Serving Like Jesus | Becoming a Jesus Church: Week 4

Good morning, Grace Church, and good morning to everybody who's joining us online.

If you have a Bible or Bible app, I encourage you to open up to John chapter 13, verses 1 through 17.

John 13:1–17

John chapter 13, verses 1 through 17.

John 13:1–17

If you don't have your Bible or app, it will be on the screen behind you a little bit later on this morning.

We're continuing our teaching series called Becoming a Jesus Church.

We are walking through six different areas of heart formation.

They're on the wall behind me, where we see these attitudes in this heart position in the person of Christ.

And we are told that as followers of Jesus, we are being conformed to the very image of Christ, which means sooner or later these attributes will be true about our hearts as well.

And it's really not a six-week series on how to be a prayerful person or how to be compassionate, as much as it is a six-week series on how to become the person that God is calling you to be in these areas.

Now, this morning we're continuing on in our teaching series, and we're looking at becoming a servant like Jesus.

Now, I'm going to admit something to you this morning that may sound strange coming from a pastor, but I've got to reveal my humanity before you.

Okay, I have a broken human nature, as we all do, and in my broken human nature, I really want to be great.

Like I really want to be great.

I want to achieve and aspire to a level of greatness while I'm here on the earth.

I want to be a great dad, I want to be a great husband, I want to be a great pastor, I want to be a great leader, I want to be great in that area, like in those various areas.

If I owned a business, I'd want to be a billionaire.

Like I have real ambition, I want to be great, but more than wanting to be great, I want everyone else to say, Pastor Dan, you're great.

Okay?

It sounds funny, but you gotta understand, in my brokenness, that's a real disposition that I have.

I want the accolades of the world and I want them to think of me as important.

And I know that I'm not the only one because the default of our human nature, all of us, want to be great or perceived as great somehow in some way.

And the easiest way to figure that out as a self-assessment is to ask yourself this question: What hall of fame do you want to be in?

Right?

Do you want to be world's greatest mom, world's greatest dad, world's greatest teacher, world's greatest business leader, world's greatest boss?

Does anybody have that mug floating around?

Okay.

Because there's a disposition of the heart to want to have greatness in the eyes of the world around us, to find a degree of self-importance from the various accolades that we have.

Now, what's interesting about Jesus is that as you read the life of Jesus, Jesus never tells his followers that greatness isn't a real thing and that greatness shouldn't be pursued.

He never tells his disciples to not become great people.

And we learn this in the story of the disciples when they decided they were going to have a little argument about who was the greatest disciple.

Imagine that conversation at Grace Church.

Who's the best follower of Jesus at Grace Church?

Who's the greatest?

Here's their conversation.

Luke chapter 22, verses uh 24.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

A dispute, an actual argument, breaks out among the disciples as to which of them is to be considered the greatest.

Is it gonna be Peter?

Is it gonna be James?

Is it gonna be John?

Is it gonna be Judas?

They're having the argument.

They're trying to figure out who's gonna be the greatest among them.

And as Jesus overhears their argument, he doesn't tell them to not pursue greatness.

He just reveals a different kind of greatness.

And so Jesus now enters into the context two kinds of greatness.

The first is what was called worldly greatness.

That's the disposition of our flesh.

If you want to be self-important and admired and have influence, that's worldly greatness.

Especially if you want to use that to have other people serve you and do what you want.

Jesus now introduces kingdom greatness.

It's a very different concept.

Luke chapter 22, 26 to 27.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

Jesus tells his disciples that the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like one who serves.

I am among you as one who serves.

Now, before I move on from this, I don't want you to miss this very subtle uh what I would call like dig on the disciples.

And when he does the dig, he actually does something else.

He declares that he is actually the goat.

He is the greatest of all time.

Jesus, in that one sentence, says that.

So what does Jesus say?

The one who rules should be among you like one who serves, and I'm among you as one who serves.

So what's the inference?

I'm the one who rules.

That's what Jesus is telling the disciples.

I am the King of kings, Lord of lords, I have authority, I have power.

It's all been given to me.

I take all of my position, all of my power, all of my authority, and how do I use it?

Do I lord it over you?

