Jentezen Franklin - We Are Not Crazy
I'm reading this morning from the Book of Mark 10:43. "Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be a servant". If you want to be great, you have to be a servant. I wanna preach this morning a different title and a different message. "We are not crazy. We are not crazy". Would you confirm to someone they may be wondering, but tell them, "You are not crazy"? I'll explain the title in just a moment. According to heaven, and some of you find that amusing because apparently you had questions about that individual, but it's alright. God measures greatness in terms of service, not status.
In the world, how many people serve you means you're great. The more a person is served and catered to, "Wow, they're great. Look at their entourage, look at the people making a big deal about them". But in the kingdom of heaven, it's not how many people serve you, but how many people do you serve, that determines and measures your greatness. Knowing your gift, and your call, and understanding, that everybody's not called to preach or to sing. But that you're called, and you're good, it's in your DNA at doing something is important, but having a servant's heart is even more important than you using that gift for God. Because if you don't have a servant's heart, you'll be tempted to misuse the gift for only personal gain. If you're not serving people, you're not serving God. Real servants make themselves available. They jump in when the need presents itself.
Galatians 6:10 said that, "Whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good, especially for the family of believers". You see, when you do little things, if you do little things, they will become great things, if you do them like they're great things. Do little things like they're great things because God is watching. Galatians 6:3 said, "If you think you're too important to help, you're only fooling yourself". This is God's word, "You are not that important". If you think you are too important to help someone, somebody else, let the little people do that stuff, you are fooling yourself. Jesus washed people's feet, Jesus took care of children and worked in the children's ministry. He laid His hands on them and He called them and said, "Suffer the little children, I wanna minister to them. I'm gonna have a children's ministry. I'm gonna get involved in it".
Jesus cook breakfast for the disciples over, and over, and over. He had a favorite meal for breakfast, fish and bread, and He cooked it over and over in the text. Jesus, the Son of God, God in skin, He could be performing miracles, but He never lost and never felt that something was beneath Him. And He was serving, cooking, using cooking to serve His disciples. He served lepers, He healed, nothing was beneath Him. It's your willingness to do the not such great stuff that qualifies you to do the great stuff down the road, and all of heaven watches. Real servants are faithful, they don't leave a job half done. They don't make commitments and not show up. They don't stop at the slightest provocation because they don't feel like doing it anymore. But real servants are faithful to the end, they don't quit until the job is finished.
Can others depend on you? Can God depend on you? Are there promises that you need to keep? Are there commitments that you need to honor? This is the test of your character. If you pass that test, you're in good company with Abraham. You're in good company with Moses, you're in good company with Paul, who was, all of these men were called faithful servants. Jesus taught in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, "That the servant who failed to use his one talent, that talent would be taken from him and give it to the man who had 10 talents". Jesus was not a socialist. He did not say, "It's okay for you to sit there and do nothing with what you've got, and you should expect more". No sweet, humble, kind Jesus said, "If you don't get up and use what I've given you, I take it from you, and I give it to the guy who has 10 because he'll use what he's got".
That is important, we need to teach that to this generation. It's very, very important. When you understand that if you fail to use what you have been given, you will lose it. Real servants keep a low profile because self-promotion and servanthood don't mix. There's something about the bright lights that can blind you. There's something about the people who serve in the shadows that God notices, and God marks. Many start out as servants, but end up as celebrities. They become addicted to attention. They have to have the praise of men, but it's the hidden parts of the body that are imported even maybe more so than that, which is seen, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys. You don't see them working on me, you only see the outer part, and that's kind a what the preacher is to the church and the singers are to the church. It's the outer part, but it's the hidden part of the body of Christ that make miracles happen every Sunday for people's lives.
The Bible said in 1 Corinthians 15:58, "Throw yourself into the work of the master, confident that nothing you do for Him is a waste of time or effort". I tell you, that's the key to it. When Cherise and I came here over 30 years ago, we threw ourselves into the work of the master at Free Chapel. We were confident that nothing that we did was a waste of time or effort. We would pull up to these campuses, and back then it was the one on Browns Bridge and then the one down the street, the old campus that's now our youth center and act in office administration and so on. And we would pull up to those parking lots with five children in car seats in a minivan.
And some of those days were so long, we would have two Sunday morning services, and a Sunday night, and Wednesday night was coming two days later. I preached four sermons a week, brand new sermons, and I like to have lost my mind, but I did it, but I did it because I read and my mom and dad raised us, and her parents raised her to throw yourselves into the ministry. God sees it. God sees it. Philippians 2:25, Paul said, "Epaphroditus, my favorite, my fellow worker ministered to my need". He said, "I'm a volunteer. I am someone who gives. And my fellow worker encouraged me, he blessed me, he touched me".
