The Way of David - Personal Ministry

Welcome

Well, good morning, Friends! If we haven’t met yet, my name is Dan and I serve as the teaching pastor here at Lifepoint Worthington. I’m really glad you’re here with us today.

If this is your first time…

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Introduction

Alright, let’s get going.

We are continuing in our series called, “Broken Mirrors” and, so far, I think it’s been super interesting. It based out the New Testament book of Hebrews, in an iconic section called, “The Hall of Faith”, where the author references all of these characters from the Old Testament and holds them up as a model of what a faithful life looks like.

And what’s super interesting about these characters is that ever single one of them is pretty messed up. They are ALL far from perfect. In this list, we find cowards, liars, cheaters, murderers, radical vigilantes. It’s honestly a bizarre group. But this section points to the mystery of God’s kindness to consistently use imperfect people to reflect a perfect God!

So we’re taking some of these references in Hebrews 11 and using them like portals back to the full story. And we’re looking at how these stories connect to our Core Values at Lifepoint.

So, just to catch you up. In week one, we looked at Cain and Able and talked about our Gospel Identity; that in Jesus, we are NEW. In week two, we looked at Samson and talked about Reaching Priority, that in Jesus, we are Missionaries. Last week, we looked at beginning of Moses’ story and talked about Authentic Community, that in Jesus, we are FAMILY.

Today, we’re going to look part of the story of David and talk about Personal Ministry, the idea that in Jesus, we are SERVANTS.

And so, if you’re new to Lifepoint, this is a great series for you because we’re trying to paint a picture of what we want to be about as a church. And just like everyone of those characters in Hebrews 11, we are flawed. We don’t even pretend to have this all figured out! But our hope is that we more and more embody these values in the life of our church!

And if you’ve been around Lifepoint for a while, you need this series too! It’s reminder of what we do and why that still ought to shape us and challenge us so that we don’t end up as a church that’s coasting—drifting away from what we really do believe God has called us to!

And I think the value we’re talking about today is vital for us; Personal Ministry. And it’s not just because it’s the message were I talk about a bunch of serving opportunities in the our church. Though I’m 100% going to do that! It’s because there are a some deeply held myths about serving that we need to confront in our own hearts and minds.

See, typically in a message like this, you walk away with the vague impression that if you’re going to be connected to a church, you should probably be serving in that church somewhere. But the answer to why you should be serving is generally left hiding between the lines…left for you to figure out on your own. The danger is that if we land on the wrong answer it will have devastating consequences!

So here’s what I want to do today. I want to explore three myths about why we should serve as followers of Jesus: that GOD needs you to serve, the CHURCH needs you to serve, that I need you to serve.

And we’ll see why each one of these ultimately misses the mark.

And to do that, we’re going to look at a classic story…one that I’m willing to be you’ve all at least heard of…but one that I don’t really think is about what we tend to think it’s about.

The story of David and Goliath.

So if you have a bible with you, open up to the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel chapter 17.

I’ll pray and then we’ll get started.

PRAY

It’s All About the Heart

Alright, let’s get started.

The story of David and Goliath is classic. It’s the underdog of underdog stories, isn’t it?

Let me set the scene a little.

The Israelites are camped out across their historic enemies, the Philistines. If you can picture it, each group has made camp on opposite sides of a valley. They’re both in the mountains looking down at the valley bellow.

Now, they’d worked out a bit of a system at this point.

Instead of having both armies clash, resulting in horrific casualties on both sides, they have elected to use something like a duel. The best warrior from one side will fight the best from the other. And whichever side wins the fight, wins the battle and the others become slaves of the winners.

The Philistines send out a man named Goliath; which now is ubiquitous for HUGE, right? And for good reason. The way he’s described is insane. He’s enormous and would honestly be terrifying human being.

Saul, the King

Now, what interesting is that at this point, Israel has someone who should be able to out and fight: their current king Saul. Interestingly enough, Saul is described as being basically the best of the best. Look how we’re first introduced to Saul earlier in chapter 9.

1 Samuel 9:1–2 (ESV)

1 There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, son of Zeror, son of Becorath, son of Aphiah, a Benjaminite, a man of wealth. 2 And he had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.

So the Philistines have a prized fighter and so do the Israelites.

But Saul won’t go out there. Even he sees it as basically a hopeless situation. And so for 40 days, Goliath is out there taunting them.

But on the 41st day, David shows up.

