Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear heavenly Father, as we gather together in the name of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus, we come before Thee full of joy and gratitude.
How we praise and thank Thee that Thou dost love us so much, that Thou wast willing to come to this wretched world and die for our sins. Lord, we are forever grateful for this.
We praise and thank Thee that Thou hast not only saved us, but Thou hast even called us to serve Thee. Who are we that we can serve Thee? O dear Lord, it is all Thy grace and mercy.
As we gather here this morning, O Lord, teach us how to serve Thee in a way that will really satisfy Thy heart. We pray that our days on the earth will really count, that Thy will may be done on earth through us as it is in heaven.
We commit this time into Thy loving hands. We look to Thy Holy Spirit to open Thy Word to us. We pray that Thy Word, which is truth and life, will become an experience to every one of us. We give Thee all the glory. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Thank God for gathering us together at this time. Thank God that we began this conference with the Lord’s table.
As we come to the Lord’s table, we come as God’s children. We do praise and thank Him that He has given us life, that we can come before His presence, remember His amazing love toward us, and express a little of our appreciation to Him.
He is worthy of so much more than we can ever mention. But thank God that our Lord is willing to accept even our little gratitude.
But, brothers and sisters, we all know that we are not only God’s children. When we think of God’s children, we think of life—how He gave His life to us. But thank God, after we become His children, He calls us to serve Him.
You remember Revelation 1:5-6:
Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood;
and He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father.
You find that He has not only redeemed us by His precious blood and given us life; He has also made us a kingdom, priests unto His God and Father.
When you turn to Revelation 5, you find the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures worshiping and praising our Lord Jesus, saying:
Worthy art Thou, because Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation,
and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests.
So, dear brothers and sisters, every brother and sister should be very clear about this matter: we are not only God’s children, but we are priests unto our God and Father.
A priest is a person who is completely devoted to serving God. The only thing a priest does is serve the Lord. Every redeemed child of God is a priest unto God.
That is the reason that, after we are saved, we all need to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. This is acceptable to God; it is holy, and it is our reasonable service.
You know, brothers and sisters, sometimes we confuse the matter of work and service. Sometimes we think work and service are one. If we do something for God, then we are serving Him.
Strictly speaking, there is a difference between work and service. Work is impersonal; service is personal.
The object of work is a thing. If we can accomplish a thing, then the work is done. Service is entirely different, because when you serve, you have a master. Therefore, the Bible puts service and worship together.
In Romans 12:1, when it says, “This is your reasonable service,” another translation says, “This is your spiritual worship.” Therefore, in service—especially in serving God—there is an element of worship.
That is the reason why we need to come together and consider this matter of service.
The theme of this conference concerns spiritual service. But when you read the Chinese version, you find there is a little difference, because the literal translation of the Chinese is “rethinking the service.”
Even though there seems to be a little difference, the spirit is the same. Service is spiritual, and because we are serving a living God, we need to check ourselves again and again.
I was assigned to speak on the blueprint of service, and I would like to approach this matter from three directions.
First, the blueprint of service: if we are to serve the Lord, we need to have a pattern for service. We need to know what kind of service will be according to God’s will.
Second, we would like to consider our present service. We want to look at our service today and see whether it meets God’s standard.
Finally, we would like to see the way to recovery. How can we be recovered to the service that will be according to God’s heart?
Will you please turn to the Gospel according to John, John 12:26? This is the word of our Lord Jesus:
If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will the Father honor.
Before we were redeemed, did you know that we were also serving? But we were serving the world, serving ourselves, and even serving the enemy of God who is behind all things.
But after we are redeemed, there must be a tremendous, drastic change of service, because no one can serve two masters. You will either love the one and hate the other, or you will hold to the one and despise the other.
Our Lord Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon can represent the world, and it can represent even the enemy who is behind the world.
But thank God, He has delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Therefore, as soon as you are saved, there is a complete change of service. No longer do you serve the world and the enemy; now you serve the one true and living God.
