Having a Servant’s Heart Series: Part I: The Value of an M.B.A. Matthew 20:20-28. CBC August 18, 2007
Well, I know that I have missed you over the last several weeks in my travels to China and Vermont and I hope that you have missed me maybe a little. But as Amanda reminded me the other day, that she would really miss my jokes. Well it’s nice to know that someone appreciates my humor. I found it very funny that while we were in China I met this sweet 10 year old named Daphne and Daphne wanted to practice her English. And so she had this little book helping her work on English. And guess how Daphne and I worked on improving her English. That’s right. She loved to tell corny jokes. Just like me and that’s how we worked on English. And so today as we begin a new series on Having a servant’s heart, I thought that I would share with you some new material.
Q. What do you call a chicken crossing the road?
A. Poultry in motion.
Q. What do you call four bullfighters in quicksand?
A. Quatro sinko.
Q. Where do you find a dog with no legs?
A. Right where you left him.
Q. What do you call cheese that isn’t yours?
A. Nacho cheese.
Here is one that really is not a joke: What do you call a Christian who isn’t serving?
A. An Oxymoron
Here’s the problem. In today’s society there are many Christians who believe that being a Christian does not require any work. That a Christian can simply sit back and take the easy road with no responsibility. But that is not the case. All are called to serve. Now I am thankful that there are many in this church that serve the Kingdom of God and I want to applaud you this morning. Thank you for your service. Thank you for being willing to further the Kingdom. Yet, I must be honest, I also understand that not everyone serves. Now I might be making some uncomfortable but we must not hide from the truth. My aim in these messages over the next few weeks is not to discourage but to encourage all of us to see the blessings that come from serving. You heard Linda share earlier about the blessings she receives in service to the Lord and that is the point that I am trying to convey over these next few weeks. How you and I can become better servants for Christ. And so as we begin our quest for servant hood through the ministries of this church, let’s understand how we can become better servants.
Here at CBC we have a mission statement and that statement states that we have a mission to Welcome all to a new way of living by Believing, Belonging and Becoming in Christ. Well to do that you and I must be willing to serve.
When we accepted Christ into our hearts we committed our lives to serving Him and not ourselves. We committed ourselves to following His will and not our will. And so over the next several weeks, I am going to encourage this church to stand up and declare before God that all of us here at CBC are willing to improve our service to God.
But today you might be here saying well, I’ll be honest Chris, how can I serve. How can I be a better servant? Well there is a passage in the Gospel of Matthew that helps us how to become a better servant. So this morning let’s learn that there are 4 Key ingredients to getting our M.B.A. in Servant hood.
1. Understand your purpose.
In order to become a better servant for Christ, we understand our purpose in serving. If we are not careful we can lose sight on the real reason that we serve. Someone asked me this week wouldn’t it be great to bring all of those Chinese people over here to America and I said actually no it would be great to take all of us Americans over to China. And she looked at me questioningly and I said the reason we all need to go over there is because over here our purpose in doing something is either to better ourselves or to make ourselves look good while in China their purpose in doing something is to help the community and each other. In America the focus is on me and in China the focus is on community. In our passage this morning, the mother of James and John had it all wrong.
Our passage tells us in verse 20 that the mother of Zebedee’s sons who were James and John who were also disciples of Jesus comes before Jesus kneeling and asks a favor. It is interesting to note who this mother was. In Matthew she is the mother of Zebedee’s sons. Mark tells us that her name is Salome and John says that she is Jesus’ mother’s sister. What does that mean: It means that Salome Jesus’ aunt kneels down and asks a favor for Jesus cousins.
The favor that Salome wants for her sons is for them to be able to sit beside Christ in the most honored places in the Kingdom. Now many would say so what’s the big deal with this request. Well it’s not necessarily the request that is the problem it understanding her purpose in asking it. The whole reason for wanting to sit beside Jesus was for their own satisfaction. They wanted to look good. In ancient royal courts, the persons chosen to sit at the right and left hands of the king were highly honored and they saw this as a plus for them. Yet they did not understand Jesus idea of a crown. While Jesus was speaking about a cross these individuals were interested in a crown.
