Allen Jackson - You've Gotta Serve Somebody - Part 1
I’ve been inviting you to imagine that God has a plan for your life that extends beyond just going to heaven or that extends beyond just a plan for your eternity. And that God’s plan for you is inseparable. In fact, it will be experienced as you understand and appropriate or believe God’s promises. That it won’t chase you down, it won’t find you. You’ll have to believe those promises. And that if you can imagine those things, then you’re willing to live as a part of God’s people. And God’s people are those people who believe his promises and embrace his plan for their life. They’re not the people who sit in churches or have Bibles or moral.
And at the end of the day all of us wanna be involved in God’s plan, I hope, that we’re willing to believe God’s promises and to live as his people. In this session I borrowed a line from Bob Dylan. I don’t do that often. You gotta serve somebody. But I wanna start in 2 Peter chapter 1 with the passage that’s really informed this whole series. Peter, the fisherman that Jesus recruited said, «His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness». That’s an amazing statement. That God has given us everything we need to be godly. I don’t know about you, but a lot of days, I don’t feel like that. I think he must have left something out. Do you wake up every morning thinking, «Oh, I want to be godly»?
Let me ask you in a different way. How many of you live with somebody that you’re certain does not wake up every morning thinking, «Oh, I wanna be godly». Okay, well, the Scripture says, «He’s given us everything we need for life and godliness». We have to choose to believe that, «through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. And through these he’s given us his very great and precious promises». He has given, it’s the perfect tense, means it’s already been done. Not going to be done. Nothing gonna be added to it. It’s not going to be extended. It’s a «Fait accompli». It’s been fully accomplished. «So that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires».
The promises of God, I don’t believe should be imagined to be something is like bolt-on ideas, add-ons they shouldn’t be considered 'cause I think if you don’t believe the promises and appropriate them, you will not escape the evil desires and the corruption of this present age. So we either believe God and begin to appropriate what he said is possible for those of us who follow him, or we will be overwhelmed by the corruption and the evil of the present age. Those are the options. Those two things have been stated in the perfect tense. He’s already given them to us and he’s given us everything we need. That’s amazing to me. Nothing left out, nothing withheld. We have everything that we need.
So if we put it in its simplest forms, God’s provision is in his promises and those promises are our inheritance. Many of you have heard us talk about the Jewish people in Israel and the inheritance God has given them at the end of the Mediterranean, that little strip of land. Well, to the rest of us, he hasn’t given a piece of land, but we live a life that is defined by the promises of God. You know, in the Old Testament we read the story, in fact, we just finished reading the story of a leader named Joshua through whom God led his people into a promised land. Well, the New Testament tells us a story of a leader named Jesus, and God leads his people into the land of his promises through what Jesus did for us with his redemptive work.
Now, just as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had to occupy that Promised Land even though it was their inheritance, you and I will have to occupy the promises of God. We will have to appropriate them. So we’ve been looking at some aspects of that and trying to understand it. In this session, I want to take it a little step further, just an idea. I hope it’s apparent to you that God will keep his covenant. Covenant is the most binding word in the Bible. There’s no word that carries with it a greater strength of contract than covenant. To say God keeps his promises feels a little light to me because I think we think that promises is something that are a bit more transitory. Promises tend to depend upon relative humidity and all sorts of things. The covenants of God are the most binding agreement he makes with human beings.
In Deuteronomy chapter 6, there’s a promise God is making through Moses to the children of Israel. He said, «When the Lord your God brings you into the land, he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you a land with large, flourishing cities that you didn’t build, houses filled with all kinds of good things that you didn’t provide, wells you didn’t dig, and vineyards and olive groves that you didn’t plant, then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful, be careful that you don’t forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery».
Now, the people to whom that was delivered didn’t occupy the land. They died in the desert because they chose not to make the effort. They said it’s true, when they got to the place that they could actually see it and explore it, they said, «It’s truly an amazing place. It’s remarkable. Everything God said about it is true, but it just feels a bit too difficult for us. We’re not sure we wanna do that». It says God was so angry with them that he swore on an oath that they would all die in the wilderness, and so for decades, they wandered in a circle until that generation was all gone. But before they got to that point, God was giving them an instruction. He said, «when you get into that land, you’re going to have blessings that you didn’t create. You’ll have opportunities that were beyond what you prepared for yourself. There will be things accrued to you. There will be things presented to you that you shouldn’t imagine you made happen fully».