You see, Jesus was intentional when He built a church outta volunteers. When He called Peter a fisherman, and John, and James, and all of the disciples, and He said, "Help me spread the good news all over the world". He could have just been a solo act. He didn't need them, but He said, "I know what it'll take. It'll take people who have different gifts to reach different kinds of people, and if they'll all do their thing, I'll bring glory to the name of the Father because they're using their spiritual gifts".
It'll be a volunteer organization. He could have hired marketers. He could have said, "I tell you, I'm gonna hire marketers, and I'm gonna have fundraisers, and I'm go hire hundreds and hundreds of staff and we'll get a worldwide ministry going. But instead", He said, "No, I'm gonna take these dirty guys. Some of 'em have B.O., they're fishermen, and you know, I'm go clean 'em up and I'm go teach 'em through servant hood. I'm go cook breakfast for 'em, I'm go hang out with them, I'm go live with them for three and a half years, and I'm go empower them, and they're gonna build the church that I've come to earth to save".
The kingdom of God primarily rests upon the shoulders of volunteers. In Ephesians 4:1, Paul instructs pastors to mobilize every person in the church. Paul commands the pastors to train and equip every person in the room for a lifetime of volunteerism and servanthood in the church. In 1 Corinthians 9 the Apostle Paul felt so strongly about volunteering that he reminded the congregation there in Corinth that he was building, that "I am myself a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I volunteer". And he even brought up in that text, he said, "I work a full-time job until this church gets established enough. I'm gonna work a full-time job as a tent maker, and I would not take anything from you. I just wanted to make sure you understood I'm a volunteer, like you are a volunteer". That's pretty powerful when you think about it.
The great apostle Paul said, "I'm not too big, I'm not too important to serve people". The idea of volunteerism is found throughout all the New Testament. Most churches don't follow that pattern, and that's why they don't grow. That's what has grown this church, that is what made this church what it is today. It's precious volunteers. It's people serving at every campus. It's people serving behind the scenes. It's people serving all over these grounds, and they make ministry happen. In the scriptures, you know, I was thinking about how that the pattern today is so messed up. Somebody starts a church, they get it up to about 75 or a hundred people, and they say, "Hey, we need to hire a pastor". And they hire a pastor to do ministry.
And that one man is supposed to teach, he's supposed to preach, he's supposed to marry, he's supposed to bury, he's supposed to have vision, he's supposed to have counseling, he's supposed to be the counseling center, he's supposed to be the administrator, he's supposed to get a budget. He's supposed to be over at the finances, he's supposed to have a nursery department, he's supposed to be the cleaner of the church, he's supposed to cut the grass. Hey, we need the church unlock, come on over. This is kind a how, this is how it was. I was in a pastor's home like that. My dad carried keys, a key thing. He had about 50 keys, and when he'd walk around and he'd have to unlock all the, 'cause it never dawned on the people we're supposed to do that. They saw them as hired hands. And in a year, "By the way, we'll only give you a year contract, and in a year we're gonna vote on you. And if we don't like you, we'll get rid of you and bring in another one and wear him out".
Thank God we don't do that around here, amen. The only way we vote is with our feet around here. Come on, say, "Amen". "I don't like that". I don't care, amen. That's, you go do your own church. Hallelujah. It's totally unbiblical to expect that. That's not God's plan, God's plan is different. God says, "I want volunteers, I want people who are in the business world to do the business of the church. I want people who are good administrators to administer my church. I want people who have different gifts to use their gift, if it's arts, if it's dance, if it's a fellowship, if it's a great personality, or internet, or counseling, or whatever it is, I want 'em to use their gift to touch the kingdom of God and to bless the kingdom of God". They're in this room right now, they're standing all over this campus right now.
You see these guys behind these cameras and at every campus we've got 'em, and you saw 'em. They were at the doors as greeters, we don't pay those people. I don't pay all these people, we can't afford that, there's no way. These guys behind these cameras, they come in about 6:30, 7 o'clock at the latest, they're in their place, they're check checking their equipment. They, "Come in, come in, come in". They, can't even hear me now. I can talk about 'em all I want to. All they're hearing is, "Bring that camera in, bring number three in. There's a guy there that's picking his nose. Get the camera off of that one and go over there to that one". That's how they talk, I've listened to 'em. "Oh man, what's that one doing"?