David, the Boy

He hears Goliath and immediately starts asking questions about what anyone’s doing about this guy. And if no one else will fight, he’ll suit up.

At this point in his life, David is a shepherd. Probably, not fighting age, because if he were, he’d be on the battle field with his brothers. But also not like a little kid. In fact, when he’s making his case to Saul about why he’s qualified to go out to fight Goliath, he shares this little detail:

1 Samuel 17:34–36 ESV

34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, 35 I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. 36 Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.”

That’s pretty legit.

I mean, it’s still an underdog story…but…it it’s me, I wouldn’t be too fast to write him off!

And I think you know how the story ends.

David picks up five stones, a sling, takes aim, and kills Goliath.

Here’s an artist rendition of that moment.

And that’s the story.

Go, be like David. Fight the giants in your life.

Not what it seems…

But, I think theres more to this story than that.

You see, I think sometimes we have to be really careful with stories like this one because they can become so familiar and so isolated as a stand-alone story, that we don’t really pay much attention to them.

Have you ever had that experience when you get home from work but, when you think about it, you barely remember ever driving home? It’s just such a familiar trip that you basically do it on auto-pilot. Know what I’m talking about?

Well, the same is true for this story.

You know what’s interesting is that if you follow the details closely, you realize that chapter 17 actually takes place sometime before the events recorded in chapter 16. Now, I’m not going to be able to unpack all of this here today, but I’m more than happy to have a longer conversation about this at another point if you have questions.

I’ll sum it up this way, because it’s actually a pretty big debate among Old Testament scholars. Basically, the problem is that in chapter 16, we first meet all of Davids family, his father, is brothers, and actually we get the story of David meeting Saul for the first time.

Here’s the problem, though. When you get to chapter 17, the narrator of the story reintroduces us to all of David’s family as if we’ve never heard about them before, David meets Saul and it seems pretty clear from the story that they’ve never met before all of which can’t be true if we know they all just met in chapter 16.

It’s a bit convoluted. I know.

Like I said, we can talk more about it if you have questions.

But here’s the point.

If we take a step back, and look at this from a birds-eye-view, the point of this story will start to look a lot different. Instead of reading it in isolation, we need to read this connected to chapter 16.

David Anointed King

Jump back a page or two.

Saul has just been rejected by God as the King of Israel and Samuel the prophet is sent to David’s family to anoint a new king.

He meet’s with David’s father, calls all the brothers together, and finds the most logical person, the oldest son son, but right before he anoints him, God speaks to Samuel and says in v. 7,

1 Samuel 16:7 ESV

7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

And as you go through the rest of the chapter, brother by brother is rejected. Presumably, it’s because of exactly what God said in v. 7, that he is not looking at the outward appearance, but he’s look at the heart.

And finally, he get’s to David, the shepherd.

And for some reason, there is something the Lord sees that distinguishes David’s heart - his character - apart from the rest of his brothers.

You see, what I think is going on, rather than having this random one off story come next that has all of these out of order details throwing off the storyline, the author of 1 Samuel is looking backwards to a story ABOUT David that demonstrates why he is different; that illustrates what’s going on in His heart that isn’t here with rest of his brothers.

And all of a sudden, instead of this being a story about David conquering the “Giants” in his life, it’s a story about David’s heart posture for his people and His God.

David sees himself as one who is willing to lay his life down. He willing to do what no one else is willing to do. In fact, the word he uses to describe himself three times in this story is not WARRIOR, not SHEPHERD, but servant.

This is how he sees himself.

This is how the Lord sees him.

David is a servant.

This is the main point of the story. David is willing to serve, David is willing to sacrifice, David is willing to give of himself for the sake of others. And THIS is what the Lord sees in him!

Myths about Serving

And I think there is something profound that happens when with think of the story that way. Because it gives us a glimpse into the heart and mind of God and it shows us what He desires and what honors him. And the unavoidable conclusion here is that the practice of serving reveals something about our hearts.

David’s posture as a servant reveals where his heart is at.

Our posture towards serving reveals where our hearts are at.

Case in point.

How many of you: you don’t have to raise your hands, but how many of you, as soon as I said we were talking about serving today thought, “He’s going to try and get me to start serving.”

Now, no judgement from me. But it does reveal something about us when that’s are response!

But just like a said at the beginning, I think we often approach this topic assuming a specific motivation for serving. We all will answer the question “why should I serve.” How we answer that, though makes an enormous difference for what happens to us in our serving!

