Well, as Jerry reminded us, in a couple of weeks we do have the conference. It is a real joy to be able to gather together.
One of the things the conference requires, as Jerry has already touched on, is physical preparation. It also requires a time of spiritual preparation. To me, this is one of the most precious things, particularly about the prayer times we have: together, we can really cry out to the Lord to prepare our hearts.
Also, I have noticed within my own life that at times it takes a special time or a special event for me just to stop and take inventory: Where am I in the Lord? You know, we should be doing this every day. It should be a daily exercise of giving ourselves to Him and saying, “Lord, continue searching my heart.”
But, Lord, at times there are special events where we just need to stop, present ourselves to the Lord, and say, “Lord, I want You to really be speaking to my heart and preparing me in a very special way.”
This conference is such a time. In a way, from a business point of view, it is like taking inventory. You have on your books and records what you say you have, but then you actually go out and see what you really have. If it is not there, you write it off the books; it is a loss.
At times in our spiritual lives, we need to take an inventory. But it is the Holy Spirit who does the taking of the inventory—the specific inventory. I would like for us to fellowship this morning regarding using the conference as a kind of benchmark.
Since most of us will be serving at the conference, let us consider our heart attitude and our lives as we serve the Lord and His house. As we have this opportunity to stop and reflect, most of us will be serving at the conference in many different ways. But, Lord, we have a desire that our service would really be unto You.
“Lord, I am not here serving myself. I am not here seeking my own glory. But, Lord, we have a desire that our service would be unto You, for Your glory and for Your honor.”
In that regard, we have a Scripture that can help us, because the psalmist cried out in Psalm 139. At times, we can be so introspective within ourselves, but the light we have in ourselves is really darkness, and we cannot see too clearly.
But the light of His life is a light of love, even as we have been worshipping this morning. He loves us so much. He wants to show us things in our lives where we are not measuring up, and He wants us to be encouraged to continue on in Him.
If we look at the end of Psalm 139, the psalmist has a heart cry to the Lord. This is Psalm 139:23-24:
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my anxious thoughts:
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
Today, I would like for us to fellowship about this matter of our service to the Lord, our service to one another, and service within the house. As we stop and ask the Holy Spirit to take inventory, may we give the Holy Spirit freedom within our lives to search us.
Because it speaks in this verse: “Is there any hurtful way?” You know, the hurtful thing is serving ourselves and not the Lord. So, as we have our time now, let us have a word of prayer and really commit ourselves to the Lord, that He can speak to all of our hearts.
Lord, we do come with worshipful hearts today. We thank You ever so much, Lord, for the greatness of the salvation we have in You. We thank You how You have redeemed us and called us unto Yourself. Lord, we thank You for the blessing of Your life within.
Lord, as we come now, each one of us presents ourselves unto You, that You could speak to us in a very special way. Lord, we each want to have a desire to hear from You, that, Lord, we have a desire to serve no other gods.
But Lord, sometimes we are not even conscious—I know I am not even conscious—that I am serving myself. But Lord, I thank You that in Your love, You shine Your light. Today, Lord, we want Your light, Your Holy Spirit, to have freedom in speaking, freedom in hearing, and freedom in working within all of our hearts as we give ourselves to You.
In Your marvelous name. Amen.
Sometimes, as I pray, we do not even know what our real condition is. I was thinking of it because I am at that age where every year I go to the doctor and get a physical exam.
I walk in, and the doctor asks me, “How are you feeling?” I say, “Fine.” Well, does he take my word for it? Nope. He runs some tests. Then I walk out of the doctor’s office with my high cholesterol and a bottle of Lipitor.
I was feeling fine before I went in. You walk in, and you walk out knowing you have high blood pressure. All of a sudden, you find out that your hearing is going bad. It is not that everybody else is just mumbling; your hearing is failing a little bit.
Well, this is the way the Lord provides these opportunities. We say, “Lord, we are fine.” He says, “Well, let Me examine you. Let Me search your heart. Let us see how we are really doing here.”
Today, we want to take this opportunity to ask Him to really search our hearts in the specific matter of service to Him and service to His house. I do not want to make too much of the conference. It is not that we are doing this for the conference’s sake, because really this is our daily life.
We have opportunities every day to serve Him, to serve the brethren, and to serve one another. We need to seize the opportunities that He provides for us. We need to allow Him daily—not just at these special times, but daily—to search our hearts and train us in the way that He wants us to go.
I would like to ask us one question today that can serve as the benchmark for our time together. I have been asking this of myself: Am I a bond slave, or am I a volunteer?
It is an important question. Am I a bond slave, or am I a volunteer? I was very thankful today that when our brothers were sharing things, they did not use that word volunteer, because that would have been awkward.
But it is a serious question. Outwardly, they can look the same. Yet we know that within the Christian life, it is an issue of our hearts. The heart is the issue. We really want to consider this before the Lord today: Am I a bond slave? Am I a volunteer?
First, we want to have a clear understanding of what these two terms mean. Turn with me back to the book of Deuteronomy. This is where we see the story of the bond slave in the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 15.
Deuteronomy 15:12-17:
If thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
And when thou lettest him go free from thee, thou shalt not let him go empty:
Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy threshing-floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him.
And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to-day.
