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“You
Were Made to Serve" |
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“You
Were Made to Serve" |
Sermon
five in the 40 Days of Purpose programme Rev.
Dr Robert Iles
at Golden Grove Uniting Church, S Australia.
14.11.04
Well it’s good this week to be able to share with
You the message God has given me. For that I thank the Lord,
But I also thank the Rev. Ian Moulton. This man is a great servant of God.
True servants don’t mind being interrupted as he was last Sunday at 6.30am.
He showed servant grace and said, “Just leave Sunday morning to me Robert and get yourself better”.
I still couldn’t quite let things go and had to ring him back later and
Send a lot of material for him with Janis, but I would like you to honour this man with you applause and appreciation.
He is a gift of God to our church.
Now Ian I am still feeling a little off, so would you mind taking over from this point on? In fact this morning, like last week, I rang Ian,
Just to tell him I was well and would see him soon. You could hear him relax.
Today we move into week 5 of 40 Days of Purpose.
We remember that the opening line of Rick’s book is, it’s not about you.
You are made for a purpose and you are made for someone else,
You were made to serve God in love through worship,
Through enriching a church family, through reflecting Christ in the way you live, work and talk to others and today in learning to serve God and his people.
We have spent a lot of time talking about what God has done for you and
All through Christ. Tozer quote:
You have been given this Creation, with ripening strawberries,
Flowering bulbs, the gift of rain and sunshine.
You have been given a democracy and the most precious aspect of democracy
An opposition party. In many places in the world, with failed and corrupt governments, there is no opposition party. They are in jail or do not exist.
But that is one gift you have here. And all our governments are very happy that the
Oppositions are where they are.
You have been given all things in Christ, the possibility of eternal life, the forgiveness of sins and Holy Spirit power, a church to belong to,
A work to do.
Whatever direction you look in, you are beneficiaries of a God
Who says you can call me Father.
But now we look a little further. What you are going to do about that.
You are in a great tradition of service, of response to God’s work
And human need.
You see it in Acts 6.
The Early Church had not gone far when it own success started to
Reveal problems. It was a mixture of poor and rich, male and female, married, single and widowed, hungry and well fed, different racial backgrounds –it was a church
Pretty much like ours.
Its life of love and welcome was such that poor and abandoned women flocked into the church. The first ever social welfare system came into existence.
Widows feature a lot in the New Testament. James 1: 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Paul wrote in 1 Timothy about the stringent qualifications for
A widow to be put on the welfare list. Care for vulnerable women
Spread from downtown Jerusalem to Non-Jewish environments which
Had never seen this kind of care in action.
Building on Jesus compassion for women, Acts 6
Shows how His compassion was first expressed.
These early Christians were overwhelmed by neglected people in need.
Peter and the apostles not only cared for people souls but also for their bodies. These women had never been trained in any
Profession so they sometimes had to beg or worse. But they came to Christ
And they came to the church.
However as important as this was the apostles had more important work to do.
So with the modern church. If the church ever becomes content
With being a welfare body alone it fails the poor, the needy and everyone else.
While it must care in ways that directly address human need
It starves them and leaves them naked if it does not tell people about the Jesus they have not believed in. It amazed me in the Synod reports
To see amongst all our welfare agencies reports, almost no references to Jesus Christ
And the need for the Gospel in peoples lives. I got the impression that once we have clothed and fed we have done our duty.
But this Scripture shows that service is also service of the soul as well as the body.
The apostles realized if they focused only on this work,
They would be limited in reaching one more for Jesus.
But ministry has to deal with issues that threaten to explode
And divide the church, here racial conflict.
The native Jews and the Greek Jews were in conflict.
The Greek Jews
said their women were being overlooked in the daily distribution of
food.
The newness of Christianity created problems.
What did it mean to follow Christ when issues of race arose?
Paul later said in Galatians 3:26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,
27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
But this took some getting used to. Christ was overcoming racial barriers
But it took time to learn that Christ even broke down
Racial differences, that Christ is even more important than culture.
A multitude of diverse believers is more important than multi-culturalism.
Culture comes second to faith in Biblical teaching something our world
With its tribal and racial conflicts needs to discover for its own survival.
So the disciples needed wisdom to deal with this situation. The church could have ended there and then
If they had not seen that life in Christ transcends race and culture.
So they appointed people for the job. Seven men
In this instance, to “wait on tables”.
Note also the foreshadowing of democracy under Christ here. Elections were rare in autocratic times but here the apostles,
Who could have been autocratic and just appointed people, trusted the people to make a wise decision about leadership, as you will be called to do in our congregation meeting
In December as people offer themselves for service.