You see, all three of these individuals were confused about their purpose for serving beside Christ. They wanted to do it for the glory of themselves instead of serving the glory of God wherever he wanted them to serve. To be better servants we must understand our intentions of serving. Is it for the glory of Chris or for the glory of God? Here is an example to help us understand our purpose for doing something. Now let me preface this. I am pretty sure that I never cause any grief for my wife but on the occasion there are times when I must offer an I’m sorry. Now how do we offer the I’m sorry? If we just say I’m sorry just to avoid sleeping in the dog house then it is entirely for selfish gain. But if truly admit that we have wronged and offer a heartfelt apology because I have hurt my significant other then I am doing it for the right reason.
Our intentions for service should always be for the glory of God and nothing else.
When faced with this mother’s wrong intentions for service Jesus asked a question to help her see the problem. He said “What is it you want?” A truthful answer to this same question can help you and me in our serving as well. “What is it you want?” “Why are you doing this?” “Who are you serving?” “Who do you want to impress?”
2. Servant hood is Difficult.
A second statement that needs to be made is that servant hood is not an easy road but is difficult. When Salaome made her request Jesus pretty much told her she was crazy in asking that request. Jesus responded that in making such a self-centered request, they did not know what they were asking. To request positions of highest honor meant also to request deep suffering, for they could not have one without the other. There is a reason Jesus talks about drinking the cup. The cup is a symbol of suffering. Jesus would utter those words in the garden before his arrest and death praying that this cup of suffering be taken from him.
Some might think that their quick answer of saying Sure we can drink the cup is them being macho or just plain dumb. But maybe they were just showing their willingness to follow Jesus whatever the cost. However, later on in the garden of Gethsemane we find out they truly were not ready to drink from the cup as they cut and ran from Jesus when the soldiers came to arrest him.
What does this have to say about servant hood? It says that serving in ministry for Christ is going to be difficult. There will be demands on your time. There will be people who laugh at you because you spend more time at church than just an hour every week. There will be many other demands on your life. Servant hood is going to be difficult but it will also be a blessing. The Christian life is not easy and ministry is not a piece of cake but it is worth it. And when you feel like giving up or not thinking that you have what it takes to serve is encouraged by I Corinthians 15:58 which says “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
3. An outward focus and not an inward focus
So we must understand our purpose for serving and realize that it’s going to be difficult and the third thing we should do is have an outward focus and not an inward focus. Now James and John were just 2 of the 12 disciples and when the others found out what these two were requesting, they were pretty upset. Verse 24 says that they were indignant. That’s a hard word for me to say but what it means is that they were pretty ticked off. Have you ever gotten mad because you lost out on something because someone had some pull and used some connections to get that which you felt you deserved? The disciples were mad because James and John were using their mother who was Jesus aunt to get what they wanted. The disciples were not mad because James and John did not understand what it means to be a servant, they were just mad because they had not thought of doing what they had done. The spiritual attitude of the ten was not any better than that of the two. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to be angry at the sin we see in others, while we indulge in the same ones ourselves? Why is it that we condemn in others what we excuse in our own lives?
Here we see that selfishness always results in dissension. When we think only of ourselves, community breaks down and unity is replaced with division and backbiting. That’s why one of the best things we can do as a church is to serve together. A church that serves together stays together.
I love what Jesus does next in the first part of verse 25: “Jesus called them together…” Oh what a marvelous picture of the love and kindness of Jesus. The amazing thing about Jesus is he never lost patience or got irritated with these guys. Not so with me. Yet instead of exploding on them he responds in gentleness and sympathy and in love and calls them together and seeks to lead them to the truth. So he patiently called his disciples together and explained to them the difference between the kingdoms they saw in the world and God’s Kingdom, which they had not yet experienced. In the world Jesus says that the great man is the one who bosses others around and is in control. In this world the one who snaps their fingers and people come running is the great one. But Jesus says in verse 26 that for you and me as Christians it should not be so. Jesus states that in the Christian world if you want to be great then you must be a servant. According to Jesus, Greatness does not consist in commanding others to do things for you; it consists in doing things for others and the greater the service the greater the honor. This is a complete reversal of the world.
If the disciples wanted to be leaders in His kingdom, they first had to become servants. What is a servant? It’s someone whose heart is intent upon, and whose will is bound to, the will and wishes of another. If I am your servant, then what you say goes. You have the last word.