Do I put my thumb on your shoulder and push you down into submission?

Or do I use my power, my authority, my position that's been rightfully given to me by God and serve you?

No, I am here.

I've come to be one who serves.

In other words, I'm also the goat, by the way.

I'm the greatest in the kingdom of God.

It's one sentence where Jesus acknowledges who he is and how he uses his position for a very specific purpose on earth.

If you read Mark 10, 45, Jesus says the same thing.

The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

Jesus is fully aware that his position and his mission here on earth is to serve God's people and to serve them in a way that only he can serve them, which is to remove their sin upon the cross.

Now that is very different than worldly understanding of greatness.

In the world's understanding of greatness, the greater you are, the more power you have, the more influence you have, the more people serve you.

But in the kingdom of God, Jesus says that's not so.

The more power you have, the more influence you have, the disciple of Jesus submits it over to God and uses it to serve other people.

So Jesus has never eliminated the idea of greatness.

Okay?

Jesus doesn't eliminate greatness.

He simply reveals the kingdom standard of greatness, which is a humble servant.

So if you want to be the greatest follower of Jesus, if ambition is in your heart to be the greatest in the kingdom, there's a pathway there.

But it requires a heart formation where everything you have is laid down at the foot of the cross and your life is no longer your own.

You are a slave to the person of Jesus Christ.

That is the pathway to kingdom greatness.

Not everybody's willing to walk that road because that road requires you to set aside many different things about who you believe yourself to be.

But Jesus was able to lay aside his own sense of importance.

He didn't ignore his importance, he simply set it aside for the sake of serving others.

So what is it that allows the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Lords, to instead of requiring service from his followers, step down into their position and serve them in their place.

Well, here's what we learn about having a kingdom servant heart in the person of Jesus.

A servant, a kingdom servant, is secure in the position that they have with the Father.

Okay?

Jesus is very secure in his position with his father.

Let's look at John chapter 13, verses 1 through 3.

John 13:1–3

It was just before the Passover festival, and Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and to go to the Father.

And having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them until the very end.

And that evening, as the meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus, Jesus knew that the Father, in that moment, Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and they had come from God, and that he was returning to God.

John 3, 1 through 3 reveals a lot about what Jesus knew.

Jesus knew that his time on earth was coming to an end very soon.

Jesus knew that one of his disciples was about to betray him.

Jesus knew that his other disciples were going to deny him.

Jesus knew that what laid before him was the cross and his very own death.

And yet, even though Jesus knew all these difficult things were going to happen, Jesus also knew that all of it was under his power according to God the Father.

Jesus knew his identity.

He was secure in his identity as the suffering servant, coming to do what God had called him to do and have everything under his power.

Because of Jesus' security and his position with the Father, he's able to act as a servant king.

Insecure people demand accolades, demand service, demand a level of importance from those around them.

But Christ, deeply, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically secure in the promises of God, and his identity as the Son of God serves the world around him.

This is what Jesus knew.

And so my question for you this morning, church, is this do you understand your identity?

Do you understand your identity in Christ?

Because so many of us try to find an identity from what we call our social identity.

And a social identity is something that determines your level of perceived greatness or self-importance.

That's what social identity does.

And we get it from a variety of places.

You get social identity from your family, from your place of business, you get it from your church or the town that you live in.

All of these things create a sense of social identity and they contribute to the way you understand yourself and your level of greatness and self-importance.

Let me give you a very tangible experience.

And this applies to everybody who lives in Liditz.

So if you live in Lidditz, you're going to relate to this.

I've lived in Liditz now for five years, but occasionally I do leave this wonderful town and I travel around.

And when I meet people in different areas and they ask me where I'm from, I'll say I live in Lidditz, Pennsylvania.

And nine times out of ten, I will get this response.

Oh, I just love Lidditz.

I've been there a bunch of times.

I love going to the craft show.

I love coming downtown to eat at that restaurant.

What's it called?

It's like a bull or something.

Yeah, I love sitting outside on the patio there.

We've taken pictures down in the park as a family.

Oh, we love to go there once or twice a year and just enjoy Lidditz.

It's so great.

And when I hear that, it informs a sense of my identity, right?

