I WOULD LOVE TO SERVE!
Galatians 5:13-15
S: Service
Th: Grace-Full Living
Pr: WE ARE TO LOVINGLY SERVE OTHERS.
?: Why?
KW: Reason
TS: We will find in Galatians 5:13-15, three reasons why we are to lovingly serve others.
The _____ reason we lovingly serve others is because it…
I. OPPOSES LICENSE (13)
II. OBEYS LAW (14)
III. OBSTRUCTS LOSS (15)
RMBC 9/10/00 AM
INTRODUCTION:
1. Have you ever wished you had more help?
ILL Notebook: Help (Spend Rift)
Jane apologized for being a few minutes late for the din-ner date. She and her husband had been grocery shopping, she explained, and it had taken longer than expected. Florence, knowing that her husband, a non-shopper, was listening, and hoping he’d be inspired to help her, she said, "Do you mean Steve shops with you?" "Oh, yes," Jane replied. "We always go together." Pressing harder, Florence said to her husband, "Isn’t that nice? Steve shops with Jane every week." "Dear," Florence’s husband said, "if you’d like Steve to shop with you, it’s okay with me."
Well, perhaps that was not the help she was looking for.
There are times, though, we are all looking for help.
I think this is true in the church.
The church does not function well when the emphasis is on the individual.
The church does function well when the emphasis is on individuals dependent on each other for help.
For…
2. The church is to be characterized by its ability to help each individual member succeed.
When we work to make the other succeed, the church functions well.
We will come back to this in a short while…
TRANSITION:
Let’s pause a moment and remember our context.
We have been doing a study on what is titled in our Bibles as Galatians.
We began this study in the spring and after having a month off, we are returning to it today.
As you may remember…
1. Context: Paul is writing to the churches in Galatia to refute the legalistic Judaizers.
The Judaizers had said that belief in Jesus was fine, but it was not the whole story.
To be truly saved, you had to also keep the law by being circumcised and following its instructions.
These Judaizers were repeating the same error that the Pharisees had made during Jesus’ time on earth.
They were legalists.
You weren’t in unless you did it their way.
They said, in effect, “We know what God’s rules are, so you better do as we say or you don’t belong.”
We need to recognize today that legalism is one of the favorite weapons of the enemy.
Satan loves to get Christians to be legalistic, for then he has destroyed their enjoyment of the Spirit and he can use them to spread havoc among a generation or a company of believers, and ruin a vital, active, and growing Christian community.
This is exactly what happened in Galatia, and is what inspired Paul to write the letter to the Galatians.
Here was a group of young Christians who had a fantastic beginning.
Their response to the preaching of the apostle was right on.
They had given themselves totally to Christ.
Paul was rightly enthusiastic about this group of growing young Christians.
But, after a while, word came to him that legalism had set in and the results were disappointing.
What had been a bright and marvelous testimony of the grace and glory of God was being turned into a dull, apathetic group of religionists—cold, barren, and empty, almost devoid of spiritual life.
What happened in Galatia can happen to us as well.
Whenever Christians levy standards of achievement or behavior or spirituality upon others, the heavy burden of legalism sets in.
Legalism in the church can be about all kinds of things, like clothing styles, length of hair, food you eat, playing and/or working on Sunday, playing cards, types of Bible version you use, chewing gum in church, how many verses you memorize, how many hours you spend in prayer, how much you give to missions—and the list could go on and on.
And if we don’t come out on the same side with the legalist, well our destiny, according to them, is not certain.
The legalist brings great danger.
Even though they may look good, and what they are doing is good, what they have done is add to salvation.
But this brings us to a truth, from which we cannot back down.
And it is this…
2. Salvation is always God’s work and God’s work alone.
You cannot put yourself in a better position to earn God’s favor.
What He has done for you is complete and full.
There is nothing for you to add.
There is nothing you can add.
God’s work of salvation is complete and adequate.
It successfully meets your every need.
When God saved us, He provided our every need.
3. As a result of God’s work, we have the Holy Spirit who works in us and through us.
When we become a Christian, we inherit Christ’s own nature.
The Holy Spirit comes and personally resides in us.
This has great implications for us and against the legalists.
For our motivation to obey the commands and restrictions of God’s Word is not external.
It comes from within!
4. Because of the Spirit’s presence, we are able to “keep in step with the Spirit.”
The Christian has the glorious privilege if living under the internal guidance, restraint, and power of the Holy Spirit.
And when the Holy Spirit is in control of our lives, He energizes us to obey the will of God.
This month is Discipleship month and our theme is to “keep in step with the Spirit.”
As true followers of Christ, we are to pay attention to the Spirit within us and follow His lead.
For when we keep in step with the Spirit, we will follow Jesus, we will love and obey Him and we will worship and submit to Him.
Ray Stedman described the essence of discipleship when he said…
5. “True Christianity is to manifest genuinely Christ-like behavior by dependence on the working of the Spirit of God within, motivated by a love for the glory and honor of God.”