And his note there was, «Be careful. Be careful when that happens, that you don’t forget the Lord». Well, I would submit to you that it’s a pretty accurate description of our lives. We have blessings and opportunities and freedoms and liberties that we didn’t create. We stand on the shoulders of the sacrifices that of others have made. And I’m not saying that you haven’t sacrificed or that you haven’t worked hard or that you haven’t been diligent. I believe many of you have. But there’s a danger, and I would just repeat what God said to them because I think it’s relevant for me and I think it could be relevant for you. We wanna be careful that we don’t forget the Lord. That he’s the one who delivered us from darkness.
If it hadn’t been for his sovereign intervention in our lives, we wouldn’t have the opportunities we have today. That God keeps his word. It’s a very important somewhere that needs to be established as a cornerstone in your heart, in your decision making, in the plans that you put together, that God keeps his word. It’s true with his blessings, it’s equally true with his judgment. God keeps his word. Joshua chapter 24, if we scroll forward a few years, Joshua now is near the end of his life. He’s led those former slaves of Egypt into the Promised Land. He’s seen them conquer Jericho and many other places after that. There’s still work to be done, and so he’s providing some final instructions to the tribes of Israel.
Based upon his experience, he’s watched one of these transitions from Moses into his own life, and now he realizes that his season of leadership is coming to a conclusion, so he gives these instructions to the people. He said, «If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served on the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you’re living». And the line that I hope many of you know, «But as for me in my household, we’ll serve the Lord». We’ve probably all seen that on little plaques or greeting cards or some way that it can be sold. Hope Joshua gets royalties. But he’s reminding us of something that is very important for us today that we have a choice to make whether or not we will serve the Lord. He didn’t say, «Choose today whether you want to be a part of God’s eternal kingdom». He said, «You have a choice to make about how you’re going to live your life. About what you will serve».
See, we have separated our faith from this notion of serving. We have introduced it in a part of the equation that really isn’t supported by Scripture. We’ve kind of had to extrapolate verses and duct tape it together to get to this place where our faith is about eternity, then the notion of being the people of God means we’re the people who serve God. That whatever you serve with your time and your attention and your effort and your resources is truly the way to understand what is supreme in your life. We don’t think about worshiping idols that are crafted very often anymore by wood or stone or metal.
So we think, «Well, it’s not really possible that we could be idolatrous because we don’t do that, but whatever has the primary assignment of our attention wherever the significance of our life is focused, that is what we worship». And Joshua was saying to the people, you have a choice to make what you’re going to serve. And then he makes that statement that we all know, «As for me in my house,» but I would submit to you it’s more significant for Joshua because the people who were his peer group, the people that he would have graduated high school with, the people that he might have started his career with, the people that he could tell stories with about the brick pits of Egypt because that’s where Joshua started.
«Do you remember the slave masters? Do you remember what it used to be like on the Egyptian holidays? Do you remember the Egyptian priest? Do you remember the whole», well, the people that started that journey with him are not there. They’re all gone, save Caleb, because they chose not to serve the Lord. So when Joshua was making this presentation to the people, this isn’t some theological theory to him, it’s not some hypothetical. It’s not like, you know, well, it’s possible. He’s lived this out. He lost an entire generation of people. And he’s saying, «I understand that there are generations who will say, we don’t wanna serve the Lord. We don’t intend to do that. And I don’t want you to be one of those,» he says.
But you have to choose. Which brings me to the point that we’ve made often around here is that every generation has to choose for themselves. And one of the, if not the greatest gift that I believe parents can give to their children, is to do everything in your power to add momentum to help them choose to serve the Lord. It’s the only thing I think that will take them through. So it’s the presentation I wanna spend our time with in this session has to do with this nature of serving the Lord and what that looks like. And I’m not recruiting. I’m not above it, I’m sure I will do it at some point in the future, but I’m not this weekend, other than to recruit you to a larger imagination of serving the Lord. The Bible talks about rewards for the faithful and wise servant.
