Breaking the Back of Self-Centeredness

The rough one is for tonight. Well, ushers, while you're up, let's also just make sure that we've welcomed our visitors appropriately tonight and handed them one of our packets just as soon as you get a chance to get back there. Visitors that come with us on Wednesday night, I know some come who are members of other churches and we're glad you feel welcome to be here to visit with us and also particularly we're glad for those who don't have a church and maybe you're new in the area. I just, I'm amazed at how many people continue to move into our circle of ministry here and we're glad that some of you come with us tonight. I know Mike Less became the first time on a Wednesday night two months ago and now he's going through Discovering the Way and becoming part of the church. So if you're a visitor tonight, are we ready, ushers? We're getting ready. Yes. If you're a visitor, wave your hand and let's give these folks a welcome tonight, church. Go ahead, wave them up. Over there. Thank you, ma'am. Over here. I see another hand. Wave it up high. Glad you're here and folks, it's okay to invite people to come to the Bible study on Wednesday night. I know it's always an accomplishment when you get yourself here, but it's also good if you can think of someone else to bring. Philippians 2. Now let's turn to the Word of God. I did mention last week that this was going to be the basis of several weeks of instruction and tonight I'm going to really dig this pretty deeply for us. If you don't have a Bible and you see a neighbor next to you who has one, risk asking if you can look at it. Because if they say no, they really need to hear this Bible study. You'll know about it, all right? Let's start in verse 5 just for the sake of moving along. Your attitude or have this mind, and what was the word we used last week? Mindset. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, 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. How many of you Bible say the form of a servant? All right, that's a key word. It also probably says the form of God, doesn't it? Up in verse 6. We'll talk about that at length. And being made in human likeness, he was found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Would it surprise many of you if I said that God's truth, and we sang several choruses about God's truth tonight, that his truth and wisdom work in every arena of life and not just church? Would that surprise many of you? Would it wake any of you up? I don't know. It shouldn't surprise you. It works not just in church, does it? It works in lots of arenas. In fact, the great successes in today's world can be explained largely by those people and people groups who have discovered the wisdom of God's word, sometimes not even knowing it, and have applied it to their benefit. I would want to submit to you that the greatest needs in the world today are for servant leaders in government, the marketplace, in homes, and in the various institutions that we cherish in our civilization. In fact, most of the breakdowns that exist today in those different arenas do so because people take the Me First mindset and play it out to the max. What better illustration should come to mind than the savings and loans scandal? Here's today's USA Today. One perpetrator of a gigantic fraud, probably himself, his own family benefited in the millions of dollars, is now going to jail. One. All right? We are estimating we have between three and five hundred billion dollars to pay for this mess. Remember that all of our troops over in Saudi Arabia, and all of them only cost us about a billion a month. So imagine that, you know, what this is. Why did this happen? Because this gentleman apparently, along with lots of others like him, had Me First as a motivation. A tragedy that we are going to pay for. Why? Because somebody put his interests, his own wants, his own desires, in front of an entire nation of people at that point. On the other hand, it seems that in our culture, servant-oriented groups of people are discovering that it can be not only popular, but profitable. It's amazing to me how many people in business are discovering the power of having a service-oriented mindset. I mentioned to you that I had read a number of books through the summer. One of them that had an impact on me was the book Thriving in Chaos. And one of the things it says is this. In order to be a successful company in the 90s, become a service fanatic. Emphasize service in the customer's terms. Service pays. Measure customer satisfaction in their terms and emphasize ways that you can serve them. I read this in a Christian journal this week. The author is making allusion to the fact that the world seems to do a better job of serving its customers than the church does. And it refers to a group called the Farm Journal. Now, we have a few farmers left here in our church. Maybe some of you get this. It's a 112-year-old magazine. And they go out of their way to uncover and meet the individual needs of little farmer groups all around the country. They print one version of their magazine for a farmer in Angola, India, who has 600 acres of corn and a personal computer, and another version for his neighbor who has 150 acres of corn and a small herd of cows. And so each farmer gets his own little version