Oh.

I live in Lidditz.

A very desirable place among men to live.

I must be pretty cool because I live in the coolest small town in America.

Wow.

I bet I can sell my house for 20% more than the surrounding towns.

Okay?

I must be pretty cool.

I didn't build lidits.

I don't contribute a whole lot to the infrastructure of this town or the local businesses.

I live here, my kids go to the school here, and I pastor a church here.

And you know what?

Like, when other people give lidits accolades for all the stuff that I had nothing to do with, it still makes me feel pretty good.

Sense of self-importance.

I must be pretty great because I live in a pretty great town.

That's social identity.

And we do it with every part of our life, whether it's the company you work for or the title that becomes before your name, even your kids' accomplishments, they inform your social identity.

And none of those things are wrong, but the problem becomes if that becomes the source of our identity and we don't know who we are without those things, then if our personal security comes from our social identity only and not our kingdom identity, we will protect our glory rather than lay it aside for Christ's glory.

And if you're going to be a servant of God, you're going to lay aside your own glory more than you would like to.

I want to take you back just one chapter to John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

When Jesus was teaching and preaching, there were many local leaders that believed Jesus was the Messiah.

And as these men believed, they believed in him, but because the Pharisees, they would not openly acknowledge that they believed in God for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue.

And here's the most important line: for they loved human praise more than the praise from God.

Social identity.

That's what that is.

I love the social identity I have from being a part of this institution or this secret society or this group of people.

And if I identify with Christ publicly, I'm going to lose social identity.

They were afraid of man, but more than being afraid of man, they loved human greatness.

Every single one of us loves human greatness.

It's foolish to say that we don't.

Our flesh yearns towards it.

There wouldn't be influencers if social media didn't elevate the level of being a great person, perceived influence, whatever that might mean.

When you love the praise of man, oftentimes you will not identify publicly with the person of Jesus.

Have you ever had that fear?

You were out in public, maybe you're part of your clubs or a part of your school, maybe, maybe you're part of a sports team, and there was an opportunity to identify with Christ and you didn't?

Well, why didn't you?

The Bible tells you it's because you love the praise of man.

You love your own personal sense of greatness more than identifying with the person of Jesus Christ.

And if we can't identify with Jesus publicly, then we have an extraordinarily long road to go if we're going to identify with Him in our hearts as a servant.

Because servants have to lay aside their own sense of greatness.

One of the things that leads towards having a servant heart church is that you're willing to identify with Christ publicly in all circumstances and places.

Recognizing that even though it may cost you a sense of social identity and a loss of greatness in the eyes of the world, it elevates your level of importance in the eyes of God, as it makes you a part of being the humble servant he's asked you to be.

And now that you have lost your social identity, you can begin saying there's nothing beneath me, and I can begin serving the way the person of Jesus served.

Jesus was completely secure in his identity as the Son of the Father.

John 13, 3, I'll read it for you again.

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power and that he had come from God and he was returning to God.

He didn't need other things to affirm his identity.

He didn't need the disciples to make sure that he felt like he was a person of worth.

He knew he possessed absolute power and authority and was appointed by God to go to the cross, to die on the cross, to resurrect from the dead, prove power over life and death, and one day return and establish a new heaven and new earth.

When he's so secure in his position and his identity, he does not worry about the thoughts and the opinions of the glory that comes from this world.

So, church, I have to ask you, do you know?

Do you know what Jesus knew?

Do you know what the Bible says about you as a follower of Christ?

Romans 8:17 says that you are a co-heir with Christ in the kingdom of heaven.

Romans 8:17

That through Christ you've entered the presence of God, you've been adopted in the family of God as a son or daughter of God.

Jesus is called the Son of God.

If you are in Christ and you are a son of God or a daughter of God, God the Father looks at you like he looks at Jesus Christ.

He makes you a co-heir.

So if Jesus has all authority under him and you're a co-heir, who has authority?

You do.

You have the same, well not quite the same, identity shared authority with Christ in the kingdom.

You have shared authority, and it's given to you by the person of the Holy Spirit at work in you and through you for the sake of expanding the kingdom here in this world.