You remember when God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt. He said to Moses, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”
The children of Israel were slaves in Egypt. They were serving Pharaoh, and Pharaoh put them into hard labor. But God’s salvation came to the people of Israel: “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”
So, brothers and sisters, we need to remember this: we are saved to serve a living God. Do not think that we can be redeemed and yet live for ourselves. There is no such thing in the Word of God.
As soon as you are redeemed, you are already put in the way of serving God. Therefore, we need to be occupied with our Father’s business.
Sometimes we have a wrong idea. When we talk about a conference on service, we think it is for those who work full-time for God.
But, brothers and sisters, may I ask a question? I believe that every redeemed child of God is full-time in serving God. If you are not full-time in serving God, whom are you serving?
To me, every redeemed child of God is full-time in serving God. You may have an avocation. You may be a doctor, an engineer, a housewife, a teacher, or even a student. But that is your avocation; that is not your vocation. Our vocation is serving God.
Now think of Daniel. He was the prime minister of the greatest empire in the world at that time, the Babylonian Empire and then the Medo-Persian Empire. Yet even the emperor recognized that he served God.
When Daniel was put into the lions’ den, the emperor came to him and said, “Daniel, the God whom thou servest continually, hath He delivered thee?” Praise God, the God of Daniel is the Almighty God.
We have no excuse. We cannot say, “Well, I am too busy. I am too busy making a living. I am too busy with my family. I am too busy with this and too busy with that. So I have no time to serve God.”
Can you compare yourself with Daniel? He was the prime minister of the greatest empire in the world, and yet even the emperor recognized that he served God.
No matter what avocation you may have, remember that you are separated for one thing and one thing only: you are separated to serve the living God.
Dear brothers and sisters, I do not know how to emphasize this point. I pray that the Spirit of God will impress this thought into your very heart, because this is most basic in our Christian service.
Especially when we see that our Lord is coming soon, we do not know how many days we have. What if the Lord comes today? Are we diligent and faithful, or are we foolish and lazy?
Dear brothers and sisters, I think this time we are going to be serious about this matter of serving God.
How can we serve God in a way that will really be according to His heart? The character of service is based upon the object of service.
If you are serving man, then you have to know the character of the man whom you serve. If you know his character, then you can serve him and please him.
But, brothers and sisters, we are not serving men; we are serving God. Therefore, the first thing we need to understand is that we need to know Him.
If we do not know God, if we do not have a firsthand experience of our God, if we do not know His character, if we do not know what He wants and what He thinks, if we do not know what He is really after, then how can we serve Him?
We cannot serve Him out of our own mind. We may think that this is the way God should be pleased, but it may be a great surprise.
You remember Matthew 7. The Lord said that many will come to Him and say:
Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name, and by Thy name cast out demons, and by Thy name do many mighty works?
Yet the Lord will say, “I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.” Brothers and sisters, if we want to serve our Lord, the first and primary thing is that we have to know Him. We have to know His character, His heart, His purpose, and His will. Unless we do, our service will be rejected.
Our God is the greatest mystery in the whole world. Can you think of any mystery greater than God? Who is able to know Him? Who is able to know His mind? He is so immense and so transcendent.
How can we know Him? How can we understand Him? Can a little ant understand you? Can a little bird understand you?
I remember once, when I was in my room, a bird flew in. The room was filled with glass. When the bird realized that it was in the wrong place, it tried to find a way out, and it hit itself against the glass again and again.
I said, “Little bird, I want to save you. Just allow me to lay hold of you and lead you out.” But the bird did not understand me. It would hit itself until it dropped, and then I could pick it up and bring it out.
Brothers and sisters, with God it is millions and millions of times more than that. How can we know Him? This is the biggest problem in the universe.
But thank God, our God is One who reveals Himself. If our God did not reveal Himself, who would know Him? Who would be able to serve Him? Who could please Him? Nobody could.
Thank God, our God is One who reveals Himself. You remember Paul: “It was the good pleasure of God … to reveal His Son in me.”
God spoke of old to our fathers through the prophets, but it was in pieces. In these last days, He has spoken to us in His beloved Son. Full revelation has been given, and He has given us the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.