And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go out from thee; because he loveth thee and thy house, because he is well with thee;
Then thou shalt take an awl, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maid-servant thou shalt do likewise.
Here we have the picture of one who had been a slave, but then he had been redeemed from his bondage and set free. He was not just set free; when he was set free, he was liberally provided for. He was provided with everything that he would need.
He was provided from the flock, the threshing floor, and the wine vat. If I could speak English, the message would go a lot easier. But from the flock and threshing floor, and also from the wine vat.
As I was thinking upon that, spiritually, the flock gives us that precious Lamb of God, provided for each one of us. The threshing floor gives that bread of life that comes forth. The wine vat gives you the new wine, the precious Holy Spirit.
This one had been provided with everything and was set free to go and do whatever he wanted to do. No lack. And what was his response? He said, “No, I love my master.” But he did not stop there. He said, “I love my master and his household.”
Now, I read from the New American Standard, and some translations just use the word house. But I like how it uses household, because a household includes the people within. It includes the family that is there.
Not just the house, which we could think of as a physical structure, but when it says household, it is speaking of all the brethren who are in that house. This one testifies, “I love the master, and I love his household.”
Because of this love, I freely respond to him and freely give myself to him to serve him all the rest of my life. As a testimony of this, as a public testimony, I want my ear pierced to his house.
They take him, drive that awl into the doorpost, and his ear is pierced for life because his heart is given. He has responded. In six years, he has learned. He has seen the master’s love.
Drawn by the love of his master, drawn by the love of those within that house, he responds and gives himself freely. He says, “For the rest of my life, I am here to serve you. I know that as I serve you, everything will be provided for. I do not have to worry.”
He is not thinking of himself. His heart is now set upon what his master desires. What is his master’s purpose? What does he desire? This is what he wants his life to be driven by and motivated by.
We see the beautiful picture of the perfect bond servant in our Lord Jesus Christ. Out of love for His Father and His Father’s house, He came, forsook all His rights, and gave Himself so freely.
Brothers and sisters, today, as He comes to us, what is our response? Is this not what the Lord has done for us when He purchased us and redeemed us? He set us free, and when we were saved, we were blessed so abundantly.
But what do we do with those blessings? How do we use them? Do we end up using them for ourselves, to further our own desires? Or do we return to Him with a heart that says, “Lord, I want to serve You all the days of my life”?
Just as that bond slave had his ear pierced, that ear piercing is, to me, almost the most critical aspect of a bond slave’s character: having an ear to hear. What is a slave? He is useless to his master if he cannot hear the master.
The Lord wants us to have that ear, because all throughout Scripture, how does it say? “He who has an ear to hear.” May we know, in the hour in which we are living, when there are many voices out there, how to hear what He is saying.
As we give ourselves to the Lord, as we present ourselves to Him, may we really come and have that desire to have an ear to hear what He is saying—to be bond slaves of the King of kings, bond slaves of the Lord of lords.
What a privilege it is to have the opportunity to serve Him, not only just now but throughout all eternity. It is a beautiful picture in the very last chapter of the Bible. Who are those before the throne of God, worshipping and serving Him? They are characterized as bond slaves.
The bond slaves are there before the very throne of God. May the Lord, in the hour we are living in, help us see His love for us and not just take it inward for ourselves. May His love motivate us to return and offer ourselves to Him, that we might be about our Father’s business.
In reality, we are bond slaves. However, experientially within our lives, are we bond slaves? Who are we living for? How do we go about confirming that we are bond slaves of the Most High God? How do we allow Him to train us so that we would be fit for our Master’s use?
It comes back to one of these very foundational words. I will put this out of order so they can have more work next week. It comes back to one of these foundational words that, sometimes because of familiarity, we do not hear.
As soon as we mention consecration, we can say, “Oh, I have heard the message on consecration. I know about consecration. Ten years ago, I consecrated myself.” So we can just pause for a few minutes and not have to listen.
But brothers and sisters, the very foundational thing—the very practical, experiential way that we, within our Christian life, confirm that we are bond slaves upon this earth and desire that the Lord would make us fit for our Master’s use—comes back to this very issue of consecration.
It is a foundational thing. It is an essential thing. Brothers, so many of the problems in our lives, day in and day out, can be traced back to this whole matter of consecration: Who are we serving? We end up serving ourselves, and we get in so much trouble.
Consecration is basically deciding who is in charge of our life. Who is Lord of our life? Are we in charge, or is He really in charge? It is settling this once and for all.
In the Old Testament, the word consecration meant the filling of the hands. Your hands were full of things for the Lord. But it is tragic: I know within my own life, and in so many of our lives, it seems as though we have our hands full with so many other things.
Sure, we have the Lord in there, but then we have many other things in there. My brothers and sisters, how the Lord wants us to lay those other things aside and hold on to Him, that our hands would be full and fit for our Master’s service.
As we present ourselves unto Him, we can do that. As we do that, we have to remember that consecration is a freewill response to His love and to the mercies of God. He is not demanding. He does not come to us and say, “Now I have saved you. Now I am demanding this.”
No, He says, “I will show you My love. How are you going to respond to it?” We know the familiar verse in Romans 12:1:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
It is the mercies of God. As we look through the beginning part of the book of Romans, those eleven chapters, we see the mercies of God. Then we see that because of that, we respond to His love. As the Lord opens our eyes to see His mercies and His love, then we are drawn, and we respond to it.