That’s a good and powerful statement.
We are truly acting like Christ’s ones when we are dependent on the Spirit and motivated by His love for lost souls.
So, in turn, when we come to today’s text, we find that…
6. WE ARE TO LOVINGLY SERVE OTHERS.
This is the core of the text as we see it today.
We serve.
And we do it motivated by love.
So…
7. We will find in Galatians 5:13-15, three reasons why we are to lovingly serve others.
(13) You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (14) The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." (15) If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
OUR STUDY:
I. The first reason we lovingly serve others is because it OPPOSES LICENSE (13).
1. Paul answers the accusation that he is promoting licentiousness.
When Paul called for freedom from the law, the Judaizers feared that this freedom would lead to license.
They were afraid that the Galatians would think that they could do anything they well-pleased, even to the point of sinning.
But Paul was not giving into that extreme.
He tells the Galatians that they were not to use their freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.
They were not to surrender the freedom that they had in the all-satisfying Christ to return to the unsatisfying desires for mere physical pleasures of self-exaltation.
For…
2. We have freedom from sin, not to sin.
We are free from sin.
Before, we had no choice.
We had to sin.
But now, we can go another way.
We are free for service to one another; service that is in love.
We no longer look out for number one.
We are now free to look out for others.
Thus, servanthood is the goal of freedom.
We are free to lovingly serve others.
II. The second reason we lovingly serve others is because it OBEYS LAW (14).
1. The law reflects God’s standard (Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:8-10).
In Leviticus, we find a law that bears testimony to how we are to treat one another.
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”
God wants us treating one another in the same way He treats us.
He wants us to be marked by love.
He desires that we love one another just as He loves us.
Paul would later reflect on this in his letter to the Romans when he said:
(8) Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. (9) The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (10) Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
The freedom and fullness we now possess is a call to love.
The Spirit within us calls on us to meet the standard of righteousness, and it is entirely wrapped up in the word “love.”
For love is the overflow of God’s grace.
In the law, all God has ever been looking for was people who were so satisfied in His grace that their lives were an outpouring of love.
This means that…
2. We are now free to satisfy what God has made us for (I Corinthians 13:1-3).
We can do a lot of great things that seem noble and courageous, but they will be inadequate unless we are fulfilling God’s standard of righteousness by being people characterized by love.
This is the testimony of Paul in I Corinthians 13:
(1) If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. (2) If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (3) If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Forgive me, but I am going to be very blunt here.
You can do a lot of good things for very good reasons and still go to hell.
You can fight for poverty programs, or a prayer amendment, or for the outlawing of partial-birth abortion and still go to hell.
This is because love is not defined simply as mere deeds.
It always involves the condition of the heart of the doer.
If we want to bring the message of the Bible to bear on the problems of the world around us, we need to realize that the Bible is much more radical than any political or religious agendas.
It says to all, “Though you give your body to be burned in the service of your agenda and have not love, you gain nothing.”
We might be impressed with a person who gives a million dollars to build a hospital in Bangladesh, but God looks on the heart and knows the hidden motives of the soul.
Simply, God wants us motivated by love.
It is what He has created for.
And when we do genuinely love, it gives evidence of genuine faith.
So we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
This is a hard command, for it means that I want to feed the hungry as much as I want to feed myself when I get hungry.
It means that I want to find my neighbor a job as much as I am glad that I have a job.
It means that I want to help my fellow student get As as much as I want to get As.
It means that I want to help the person stalled on the freeway as much as I am glad that I am not stalled on the freeway.
It means that I want to give others the chance to play as much as I want to play the whole game.
It means that I want to share Christ with my neighbor as much as I am glad that I know Christ myself.
This all means that I care about what happens to others as much as I care about what happens to myself.
Can you imagine what the church would be like if we were all like that: looking at the person to the right and to the left and feeling the same longing for their happiness that we feel for our own?
Not only would the law be fulfilled, this place would be glimmering with joy and the glory of God would be unmistakably present in our midst.
All because we were willing to lovingly serve others.
III. The third reason we lovingly serve others is because it OBSTRUCTS LOSS (15).
ILL Notebook: Warfare (Pentagon)
There was a speaker who was in the Washington, D.C. area on business at the Pentagon. He had gotten caught in an endless traffic loop that kept taking him over the Potomac River. Spotting a jogger along the road, he called out, “Which side is the Pentagon on?” Keeping his pace, the jogger answered, “I think they are on our side.”
Well, sometimes, in the church, we start wondering who is on our side.
So, when we come to this final verse, Paul describes what happens when love is not the rule.
For…
1. When we do not love each other, we will cause hurt.
The context of the description that we find here in verse 15 is of wild animals engaged in the fury of a deadly struggle.
It is an out of control struggle that will not stop until a mortal wound has been given.