By the Holy Spirit, we are able to know God, know His heart, and know what is His delight, so that we can serve Him in a way that is satisfying to Him.
Our God is the living God. Therefore, whoever serves Him must serve Him in life. You cannot serve Him by theory. You cannot serve Him by doctrine. You have to serve Him with life.
Our God is Spirit. Therefore, whoever serves Him must serve Him in spirit. In other words, you cannot serve Him merely with your mind. No matter how noble your thoughts are, He cannot be reached.
You cannot serve Him with your body. Even if you prostrate yourself on the floor, thinking that you are worshiping and serving Him, God is not reached. You have to serve Him in spirit.
Our God is truth, and we must serve Him in truth. God’s Word is the truth. We cannot serve Him outside of God’s truth.
Our God is heavenly. We cannot use earthly ways to serve Him. We can use the way of the world and temporarily seem to be successful, but that is only religious work. God is not in it.
So, dear brothers and sisters, I think we need to have a very fundamental change in our thoughts. We have to serve God by knowing Him. The more you know Him, the more you serve Him.
Thank God, when we read the Word of God, the Bible is the revelation of our God. It is the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a living book.
In this Word of God, we are able to know what is in His heart and what He is really after. Therefore, it is most important, brothers and sisters, that we meditate on and study the Word of God.
We have to depend on the Holy Spirit to reveal the Word to us, because we have to read the Word of God to the extent that we begin to see Christ. This is the only way of serving.
Our God is living. When we try to find a blueprint of service, we find that He often illustrates that blueprint through living people. The Bible is full of such examples.
Because God is a living Person, He often puts His thought into the lives of living people, that through them we may have a glimpse of God’s thought and may know how to serve God in a way that pleases Him.
When you read the Old Testament, there is one person who stands out as the servant of God. I think everybody knows that person: Moses.
You remember Numbers 12. When Moses’ sister Miriam and his brother Aaron began to speak against Moses, God came into their midst. He called Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to Him, and God said:
If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision,
I will speak with him in a dream.
My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my house:
with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches;
and the form of the Lord shall he behold.
In the Old Testament, you find Moses as a living example of God’s blueprint of service. If we want to learn how to serve, we have to learn from the life of Moses.
Moses was born under the sentence of death, because Pharaoh gave orders that every male child must be drowned. Moses was born at that time, with a sentence of death over him.
But thank God, he was delivered, as it were, out of water. That is the meaning of the name Moses. Moses was one who was delivered out of death because God had a purpose for his life.
Moses became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He lived in the palace. The Bible tells us that he learned all the learning of Egypt, and he was mighty in his words and works.
But his mother somehow put into his little heart that God had a purpose for his life. He had a heart to serve God’s purpose.
When he was forty years old, he went out to visit his own brethren. He saw an Egyptian mistreating one of them. He looked this way and that, and when he saw there was nobody, he struck the Egyptian and killed him.
The next day he went out again and saw two Hebrews struggling with each other. He said, “Ye are brethren; why do ye smite one another?” He thought his brethren would understand.
But the one who was doing his neighbor wrong pushed him aside and said, “Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Thinkest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian yesterday?” The matter became known to Pharaoh, so Moses fled for his life.
Here was a person who had the heart to serve God, but he tried to use his own might and his own eloquence. He was a complete failure. God did not accept that kind of service.
For forty years Moses was in the wilderness, shepherding a flock. When he was eighty years old, he saw a thorn bush.
In the wilderness, a thorn bush catches fire easily because it is so dry and hot. A thorn bush may burn by itself. But this bush was burning and was not consumed. That was a miracle, so Moses went forward to look at it.
A voice came out of the burning bush. God was in that burning bush, and God revealed His heart: “Go to Egypt, and deliver My people.”
Here you find Moses. Forty years earlier, he had a heart to serve God. He used his might, his eloquence, and all that he had learned from Egypt. But you cannot serve God that way. He was completely rejected; he was a total failure.