It is also good to clarify that consecration is not giving ourselves to the Lord to do something for Him. So often we say, “I am giving myself to the Lord. I am going to do this, and I am going to do that.”
But brothers and sisters, this whole matter of consecration is not just giving ourselves to do something for Him. It is giving ourselves to Him so that He can be in charge of our lives and live out His life through us.
Consecration is not doing; it is being. It is allowing Him to be in charge of our lives and allowing Him to direct us into the fullness of what He would have.
Consecration is also a one-time event. Brothers and sisters, it is good within our lives, particularly for young brothers and sisters, if we have not done this when the Lord has touched our hearts, that there is a time when we get on our knees.
I love the songs. Have you ever noticed the songs we sing? We always stand when it says, “I stand to praise You.” Well, we never get to the next verses where we get on our knees. We need to be on our knees. It is wonderful to stand and praise, but we also need to be on our knees.
As we get on our knees and give ourselves to Him, that is a one-time thing of settling it within our lives. But as we go on in the Lord, we also need daily to present ourselves to Him as that living sacrifice.
Consecration is absolute, but it is also progressive. It continues through our whole life. As we see Him, we respond to Him. Then, as we respond to Him, He shows us more of Himself.
At times, when He shows us more of ourselves, we feel, “Gee, I have not even given myself to Him.” So there is a daily giving of ourselves to Him. He increases that desire within us that we would really be given to Him.
This issue of consecration is the step that we take upon this earth to testify that we are bond slaves, that we are captured by our Master’s love, and that we have this desire to give ourselves to Him to serve Him, His matter, and His house.
May this matter of consecration not become too familiar to us. May it be fresh within our hearts day in and day out. May we allow the Holy Spirit to take His inventory as we give ourselves to Him, saying, “Lord, Holy Spirit, take the inventory of my life.”
So this is a bond slave: one who is captured by the love of his master, who responds to that love and gives himself to the master, that he can serve him, his house, and one another.
Now, what is a volunteer? To bring in the contrast, I looked up Webster’s definition. Webster says that a volunteer is one who freely undertakes a service or a duty.
When I am speaking of a volunteer today, I am speaking of one who is attracted or motivated by a particular need or a particular task to be done. We see a need, and we go out and do it. Someone says there is a need here and a need there, and we go do that. We focus upon the need and the task to be done.
Brothers and sisters, one of the strengths within this country is the spirit of volunteerism. We grow up in a country characterized by volunteerism, so it is within our very nature.
We thank the Lord that we can celebrate sixty years after D-Day. It was a spirit of volunteerism where men went and gave their lives. As a country, we are characterized by that.
Anywhere you go, you see volunteers. You go to the hospital, and volunteers help you there. You go to schools, and you have the PTAs, the class moms, and volunteers everywhere. We have the Boy Scouts, Little League, rescue squads, concerts, ballets, and symphonies. There are volunteers everywhere.
They are doing a service. There is a task they can do. But we also have volunteers within the house of God. Does the Lord really want volunteers, or does the Lord want bond slaves?
I want to clarify something, because depending upon your translation, the word volunteer is used in some Scriptures. It is interesting to note that in the King James, Darby, ASV 1901, or Young’s Literal Translation, the word volunteer is never used.
But in the New American Standard and the NIV, the word volunteer is used in the Old Testament a few times. It is never used in the New Testament. None of the translations use the word volunteer in the New Testament, though a couple use it in the Old Testament.
If we look in the book of Judges, there is a story. The people of Israel were in captivity and under oppression. But then the Lord came along and raised up a leader. A judge was raised up, people were provoked to service, and real spiritual leadership came in.
It testifies in the song of Deborah in Judges 5:2 of how, when the leaders led, the people volunteered. In that day, bless the Lord. That is what it says in the New American Standard.
But Darby and some of the more literal translations read:
For that the leaders led in Israel,
For that the people willingly offered themselves,
Bless ye the Lord.
The people were a freewill offering. It is a beautiful picture of how, when the Lord raises up spiritual leadership and they lead out in that spirit, there is a freewill offering of those who give themselves to the Lord and come in to fulfill all of His heart’s desire.
In the Psalms, this phrase is used again. In Psalm 110, it says that the people will volunteer freely in the day of Thy power. Young’s Literal Translation says, “Thy people are freewill gifts.”
Freewill gifts. We get the spirit of it there: in the Hebrew, where some people translate it volunteer, the word really means being a freewill offering, poured out for the Lord. They see the Lord, and they respond with a freewill offering.
So this is not to be confused with what we are talking about: the volunteer who is task-oriented. If you go home and look in the margin in Psalm 110, the literal rendering is “a freewill offering.” Are we freewill offerings to the Lord, or are we serving ourselves?
To help us as we go through this matter, I trust that the distinction between a bond slave and a volunteer will become clearer. In one way, we could say we are going to have a test today. We have a few questions to ask ourselves, and we trust the Lord can speak to all of our hearts.
We are asking this question: Am I a bond slave or a volunteer? The first question we will ask is: What is my motivation?
