Good morning everyone. Welcome to The Edge Church. We are so glad that you are joining us. My name is Neil Schori, and I’m one of the pastors here in our church community. We are so glad to have you joining us, no matter where you’re coming from. You might be in the Chicagoland area, or you might be in California. We know that you could be in a lot of different places this morning, and we’re thankful that you’re here with us.
Today, we’re going to spend time honoring the Lord, and we’re going to do that in different ways. We’re going to sing songs to the Lord, we’re going to give back to God and his purposes in our church community, and we’re going to study what the Scriptures have to say about the Lord.
We believe that the Bible is more than just an old book that sits on a lot of our shelves. We believe that it is more than just life lessons, that it’s actually the heart of God on full display to us. It tells us about God and it tells us about us. Most importantly, it shows us that God is for us, and not just the kind of for us that’s in word only. We all know that talk is really cheap, right? But God is for us in terms of his actions, and he shows us with action and with love.
If you’re wondering what God is thinking about you this morning, I want to share this. John 3:16-17, Scripture tells us:
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (NIV).
God doesn’t just say that he loves you; he demonstrates it. All of those things that you’ve done wrong that sometimes keep you awake at night? Yeah, he came and died for those too so that you could one day live with him forever, completely free and fully the person that you were designed by him to be.
Today, we’re going to continue in our series called The Blueprint: Spiritual Disciplines For a God-Filled Life, and so far, we’ve talked about a number of practices that are designed to help us to sort of plug into God and join him in his work in us and in the world. I want to encourage you — whatever you do with these messages, try your hardest not to make them like hard and fast rules. There’s nothing that sort of sucks the life out of a spiritual practice than turning it into something that is rules-based instead of something that’s life-giving. Resist making these practices rules-driven, and ask God to give you his full life through them.
As the apostle Paul shared with the Galatians church in 3:21, it says:
For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law (NIV).
And, obviously, what Paul is saying there is that there is no life that actually comes from a law. The law was designed to show us that we can’t live up to God’s standard, that we actually have to receive righteousness and the life that comes through knowing Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Romans 8:3 tells us where we can put our hope. It says:
3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering (NIV).
So whatever spiritual disciplines you do throughout this series, keep Jesus as your destination and make sure that you’re not trying to be good enough. So far in the series, we’ve talked about the disciplines of prayer and fasting. We’ve talked about study, and we talked about solitude. Today, we’re going to talk about the spiritual discipline of service. Just like the other disciplines, service can be used to be a part of what God is doing. It can be to align with his Spirit, but it also can be used for self-serving and self-seeking reasons. So I really want to encourage you to sort of check your motives as we talk through what service to the Lord looks like.
Let’s talk just a little bit about what biblical service is not. Service is not attempting to do enough so God accepts you. It’s our tendency to want to do things to make God look at us and finally like us or do more than tolerate us. But the reality is, his love for you and his love for me is a gift. It’s a gift of salvation that is just offered to us, and a gift is free — there aren’t strings attached. It’s based in him. It’s based, not on you. So don’t try to serve your way into God’s good graces. He already made a way for you.
Service is also not trying to impress others in the church. That’s a tough one, right? We sort of want to take on a role so that people can see what we’ve done and tell us that we did a really good job. But here’s the problem: When we serve with that motive in our hearts, we’ve already gained our reward. We’ve gained the praise of people. We need to care more about what he has to say than what the people around us might say or think about us.
Service is not doing something to gain favor from God. It’s easy to think that we’re doing something good when we’re really just trying to game God. Have you ever done that? Almost like he can be manipulated into giving us something that we want as if humans are in a position to barter with God. There are so many other directions that we could go as we talk about the motives of the human heart, but I want to just get you started thinking about what might be motivating the service that you take part in your life.
In the Gospels — and that’s Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Gospels, the stories about Jesus and his life — there were just three times that are recorded where the disciples of Jesus were recorded having arguments, and all three times those arguments centered around this feeling of self-importance, feelings of insecurity, feelings of wanting a higher status. This shouldn’t be too surprising to us really , right? We do the same things. We fight for significance in our jobs, and we get mad when someone gets the promotion that we wanted. We fight for significance in our personal lives. We fight for significance in school; we fight to get the best grades and to date the most popular people. I love the reality that God saw fit, not to sort of sanitize the stories in Scripture about human experience, but he included them to show the reality of the human nature. Human nature 2,000 years ago looked a whole lot like human nature does today, and it looks broken, and God included those stories.
We’re going to look at one of those stories today, and it’s found in Mark 10:33-45. It says:
33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said [It’s Jesus speaking], “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.”
35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
37 They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
38 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
39 “We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, 40 but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
41 When the ten heard about this, [that’s the other disciples. So the ten other disciples] they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave to all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (NIV).
