down in kid Zone than to radically love and serve my family, right? Like that's just truth. And, and so this is the radical servant of the most high God to the people that are in your spaces that you're seeing every day.
And that is what God is calling us to do. That is our identity.
And so as you are serving.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: It.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Is not just about doing, it is about who you are becoming.
And so in order to do that, we need to not see people as projects. Right? It's fair. I'm a fixer. I, I like, I can see a problem and I want to fix it. I want to streamline it and get it all fixed. And. But when we do that, we tend to see people as a project that we can fix. And that is not what we are called to do. We are called to love. We are called to show Jesus. And so as a servant of the most high God, instead of just doing projects with love, we are being people of love.
And so those are the characteristics of a servant of the most High God that God has kind of shown me through different areas as, as I have been growing.
And so my encouragement to you this week is that you would remind yourself of your identity. If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, number one, you are a servant of the most High God already. You are a servant of the most high God. Wake up and remind yourself of that. And then my prayer is that we would, each and every one of us look throughout our day, ask God to open our eyes to who he has right in front of us, right in our spaces, our everyday relationships of who we need to be serving. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It's the little things. And you keep showing up, and you keep showing up, and you keep showing up.
We're going to pray and then close in worship.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you that you are such a good God. We thank you for this example of service. And as we go throughout our week, Lord, I pray that you would open our eyes to areas that you would have us serve. And not only that, that we would step into this identity that we are your servants and that we would be obedient to your call to serve those right in front of us. Holy Spirit, would you convict us in areas that we've been shying away from? Because it's hard and it's messy. I pray that you would give us obedience and courage to step into those hard areas to continue to show up like you.
We thank you for your love and your mercy and your grace.
And we pray all these things in Jesus name, Amen.
