The Pattern

In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on In Touch, The Pattern. One of the reasons we have such a difficult time discovering the Lord's will for our life is we are oftentimes have find ourselves thinking the way the world thinks rather than the way God thinks. And so when you think the way the world thinks, it's going to be very difficult to find what God's will is for your life because we don't think His way. And what has happened is we have watched the world and we've been so influenced by the world, we picked up on the world's pattern rather than finding in the Word of God what is the pattern. That is, how does God want us to live? Now we say that our belief system is different from the world's, but the way we act oftentimes is exactly the way the world acts. And so we know that the Lord says we have to do things a certain way and then we end up doing them another way. It is the influence of the world system in which you and I live. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mouth in the fifth chapter, Jesus put it this way. He said, you've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil, but whoever slaps you on the right cheek turn also to the other. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to him who asks of you and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. So here is just a brief example of how Jesus said, now here's what you've heard, here's what I say. And I think if the Lord were living today, here's what He'd be saying. He says, now here's what the world system says, but here's what I say. It is one of those areas in which you and I look at the world system and say, well, this is the way you operate. This is the way you succeed.

This is where you get ahead in life. Then you look in the word of God and you think, wait a minute, here's a real conflict. Here's what the world says. Here's what God says. And the tragedy is oftentimes the church somehow includes and involves itself in what the world says rather than in what God says. And then we wonder why things don't work out in our life right and why they don't work out in the church right and why we're not making an impact on the world. So I want you to turn, if you will, to Matthew chapter 20. And today I want to begin a new series entitled Servanthood because this is one of those areas in which what the world says and what God says is an absolute contradiction. And in this particular passage of Scripture, Jesus brings that up and He helps us to see what the conflict and the contrast is here. And as you begin reading this passage, it won't take you but a moment to realize that here is a mother who's really looking after her boys. And listen to how it begins in verse 20 of Matthew 20. Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who were James and John, came to Him with her sons bowing down and making a request of Him. And He said to her, What do you wish? She said to Him, Command that in your kingdom these two sons of Mine may sit one on your right and one on your left. Now that was rather bold of her, don't you think? I want my sons sitting one on the right and one on the left. Now you can't blame a mom for wanting the best for her boys. But Jesus answered and said, You don't know what you're asking for. Then He must have turned to her sons and said, Are you able to drink the cup that I'm about to drink? And they said to Him, We are able. He said to them, Now my cup you shall drink. And they did.

But to sit on my right and on my left, this is not Mine to give. But it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father. But Jesus called them to Himself and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great men exercised authority over them. It is not so among you. But whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. And notice the contrast here. He said, Now this is the way, this is the way the world thinks about it. Verse 25, He says, The rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great men exercised authority over them. He says, As far as the world system is concerned, the great men are those in authority, those who rule over others, those who have prominence and prestige and position and power and all the rest. He says, But not so among you. He says, He that is greatest among you will be a slave. He says, He that is greatest among you will be a servant. Now when you and I think of the Lord Jesus Christ, what are the first words that come to your mind when we think of His personhood? I don't mean the fact that He loves and He preached and taught and all those things. What are some words that come to your mind when you think about who Jesus is? One of them is what? Savior, Lord, Master, God, all of these things. Usually, we don't really think a whole lot about Jesus being a servant because the emphasis of the Scriptures, the way we read it oftentimes is not that. The way he saw himself, of course, was something different.

Jesus understood. He came into this world as a servant to Almighty God, the Father. He came into this world as a servant to man. And so he visualized, he saw, he understood as a servant. He understood in his spirit of humility, he came to serve. And as he says in the 20th chapter, he says, I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life, he says, a ransom for many. Now, let's look at this for a moment. When he says a ransom, what did he mean when he said a ransom? Listen carefully. What he meant was this. He says, here is the ultimate expression of my servanthood. The ultimate expression of my servanthood was to give my life a ransom for many. A ransom was a price paid to set a slave free. Jesus said, I have come to pay the price to set the slaves free. I've come to give my life a ransom for many. Put down the price, set the captives free. This is an extremely important word because this word is the word that is the core of everything you and I believe about the cross and why Jesus was crucified. Now, every doctrine in the word of God's important, but if you were to ask me what I personally believe is the most important doctrine in all the word of God,

without even hesitating, I would tell you the doctrine of the cross. When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he laid down his life and gave his life as a vicarious, voluntary substitute for your sins and mine. What he's saying here in each word in this verse is very important, this last phrase. Listen to what he says, he says, he came to give his life a ransom for many. For is an important word. He came to give his life as payment in, listen, he came to give his life in exchange for setting you and me free of our sins. The atonement of Jesus Christ is the payment of Jesus Christ's life in death for your sins and mine. The ultimate expression of Christ's servanthood was giving his life as a ransom. And so when somebody says, well, what is the cross all about? The cross is all about Jesus Christ paying the penalty for our sins. The atoning death of Jesus is the paying of Christ's life by himself for your sins and for mine. There's no such thing as salvation apart from the cross. There's no such thing as redemption apart from the cross. There's no such thing as forgiveness apart from the cross. So when we come to this matter of a ransom, that's what the ransom is all about. The ransom is all about God doing what? Paying the price to set you and me free