Look out, why is he coming down the aisle? And that's the kind of stuff. They do it and they touch 200 nations and every one of 'em, that camera, that camera, that camera, that camera, that camera, they do it as volunteers. They don't have a ball in chain. We don't whip 'em with a whip. They get here joyfully, joyfully and serve, the greeters wake up. And I know there are mornings when it's cold, and there's mornings when they don't feel like being faithful, but volunteers are faithful and they look over and they say, "I don't want to go stand at that dumb door at the church. Those people are so grouchy, especially in the 11 o'clock service. Many of 'em are hung over, and they don't, I gotta open the door and you say hi, and they just walk right by. And I don't know about that".
But you know what? When you do it, and you do it for the kingdom of God, you build a great church and lives are saved. It's not my honor invitation that gets 'em saved. It starts out in the parking lot, with a greeting, with a hello, with a bus driver driving a shuttle saying, "Hi, how are you? God bless you, good to have you today". It's amazing. God loves intelligent, joy filled, energetic laypeople, lay persons volunteering for the kingdom of God. I want to thank every volunteer in this church. I want to thank every person who has signed up, who has chose to wear the towel, who has said, "I'll answer the phones when they call by the thousands and thousands we get a year of phone calls from the television ministry".
And they're over there every Sunday, and they're listening, and they're praying and ministering to people. It goes on and on to the children's ministry, to the youth ministry, to the home group leaders that facilitate a small group. We have hundreds, and hundreds, of small group gatherings that happen every week. And is someone hosting that? Someone using the gift of hospitality and kindness, and they're using their home for the glory of God. It's aligning fresh volunteers with their spiritual gifts. Listen to this carefully, you see, you have to discover your spiritual gift. It's the duty of every pastor to make sure every person in a church understands that there's something that they can do, that there's something they're supposed to do. It's their duty to deploy their spiritual gift in the kingdom of God. I don't know what yours is, but God can use you.
In Hebrews 13:17, He said that, "The leaders of the local church, the pastors, will stand before God and give an account of how they led their churches". I live with that every day. How we lead our churches is through an army, like I'm looking at this very moment. You have a divine capability, you have a spiritual gift. You may say it's not important, but nobody can say that what you can give is unimportant. God gave it to you, He wired it in your DNA and deploy it and use it for the glory of God and little as much when God is in it. God has this brilliant idea. He actually thinks that the spiritual gifts that He put in each of you is all this needed to run the church. Think of it like this. This is what the Bible actually teaches, the church should be run like this. Shouldn't be a one man show, it should be this.
If you have leadership gifts, if you're a leader, a born leader, and you say, "Well, I'm a leader". Well, if you lead and you look back and you don't see anybody following you, you're not a leader. But if you are a leader, there's just people that just gravitate towards you, that there's just something about it and you were born that way. It's just, you either have it or you don't. And it's okay if you don't. You may have other gifts. You may have gifts that holds up the hands of that leader. See, God knows what He's doing, but let's say you have a leadership gift. God actually believes that leaders ought to be the leaders in the church. He believes that if you have a teaching gift, the teachers ought to teach in the church.
Isn't that profound? This is so you, you need Hebrew and Greek to understand this. He believes that if you have administration gifts, you just love numbers and that you ought to do the administration work of the church. And then there's those that have the help gifts. They just love to help, they just cook. They cook meals for grieving families. They just love to bake cookies and take it to an orphanage. They just, I don't know.
You know, gifts, gifts, gifts. The helpers let them do the help. But there's one called the givers. Did you know that one of the spiritual gifts found in the New Testament is the gift of giving? Actually, in your Bible that there are certain people who are called of God and they do not sing well necessarily. They can't preach, they don't need to do a small group. They don't need to be out in the parking lot, as important as that is. They need to come to church and to get a message in their heart and go back into the secular work world.
And you know what their gift is? They make money and they bring it back, and they support the kingdom of God. Isn't that profound? And God says, "I don't wanna put a round peg in a square hole". The scripture said that Jesus made a promise in the book of Matthew 19. He said, "If you'll become a servant, there'll be times when you'll feel like you're crazy". I'm gonna paraphrase it. You'll feel like, "Why am I doing this? Why am I pulling up into this church again? Why am I getting up out of the bed and volunteering? Why am I going to serve? Why am I doing, why am I writing another check? Why am I giving like I'm giving? Why do we do this? What is the point of it"?
Here's the point. One day the pastor will stand before God and give an account of everything that God placed him over. But you as an individual will stand before the Lord at the believer's judgment. And God will ask you personally in that moment, "What did you do for my kingdom? I will reward you personally for any and everything you ever have done". That day is coming, as sure as we sit here this morning, it's coming for every one of us. "Did you use the gift that I gave you"?