But this world in which you live wants to tell you that the greatness that you should achieve is the greatness and accolades of the world instead of being great in the kingdom of God.

Friends, a humble servant, if you're really going to be a humble servant, it starts with being secure in your position of who God says that you are.

And when you are secure in your position in Christ, you are free from the love of the glory of man.

It won't tempt you.

I mean, it'll always tempt you.

I told you earlier, I want to be great.

The temptation's always going to be there, but you're free from needing it to understand who you are and what your purpose is.

But as you pursue the path of the humble servant, something else is going to happen.

A servant's heart will be challenged by their flesh.

Your heart is going to be challenged by your flesh as you pursue being humble in the kingdom of God.

Let's look at the story of Jesus washing Peter's feet.

Jesus, knowing who he was, he got up from the meal and he took off his outer clothing and he wrapped a towel around his waist, and after that he poured water into a basin, and he began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Then he came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet too?

This is the dumbest question Peter's ever asked, by the way.

You're in a room of people, you're watching Jesus wash everybody's feet in front of you.

And you think he's not going to wash your feet?

That's not the right way to read the question, really.

What Jesus, what Peter is uh is vocalizing here is something that's actually very culturally appropriate for his day and age.

You see, everybody in that room understood exactly what Jesus was doing.

Jesus culturally was a rabbi and a teacher.

He was a man of authority and a man of respect.

And if you go back the chapter earlier, he was ushered into Jerusalem as the king of the Jews, everybody waving the palms and singing Hosanna, and so he enters into this place, recognized as a man of great importance by the people around him, including the twelve disciples.

And what Peter understands is the cultural power dynamics of the moment, okay?

If Jesus is a rabbi, he's a religious leader who's highly expect respected.

If Jesus is his rabbi, then he is beneath and under the authority of Jesus' teaching.

So in this world, in this power dynamic, there's simply no way you could reason in your mind that it's appropriate for Jesus to be doing this.

Jesus, you you can't do this.

It's below or beneath the position of a rabbi, and it's definitely below the position of a king.

And how does Jesus respond?

With rebuke.

John 13, 8.

Jesus answered, Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.

Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.

See, Peter, he didn't want his feet washed by Jesus.

In fact, he said, No, you should never wash my feet.

He protested.

If you're going to be a humble servant, when you step into positions to serve, there will be times when your flesh will argue with you and will tell you this is beneath you.

Because your flesh understands the power dynamics of the world.

Your flesh understands that there are some jobs that really, in the eyes of the world, you shouldn't be doing.

And you're just going to protest.

You're going to say, well, maybe I'm too important for this.

Yeah, I think my position is maybe above this work.

Of course, we never say that out loud verbally.

What we say out loud verbally is, hey, you know what?

I'm more gifted in this way.

So let me serve in this way where I'm gifted, because I'm not gifted serving in this way.

It's just a different way of saying something's beneath you.

You may not have actually talent in that area, and that's a different thing altogether, but a lot of us will have verbiage that we say out loud to make it sound like a good reason to not serve when the reality is there's no reason we can't serve there at all, in fact that we don't want to, and we think it's beneath us.

Because that's what our flesh does.

Our flesh understands the power dynamic.

And so when we step into the humble servant nature of Christ, it starts to argue with us and say, No, you can't do that, that's beneath you.

But that's not what Jesus says.

Jesus goes to Peter, there's some things, Peter, that only I can do.

And right now, Peter, the thing that I can do that you can't do for yourself is to remove the sin from your life.

And so Jesus washes the feet of Peter.

Unless I do this for you, you have no part of me.

I must become the servant who accomplishes a task that you can't do on your own.

And so he serves.

But you know, Peter voices this protest, and it actually speaks to something else in the human condition.

Humans, as you're well aware, definitely know what power is, we know what strength is, and we woe, we know what prestige is.

And every human being I've ever met wants to be around power, prestige, strength, and influence.

I don't know if you've ever had this experience in your life personally.

But if you ever have the chance to encounter a celebrity in real life, it's very shocking to the system.

I was walking in New York City about 20 years ago.

This is not much of a celebrity, but I was walking down New York City, there was the most immaculate mustache I'd ever seen.