from the power of sin in this life and the ultimate power of sin, which would separate us for all eternity. That's when you and I look at the cross, listen, I would never worship anything in this world, but when I see the cross oftentimes, I feel like I want to just bow down and thank God that apart from that work of his grace at Calvary, I would be lost, hell bound, damned, doomed, absolutely with no hope because it is through the cross of Jesus Christ and his shed blood, all of our hope is found in that one awesome act 2000 years ago at Calvary. That's what the Christian life is all about. Anything else you say about it, it's all about the cross of Jesus Christ. Now, so what we have to ask now is how do we know and how do we explain? I mean, what's the explanation of this servanthood? Because here's the question. How is it that he can be God and then become a servant and still be God? How can Jesus Christ be God, deity, become a servant and still remain God? Well, I want us to look at a passage of scripture and a very, very important passage. And so I want you to turn, if you will, to Philippians chapter two. Paul, in his explanation here starts off by admonishing us. And he says in verse five of chapter two,

he says, have this attitude in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. And then he describes what happens. Who, speaking of Jesus, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taken the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death. That is the point of death, even death on a cross. Now, what does he mean by this? When he said he emptied. What did he empty himself of? He did not empty himself of his deity. At no point did he empty himself of his deity. So he emptied himself of something else. That is, he had to lay aside something else. At no time had he laid aside his deity, he would have taken upon himself human flesh, and if he were not God, he would have sinned. He was God in that flesh, walking among men as a servant. He could not lay aside his deity and accomplish the purpose for which he came. So what he did not give up was his deity. You say, well, then what did he give up? Well, he gave up several things. One of the things that he gave up was this. He gave up his favorable position to divine law. He did not give up his deity, but what he gave up was he gave

up his relationship to God's law. He gave up his relationship to sin. Now look at this. Here's what happened to him. And when you come to the cross and you find Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and you remember he's sweating and saying, Lord, if there's any other way, what is it that he's asking about, not whether he's going to the cross or not. What Jesus was struggling over, he was struggling over something that he was going to have to face that he had never faced. He was struggling over something that he was going to have to deal with that he never had to deal with. Something was going to happen to him that had never even anywhere close to being a re-out in his life. And what was that? Here's what it was. Look, verse 21 of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 says, let's look at verse 21st. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were entreating through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled, brought back into fellowship with God. He, God, made him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Now, friend, that is one of the biggest mouthfuls that the apostle Paul ever spoke. Because here's what he's saying. He says that the Lord God, Father, sent the Lord Jesus Christ in this world and here's what he did. He made him, that is, when Jesus went to the cross, God the

Father placed upon him, listen, all the guilt, all the penalty for man's sin. He suffered what he had never experienced. He suffered the horribleness of sin. He felt the wickedness of it, the evil of it, the weight of it, the burden of it, and the eternal damnation of it. That's what this cup he was talking about was all about. And so he said, what he did, he suffered it on our behalf. He knew no sin, became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. Now, what does that mean? Well, you hear people say, well, now, when I get to the pearly gate, I don't know whether they got that idea, just something I'm sure they found out in Revelation. People say, well, now, well, I'm sure God's gonna let me in. Let you in what? Upon what basis is God going to allow any of us into heaven? I'll tell you, there's only one. There's only one way we're gonna get in. If we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which means that you and I have accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, our sin debt was paid in full at Calvary, and he gave to us what we could not give ourselves, and that is the very righteousness of Christ ourselves, because we are now, every single believer is clothed in the righteousness of Christ. That's what makes it possible for us to get to heaven, that you and I have received Jesus Christ as our Savior. And he said in that passage, listen to that, he said that we might become the righteousness of God in our relationship to Jesus.

Now, you and I don't always act righteous. God knows that. We don't always act out who we are, but the truth is who we are, we're the sons and daughters of Almighty God, having been forgiven of our sins through the cross, and the one who came as a servant, the ultimate expression of his servanthood was that he took upon himself our sin, exchanged his righteousness, and gave us his righteousness. He took our sin, he died on our behalf, and in so doing, he expressed servanthood to its ultimate. That's what Jesus was all about. And that's what this passage is all about. Look, he says that he emptied himself, and he emptied himself, not only that, he emptied himself of his riches, for example. And if you'll think about this, how many of you like people who always want to borrow something, always want to borrow something? Nobody likes that. Well, let me give you a little different perspective on this, because if you'll think about what did Jesus give up when he came? He gave up everything. He gave up ultimately his life. But the truth is, when he came to earth, he lived as a carpenter for a while, and then he went out on his ministry. It's interesting if you think about Jesus and what was going on in his life. Because they had to borrow Mary's womb to be born in, borrowed somebody's stable to be born in, or be born from to be born in.