ILL Our Daily Bread, 11/18/94
One night, a pastor had a night out with his four-year-old son. Halfway through their hamburgers, he detected rumblings in the booth behind them. The muffled anger in a man’s voice soon erupted in a snarl, "What did you say?" A woman shot back, "I said I’d never come crawling to you. I couldn’t get that low." The pastor cringed as the man cursed at her and said, "I don’t know why I ever brought you to this restaurant tonight." "I do," she said. "You’ve got a guilty conscience!"
Ben, the son, was staring over his shoulder, so the pastor asked him what he was thinking about. "Oh, I’m thinking about Jesus," he said, "and how He died for our sins."
Ben’s response left quite an impression on his dad. As the angry man and woman finished their meal by chewing up one another, he had to admit that he too knew about anger and a bad conscience. Then his own child reminded him that Christ came into this world to rescue us from our sin.
We have no excuse for falling back into the kind of cannibalism that took place in that restaurant. We have been forgiven and have received a spirit of love. And we have the example of Jesus. His ways are as practical and life-changing as we’re willing to let them be.
–-MRD II
This means that we are to be serving one another, not sacrificing one another.
2. Because of the potential destruction, we must give constant attention to being characterized by love (I Corinthians 13:4-7).
This is why Paul provided us an ample description of what love looked like…
(4) Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (5) It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (6) Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (7) It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
ILL Our Daily Bread, 6/20/94
A prominent Christian leader was known for his willingness to help needy individuals with their social and financial problems. When asked why he took time out of his busy schedule to do this, he replied, "When I was a boy, I worked in our family grocery store. I was taught that I should never ask a customer, ‘Is that all?’ Instead, I was told to say, ‘Is there anything else?’”
When we lovingly serve others, we will block out those things, words or actions that will hurt.
Instead, we will look for those things that will cause others to built up and strengthened so to minimize any potential loss.
What kind of disciple are you going to be today?
Will you be one that lovingly serves others?
APPLICATION:
When we think of the word discipleship, some of us might be inclined to think that it is only for the spiritually elite.
Discipleship is for those that are really spiritual.
But, you know, that really is nonsense.
We are all called to be disciples…each one of us.
And when it comes to being a better disciple…
1. We are not to seek spirituality, for there are no formulas for the spiritual life.
Spirituality is never a legitimate goal.
Hang in with me for a moment on this…
Take for instance…the disciples…they were concerned about spiritual status.
This is why the disciples were concerned about who was going to be first in the Kingdom of God.
They were status seekers.
They looked for spiritual success to gain prestige.
And the Lord’s response to this kind of thinking was:
“Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant”
-Matthew 20:26
In Christian circles, we attempt to become “spiritual” to attain status in the church.
In the world, wealth gives prestige.
In the church, spirituality gives status.
But again, spirituality is not what we are to seek.
2. Instead, we are to seek a strong, vital relationship with God (John 15:5).
Jesus describes what the relationship is like:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
We are to have an inner reliance on God.
For you see, abiding is our responsibility.
Keeping the communication going is our responsibility.
Maintaining the relationship, this is our responsibility.
It is not to look spiritual.
It is not to act spiritual.
Our responsibility is to be in relationship.
So to do that, we walk in the Spirit.
This is our one and only method.
And it is personal, so it cannot be copied.
God deals with each one of us differently and individually.
So…
3. When we love God, we will lovingly serve others and thus, keep in step with the Spirit.
ILL Notebook: Service (Faithfulness—Craddock)
Fred Craddock, in an address to ministers, caught the practical implications of discipleship in terms of service. “To give my life for Christ appears glorious,” he said. “To pour myself out for others…to pay the ultimate price of martyrdom—I’ll do it. I’m ready, Lord, to go out in a blaze of glory.”
“We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking a $1000 bill and laying it on the table—‘Here’s my life, Lord, I’m giving it all’”
“But the reality for most of us is that he sends us to the bank and has us cash the $1000 for quarters. We go through life putting out $.25 here and $.50 there. Listen to the neighbor kid’s troubles instead of saying “Get lost.’ Go to a committee meeting. Give a cup of water to a shaky old man in a nursing home.”
“Usually, giving our life to Christ isn’t glorious. It’s done in all those little acts of love, $.25 at a time. It would be easy to go out in a flash of glory; it’s harder to live the Christian life little by little over the long haul."
This is what we are called to do.
Spend those quarters
Be a true disciple of Jesus and lovingly serve others.
BENEDICTION: [Counselors are ]
Serve…that’s not always so easy when we want to be on top, when we would rather say my way or the highway; but service really is the high way to the kingdom of God;
Serve others…because we do serve ourselves all the time; we help ourselves to what we need; but serving others is the way of discipleship—it is following the example of Jesus who washed the feet of His disciples;
Serve others lovingly…that which is to make us markedly different than the rest of the world is a supernatural love that is in us and flows through us as we keep in step with the Spirit.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