It was Geraldo Rivera.

I don't even like Geraldo Rivera.

He's just a newscaster, journalist, anchor.

And when I saw Geraldo Rivera, I was like, oh my gosh, it's Geraldo Rivera.

I gotta get a picture.

So my brother and I and our friends were like, Geraldo, Geraldo, a picture, a picture.

And he's like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

And we're like, come on, buddy, a picture.

And it's like, okay, fine.

He gets his arms around us like he's our best friend, takes a picture, says, Have a great day, guys.

And we talked about it for like three days.

Can you believe we met Geraldo Rivera?

Geraldo Rivera is a joke.

Okay?

But that is what worldly greatness does to a person when you really encounter it.

And it just out of nowhere, you want to be around it, you want to be associated with it, regardless of the person and their values, the power is attractive.

And so when God enters the world and he comes down as a human being, as a baby in a manger, weak, human, frail in physical nature, a God who comes down to serve humanity, a God who gets on his knees, a God who goes to a cross, that confronts something inside of our flesh.

Do we really want to be associated with a God that the rest of the world perceives as weak?

If you look at every other religion in the world that have man-made gods, these gods are powerful.

They have places of authority, and you're just hoping that this God may take mercy on you and do something for you out of pity inside of your life.

That if you can't conceive, you go to the fertility gods.

If you want rain, you go to the rain gods.

If you want some other form of submission in your life, you go to Allah.

I don't know, but there's these gods that exist in a world made by man that emulate our own flesh, which is power and greatness and keeping people subservient to them.

Not the God of the Bible, not the person of Jesus.

He comes into the world on the opposite side of that spectrum, not to be served, but to serve and do for us only what he can do, which is the remission or take away our sins through forgiveness with the death on the cross.

And so what appears weak, and it does appear weak, God incarnating as man, man, God going to the cross as man and then dying, it's weakness.

That is absolute weakness.

In fact, the scriptures and theologists call it the humiliation of Christ, that he would leave heaven where he's on a throne of full glory, enter mankind's experience, and be totally and utterly humiliated, be stripped naked in front of people, be lashed, be beaten, be uh enthroned with a crown of thorns.

I mean, this is total and utter human suffering and humiliation to take on a work that only he could do, which is to die a perfect death on your behalf and give you access to the presence of God through the forgiveness of your sins if you call upon him.

So, unless Jesus washes you, you have no part with him.

And so, as we continue developing the mindset of becoming a servant of God, a humble servant like Jesus, I want to encourage you with a few things.

Before you are ever a servant of Jesus, Jesus serves you.

Before you ever are asked to make a sacrifice for Jesus, Jesus sacrificed himself for you.

Before you were ever asked to give anything away for Jesus, Jesus gave away his whole life for you, even leaving behind the crown and the authority of heaven temporarily to dwell here on earth as man, he left it behind for you.

And before you're ever asked to even pick up a towel or to stack chairs or to plunge a toilet or to open a door, Jesus, the God of the universe, picked up a towel and washed your feet first.

This is the humble servant.

This is the model that is set before us.

And as you begin serving Jesus, you will find that a servant heart is going to be formed in you by understanding the full measure to which Christ Himself has served us.

That through his death, burial, and resurrection and the removal of sin, we're not associated with a weak power in the world, but the greatest power in the universe.

Christ is the only one who has power over life and death.

That is real power, amen.

I don't care what this world has to offer in terms of worldly accolades, worldly power, worldly influence.

The person of Jesus Christ has power over life and death.

And when he returns and resurrects me from the dead, if I die before he comes back, I am going to raise from the dead in a new body.

I'm going to look at the entire world and I'm going to say, Told you so.

Jesus has the power.

I told you so.

That's power that I'm associated with today.

I'll experience the full measure of that power upon resurrection day or the return of Christ.

I want to be associated with that kind of greatness, kingdom greatness.

Now, Christ's exalt uh his exaltation and his greatness was bestowed upon him because he was willing to become the suffering servant.

If you look in the Old Testament, there's many prophecies about the Messiah that the Jews were promised.

Isaiah 52 and 53 are very popular prophecies about this person.

And here's what it promises.