As we look at the bond slave, his motivation is the love of his master. He sees his master. He is drawn by his master. He has a love for his master, his house, and the brethren—the family within that house.
This is the motivating thing of the bond slave. We could call it the motivation of love. He is constrained by the love of Christ, as was Paul’s testimony. That drew him on and on to enter into all that he eventually entered.
It is interesting as you look throughout the lives of Paul, Peter, and many different ones: they all characterized themselves as bond slaves of the Most High God. Brothers and sisters, would that be our characteristic? Would that be what we are known as?
Now, what about a volunteer? As we said earlier, a volunteer is one who sees a need. It can be a legitimate need, and they go out and try to meet it. They can also be those who are committed to a cause.
We have many volunteers for the cancer society because there is a cause, and they are doing a lot of good in those areas. But we can have volunteers within the house of God who are committed to a cause.
Brothers and sisters, when the Lord calls us into certain areas, yes, we respond. But what we are called to do is first love Him, and then He sends us out to serve where He desires that we serve.
The volunteer also does a lot of things for appearance’s sake. Maybe he has the desire to look good in man’s eyes: “Oh, I want to do that. Everybody will see me.” He likes to look good in man’s eyes.
The volunteer will also do things at times to please men, to win someone’s approval and favor. How many times at work do we see the boss say, “I need a volunteer to do this,” and everybody says, “Ah, I can get on the boss’s good side if I volunteer to do this. I can win the boss’s favor.”
The motivation always comes back to what we can get out of it. I win the boss’s approval. I get satisfied. I get some praise. It is opposed to our Master.
There is a contrast here that we begin to see between the bond slave and the volunteer, because the volunteer can get something out of it. When we are going through school, they have what they call voluntary community service. In one sense, it is not voluntary, because if you do not do it, you do not get credit.
So you have to be a “volunteer” to get credit. Or how many of us have volunteered to do something so that we could get into the event free? I remember when I was in college, I would volunteer for different things so I could get into a concert free.
This was in the days when I went to concerts, you know. I do not go to concerts now. It is my hearing, yeah. But you could volunteer to be an usher at a concert, and then you got in free. You could volunteer to carry the chains on the side of a football field, and you got into the event free.
There are many ways to volunteer, and you get something out of it. I am sorry that at times, even within the house of God, we are volunteering because we can get something out of it for ourselves. But are we those who are given solely for the Master’s use?
As I was thinking on this, I was thinking back to Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13. It is a beautiful picture. Paul, Barnabas, and the others—what were they doing? They were ministering to the Lord.
They were not focused on all the needs. They were not even inquiring where to go. They were ministering to the Lord. Then, as they ministered to the Lord, the Lord said, “Set apart for Me Paul and Barnabas,” and the Lord sent them out.
They responded because they were bond slaves of the Most High God. They responded in love to what He said for them to do.
It is tragic today. As we look around, we can see the needs. The Lord said, “Ye have the poor always with you.” But are we driven by the needs? Are we driven by the doing? Or are we driven by a response to the Lord’s love within us, constraining us, with Him as Master of our lives?
The bond slave is one who responds to the Lord being Master of his life. This does not mean passivity. At times, when we use the words being and not doing, we can get the thought of passivity.
But if you look at Paul’s life, Paul would not be characterized as a passive person. When the Lord told him to go, he went. He gave himself so freely to the Lord and responded in such a marvelous way, because it was a heart issue.
The more we go on and look at this bond slave and volunteer, we see that it is a matter of the heart. Who is your heart in love with? Is your heart in love with the Lord, or is our heart in love with ourselves? Who are we choosing today to serve?
As we come to this matter of service, we can ask another question: Where do I serve? Obviously, a bond slave is going to serve wherever the master says.
Most of us have been studying Acts on Friday nights, and we just finished Acts 10. I thank the Lord that Peter, a bond slave of the Lord, was willing to serve wherever the Master sent him.
Peter was willing to go to Cornelius’s house. It was totally against his own upbringing, totally against his own constitution, his nature—everything within the natural Peter, or we could say Simon. That was totally contrary.
But he was constrained by the love of his Master. When his Master had prepared him and sent him out, Peter responded immediately, and he went. He did not even fully understand all the implications.
But he loved his Master enough that he knew his Master would take care of him and provide for him. He was not thinking of himself: “What will people think? What about those guys back in Jerusalem? I have to go face them.”
We are getting ready to go into Acts 11, and sure enough, as soon as he got back in town, wham, they hit him up. “Peter, what are you doing, going to those guys’ house?”
Peter calmly testified how the Lord had worked. How could he stand in the Lord’s way? This was Peter’s heart: wherever the Lord would have him serve, he was willing to go and do this.
Now, the volunteer serves based on personal choice: “I want to serve here. I choose. I have a preference. I want to serve over here.” Maybe I have a certain talent. Maybe I can serve in this area.
We serve in the areas that are priorities in our lives, things that are important to me. “This is where I am going to serve.” But no, brothers and sisters, our service within the house of God and to one another is not based on our choice. It is based on His calling.
Over and over, we see how the words I and my start popping up more and more with the volunteer: self-satisfaction, self-glory, my way, “I want to do this.” The bond slave is always focused upon the Master.
