Service

VOLUNTEER APPRECIATION NIGHT — SERVICE

Thank you all for coming tonight for just another opportunity to fellowship with one another. I love being a part of this community and I am so thankful to be a part of a church where we really do feel like a family.

In our family, we make a regular practice of “thankfuls.” We take a moment to shout out one another. To make it publicly known that we appreciate each other and the ways that we love, encourage, and serve one another.

Tonight is a little bit like that. I personally and on behalf of the elders and the staff want to thank each one of you for serving one another. We don’t serve one another simply because “someone has to do it.” We don’t serve one another to earn anything from one another. We especially don’t serve to get anything from God.

We serve because he first served us — and in the spending ourselves for one another, we get the most of the body we already belong to by the blood of Christ.

I want to take a quick survey through Scripture to name why we serve. how your service, as an act of obedience to the call of the Lord in Scripture blesses those around you, but also blesses you.

I want to call out three things that we experience when we serve.

When we serve, we experience...

Sonship

Self-Forgetfulness

Sanctification

MOVEMENT 1 —When we serve, we experience Sonship

▸ You don't serve to join the body; you serve because you already are the body — service is how you take your actual place in it rather than standing beside it

▸ Family-and-chores illustration: what bonds a family isn't only the fun; it's the shared work in the place we spend our lives together

✦ 1 Corinthians 12:12–26 “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”

— The parts of the body that seem to be weaker, or in our case less visible, are indispensable. When you serve in the kids classroom, or when you come early to set up, you are an indispensable part of the body. When you come early to prepare food or step out of service a couple of minutes early to get food ready for a bunch of hungry people, you are an indispensable part of the body. When you walk the hallways during service, peek at the parking lot, and ensure that we are all safe while we worship, you are an indispensible part of the body. And that’s just on Sunday. We have people serving throughout the week too. All of the things that all of you do to serve one another with fellowship, community, meals, council, friendship, and so many other things represents what the church at the deepest level is. The one, unified body of Christ, working together to know Him, to serve Him, and to make his name known in all the earth.

✦ Ephesians 4:1–16 “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

— the body grows and builds itself up in love "when each part is working properly"

✦ 1 Corinthians 12:27 “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

MOVEMENT 2 — When we serve we experience SELF-FORGETFULNESS

▸ Matthew 6 engine: giving, praying, fasting are all visceral ways of showing ourselves we rely on no created thing, only the Creator — service belongs in that same line ▸ Every resource — time, attention, energy — is stewarded, not owned; all ultimately God's

✦ Matthew 6:1–4, 6, 17–18 — giving, prayer, fasting "in secret," and the refrain "your Father who sees in secret" (covers the volunteer nobody notices)

✦ Luke 9:23 “And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

— "let him deny himself and take up his cross daily"

✦ Philippians 2:3–4 “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

— count others more significant; look to the interests of others

MOVEMENT 3 — When we serve, we experience SANCTIFICATION

▸ The Spirit forms Christ in you through the service itself; it isn't the wage of formation, it's the means ▸ Love made visible is the mark of the believer — service is a clean, direct display of it

✦ John 13:34–35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.””

— "by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another"

✦ 2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

— "transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another"

CLIMAX — WHY WE SERVE AT ALL (BACK TO MOVEMENT 1'S GROUND)

▸ The one with more reason than anyone to be served — King of kings, Redeemer, God over creation — came not to be served but to serve ▸ We serve for the same reason we love, forgive, show mercy, extend grace: because he first did

✦ Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.””

— "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many"

✦ Luke 22:27 “For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.”

— "I am among you as the one who serves"

✦ 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”

— "we love because he first loved us"

✦ Romans 12:1 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

— "by the mercies of God... present your bodies as a living sacrifice" (the therefore that holds the whole night)

Ephesians 4:15–16 “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

PRAY

SMUGMUG

KEYS(Rob)