Isaiah 52 promises that the servant of God, the Messiah, will act wisely, he will be raised and lifted up, and he will be highly exalted.

That one day, in the world's view, the suffering servant or the servant of God will be highly exalted by all men.

But the pathway to being the greatest in the world, the greatest in the kingdom, is going down, not up.

And that's Isaiah 53, just the very next chapter.

There's a prophecy about what Christ will have to do.

Christ himself will be despised and rejected by mankind.

He'll be a man of suffering, familiar with pain.

Surely he will take up our pain and bore our suffering.

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

Despised and rejected by who?

By the world.

Not great in man's eyes, but no, seen and killed as a criminal, the worst of the worst in all of the Roman Empire.

On that cross as a criminal, as low as God could possibly go, he bears the weight of the sin of the world, and then as a result of that, upon resurrection, the Father exalted him to his rightful place in the kingdom of heaven.

This is the God that we serve.

A God who serves us first, doing for us only what he can do.

And when Jesus does that, he's just echoing the heart of the Father.

Look at Exodus chapter 6, verse 7 through 8.

Exodus 6:7–8

God is seeing the nation of Israel in captivity, and he wants to deliver them because they're suffering.

I have indeed seen the misery of my people.

I've heard them crying out, and I'm concerned about their suffering.

So I have come down to rescue them.

God the Father came down through the prophet Moses, through the plagues, the moving of the Spirit to deliver his people from suffering.

Then God himself later comes down in the New Testament as the person of Jesus, where he walks among those who are suffering.

He heals the sick, he heals the leper, he gives them spiritual truth, he feeds the hungry, and then God goes further down all the way to the cross where he gives his life for you and me.

Further down, further down, further down as a humble and ultimately suffering servant.

And what moved him to come down?

He saw and he heard about the suffering of his people.

He looked at the sheep, the people, right?

And they were like sheep without a shepherd, helpless and harassed.

His compassion moved him to come down from heaven to earth, where he served us by giving his very own life.

You know, um.

And I'm gonna be honest with you.

There's a part of it that says, Yes, please do.

I would love it if you did that, because I don't feel like doing it.

But there's also this thought in my head, and I wrestle with this, I wonder if people are asking, and I know they're asking to help and to do all the things, but I also wonder if they're asking because somewhere in their mind, they think that as the pastor of the church, I shouldn't have to serve that way.

If Jesus was willing to get down and wash his disciples' feet, friends, I can tell you that there is no kind of greatness, no kind of position, no kind of role in the kingdom of heaven that exempts anybody from the servant's towel in the kingdom of God.

There is no role of service beneath any follower of Jesus in the kingdom of God.

And that's what Jesus tells us in John 13, 14 through 16.

Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet.

I have set for you an example that you should do as I have done for you.

Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, and no messenger is greater than the one who sent him.

So if Jesus is the rabbi and Jesus is the teacher, and Jesus is the Lord, and this is what he does, if you are choosing to follow Jesus, then you are taking on the yoke of Jesus, and you're saying, I will do this too.

I will do these very same works.

This is what my king is like, this is what my God is like, this is who I am going to be like.

As he has done for me, so I so will do for the world.

The last thing you need to know about this is as you serve Jesus, or you serve the world the way Jesus served you.

If you know the way of Jesus and you're living like Jesus, it brings about the blessing of Jesus in your life.

Listen to John 13, 17.

Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Do you know what the blessing of serving like Jesus is?

It's a really big house and a brand new car and millions of dollars.

That's what it is.

All you gotta do is serve like Jesus and you'll have everything the world wants you to have.

That's heresy.

It's not true.

Here's the blessing of serving like Jesus.

You identify with your master.

That's the blessing.

You're identifying with the person of Jesus Christ, and you're becoming like your master.

I'm telling you that service is heart formation, it's the tangible expression of your prayer life and your compassion.

When you have compassion and you move towards somebody, there's a next step that has to happen, and that's service.

Now, the church, the body of Christ, is built and given to us by God to love one another, giving our lives over to one another, serving one another.

It's not just about the normal functions that make Sunday morning work.

We've got a lot of volunteers.

I'm not talking about volunteers, although volunteering is a form of service.