When we serve according to His calling, there is a fullness that is brought in, because every joint is in its proper place and every joint is supplying in the way He desires and has designed. It brings in a greater expression of life. It brings in the fullness of Himself.
But often, when we are serving in our own ways—where we are choosing—we can consciously or unconsciously begin to think that what we are doing is a little more important, or even the most important. Then this can bring in conflicts.
If we stop and think, even within the house of God, there are two things that have been almost since the first century in conflict with one another. You have those who have a burden for the gospel, and their burden, choice, and preference are to go out and preach the gospel.
Then you have those who are interested in the house being built. Instead of seeing that this is really one work—that the gospel and the house being built are two aspects of one great work—we fragment the work of God.
Instead of building going on, we end up doing no good. It is all vanity. But how the Lord desires that, as His servants and bond slaves together, there are those whom He calls for the gospel, and we support them.
There are those involved more specifically in aspects of the building, and we support them because we see it is one great work that He is doing to accomplish His purpose.
Brothers and sisters, when we fragment that, when we start thinking that our little area of service is more important, then the Lord is not able to bring in that completeness and the glory that He desires.
I think this is a wonderful opportunity we have at the conference to practice this. As we said, there are many different ways of serving. We have transportation—praise God, people can get there. We have those who will be taping, videoing, opening doors, ushering, ministering the Word, teaching, and doing crafts. We can go on and on.
How does the fullness of the Lord come forth? It is when we are all flowing together under the headship of Christ. Then the conference flows, and He is able to accomplish what He desires.
If we start thinking that our little area is the most important, we can start limiting the Holy Spirit. But brothers and sisters, may we see how much we need one another. May we appreciate one another’s service.
In our natural selves, we cannot see it. It is impossible for us to appreciate one another in our natural selves because we are so self-centered. I might think that the bookstore is the most important thing there, and if you all do not get it, you are missing the whole conference.
But no, it is all just a part. In the Lord, as we begin to see from His perspective and have His heart of love for our Master, we have the confidence of going into this conference knowing that it originated in our Master’s heart.
The conference did not originate in our heart. It originated in His heart, and He wants to accomplish something. As we flow together, there can be a fullness to that time.
Praise God, we do not limit that to the conference; we use it as an example. We gather here weekly, as we live together as brothers and sisters within the house of God. How is the fullness of His life manifested?
It is manifested as we serve Him and serve one another, and as we begin to appreciate one another in a fuller and greater way—not elevating some, putting down others, or thinking this is more important than that.
Oh, how we need to see the preciousness of the life of the Lord, His service, and every member of the body of Christ. He is the Head. It is His life within each one of us.
This is what He is jealous for in these days. He is jealous that His house would be built and that there would be a testimony unto Him. But there are too many of us volunteering within the house of God to do our own thing.
May the Lord convict us, and may the Holy Spirit search our hearts, that we could be bond slaves to Him and serve what He wants instead of serving our own desires and getting our own self-satisfaction from what we accomplish.
As we continue, we come to the next question. All right, we are going to serve. How do I know what to do? We do whatever the Master says.
A bond slave knows the heart of the master. A bond slave not only knows the master’s heart; he knows the master’s desire. It is a beautiful picture in Psalm 123: the bond slave has his eyes upon the hands of the master.
He is not occupied with all the needs around him, but his eyes are upon the master, so that when the master gives his bidding, he hears and knows. Jim last week was speaking about how we need to know the Lord, His heart, and His desire.
This is where the ear is so vital: that we could come into knowing what is His heart and His desire. As He speaks, He will lead and show us what we are to do.
When we consider this matter of serving in the house of God, do we start looking around—there, there, there? Or do we fall on our face before Him and say, “Lord, I want to serve You. Show me how to serve within the house of God.”
If we honestly ask the Lord that, He is not going to say no. He is not going to say, “Just sit there and wait.” He will show us where to live and function within the house of God.
But what is the volunteer’s attitude? He must be told what to do. The volunteer just sits. I remember when I went in the military. I just sat there. They told me to do this; I did that.
So often, as we volunteer for things, we do not understand the whole. We do not see the Master’s heart in the big picture. We just see our little aspect: “You tell me what to do, and I will do it.”
That gets away from being a heart thing. So many of us sit and say, “You just tell me what to do, and I will do what you tell me to do.” But no, it is the Lord telling us what to do.
Or we put together our little to-do list. Now, I put that up there with fear and trembling, because we really need lists. I am not saying we are so spiritual that we never have to-do lists.
The Lord showed Moses a pattern, and Moses went according to the pattern. There are those to whom the Lord has given direction, and we flow together and serve in the different areas. So do not get so spiritual on us that we say anyone with a list is unspiritual.
No. There is order, a way, a flow, and a life. But what is the source of the list? Is it coming from Him showing the pattern and the way? Or is it simply our own response: “Here is something over there that needs to be done, something there, something there”?
Again, it comes back to the source—the heart of the whole issue.
Again, our Lord Jesus is the perfect example here. When He was upon the earth, how did our Lord Jesus know what to do? Did He do anything of His own? He did what the Father told Him.
He was able to do a lot. Yet He said, “I did not do anything on My own initiative.” Now we have that life within us. We should not be doing anything on our own initiative, but allowing that life to lead us into a fuller expression of Himself.