Let me show you what I mean. I want to look at three myths about serving.

Myth 1: The Church Needs me to Serve

The first myth is that you can believe you should serve because the church needs you to serve.

And I understand that. When we look around here on a Sunday morning, you can very quickly quantify all the work in terms of how many people it takes to pull off a Sunday service.

We need folks serving downstairs in Lifepoint Kids. We need people who are serving on our connections team, on the parking team, on the security team, in the production booth, and on stage as musicians and singers. These are all people who are giving of their time right now so that we can be in this space!

The easy conclusion to come to is: I should serve because the church needs me to serve. There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot that could be done.

But I think there’s something dangerous about this answer: I should serve because the church needs me to serve. It’s not immediately obvious, but think about it for a moment.

If the church needs you to serve and that’s your motivation for it, how do you know if you’re really pulling your weight? Is it twice a month that meets the need? Is it twice a month (as long as you’re in town and there’s no soccer practice) + a community service project with your Lifegroup twice year?

Actually I think there’s a good chance that when this is your motivation, you’ll end up feeling anxious about serving. Like we said, there’s a lot of ways to serve…there is always more that you could be doing. In fact, if at any moment you asked me: is there any way I can help out, the answer will ALWAYS be a resounding, Yes!

Not really knowing what other’s think about you’re serving patterns. So if there’s more work + the church needs you, that equals anxiety. You’ll never really know if you’re doing enough or if others think you’re doing enough.

Worse still, when it’s about the church needing you, eventually something will happen to your heart. You’ll see yourself filling more and more holes here, with less people stepping up to serve alongside you. This is where burnout happens - doing too much because you’ve come to believe the church is more and more reliant upon you.

And for that matter, shame on me if I have communicated that to you! Sometimes pastors do a poor job of protecting the church from this lie and we talk to people and rely on people as if the whole thing is built on them serving! More on that in moment.

Here’s the point: the church doesn’t need you to serve.

Myth 2: God Needs me to Serve

Here’s the second myth: God needs me to serve.

The equation is: There are lots of serving needs + God needs me to do this for Him. But I think there is an unspoken belief attached to this: that God needs you do this for him SO THAT He will bless me or, SO THAT He will be happy with me or, SO THAT He will love me. And it may seem odd to say out loud, but many of us know exactly what it’s like to be an a relationship where you feel you have to earn affection. Where you have to prove your worth. Where Love is conditional.

Friends, if you are serving because you believe, in your heart of hearts, that God needs this from you, you will inevitably find yourself crushed by worry and guilt.

Worry over when you will ever have served enough.

Guilt over never really feeling like you’ve done enough.

What we have to see is that God’s love for us is not a Performance love. It’s not a “how much” love! It’s the love of a Father who delights in His children, who knows what they need before they open their mouths to ask! God does not need you to serve - He does not love you more or less based on how much you contribute. It’s a myth. It’s a lie!

Myth 3: I Need you to Serve

And one more before we get to the punch line: This is the one I need to watch out for in my own life - or really any church leader for that matter.

Myth #3 is that I need you to serve somewhere.

And all be honest, I constantly have to confront this in my life.

What happens when we believe this myth about serving is that we get so caught up in our own thing, that people start becoming a means to an end. Relationships become transactional. You are valuable to me in as much as you can meet my needs. And I have watched this happen in my own heart of the years.

I have watched people become a dollar sign in my mind. I have dehumanized relationships, thinking about people as horsepower. And all to accomplish my thing. To ensure I end up looking good. And I know that in a group like this, some of you have been on the receiving end of this - and it hurts.

And you may not cleanly identify with any of these myths…but I bring them up because they are sneaky and slowly but surely, each one of these will come up in our hearts and minds over the course of many years. And will, from time to time, find ourselves answering the question, ‘Why should I serve?’ with because the church needs me…because God needs me…because leadership needs me.

But each of those answers misses the mark.

You Need you to Serve

Friends, the reality is, more than anything else…it’s not me, it’s not the church, it’s not God that needs you to serve…it’s YOU.

YOU need you to serve. You need you to serve.

Why exactly?

Because of what we said a few moments ago: serving reveals whats actually going on in our heart. Just like the story of David and Goliath shows what was going on in David’s heart.

Serving shows us where are hearts are aligned or misaligned with God’s heart and what he cares about.

Let me give you an example.