I'm talking about the heart position that says, I see a need, and I'm gonna move towards the need, and I'm going to meet the need, and meeting the need is my act of humble service, no matter what it is.

Because it's not beneath me.

Because there's nothing beneath my savior, there's nothing beneath me.

Church, I want to ask you a question this morning.

If somebody asked you to help them, I'm sure you would say yes.

My real question is this: how much of your life are you willing to give away for Jesus?

How much of your life are you willing to give away for Jesus?

I want to read to you 1 John 3.16.

I read it last week, I'll read it again.

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 our brothers and sisters.

If Jesus was willing to go down on his knees and wash feet, and Jesus was willing to lay down his life and give it over for you, how much of your life are you willing to give away for the people that God loves?

Because if it's anything less than all of it, then you're more concerned about your own glory than the glory of God.

It has to be all of it.

And if you're not there today, I understand.

Some days our flesh is strong.

We don't want to lay it down.

I get it.

I totally get it.

But that's what the work of the Lord is doing inside of our heart, turning us into people that is willing to say, whatever it is, whoever it is, I lay down all of myself.

I lay down my time, I lay down my money, I lay down my preferences, I lay down my conveniences because I see a person, they have a need, I can meet that need, I'm gonna serve them like Jesus has served me.

And over the next couple of years, I'm excited to see what God is gonna do in the life of Grace Church as we become a church that serves like Jesus, with nothing beneath us, but everything ahead of us as we look towards celebrating all of God's goodness and all of God's glory.

One of the ways that we're gonna do that practically in the next couple of weeks, is Allie and our kids' ministry have this really fun event.

They're gonna take young adults or grandparents plus their little kids.

We're talking like nine, ten, eleven, and younger, up to Camp Conquest just to serve.

Many of you know camp, it's a camp we're affiliated with, about a half hour from here.

They're just gonna go love somebody else.

Because one thing to serve the body, like we can serve our own church as much as we want and it's well and good, but also we've got to serve our partners and we gotta learn how to serve our community, we've got to learn how to serve our neighbors.

And so if we don't practice serving, then we're gonna miss out on the opportunity to have heart formation in our young people.

So if you're a grandparent or a parent looking forward to that, mark it on your calendar, November 14th, they're gonna do that.

And for everybody else, the greatest part of belonging to a local church, the body of Christ, is not the Sunday morning service and the ministries.

This is about 20% of what church life is about.

So if you're just sitting in the rows, you're just watching online and you've been consuming the experience, enjoying the teaching, the worship, the ministries, but you're not actively serving somewhere.

You're missing out on an incredible opportunity for that act of service to make you more like the person of Jesus.

We don't ask you to volunteer simply because we need programmatic help.

Part of us asking you to serve at the church is because we care about you becoming more like Christ.

And when you step into positions of service here at the church, they will stretch you, change you, and transform you.

And the more you serve, this miraculous thing happens, the more you serve, the more low things that you do that challenge your flesh, the more grateful you are for the gospel that you've received.

Because you understand that Jesus, in all of his greatness and authority, was willing to lay it aside for a moment to come serve you.

And all of a sudden you're down there and you're setting up chairs or you're cleaning the toilet or you're taking care of a kid and you're sitting yourself thinking, this is hard work.

I don't want to do this.

But Jesus, you did the work for me that was hard.

And I'm so grateful.

So as we serve in the church, we serve one another, we identify with the serving nature of Jesus our Lord, and we love the gospel we've received even more.

It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, we come before you recognizing that you have done for us what we could not do for ourselves.

You have purified us, cleansed us, made us right before God the Father as we share in your righteousness.

Thank you, Jesus, that your mercy and your compassion and your love bestows that upon me for simply saying, You are my Lord and giving my life over to you.

Father, would you empower this church through the person of your Holy Spirit to change our hearts from thinking so much about ourselves to thinking much more about you, that we would echo the call of John the Baptist that we must become lesser and you must become greater.

Jesus, I can't wait to see what happens as you begin working in my own heart and in the heart of the lives of Grace Church, helping our people become humble servants like your son Jesus Christ.

Please do all of this and more in your name.

Amen.