Come to Serve

To love like Jesus is to serve like Jesus.

[Scripture]

For today’s message, let us turn to the gospel of 1)John 13:34-35. Let us all rise and read the scripture together.

요한복음 13:34–35 NIV

2)34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Amen.

This is the word of the Lord.

[Welcome]

Good morning PW and welcome to today’s worship service. Let’s turn to turn neighbors and say, 3)“Jesus loves you.” Jesus loves you and because he did, he died on the cross beat the grave and now sits on the throne next to God. I hope that this worship be a worship where you experience Jesus’ love. 4)This month, we are taking the time to look back on what Jesus has done in our lives and what his resurrection means to us. Last week we learnt when we hope in Jesus he takes care of our lives and for that we should only hope in Jesus and today, we are going to listen and do what Jesus did on earth.

[Sermon]

Few weeks back, I talked about how we should use social media as a Christian. I challenged everyone that you should all use it to show who God is to the world. Preach it and live it. So, for my Kakao Profile, 5)I changed the my status to my favorite scripture. Let’s read it together.

골로새서 3:23 NIV

6)23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,

This is my life time goal. It is to work for the Lord not for men. And because I am Pastor it is much easier to live this life. Also, it is something that I could follow well. Because, I don’t like to do what people tell me to do in the first place anyway. I don’t like to be that push over person. Everything I do, I want to do it to honor God. And because I am doing it for God, I want to do it well. I want to put all my energy into it. Because like how I said it is done to honor God. Because this scripture is my goal. Because I want to do it well, I get frustrated a lot. Because, I think in my point of view that it is not enough. Other people might have said, it is Good, it is Okay. But in my standard, it was not enough for God.

For example, when I first started ministry. I served a youth group in Pohang of South Korea. 7)I was 23, I was young, I was active.I had more energy. And I still remember the 2 retreats that I led while I was there.

8)The first one, I had no clue what I was doing then. I got all the feed backs from teachers and students. In the second retreat, I put all the feedback into consideration and planned the most amazing retreat ever. I wanted the retreat to be a fun retreat. That was my goal. I hired a praise team to come down to lead worship. I picked out an amazing spot in one of the streams for water activities. The theme and the program was all spot on. The staffs were all well trained. Everything looked perfect. I was ready.

Like what I have planned. It was an amazing retreat. A lot of the students encountered Jesus. God’s spirit was doing his thing. New comers came to confess that Jesus was their king. But… One thing did not go as planned. I am not proud of this but I can’t swim. But as I was lurking around the water having my eyes out for the students, I got pushed into the deep end. The chaos happened. I was waving my arms around to grab hold onto something. The students were jumping on me thinking it was fun. I was literally fighting for my life. I was waving my arms around in the air then I caught something. I tried to grab hold onto it to get out of the water but what was happening was the thing that I grabbed on to started to come into the water with me. So, I was grabbed on to the shirt of the keyboard player. She was the most frail person there. I was dragging her into my grave. But then the people around her grabbed onto her and pulled me and the keyboard player out of the water. Thats when I should have pulled the plug. But then another person who was the drummer he fell in the same place I fell in. We got him out quickly but he was in shock and had to call an ambulance.

I was panicking. Someone nearly died in front of me from a Retreat that I was running. He was hospitalized in some rural country hospital. After I sent the students to go shower, I went to the hospital to check on his status. He drank a lot of water and because he was shocked from the experience, he passed out. So he was going to be okay to leave the hospital the next day. I was thinking in my mind. God what are you trying to tell me? Don’t be arrogant? Is that it? Or just quit ministry? All sorts of thoughts were going through my mind. But I came back to the retreat center, we worshiped God. It was an amazing worship. But then, I received another phone call from the hospital saying that the drummer was in a critical situation. So, I went straight to the hospital, there were lines attached to him everywhere. He was screaming, “My Brain feels like it’s going to burst.” Once the IV was put in, he became calm again. I was praying, I was worrying, it was just pure chaos. After returning to a stable condition, we called another ambulance and we sent him to Seoul National University Hospital. Thank goodness it wasn’t anything serious. He had an allergic reaction to a vitamin shot.

After the retreat all the students changed the teachers changed by God. Everyone was saying that it was the best retreat ever. But for me, it wasn’t I didn’t see the changes in the students but what I remembered was the drummer. God was with us. God kept us safe. But because of this drummers incident. How stupid is this?

I am not saying that the drummer’s incident is something that I should have ignored. It was something that made me humble to pray. But I should have seen the other things God has done through the retreat. I should have seen what Jesus was doing to the students and to the teachers. He changed them for Good. But I was focused on the only thing that not go to plan. Why is that? It is because I did it for myself. I wanted to make sure I do it right.

Colossians 3:23 says, 9)that working for the lord not for men. Yeh it seemed as though I did it for the Lord but really I did it for myself because, I saw what I did wrong. Not what God was doing but what I was doing. It was all about me. I wanted to prove something through it. That’s why I put all my effort into the retreat. The reason I bring this story and this scripture into the sermon is to show you all that we all make this mistake. Mistake of doing things the way I want to do for God. Thinking that you are doing something fro God but actually you are doing it for yourself.

Let’s read today’s scripture one more time.

요한복음 13:34–35 NIV

10)34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

From this scripture, we are called to love. So to follow Jesus, what do you do, you love others. But in your own ways. Now, my language of love is when someone gives me gifts. Through the lent I don’t feel loved by myself because I haven’t been buying things. Any ways, do you think I will feel loved if my wife buys me flowers? Ah nope. That is not the right way to love me. So when Jesus is saying that Love one another As I have loved you … you have to see how Jesus loved others. How did Jesus show his love. He showed it by serving.

Let’s read John 13:2-5

요한복음 13:2–5 NIV

11)2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Just before Jesus said love like how I loved you, he washed the disciples feet. Ewh. Dirty. But no matter how smelly or gross the disciples feet were, Jesus showed love by washing their feet. Serving to an extent to taking care of the most dirty thing in life. We have to be on point. To love is to serve. Jesus he doesn’t stop there. He show his love by serving us as the last sacrifice. He sacrificed his own life. Jesus he came to love and he did it by serving us.

Question. Are you loving others like Jesus? This scripture doesn’t mean to serve others by washing their feet. But to love is not just saying I love you. Love is not just reacting to how you want to be loved. But to love like Jesus it means to serve others. Do something about it. Show that love. Like How Jesus did, you do it too. This does not only apply to you all. But it applies to me as well. I love myself, but I don’t show love like Jesus so I want to change. That is why I have the water and a chair up on the stage. I am going to wash one of you guys feet.

(Washing)

Today, I send you all out into where your lives are. Love like Jesus and serve to show that love. Let us pray.

[Prayer]

[Response]

More Like Jesus

[Announcement]

1. Retreat In house

2. Retreat sign up

3. Easter Festival

4. Baptism

5. Mother’s day

6. Change in time