The people were given the power to prayerfully choose rather than have the apostles appoint a person. Leaders have to trust God’s people to act wisely and with discernment.
That what good leaders do to. One brother I used to work with could never do this. He would give someone a job and within five minutes would be
Ringing up to see how they were going with the task and so on
Until people despaired and threw it back to him.
The apostles trusted the people.
And note in v. 3 that the qualifications for this ministry of service
As administrators. It was not that they could add up well, nor were good administrators,
Or had experience in managing food supplies: what were the qualifications- they be full of the Spirit and wisdom. Spiritual qualifications come first
In ministry and service.
So seven men were elected and presented to apostles who prayed over them, like our new members were last week, so I am told.
IN v.5 we see now there was unity rather than dissent as in .v1.
And out of unity came growth, ands look what v. 7 says: What a wonderful outcome. The widows were fed, the races harmonised, the people saw they had an important role in making decisions and God blessed the appointed leaders.
These actions presage a whole history of Christian service
Wherever the Word of God has gained a hold on people works of compassion have followed soon after, as an expression of that Word
Not as an alternative to it. The church should never try and justify
Its existence before the world by all the good works it does but by the good news it brings.
The works can speak for themselves but the Word needs to be spoken and offered as will see next week.
James shows too of how major changes that affect us today were begun.
He writes of being wary of favouring the rich and important; the best ahead of the poor. James tells them that to follow Jesus is not to act like
Worldly people and curry favour with the important in the world
All are equally needy of forgiveness grace and Holy Spirit power. Both the rich and the poor are equal in need.
In our times some church leaders and departments go the other way. They
Seem to detest successful business people and wealthy Christians
And those good things about economically free systems that reward people who take risks and invest their money in
Enterprises. But Scripture still teaches that honour should never be based upon external things. On the kind of car you drive, the house or suburb you live in,
The eminence of a politician, the size of a bank account. This was a radical push in equality in C1 under Christ, never before seen.
And again it
is part of a great tradition of service, loving God then loving the people he
loves who may not yet love him.
We should never forget that Christians had a huge impact on
the Greek and Roman worlds.
The Epistle to Diognetus in AD 125 says this of Christians:
They marry as do all; they beget children but they do not commit abortion.
They have a common table but not a common bed. They are in the flesh,
But they do not live after the flesh.
They pass their days on earth but are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws…..but surpass the laws by their lives.
They love all people and are persecuted by all.
As Christianity spread the sanctity of marriage and reverence for life increased,
While polygamy, concubinage and divorce decreased.
Women rose in stature. Child abuse and infanticide declined.
Christians brought abandoned children, mostly girls,
Into their homes. When they were full
The first orphanages were opened by Christian widows and deaconesses.
The Christians took in the sick and lepers and the homeless. They opened hospitals.
Thalasius, a Christian monk founded a home for blind beggars on the banks of the Euphrates. Others opened the first
Asylums for the insane in Spain.
And much more followed after the Reformation as the Bible became available
To the masses outside of monasteries.
And today it continues. In Bangladesh Christians number only one-fourth of one % of the population but do almost all of the relief work, to mostly Muslims.
In India Christians are less than 3% of the population yet 27% of all the hospital beds
Are provided by Christians and 53% of all nurses from
The Christian community. One of the major reasons people leave world
Religions and come to Christ is because Christians don’t only care for their own
But all people of need.
So you are part of a great heritage of service and it is now over to you
To add to it. As people of wisdom and The Holy Spirit you are called to serve as well, according to your gifts and talents.
It maybe through waiting on tables or its equivalent. Have you ever noticed the quiet unheralded work of the property committee?
New desks and tables appear, a new computer station in the vestry foyer,
And much more. And we hope to keep that committee will be even busier
When we get our hands on that $187000 grant.
Others work on rosters, our website, cleaning,
Morning tea, in the crèche, catering,
Managing, organising weddings, flowers, sweeping. There are many table ministries amongst us.
And there are Word ministries too. Our Sunday School teachers, singers, musicians, Bible study leaders, Prayers, preachers, evangelists.
We need people who wait on tables
As expressions of God’s love and gifts; and people who love to teach and share and witness
You were created for service. You have a part to play in maintaining the Body pf Christ, in its table life and its Word life.
Whoever you are, whatever your background, however difficult or easy, virtuous or sinful, confident or diffident, all in Christ have gifts and talents
That can be used in love and joy to build up the Body in its fitness, mobility and service.