You know, there’s a fundamental principle of physics that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. And those fundamental principles of the world we live in are typically reflections of the character of God. And if you believe that God is a God who rewards, and the Bible tells us we should, that if you come to God, you have to believe, you must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him. But if you believe that there’s a God who rewards you, you also have to understand that there’s a God where there’s a punishment. Or at least maybe perhaps a better way to say it is there’s a consequence of refusing to serve the Lord 'cause if you don’t serve the Lord you serve something.
So in Matthew chapter 24, Jesus is telling a parable about a wise and faithful servant. I’d like to be one of those. I mean, in God’s economy, wouldn’t you like to be labeled wise and faithful? Or maybe sloppy and slovenly. I’d like to make the wise and faithful cut. And so Jesus is telling this parable. He said, «Who’s a wise and faithful servant, whom the masters put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at their proper time»? It’s not a particularly fun assignment, it’s very repetitive, it’s very confining. I’ve had to care for animals on a regular basis and food and water is not something you can do once a week or every other month or when it’s convenient or you have a few moments. «It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he’ll put him in charge of all of his possessions».
What’s the reward? If you’re a wise and faithful servant, you’ll be put in charge of all the possessions in the master’s house. I don’t believe that’s some figurative, I believe God will give you assignments and responsibilities. He will entrust you with things of far greater value, of far greater significance than anything this present world order holds out to us if you will choose to be a wise and faithful servant of Almighty God with the days he gives you under the sun. And I’m not talking about being a preacher or a professional Christian because I don’t believe that’s a requirement in order to be a wise and faithful servant. You can be a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker and be a very wise and faithful servant of Almighty God. Or you can be a preacher and be a very unfaithful and unwise servant. It’s not a professional commitment, it’s a personal choice.
Joshua said it this way, «Choose today whom you’re going to serve». It’s a conscious, intentional, I think it’s noteworthy if we were gonna frame that in the language of contemporary evangelicalism, we would talk about it in terms of conversion. Again, I believe in being converted, but the rewards go to the servants, to the wise and faithful servants. We have to reposition a little bit, we have to recalibrate. Not to diminish one, but to understand that’s the doorway into a transformation of life, a revaluation of time and energy and effort in how we think. 2 Timothy chapter 2. Here’s a trustworthy saying. «If we died with him, we’ll live with him. If we endure, we’ll reign with him. If we disown him, he’ll disown us. If we are faithless, he’ll remain faithful, for he can’t disown himself».
I’m fascinated by the phrase that if we endure, we’ll reign with him. See, there’s something ahead of us more than just making the cut. We wanna live in such a way that God can trust us with roles of significance. The more I read my Bible and the more I try to understand about what’s ahead of us, I truly believe when Jesus is coming back to this earth to reign, the millennial reign of Christ, he’s gonna rule and reign on earth. There’s a new order coming. And he says, we’re going to reign with him. It’s not going to be a passive time. If you know something about that season, not everybody’s going to be happy about it. And we’re going to be called upon to serve with the Lord in bringing his will to bear on earth as it is in heaven. He taught us to pray that way. But the people engaged in that great undertaking invited to participate that are the people who have been faithful and wise servants.
So what I’m suggesting to you is that an exalted place in the emerging kingdom of God is to be considered a servant. It’s a celebrated position. It’s not like way down the org chart. And I brought you a rather elaborate sampling. I’m not gonna dwell on them, but it’s a diverse listing of people. In Romans 16, Paul said, «I commend you to our sister Phoebe, she’s a servant of the church». He didn’t list a talent or a gift or a unique ability. He characterized an attitude. She serves the church. In Philippians 1, «Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus». He has a very extensive resume. His curriculum vitae is overwhelming. But his introduction to the church in Philippi, he chooses to identify himself as a servant.
Philippians chapter 2, it’s describing Jesus and his choices. Says, «He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness». Do you remember when Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with the disciples? It was a very eventful evening. That meal, it’s Passover meal, which carries enough emotion with it in and of itself. I’ve been in Jerusalem on multiple occasions for Passover and you feel it all throughout the city. So there’s that layer of anticipation and excitement. The disciples have gone to prepare the place for Passover. Remember the narrative, you know, where will we go? Well, you’ll find that, I mean, it was supernatural how they got led to the building, but they finally get to the meal. They have Passover. In the midst of the meal, Jesus said, «One of you is a devil and you’re gonna betray me».