Then, you recall that he had to borrow a place to sleep. He said, you know, the Son of God has no place to sleep. He borrowed a boat to preach from. He borrowed an upper room to have the last Passover supper with him. And what's the last thing he borrowed? A tomb. Now, next time you say, I don't like borrowers, there's one exception. The Lord Jesus Christ is always having to borrow something. Because what? He didn't have anything. He laid it all down for you and me. He came as a servant to give his life, he says, as a ransom for many. So what happens? His relationship to sin, his relationship to riches, he gave it all up. In fact, 2 Corinthians, look at that, if you will. Chapter 8 and verse 9, look at this. 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. And again, Paul, he loves the word grace because he knew that's how he got everything. Through the grace of God, by the way of the cross, he says in verse 9. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, imagine in heaven what he owned. I mean, he owns it all, creator of everything. He was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you through his poverty may become rich.

Now, let me ask you, how many of you think you're rich? That's what I thought. You see, you don't think so. But you see, the reason you don't think so is because we're not looking at it from God's eyes. He says he was rich and he became poor, that you and I may become rich. I don't know whether you thought about it or not, but you and I are extremely wealthy because our wealth is eternal. It is spiritual wealth, which will live far, far beyond physical and material wealth. We are wealthy indeed. We have eternal salvation. Listen, the God who spoke this world into being, he's my God and I'm his son. And friend, that makes me wealthy because everything I need, my father knows how to speak it into existence if I don't have it. That's how great he is. You and I, you and I are the wealthiest sons and daughters of God. And to be dragging around talking about how bad things are, listen, one of the reasons they're bad is we talk them into being bad. We need to think about who our father is. He says, I'll grant every need that you have according to my will. Jesus laid down all of his wealth,

but he said in so doing, he made you and me wealthy. So that's one thing he gave up. Another thing he gave up was his heavenly glory. If the Lord Jesus Christ, listen, if he had not laid aside his glory, not his deity, not his innate nature, if he had, listen, if who Jesus was had not been covered in a human body, people had to walk around saying, he's over there somewhere. The light of his glory would have been such you couldn't even see him. Remember, we're talking about absolute perfect holiness. That is absolute unblemished, untarnished, unbroken light, heavenly light. There'd have been no way in the world. And so he came, he laid aside his glory for a season of time until he'd accomplished the father's purpose. And then his glory, of course, was all restored to him. And when he comes, he'll be coming, the Bible says, in glory and majesty and power with his heavenly host of angels coming with him. Not as a servant, but as king of kings, Lord of lords, and the judge of this whole universe. And so when you look at how it all happened, that's the way it happened. Now, we say his ultimate expression of servanthood is his work at the cross. But I want to now talk about a demonstration

of his servanthood to bring it down a little bit more closer to where we live. So I want you to turn, if you will, to John chapter 13. John chapter 13, in the 12th verse. And so when he had washed their feet and taken his garments and reclined at the table, he said to them, do you know what I've done to you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you're right, but so I am. If then the Lord and the teacher washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master. Neither is the one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you're blessed if you do them. Here's the spirit of the Son of God. Here is servanthood in two extremes. First of all, he's willing to get on his knees with his precious hands, it'll be a blessing. be crucified for you and me, and wash the, listen, wash away the dust and the dirt from dirty feet. And in just a few hours, he's gonna be offering himself as the Lamb of God, nailed to a cross, to wash away sin from the human heart. That's what servanthood's all about. It doesn't make any difference what the task is. The issue is, Father, what do you want to do with my life?

And what does he want to do with our life? He wants us to be servants. He says, in my kingdom, there will be no big deals. What I'm looking for are men and women who are willing to serve, not choosing the place, high positions, medium positions, offering ourselves to be servants of Almighty God, whatever he calls us to do, wherever and to whomever. And then he asked that question, is the servant greater than his master? No. If Jesus Christ is willing to wash dirty feet and will lay down his life on the cross, could I ever tell him no? Could I ever say no to Jesus for anything he'd ask me to do? Could I ever say no to God? When he says, I love you enough, I'll wash your feet. Love you enough, I'll die for you. That is what servanthood's all about. And Jesus is the greatest servant of all. And then, you know, remember what he said? He said, follow me. Not to greatness in the eyes of the world, but to greatness in my eyes. The greatest among you, he says, will be your servant.