Our Lord Jesus had an ear to hear what His Father’s heart was. It was tragic when the disciples would ask Him things, and He would say, “Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me?”
Brothers and sisters, have we been with Him so long? Do we know Him? Do we know our Master’s heart? Do we know our Master’s desire?
When our Lord was upon the earth, as He walked through a street, He was conscious. He would notice someone hurting. He would notice someone who needed a touch. His Father directed Him, and He went and ministered.
As we become more and more given to our heavenly Father, He opens our eyes so that we can become conscious. It is amazing to me how unconscious we can be. Particularly us men, it seems like we are very unconscious. We can be totally unconscious of a situation.
So often we can look around and say, “Oh, look at that brother over there. Gee, nobody is helping him. He has such a heavy burden on his shoulder. It really would be nice if maybe somebody could go pray with him.”
Well, maybe the Holy Spirit is bringing something to our lives. Maybe the Holy Spirit is pointing something out to us so that we can go and serve and minister.
I get amazed at some of the mothers at the conference. Here is a mother going through the cafeteria line with six kids. She is carrying four trays and pouring milk. We are sitting there saying, “Wow, look at all that mother is doing. She is really great.”
Wait a minute. Maybe you are seeing that so that you could get out of your chair and go help her. So often we want to look for the big things that we would characterize as service.
But the Lord opens our eyes to see situations. Maybe He is opening my eyes to see this marvelous mother doing this terrific act because He wants me to go give her a hand.
Are we conscious of the Holy Spirit speaking to us and training us to serve within the house of God? Or do we get so overwhelmed by our own situations at times that we cannot even serve?
To me, one of the most beautiful pictures of service in the Old Testament is Joseph. We know that Joseph served the Lord wherever he was—whether he was in his father’s house, in the pit, in Potiphar’s house, in prison, or in the palace. Wherever Joseph was, he was serving.
There is a beautiful picture when he was in prison. We know that he was wrongly imprisoned. He was only in prison because he was faithful to the Lord. He said, “I will not sin against the Lord or my master,” and he ended up in prison because of his faithfulness.
What was Joseph’s attitude? Was he self-pitying? Was he trying to get all the other prisoners to sign a petition to get him out? Was he drawing sympathy from his own condition or situation? No.
It is a beautiful picture. One morning, Joseph wakes up, and in the midst of his affliction and all his troubles, he notices that two of the other prisoners have troubled faces: the cupbearer and the baker. They had dreams that were troubling them.
Joseph was able to notice others’ troubles in spite of his own troubles. This is a bond slave. A bond slave notices others. A bond slave is conscious of others.
Joseph showed both men what was going to occur. To me, he was simply not so self-absorbed. I get convicted every time I read that chapter, because as I go through troubles and trials in my life, I can become so self-absorbed and paralyzed that someone could be dying right beside me, and I would not even notice.
I would be crying out for help for myself. Would the Lord help us to really lay down our own selfish desires, wants, and needs?
Sure, as we are together in the house of God, things will happen. That is what Jim encouraged us with last week: grow up. That was a question I had: How many cleaned up their rooms this week? Let us see who was here last week.
But we have to see that in spite of our situations, the bond slave is still serving. Joseph, in spite of his affliction, was still serving. May our troubles not hinder us from serving one another and serving our Master within the house of God.
Then we come to the next question: When do I serve? You are beginning to pick up the answers here. The bond slave serves continually. Whenever the Master says, he serves.
But the volunteer serves when it is convenient, when it fits into his schedule. Again, this is the contrast between self-centeredness and Master-centeredness.
Our service is at His bidding, brothers and sisters. Our service is not at our own bidding, nor is it at the pressure of others, but at His bidding.
I remember when our Lord was upon the earth and His dear friend Lazarus died. There was a lot of pressure for Him to go right away—or even when He heard Lazarus was sick, to go right away and see what He could do.
What did He do? He stayed where He was. Then, at the proper time, when the Father said, He went. By our Lord’s obedience, the glory of the Lord shone forth with Lazarus being resurrected.
Our Lord, when He was upon this earth, said, “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.” How often in the days in which we are living, we end up following so many other things. We try to fit things into our schedules and our convenience.
It always amazes me, because I am guilty. Maybe something is going on, and we do not particularly like it or have a particular burden for that aspect. So we say, “No, I am not going.”
Then someone calls us up and says, “Hey, do you want to go here? Do you want to go do this?” Maybe you particularly like that. We will work ourselves to death rearranging our whole schedule to fit in what we want to do.
It is amazing the effort and tireless energy we can expend to rearrange things to fit in what we want to do, as opposed to fitting in with His bidding.
On this matter of when I serve, do you not think that when the Lord calls us to serve, He knows whether it is convenient? When He was upon the earth and called people to follow Him, there were those who said, “I just bought some land. I have to go take care of that. I need to go bury my father. I just got married. I have to take care of that.”
Do you think the Lord does not know all these things? When the Lord says, “I want you to do this,” do you think He does not already know our entire life and situation?
It is not as though He says, “Oh, I did not realize that was happening to you. That is okay. I did not realize you just got married.” No. When He calls us, He knows exactly where we are and exactly what is going on in our lives.