And that ripples around the room. Who is it? Could it be me? Judas is identified and he leaves, which no doubt creates some additional emotion for those left at the table, you can imagine. Jesus has reminded them of what’s coming, and there’s great anxiety about that. I’ve prayed for you that your faith wouldn’t leave. In the midst of all of that, do you remember what Jesus did? He washed their feet. He said, «Now I have shown you something. I’ve served you, and you should do the same».
We borrowed that, we’ve ritualized it. On more than one occasion I’ve been a part of a service where we would wash one another’s feet. It’s not wrong. But what Jesus was asking us to was something more than a ceremonial repetition of a point in history. He’s modeling something for the disciples on the evening when he’s going to be betrayed. Within a matter of hours, he’s going to be tortured to death. He’s identified a traitor in their midst, one who will betray him, treasonous. And in the midst of all of that, the activity he chose to engage, to model for them is to serve them. You remember Peter objected, «Lord, not me, I should wash your feet». And he said, «Peter, if I don’t wash your feet, you have no part of me». And he said, «Then not just my feet,» you know, Peter.
So this notion of being a servant, this is not some secondary. It’s not like you don’t have anything else to do so, you know, is there some way I could serve. It’s an understanding of our lives. People matter. They matter to God. They matter to God enough that Jesus humbled himself and became one of us. Took the very nature of a servant, became obedient, it goes on to say in that second chapter, obedient even to the point of death. You and I, we serve God by serving people. I don’t think you can serve God unless you serve people. It’s not some abstract equation. I believe in intercession, I believe in Bibles, I believe in all those things, but ultimately, the expression of our faith is serving people. It’s not always just the ones we like. We have to make time for people. Ugh. Rather than curse them on the highway, pray for them. That’s trouble right there. I’m not done with the list.
Hebrews chapter 3, «Moses was a faithful servant in all of God’s house». Wow. Moses got the Ten Commandments. Moses parted the Red Sea. Moses came up with the manna thing and the quail thing and water from a rock. Moses did okay. He had a plan for a tabernacle and an organizational structure for an entire nation and a set of social arrangements that enabled them to flourish as a nation. All of that comes through Moses, but what he’s identified as is he was a servant. Moses was his faithful servant.
James chapter 1, «James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ». 2 Peter 1, «Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ». Revelation chapter 1, who wrote the book of Revelation? John, good job. It says, «The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants». He said, «I have a revelation. Who am I gonna show the end of the age and what’s gonna happen»? «Show it to my servants». And then the question was, «Well, who can we trust with this revelation»? And the answer was, «He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John». I mean, that’s not by any means an inclusive list, but it’s a pretty intriguing list from Paul to Moses to Jesus to James to Peter to John, they’re all identified, presented to us as servants.
So in the 21st century edition of the body of Christ, I am very delighted to be included, God willing, as a servant. And I would invite you to that. So because I was the one building the outline, I put together some characteristics of servants of the great King. I have to think about it that way, the privilege of serving the Lord. You see, I was embarrassed by it, first season in my life. When I left here to go to college, I went to Oral Roberts University. And at the time, it was a very, they had an excellent academic record for an independent university, but not everybody thought Oral Roberts University was a great choice. And I’d come back home for a holiday and, you know, everybody know where you went or what you were doing and they’d ask and you just kind of move along.
I went to school. And then the Lord began to invite me into ministry, and that was even more awkward. 'Cause nobody, there was not like a pool saying Allen will be a pastor. And I came back to town and the church didn’t look like it does today. It was a small group of people meeting in a rented space. We believed in crazy things like praying for the sick, speaking in tongues. And people would ask me, «What do you do»? and I go, «I’m a…what do you do»? And a change had to come in my heart long before there was a change in the place where I served. I had decided, and it took some tremendous pressure in my life to be just completely honest about it. It took a tremendous amount of pressure before I decided that the greatest honor of my life was serving the Lord.