of the Farm Journal that kind of fits right to where he is. And how do they do this? Well, they have a small army of people on the phones, all by the name, by the way, of Mrs. Collins or Mr. Adams. And they make 300,000 calls each year to kind of get feedback. And this magazine, people, they say they wait for it to come to their mailbox. Why? Because they've discovered that being a servant to the needs of those people is profitable. Now, folks, we've got to learn something about this idea of being a servant. Because when we don't have it, there's an incredible breakdown. How many of you have been part of a labor management dispute? I remember now, was it last year, that Seneca Valley had this awful battle going back and forth? Well, you know, when there's not a servant heart being involved, you know, management saying, concede this and give us that, and labor saying what? Oh, pay us more and do this. You know, it goes back and forth. And we see it everywhere we look. We see this tension when there's an absence of having a servant orientation. How about in our families? What happens when a husband gets a me-first attitude in the family? It's trouble. What happens when the wife gets one? It's not worse. It's trouble, too. I think that brother's in big trouble, in fact. Anyhow, maybe you've stumbled across some families where the kids are all just caught up in themselves. My own little thing. The family's here to meet my every whim. I know when things happen and there's a ripple or two in our idyllic pond of family life. It doesn't take me long to figure out that somewhere along the line there's been a breakdown of having a servant's heart. It's amazing. And it's unbelievable to me that when someone moves to adjust that attitude, how things just keep back on track. And folks, churches are no different, are they? I mean, everywhere I go and people I talk to, I either hear people say one of these two things. I hear them say, we can't find a pastor that will really give himself to us and serve us. Can't find one. They all seem to be out trying to do their own thing. Or I hear pastors and elders saying, we pour ourselves out for the people and they don't give a rip. They just do whatever they want to do. And many hundreds and thousands of churches are in crisis today because the servant's heart has disappeared. And so there you see it. I mean, it's in business. It's in the family. We could talk about government illustrations. All of you know them. Think back of the different recent debacles in governments. Why? Selfishness, greed, me first. We need to see this tonight as not just something that's out there sort of, you know, just for the spiritual. It's practical stuff. If you get a hold of what I'm going to share tonight, it's going to change where you work, where you live, how you conduct yourself with the people that are important to you. And it's going to do so in lots of different ways. I think this is why Jesus was so intent on getting this message through to the disciples. This is why he went out of his way. Remember last week he said he had four sermons about being a servant in the space of just a little bit of script in the New Testament. Why? Because he knew that unless the back of selfishness was broken, there wasn't going to be any true change in the culture. That spirit of self-absorption and protecting our turf and guarding my rights, folks, if we don't deal with that here in our church, we're dead in the water. We're stuck. Because all we'll do is we'll just kind of like transfer people in and out. But I want to submit to you, if we get a hold of a spirit of servanthood in this church, just this many people, just this fraction of our body, what a revolution it would be. And the newer people to us, I want you to know something. You're pivotal in seeing that happen. Because you come into this thing with some fresh insight and some fresh expectation. And you can help us to grow in this whole arena together. Someone here needs to say, I'm going to take Jesus seriously. When he said, whoever wants to save his life has got to lose it. Is that going to be you? Someone here has to put the Lord to the test and say, All right, I'm going to throw my life away, Lord, to you. And I'm going to see if your word is true. I trust there's going to be someone here to do that. How does this happen? I want to talk about the mechanics of being transformed into a servant. Because you may wish it to be so. You might even be inspired, but it doesn't necessarily mean it will be. Let's look at this now in Philippians 2. Now, if you're trying to fill in your outline, I've just covered the introduction. Every human institution, including government, workplace, homes, and churches, is in desperate need of people with a serving nature. All right, the first way we're changed is we receive a new nature. No passage of Scripture to me comes close to describing what happens in the heart of a person when they receive Christ as this that describes Christ himself. If Jesus is our life, Galatians 2.20, it's no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in us. If that's the case, then, folks, we need to see what it would be like for Jesus to live in us. And what it would be like is right here in Philippians 2. Let's look at Philippians 2.6. "...who, being in very nature or form of God, did not consider that equality with God something to be grasped." The word for nature or form is the word morphe. Morphe, M-O-R-P-H-E with a little hyphen. Morphe. And it means, by definition, the inner, essential, and abiding nature of a person or thing. It's not the external shape of things. It's not what happens on the outside. It's the inner, essential, abiding nature of a person or thing. The Bible says that Jesus was God by nature. Jesus was God by nature. That's to say that the Bible tells us that he was indeed given on the inside all the qualities of deity. Are you familiar with those? What are some of them? What are some of the qualities of deity? How about glory? Listen to John 17.4. He says, "...Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." Well, how about 2 Corinthians 8 and verse 9? "...For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich..." How many believe God is rich? Jesus was rich. "...yet for your sakes," the Bible says, "...he became poor so that through his poverty we might become rich." What did Jesus leave? What did he empty himself of? These things. The right to exercise those qualities in an unlimited way. Now, this is a very tricky thing. Those of you who understand the word kenosis, the word for emptying oneself, the whole theory of Jesus emptying himself is a very profound mystery. What does that mean? Does it mean that he no longer could do stuff and he no longer had access to his riches and his glory? Does it mean that? Nope. Because he was fully God and fully man. Right? You've got to believe that. Now, folks, those of you who are newer Christians, Jesus was fully God in nature and fully man. But it says here that he emptied himself of the nature of God. What does that mean? Now, you can wrestle with this and you probably should some, and I did some more today as I have many times in the past. But basically the theory of kenosis, the emptying of Christ, means this. It means that the Lord chose for the season that he inhabited a body to not draw upon the unlimited resources that were available to him as God. And that he chose to have those obvious characteristics of his glory and his transcendent strength and all those things subjugated to his human nature so that he looked like you and me. Do you understand that? That's very, very important. Jesus gave up the right to be as God even though he retained that nature. In a sense, those godly characteristics were displaced by his human ones. That's what it means when it says here, he took on the nature of a servant. He took on an earthly heart. Now, many of you know what I mean because when you came to Christ, you know something happened in you. How many of you found that you were a different person when you came to Christ? Those of you who grew up in the church, you know, you're saying, I don't know, I've always been a Christian. But those of you who maybe found yourself out of darkness into the light know that you're a different person. Everything's changed and yet you're the same person. You get a little bit of the drift of what Jesus was about. You wrestled with the sin of me first all of your life and now you realize something in you is just responding to this new thing that's happening in your life. You've discovered a whole new desire inside of you to do different things and to respond differently and to serve differently and care for others. And it's not just something that you're doing out of bondage but because you want to. And I want us to see this here tonight. What we're talking about in being a servant is not some duty. How many just don't want anything to do with duty, obligation, got to do it, ought to do it, okay? If that's what you're into, you're going to be a real sorry believer after a while. You know, we have a group of teenagers that come here every so often under the covering of Joyce Erdner. The court sometimes finds teenagers in trouble but not really bad kids and rather than throw them into some kind of detention home, they assign them to Joyce Erdner to do jobs in the community and we happen to be one of the places that is the recipient of that. And I've been here on numerous occasions when some of these teenagers will come. And it's interesting to watch. Some of them come, you know, and they're just real quiet and they go about doing their business and they're pretty efficient and all. And some of them are really here and don't want to be here. And they don't want to work. And I watch them go out, you know, and one of their jobs is maybe to clean our bus. So they go out and, you know, they take a towel and they drop their towel and they walk over and, oh, yeah, the towel and they pick it up and then they come all the way back in the building and go to the bathroom for 10 minutes. And they go back. And it's real evident that they're being, I mean, they're serving, but they're not enjoying their service at all. On the other hand, I remember not too long ago when a group of folks in this church went up to the lighthouse at Inner City Ministry in St. Clair Village and we had a work day up there on a Saturday. And I remember ladies and men and kids just doing everything imaginable in this really dilapidated dust and dirt and vermin-filled building that was their church. I remember people hauling bags of trash and cutting down weeds and pulling