These are legitimate things, but we can allow them to hinder us from serving within the house of God.
It is amazing to me how, at times, you see young brothers and sisters serving the Lord. They are serving the Lord day in and day out, and they have really given themselves to the Lord.
Then it is one of the greatest vanishing acts in history: all of a sudden, somebody gets married, and where are they? Where are the young couples? It always encourages me when I see young couples serving the Lord together within the house of God.
Somehow we think, “Well, I have this going on, and therefore this is a priority now.” Brothers and sisters, the Lord is the One who originates marriage. The Lord is the One who puts us right where we are. He brings us together.
Sure, things might be adjusted. But when He says, “Follow Me,” are we like the one who said, “Well, I just got married”? No. The Lord knew you just got married, and He still wants you to follow Him and serve Him within the house of God.
So often, if we talk about how service has to fit into my schedule, we need to ask: Who determines the schedule? My schedule is determined by my priorities, the things I want to do. That is where the Lord brings conviction.
Not only do we need to consider where we are serving and when we are serving, but whom we are serving. Brothers and sisters, how many in this room are prejudiced?
Every hand should be up. We are all prejudiced. We have people in this room whom we like, and we have people in this room whom we do not like.
But whom does the Lord call us to serve? Again, He is probably going to call us to serve some we do not like, because He wants to train us.
As we give ourselves to the Lord and say, “Lord, okay, I want to be fit for Your service. I want to be fit for the Master’s use,” He says, “Okay. Peter, you go to these Gentiles.” Or He may send you somewhere to someone you do not like.
The Lord is training us through all these opportunities and situations, but we can be so prejudiced. Again, we can make great efforts to serve people we like or serve the so-called big names.
But how about the so-called little brethren? How about the ones we do not like? Are our hearts given to them in the same way?
When it says the bond slave loved his master and his household, it did not say, “And his household, except for the few that he did not like.” It was the whole household. We love one another.
One of the greatest things that sets us free is to see that we cannot love one another in ourselves. But it is His love. As we are captured by His love and He is ruling, then we can enter into all that He has.
All right, last question: How long do we serve? As we said, the bond slave gave himself for a lifetime. He is full-time, given to the Lord.
Often people will say, “Now, who is a full-time servant within this room? How many full-time servants of the Lord do we have?” Again, all of our hands should be raised.
We are all full-time servants of the Lord. He has called each and every one of us to serve Him every day. That service can take many different forms.
That service can be in your house. Service can be raising the children. Service can be at work. Service can be in many different forms. But whatever we are doing, we are doing it as service unto Him, and it is full-time.
But the volunteer sets his own hours. The volunteer is just part-time, because if he does not like what is going on, if he gets tired of it, he can just quit.
A volunteer is free to quit at any time. You get tired of what you are doing. You do not feel it is fulfilling. Somebody hurts your feelings. “I quit. I am not doing that anymore. They do not appreciate me.”
“Look at all the work and effort I did. I made that family this and this, and they do not appreciate it. I am not going to do that for them anymore.”
I always appreciate the Lord because, at times, I do not fully appreciate all He does in my life. Yet while I am in my unfaithfulness, He remains faithful, and He comes back.
It is that spirit of the bond slave that serves the unlovely, serves when our feelings are hurt, serves when we are not appreciated, serves when we are offended, and serves when we get tired.
Jim said last week, “Grow up.” Well, growing up is hard. What are we going to do? Get out when the going gets tough? No, it is hard.
Or maybe we get distracted by something else. The old grass is greener on the other side. “I was doing this, but look at that. Look at all the people doing things over there.”
You have all these young brothers doing something over here, but then all of a sudden the young sisters are doing something over there. “Oh, I think I will go serve over here.” We get distracted by so many different things.
But brothers and sisters, serving the Lord is for a lifetime. The bond slave has given himself to the Lord for the fullness of the Lord to speak.
There is a story in Luke 9 of one who came up to the Lord and said, “Lord, I will serve You.” He probably was kind of a volunteer. What did the Lord say to him? “Great, enter into My service”? No.
He said:
The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.
Count the cost, because being a bond slave will cost you something. It will cost us our natural life. It will cost us our self-life. Oh, but what we gain!
When we compare what we give up, it is like Paul’s testimony in Philippians 3. He counted all things as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ, his Lord. He was pressing on.
What was Paul’s ambition? Paul was an ambitious man in life. What was his ambition? He was ambitious that he could be pleasing to God, that he could be well-pleasing to his Master. He was given to Him. He was captured by the essence of the Master’s heart.
The volunteer just loves himself: “What can I get out of it? I am living for myself. I am doing what I want to do.”
Brothers and sisters, as we see these contrasts, we see more and more that this is a heart issue. I do not want anybody coming up at the end and saying, “Okay, Mac, I got your message. Now I will never use the word volunteer again.”
I am not talking about changing vocabulary. If it were that simple, do you not wish it was? I do not care if you use the word volunteer. I use it. But what is the spirit and heart of what we are talking about when we are serving the Lord and serving His house?
We also need to be careful not to judge one another in this. When we start talking about two things, we can begin looking and judging: “Oh, that one is just a volunteer. That one is a bond slave.”
Outwardly, they can look the same. Outwardly, to our natural eyes, they can look the same. The Lord takes care of that. It is not our concern. We serve Him; He takes care of that.