Now, listen, 2,000 years later we have the perspective — we’ve got a different perspective. We have the benefit of hindsight. But can you think of any worst time to ask someone for a favor? Jesus was talking about his death, which was coming very soon. This would be almost like going to visit a friend who is on hospice, who has days to live, and, instead of listening to what he has to say, telling your friend about your sore throat. It’s just one of those things that’s out of turn, but it could happen if your focus isn’t on the right thing.
This encounter that the disciples had with Jesus is a powerful lesson to us, if we allow it to be. It certainly was to them as well because, really, what it did is in this conversation, in this gathering that Jesus orchestrated, he effectively redefined what greatness looks like. When we think of greatness in everyday life, we probably think more along the lines of winning. When LeBron James or Tom Brady posts on social media, they usually post things about striving for greatness or the win that they just had. They’re not talking about anything except winning championships. When your boss asks you to reach a certain quota for sales in the quarter, he’s not going to be happy if you just reach 95 percent of your goal because you didn’t win. We’re conditioned in our schooling and by our parents and in our work lives to win because that’s what it looks like to be great in this world.
So even though their timing was really suspect — they really chose the wrong time to talk about this — it’s not really surprising that James and John wanted to talk about the succession plan after Jesus left the Earth. After all, who is going to carry this heavy burden, who’s going to be the number one leader now, or maybe even number two? They wanted this place of honor. They wanted what they thought greatness looked like. But Jesus always ruffled the feathers of the religious people of his day, and he ruffles our feathers today — and he should. After all, he wasn’t made in our image; we were made in his. So he gets to define what good looks like. He gets to define greatness, and he does it right here in this story.
James and John, they asked for what they wanted. At least they were direct. The other ten disciples were angry, and do you wonder why? Well, it wasn’t because they were so much more moral. It wasn’t because they understood. It was most likely because they were upset that they might not have the most important position in the kingdom, that they might not get the best seat at the table. And then Jesus flipped the narrative entirely, and he redefined what greatness actually looks like.
Then there’s this moment. You can feel the tension building. In verse 42, we’re told that Jesus called them all together. Have you ever had that moment where someone sort of called you to the table? I can remember a number of times when my dad would come home from work, and I’d hear him just say, “Neil, I need you to come downstairs. We need to have a conversation.” It always left me with absolute terror of what he might say because usually I knew what I’d done wrong. Usually, I had been disrespectful, probably to my mom. Probably smarted off to my mom, and my dad was going to deal with me.
So Jesus called his disciples together, and he says, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles, they lord authority over the people that follow them and their high officials exercise authority over them.” You can almost sense what the disciples are thinking, Yeah, that sounds pretty great. Put us in charge of all these people who don’t get it. Put us in charge of all these people who don’t know you, Jesus. We know you, so we should have the best seat in the kingdom. We want to be the ones giving orders because we’re sick of having people tell us what to do. Really we want to be important. We want to be powerful.
And then Jesus drops this heavy truth on them (a paraphrase of Mark 10:42-45): “That’s what the Gentiles do. Not so for you. If you want to be great, be a servant” — and then he took it a step further — “If you want to be number one, what you have to do is choose to put yourself in a position to be a slave to all.”
He wasn’t talking necessarily about mistreatment. What he was saying is greatness looks like the best servant. Then he punctuated it because Jesus was letting his disciples know, I’m not telling you to do something that I don’t do myself. He says, “Even I didn’t come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many.”
I want to share just a few thoughts for you to take away today. Here’s the first one: To live a life of greatness, seek to be less important in the eyes of the world by serving others. Let me say that again: To live a life of greatness, seek to be less important in the eyes of the world by serving others.
After Jesus and his disciples shared their very last meal together on Earth — The Last Supper — Jesus did something that blew their minds. He knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples, and they had a hard time receiving it. They knew who he was. They didn’t want the King to serve them. That was out of order. But they didn’t understand what greatness was. They didn’t understand that authority that Jesus had was used differently than authority is used typically in the world. They weren’t wrong about Jesus’ power. He was and is the most powerful being in the universe. What they were wrong about is how he would wield his power. He came to serve, not to be served.
John 13:14-15, Jesus sort of drives that point home. He says:
14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you (NIV).
Wow. He did it, and he’s asking us to do it. He didn’t come to control us; he came to liberate us. He didn’t come to destroy us; he came to save us, to set us free from the power structures that foster selfishness and evil all through our lives and all through the world.
I’ll never forget the day that I finished seminary and I walked across the stage to receive my diploma. Finally, I was done with school that I, you know, I really thought I’m just going to jump right into doing some kind of ministry, and my counseling supervisor was the one that was handing me my diploma, and he said something that has stuck with me for the rest of my life. He said, “Neil, now here’s what you need to do. Go and wash the feet of AIDS orphans in Africa.”
I’ve thought about that for years. Dr. Boatman realized something that I didn’t at the time. He understood that all of the knowledge that I now had, it would be for nothing if I didn’t use it in the way that the Lord intended — in service to the least of these, to the people who need love the most.