out garbage and, you know, walking into places with masks on and pulling asbestos out and just, and then they get done and they say, well, now what can I do? Now what can I do? Where can I go next? How can I serve next? I started thinking to myself, what a difference. On the one hand, there's this person that can barely just get up enough energy to wipe the side of the bus. On the other hand, there's someone who just can't stop serving. Now which one describes you? Well, if Christ has really made a change in your heart and you're drawing upon the supernatural resources that are available in Him, I trust that your service isn't exacted from you, but it's given as a response. How many of you have ever said, Lord, how can I ever repay you? Have you ever said that to God? You know, we're saying more and more, I want to know you more and more. And then I also, by intention and design, saying, as you really are. One of the greatest problems that many of us face is we don't really know God. We don't really know Him. And so we don't see the massive, infinite length that He's brought us. And so we're not that appreciative. You know, we quote the scriptures, there's no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. But He only lives in my schedule when it's convenient for me to do the things that He wants me to do. Somehow we get defensive. We often withdraw. We get afraid. When people ask us to serve, we're just like, uh-oh, you know, I've got to check this out. I don't want to get it over my head. And yet Jesus is whispering to us, the one that's going to be the greatest of all is going to be the servant of all. It's the greatest thing in the world to be a servant, Jesus said. It's how you can be sure of finding fulfillment. It's not some obligatory, coerced, you know, if no one else is going to do it, well, I guess we've got to do it, honey, kind of attitude. People ought to be cultivating a liberal-mindedness with what they have and who they are to give back to the Lord in response to His great act. His act of service. Remember last week we read that. I mean, He did it for us. And I don't think He wanted to. I'm looking for people who are glad to serve. Who want to say, when it's their turn, how can I do it more? And I'm looking for the Lord to make me that kind of person. Remember the old song? He ain't heavy, He's my brother. Kind of bad English, I guess, isn't it? But what does that song say? It's saying if you really love somebody, you'll do what it takes. You'll serve. You'll be there. When you serve that way in your job, in your home, in your ministry, folks, I want to tell you something. People notice it. I notice a big difference between a willing servant and a servile one. A big difference between the one who's just moving the towel because, you know, they have to and someone who wants to in response to a wonderful God. Remember this all the time, please. Who are you really serving? Are you serving North Way? Are you serving that person? Are you serving me? Who are you really serving? Jesus Christ. Romans 1, 1, Philippians 1, 1, he said, Paul, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. And listen, the most disgusting or routine or unsatisfying kind of serving experience can become a delight when it's done as unto God. Hello? It's not really glorious. I don't know that it is. Sunday, right over here in the first service, there was a gal in a wheelchair who came the first Sunday of the month when Pastor Scott led us in Handicap Sunday. And as I dug into the story a little bit, my heart was touched because she came to the church at the invitation of two nurses. And her situation is really a very, very tragic one because she was born completely normal and was living a normal married life and under a routine operation had a tragedy happen with the anesthetic and lost most of her motor functions. She wasn't able to function well. She can't control speech and things like that. But her mental faculties are sharp. And the nurses, the gals, who are members of our church and might even be here tonight, were telling me, you know, it's not easy to get this gal together and bring her over. It's not easy to watch out for her needs and those kinds of things. Well, I want you to know something. This Sunday at the end of the first service, the Lord prompted me, gave an invitation. And that gal right over there said, I want to receive Jesus in my life. And she wasn't a Christian. Now, it was the servant heart of those gals bringing this person to come to know Christ. I mean, folks, it wouldn't have happened. And there's nothing glamorous about those kinds of things. But how many of you know they share in the joy? They were touched. And it's not over yet. I mean, the service is still going to go on. But it's unto Christ. So number one, we receive a new heart. Number two, we receive a new mind. I'm going to talk to you about something that's a little different here. You see, we have a new nature, but we also have to receive a new mindset. Emotional appeals won't hack it on the long haul. One thing I try to avoid here, and I don't always do it well, but I try to avoid the situations where someone comes up here and starts to bleed over the platform and says something like, if you don't come back, we have kids with guns drawn in the back and some are dealing drugs