At times, volunteers can appear to outwork some bond slaves. We see people who are so given to the cancer society or different things, and the work and energy they put into it can look as though they are outworking others.
But if we look at our bond slave, the Lord Jesus Christ, what does it testify of the works He did? John writes that, if they were written in detail, all the books in the whole world would not contain them.
He was about His Father’s business. Are we about our Father’s business? In the days in which we are living, the question comes down to this, and you see it throughout Scripture: Whom are we serving?
Are we serving ourselves, or are we serving the Lord? It comes down to an even narrower question: Whom are you in love with? Are we in love with the Lord, or are we in love with ourselves?
As the Holy Spirit touches our hearts, we will find out that most of us are just a mixture. We are a mixture. It is much like the Galatians: they began in the Spirit and started going on in the flesh.
But praise the Lord, as we give ourselves to Him and the Holy Spirit comes in and shines His light, He shines His light out of love for us, to set us free from the snare and death of self.
The volunteer and the self-centered one are on a pathway of death. But the pathway of the bond slave is a pathway of life and love, and He is setting us free.
So often, when the Lord points out something in our lives, in my own life I think, “Oh, I am so horrible. I cannot do that.” I get so discouraged that I say, “Well, I am so bad. I am not going to do anything. I am just going to sit down and never do anything again.”
No, the Lord shows us that to set us free from it. The problem with most of us within the house of God is not that we think we are too bad; it is that we do not see how bad we really are. We still think there is a little bit of good.
But the Lord loves us. I have been praying that I can get this through my thick head and into my heart: every time He exposes something within us, it is because He loves us.
It is His great love that wants to set us free, so that we can be captured by Him. He sets us free so that we can be captured by His love.
I was reminded that, as we are going into the conference, we will be talking a lot about building. In these end days, brothers and sisters, there are a lot of trials and pressures upon us. The Lord will be testing us.
There is a testing going on, but what is the test? Is it of Jesus Christ, or is it not? This is the test: Is it of eternal value?
As we think about this theme for the conference, I was drawn to the story our Lord told in Luke 6. We can turn over and finish with this: Luke 6:46.
The Lord says—it is a familiar story—“Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” Then He brings in a contrast:
Every one that cometh unto Me, and heareth My words, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like:
He is like a man building a house, who digged and went deep, and laid a foundation upon the rock: and when a flood arose, the stream brake against that house, and could not shake it: because it had been well builded.
It comes back to the foundation. Brothers and sisters, this issue of consecration—this issue of settling who is Lord of our life—is a foundational issue.
As that is settled, and the trials and tempests of life come in, our foundation is sure and solid. What we are doing is of eternal value, and it does not fade away.
But as we see in Luke 6:49, there are those who heard. These are not people who did not hear. These are people who heard, but they did not act accordingly.
But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that built a house upon the earth without a foundation; against which the stream brake, and straightway it fell in; and the ruin of that house was great.
All is vanity. Brothers and sisters, how we need to make certain that the foundation is solid and sure in these days ahead.
As we said in the Psalm with which we began, “Lord, is there anything hurtful within me?” Having an unsure foundation, having a foundation that is not solid, can be very hurtful—hurtful to us, hurtful to our family, hurtful to the brothers and sisters, and grieving to the Lord.
May we ask the Lord in a fresh way to show us more of His love. As He shows us His love, it brings in the contrast. Yes, I think as long as we are in these fleshly bodies, there will always be a mixture.
There are no pure bond slaves and pure volunteers. We are a mixture. But brothers and sisters, our desire is to be conformed more into His image, that He would increase within us and we would decrease.
As we see His love, we would be captured by that love, and we would be set free to really serve Him and serve His house.
There is a beautiful hymn written by George Matheson. I do not know whether we know it, but I wanted to read the words of the hymn as a closing prayer also.
Make me a captive, Lord,
And then I shall be free;
Force me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.I sink in life’s alarms
When by myself I stand;
Imprison me within Thine arms,
And strong shall be my hand.My heart is weak and poor
Until it master find;
It has no spring of action sure,
It varies with the wind.It cannot freely move
Till Thou hast wrought its chain;
Enslave it with Thy matchless love,
And deathless it shall reign.My power is faint and low
Till I have learned to serve;
It lacks the needed fire to glow,
It lacks the breeze to nerve.It cannot drive the world
Until itself be driven;
Its flag can only be unfurled
When Thou shalt breathe from heaven.My will is not my own
Till Thou hast made it Thine;
If I would reach the monarch’s throne,
It must its crown resign.It only stands unbent
Amid the clashing strife,
When on Thy bosom it hath leant,
And found in Thee its life.
May all of our prayer be that He would make us captives—captives of His love—and that in that we would be set free.
Lord, we do want to return unto You this morning. Lord, I thank You for Your patience with me. Thank You for Your patience with each one of us, because truly it is a love that never lets us go.
Lord, we pray that today Your Holy Spirit could be working within our hearts in a way that we could see the eternal value of giving ourselves freely unto You and being captured by You.
Lord, where we are serving our own interests, where we are trying to please man, in Your love would You touch those spots within our lives, that we truly could be free.
Lord, make us captives of Your love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.