Here’s the second takeaway: Your motives matter to God. In your life, you may fool everyone on Earth, you may be the biggest spiritual con artist in the world, but if your motives for serving are wrong — and what that means is if your motive to serve is for any reason other than to honor God and to love his people — you’re doing it wrong. You’re missing the whole point. In Matthew 6:1-4, Jesus gives a warning to his people about this. He says:
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others [And here is the key] to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you (NIV).
When I was a brand new believer, I remember going to a particular church service, and they were in the middle of this building campaign to raise money for this brand new gigantic building, and it was really exciting. And I remember the service felt different than what it normally felt like, and the whole service ended up being about calling the names of the people in the church — they were there that day — who were the biggest givers, and then they announced how much those families had given to the church for the project. And even though I didn’t have any theological framework to understand it, to give words to the feelings that I had, I knew deep down that there was something out of order here. There was something about motive. There was something about the way it was done that made me know this felt less about honoring the Lord and more about honoring flashy human efforts.
Listen, it wasn’t wrong that they gave, but there was something off about how it was highlighted. That’s not biblical giving. It seemed out of order.
The theologian Thomas Kelly said this about God’s guidance of us as we serve. He said, “I find that he never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness.” That’s a weird sounding quote, but I just really want you to sit with it for a second. “I find that God never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness.” If we are trying so hard to be noticed, then our motive for serving is really ourselves, and it’s not God and other people. And service that honors God will be Holy Spirit-led, and it will be peaceful, and it’s never going to be self-seeking.
Here’s our final point today: Jesus set the example for us to serve. Jesus is the one. He set the example for us to serve. I love the simplicity of Richard Foster’s words. He said, “The spiritual authority of Jesus is an authority not found in a position or title but in a towel.”
Pastor Steve and I were talking this week about service and how service is actually different than your calling. You know, calling sort of being that thing that you believe God created for you to do and that’s just sort of your lane. That’s the thing that gives you life. It makes you feel like you’re connecting with God and his purpose. But the reality is, sometimes we use the excuse of a calling to keep from serving, and the reality is we were all called to serve. It’s not just for a select few. It’s not for vocational staff. It’s not just for elders of a church or deacons of a church. No, we were all called to serve regardless of gifting and regardless of profession.
Jesus told his disciples to serve because he served them and showed them an example of how we are called to live. That doesn’t mean you have to say yes to everything. I know some of you Type A’s are already going, okay, I’m going to do everything. No, it’s probably not for you if you’re away from home, multiple nights a week already. But it could be for you, in moments. If you just sort of have that sense that God, he’s preparing me for this opportunity and I have the ability to fill a need, then that probably is for you to do.
I want to remind you today that no matter what you do in service, God loves you. He just loves you. It’s not because of anything that you’ve done, and that might be weird for you. Maybe some of your relationships, to this point in your life, have been kind of transactional. Like people are kind to you because you’re kind to them. Don’t let this idea that God loves you just for you make you uncomfortable. Allow it to bring you comfort because just as there’s nothing that you can do to earn his affection, there’s also nothing that you can do to lose it. God assigns value to you because you are his unique creation, and he has placed his image in you.
You may not see it, but I promise you: Here at The Edge Church, we see the things that God loves about you. We know that he loves you because we’ve experienced the love that he has for us, and we want you to know something: No matter what you’ve done, no matter where you are today, you can have peace with God by receiving his forgiveness for all those things that sort of keep you up at night.
According to Acts 2:38-40, this is how you make peace with God. It says:
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call” (NIV).
This isn’t for a select few. This is for all of us. It’s not just for your grandparents. It’s not just for your parents. It’s not just for your really moral sister or your really kind brother. It is for you. No matter what you’ve done. If you want to have a conversation about taking your next spiritual steps, I would love to hear from you. Just email me: neil@edgeaurora.com and we’ll plan for a time to talk.
One of the things that we do around here at The Edge is we love to end by giving you discussion prompts to sort of wrestle through in your house churches or with friends during the week.
What is your biggest takeaway from this message? What is God speaking to you?
Do you want to be great in God’s eyes? I really want to encourage you to try not to give the answer that you think you’re supposed to say. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s going to say, “Ah, no, I’m good. I’m good in my own eyes,” but don’t say yes unless you really mean it.
What do you think God is asking you to let go of in your current pursuit of greatness in the eyes of the world? What is the thing that you just sorta know you’re supposed to let go of if you want to be great in the eyes of God? And why do you think that is? Share that in your group or have a good conversation with someone else during the week.
Here’s the third thing. It’s not really a question; it’s a statement and an opportunity: God absolutely loves when we choose to serve the vulnerable and our mission partner, New Life for Haiti, has a meal packing event at Lifespring Church in Plainfield on Feb. 20th at 10 am. We’d love to have you join us. If you’d like more information, more details on this, email hillary@edgeaurora.com.
Thank you so much for joining us today. Please stick around. We’re going to do a final worship song, and then we’ll see you next week.