and the whole place is going to burn down and we need you. And they go on. I don't want to do that. Emotional appeals cannot be the basis of finding fulfillment in your place of service. What I've discovered is when you're touched by something emotional it'll last two or three or four weeks. Then you say, oh my gosh, now what am I going to do? I'm stuck back here. And then what happens? Then you get kind of angry at someone who put you there and then you get mad at church and then pretty soon it's, well, I don't feel guilty. It's the wrong scene, folks. Inspiration and emotional kinds of appeals don't last. They can't be the basis for serving. And I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be sensitive to the Spirit. There might be times when He'll prompt us in a touching way. But I'm saying lots of bad decisions have resulted. Lots of confusion because emotion-based serving just kind of prompted up. I've got to do it. The Scripture says here, look at it, have this mind in you. Let's put our minds to work here. I believe what the Scripture is saying is get it into your head and keep it there. Intellectually speaking, that it's absurd to do anything but be a servant. I mean, get your head around that. It makes more sense to serve others than to serve yourself. That's what that Scripture is saying to you. A father-first mindset will ensure that God will bring you into fulfillment and eternal reward. A me-first mindset just won't do that no matter what. Self-indulgence and protecting your rights, it's a dead-end street. Now, someone probably is thinking right now, well, I know that. I mean, I don't want to be an indulgent person. I mean, I'm not here just to kind of have my own kick. Or someone might be thinking, well, I don't want to be an extreme fanatic and have my whole life tied up in doing good deeds for the church and for God. Have this mindset, the Bible says, in yourself. Look at it. Verse 8. The mindset that was in Christ who humbled himself and became obedient. I just want to say to you, if you'll do those two things to the Holy Spirit, if you'll humble yourself and say, Lord, wherever you want me to go, and you'll obey the Holy Spirit and do what He tells you to do, then everything will be fine. You won't burn out. You won't waste your time. God will see you through. You can't operate on your feelings around here, folks. You can't do it. You want to know one question I never ask myself in the morning when I come in here? I never ask myself, what do I feel like doing today? It's not very often I feel like spending seven or eight hours in message preparation like I did today. Not very often I feel like getting my head down on my desk and just looking and praying and asking and writing. It's not always. If I want to do what I felt like doing, how about you? I don't know what would get done. Emotional responses will just start pulling us away from the true issues of life. But because I know that what's going to bring ultimate fulfillment in my life and what's ultimately going to cause God to get glory for my life, it's to discipline myself, my mind, to say, this is what I'm called to do today. And I want to serve God and serve people as I do it. And I want that to be the characteristic that controls my day. And folks, I want to tell you, just because I make that once in the morning doesn't mean by 10 o'clock I don't have to make it again. I do get phone calls once in a while from people who will say, Pastor, it's 78 degrees out and the golf course is open. Pastor Scott is calling. You know and I know that those kinds of tugs are on all of our lives. But if we're to be servants of God, we need to be willing to discipline our lives. Jesus is saying more of us need to do this, to operate with mental sharpness. When I wake up at a quarter to five on Tuesday morning to come over here to pray, just like the elders, I don't feel like it. I do not feel... You might think, you know, I do not have this little minstrel band that comes beside my bed and starts singing, More and more, love God more and more. I get up and I feel lousy just like you do. But in my mind, I've registered the complaint with God the night before and He said, Too bad, get up tomorrow. And you know, we're bombarded all the time with messages that say, Hey, indulge yourself. Me first, you know. Preserve the wildlife. The one with the most toys wins. You know, have you seen a bumper sticker? You know, you walk into the drug store over here or in the airport newsstand. Self magazine. Have you seen self magazine? I mean, what a blatant statement that is. Or you. And if your mind isn't geared to repel those things, after a while, you just kind of get beaten down. You won't be a servant. You'll be a me first, self-serving, what I want matters more than what anyone else wants matters kind of person. And dear ones, if you follow that course, you know what loses? You. You lose, your family loses, and the work of God loses in your life. On the other hand, if you begin to follow the promptings of your mind, that's focused on Christ, great things happen. People begin to wonder, why are you giving that extra little bit? Why is it that it seems like so often Christians are the last ones to discover this? When we have the example of Christ, and that's really my third point, I just want to move on here and finish up. The third thing we need to receive is the encouragement through models of service. Jesus was a model to us of service. Last week I told that little kind of dramatic story about how Jesus put the towel, girded himself with it. Remember that? His disciples watched in awe as he did the thing that none of them would do. And I just want to read for you John chapter 13 and verse 15. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Wow, what could be more clear than that? I mean, Jesus said to the disciples and to us, I've given you an example. If I'm willing to be the servant of all, then I have to expect the same from you. If I'm willing to lay down my life to go to the cross, then that's an example for each of you. But no more than that, I have to say, and I know you're feeling this as well, I also need some earthly illustrations. I want to say to the Lord, Father, thank you for the people that you sent across my path who are models of service. Some of you here tonight, can you think of a person that's a model of a servant to you? Do you know someone that literally has changed you by their attitude as a servant? Someone who will give when no one's really looking? Someone who will make it happen when no one else will know? When you're surrounded by self-centered people, guess what happens to you? You become just like them. But when you're surrounded by servants, it's contagious stuff. I mean, when you start working together and giving together and watching one outdoing another in acts of kindness and service. And I've been privileged for the last years to work with elders who have a servant's heart, want to give of themselves. Go out and give 40, 50 hours a week in their job and then look for ways to serve you people. I'm surrounded by a staff whose heart is... And we even have little signs on the walls that says, we're seeking to serve. We want to grow up in this thing. We want to keep growing in it. Because we know it's what Jesus would have us to do. We want to serve. We want to become more and more like Jesus wants us to be. I was touched when I was a seminary student by lots of people. But one of the men that touched me the most was a pastor in Van Nuys, California by the name of Jack Hayford. I read an article today and I want to see if I can find it here in my notes. I picked it up at the last minute. But it's worth reading to you. Jack has been in the Los Angeles area for lots of years. I think his church is now 27 years old. And he's well known. But I picked up this letter, and here it is today, from James Dobson. How many of you listen to James Dobson's radio ministry from time to time? May I read this to you? I want to share with you one precious thing that happened while I was in the hospital. I had enjoyed perfect peace through the ten-day ordeal, despite the discomfort imposed by such an illness. He said, The presence of the Lord was very real to me, and I leaned heavily upon the volume of prayer being expressed on my behalf. However, that confidence suddenly unraveled on the day before I was to be discharged because a disturbing medical report was received, rather unexpectedly, catching me off guard. It looked like I had additional problems not yet identified. That's when I uttered a brief and ineloquent prayer from the depths of my soul. I said, Lord, you know where I am right now, and you know that I am upset and very lonely. Would you send someone who can help me? A short time later, my good friend, Dr. Jack Hayford, walked through the door. Many of you know him from his writings in TV ministry. He said, We greeted each other warmly, and then I said, Jack, your church is on the other side of Los Angeles. Why did you take the time to come to see me today? I'll never forget his reply, he said, because the Lord told me you were lonely. Spirit-led service. The kind of service that listens to the promptings of God and responds intelligently, disciplined, disciplined mind, and says, I'm going to do what the Lord has prompted me to do because putting Him first is the only way I can come to abiding fulfillment. Where are you tonight? Are you still caught up with the whole arena of just making sure you can keep it together for yourself? Or are you willing to be among those tonight that are going to say, Lord, whatever it takes, I want this same mind that was in Christ Jesus to be in me. I don't care if you're 55 or 75 or 15. We can change this city if we become an army of servants. Or we can just play church and do the best we can. My vote is that every one of us here tonight wouldn't be here if we really didn't want all of God. And I say to you, have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but taking the very nature of a servant as obedient to death on a cross. That's our example. That's our life. And I'm trusting Him to change me like that as well. That's right. Lord, I want to ask tonight that Your Word would go forth in faith and great confidence to the people that have come to receive it and that You would work the change that You want to see happen. And I ask it in Jesus' name. Let's stand together. I'm going to ask you to do something with one another. I started by mentioning just four areas. I said in the government, in the marketplace, at home, and in our institutions. Where do you want to find the role of a serv