A few years ago, Courtney and were on a global trip, working in Central Russia where we eventually wanted to serve as long term missionaries. And we are fresh out of Bible School, ready to get to work. We had studied Russian for a bout 2 years at that point. I could have a confident conversation in Russian with a 5 year old - who would be pretty confused as to why I sounded so funny.

Point is, we felt like we were ready to contribute to the work there and had been doing A TON of prep work to be there already.

But for the first few weeks, we pretty much had one job. It wasn’t to teach. It was’t to meet and build relationships. It wasn’t to run the games.

It was to wait until everyone else had gone to bed and clean the camp.

Moping. Out-houses. Dishes.

And I distinctly remember feeling like, “WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?!” We could have been doing SO MUCH MORE! We were qualified for more important work.

And you see, what was happening in that moment - was that “serving” was starting to reveal some things in me that I didn’t know existed. There was an arrogance. A level or pride and even anger that I didn’t know was there and all of a sudden, it’s coming to the surface. All of these heart issues that, without a doubt, would have had a huge influence on the work we were doing! But it was the serving that brought them up and then, with our team leadership, we could start to work through the heart issues.

See, it wasn’t the camp that needed it, it wasn’t my team leader, and it wasn’t God who needed me to clean outhouses. I needed it.

Friends, the same is true for us.

When we serve, something happens in our hearts. Let’s get a bit more specific and say it’s not just that serving reveals our hearts. Serving actually services our hearts.

It is the practice of regularly coming before your community and saying, I am going to lay down my preferences, my desires, my needs, and consider yours and seek to meet YOUR needs here that the Lord uses to profound shape and reshape the hearts and minds of his people.

Gospel Serving

And this is what is so clearly modeled for us in the life of Jesus, who did not talk about himself as a Warrior or Political ruler, but as a servant.

Mark 10:45 ESV

45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

That he came to give away his life for OUR sake! Not because we did enough FOR him, not because we served enough FOR him, but so that He could show his great love for us. You see, Jesus’ serving reveals his heart for us.

And His desire is that we, as his people, would turn and live as servants in our communities. That we would take up the way of Jesus, not by being served but by serving…giving away our lives not only for our own good but also for those around us.

Paul says it this way in Philippians.

Philippians 2:4–8 ESV

4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

You see, it is in and through serving one another that we become more and more like Jesus. Serving services the heart.

Exercising Personal Ministry

And only now that we’ve worked through all of that, I think we can have a conversation about what serving that services your heart looks like here in this specific context.

And remember, we say all of this, not with unspoken context of: I need you to serve, the church needs you to serve or that God needs you to serve, but that YOU desperately need you to serve.

In the Church

Remember, at Lifepoint, the core value we have for this is called, Personal Ministry. So the question is, while here you’re in this community, what is your Personal Ministry? Where are serving?

The Big Three

Well, if we think about just Sunday mornings for a moment there are three major arenas of serving. The Connections team, the Music and Production Teams, and the Lifepoint Kids Teams. Each one of these teams has unique opportunities for serving, whether that’s through face to face interactions with folks coming in to help create a hospitable and welcoming environment or getting things physically set up for a Sunday morning, or teaching and leading our kids.

But I would say that if there is an area in our campus where we have room for growth, it with Lifepoint Kids. This, I think, is the hardest place to serve because of what it asks of you: that twice a month you spend all the same amount of energy to get up, ready, and out the door, to get here, only to downstairs for the entire service. Oh, and you have to get here earlier than normal! Fortunately you get paid, right?

No!

But, if I may, let me summarize it this way — and this is not just true of those serving in LP Kids.

Twice a month you are committing to the hard work of heart work as you prepare, get up early, get the kids ready, fed and out the door to arrive here before almost everyone else. And when you are downstairs, welcoming kids, holding babies, breaking up fights, singing, teaching or leading a craft, you are not just babysitting. You are in a very unique position of being able to share and show the love of Jesus to little hearts and little minds that God has entrusted to your care…to our care for that hour!

More than that, you are undergoing an open heart surgery of sorts wherein the Holy Spirit is actively at work, shaping, reshaping, and bring more and more alignment between your heart and Jesus’ heart…forming you to be more and more like Him.

Yes, you may miss a sermon (though for some, that may be more of a feature than a bug) but you are no less impacted by the work of the Holy Spirit as you avail your heart to be serviced through serving.

Application

Alright, as we wrap this up, what is your next step?

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