Here’s the principle: If we want to become truly great then we must give up personal rights and serve others. We need to be repeatedly reminded that our central ambition should be to minister to people, not to be admired by them.
4. Be Like Jesus.
Here is what I love about Jesus. He never simply tells us to do something without him first doing it himself. Jesus knew firsthand the importance and the demand of being a servant because he did it himself. He is willing to offer himself as the perfect role model. Jesus’ mission was to serve others and to give his life away. A real leader has a servant’s heart. The disciples must be willing to serve because their Master set the example. We see that role model attitude displayed in our final verse today. You know you might have a hard time explaining who Jesus is and what he did but friends I want to point you to verse 28. It is here in which Jesus life is summed up in one powerful sentence. Verse 28 says that “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
We talk a lot about wanting to be like Jesus. Yet do we truly mean that. Because if we want to truly be like Jesus then we must do what he did. This means that we must serve. Philippians 2 shares with us the type of attitude that Christ had and we should have. In verses 5-7 we read that our “attitude should be the same as that of Christ who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness.” He served the needs of others and then demonstrated the ultimate act of servant hood when He gave His life to bring men back to God.
As Christians we should want to be closer to Christ, but what we must remember is that it does not necessarily mean getting closer to him in the air but getting closer to him while on our knees. You know I was excited when I got my Master’s degree. I had studied all the languages that were spoken in the New and Old Testament. I took classes on theology trying to understand these difficult concepts of sanctification and other things. But you know what having a Master’s degree does not get me closer to heaven. And while having an M.B.A. is great for business it does not necessarily going to be successful. Rather we must be willing to adopt what Dave Thomas the founder of Wendy’s adopted when it comes to our lives and that is having a different type of M.B.A. Thomas once appeared on the cover of their annual report dressed in a knee-length work apron holding a mop and a plastic bucket. Here’s how he described that picture: “I got my M.B.A. long before my G.E.D. At Wendy’s M.B.A. does not mean Master of Business Administration. It means Mop Bucket Attitude.” Dave Thomas got his M.B.A. from following the model of the Master.
This all became apparent to me during a chapel service when I was in school. The speaker that day was preaching on this passage of servant hood and he asked the question about which type of Bucket Theology we believed in and practiced. I had heard of many theology terms but never Bucket theology but once he began to explain it, it started to sink in. Here is a brief synopsis of bucket theology:
When Pilate had the chance to free Jesus, Pilate asked for a bucket and washed his hands of the whole thing. He said that he was innocent of this man’s blood and that it was the crowd’s responsibility. And isn’t it interesting that the night of Jesus arrest, he also called for a bucket and instead of washing his hands of his disciples he proceeded to wash the dirty and dusty feet of His disciples. It all comes down to bucket theology. Which one will you use?
You see many people today are Pilate when it comes to serving. They know what needs to be done. They see the need, they hear the call yet they pass on their responsibility to others and take the easy way out. They use the common phrase somebody else will do it.
But friends I am here today pleading that there is a shortage of Somebody else’s out there. And the somebody else’s that are still there are tired and wore out. Pilate’s bucket did not work for Pilate and it will not work for us. But there is one that will.
That night as Jesus reached for the bucket to serve his disciples by washing their feet he was making a point. That if the Son of God can humble Himself and serve by washing the feet of his disciples, then can’t you and I do the same by taking on a Sunday school class or the evangelism team or discipleship team or one of the other ministries in this church.
Obedience means personal involvement. We can’t serve from a distance but must get close enough to get our hands dirty. If we’re going to serve like Christ served, then we must learn to see others as He sees them. In John 13:17, Jesus tells us that if we do these things, we will be blessed. In the final analysis, happiness comes from doing the things that a servant does ¬
Pilate uses his bucket to avoid his rightful responsibility. Jesus used His bucket to take on responsibility which most would say was not His in the first place. If we call ourselves Christ followers then we shouldn’t be looking for ways to wash our hands but instead we should be getting them dirty.
So what are we waiting for? Today in your bulletins you will find the opportunities for service this upcoming year. Where will you serve, Where will you lead. Jesus says that we are blessed when we do something. So what will we do?
Friends, let’s close this service and live our lives as obedient and humble servants.