Thank God for that. What if he had succeeded? It took another forty years for him to unlearn everything he had learned in Egypt. He lost his might and he lost his eloquence.
Where would be his eloquence in speaking to a few dumb sheep? So he said, “I cannot speak. Who am I, that I should go and save the people?” He considered himself a total failure.
But God gave him a vision: the vision of the burning bush. “You are not a cedar tree. You are only a bush, and you are burning; you are destined to be destroyed. You are completely useless. But I am with you. I am refining you, and I am able to use you because I am with you.”
Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Moses went back. When he delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt, he was eighty years old.
Moses wrote Psalm 90. He said that if a man can live seventy years, and if he is strong, eighty years, that is the end of his life. Yet at the end of his life, God began to use him. This is the way that God would work with each and every one of us.
Thank God, Moses was faithful in all God’s house.
God ordered Moses to build a tabernacle: “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” Moses was a great architect; he had been in Egypt and had seen its great buildings. Yet God told him every detail.
Everything had to be done according to the pattern. God did not give Moses liberty to do things according to his own ideas. Moses was faithful; he did everything according to God’s command.
If we want to serve God, we have to walk in the way of knowing Him.
Then we turn to the New Testament. Among God’s servants, there is one who really stands out, and I think everybody knows that it must be Paul.
Who was this man? He was a most unusual young man. He was born with perfect credentials. He was a pure Israelite.
While most young people go out into the world seeking adventure, he had a sense of destiny. He was not seeking the riches and pleasures of this world. He was seeking to know God.
When he was very young, probably after his bar mitzvah, he went to Jerusalem and sat at the feet of Gamaliel. Gamaliel at that time was the greatest rabbi in Israel. This young man learned from Gamaliel and became a Pharisee.
Today we have a very poor idea of a Pharisee. But Pharisees were those who not only studied the Bible; they kept every letter of the Word. More than that, they kept all the traditions and interpretations of the fathers.
This young man, so far as the letter of the law was concerned, was perfect. He was more advanced than his contemporaries, and he was so zealous for the traditions of the fathers.
He became a chief enemy of the disciples of our Lord Jesus. All the time, he thought he was serving God. But he was in darkness. His mind was occupied with the traditions of the fathers. He served God without vision and without revelation.
God knew his heart, so God allowed him to go just so far. When he was on his way to Damascus to seize those who belonged to the Way, to bring them to Jerusalem and condemn them, a light brighter than the sun shone around him.
He was smitten by that light, and he heard a voice saying:
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.
It was not a condemning voice, not an angry voice. It was a voice full of sympathy and tenderness: “Why do you do that? You are hurting yourself.”
He said, “Who art Thou, Lord?” He did not know Him. He thought Jesus of Nazareth was a rebel who needed to be persecuted. He did not realize that Jesus of Nazareth is the King of kings and the Lord of all.
Then he completely surrendered himself. The Lord began to raise him up and use him.
He changed his name to Paul, which means “little” or “nothing.” He was entrusted with the mystery of God.
The mystery of God is Christ. If you want to know God, you must know Christ, because all that is of God is in Christ.
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and in Him ye are made full.
Paul was entrusted with the mystery of Christ, which is the church, the body of Christ. He was entrusted with the mystery of the gospel: Christ in you, the hope of glory. How faithful he was.
So, brothers and sisters, to serve a living God requires a living person. A living person who knows Christ is able to serve the living God.
But the real blueprint of spiritual service, the perfect blueprint, is neither Moses nor Paul. It is Christ Jesus.
Our Lord Jesus is the perfect Servant of God. You know, in Philippians 2, it says that our Lord Jesus existed in the form of God and counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped.
In other words, our Lord Jesus is one with God. He is God. He shares all the riches and glory of God. He is the beloved Son of the Father.
Yet He emptied Himself. How much is in you and me that can be emptied? Very little, or nothing. But our Lord Jesus, in whom all the fullness of God dwells, emptied Himself.
Of course, He could not empty Himself of His deity, because He is God. But He laid aside all the glory and honor attached to God.
Why did He do that? He did it because unless He did it, He could not be the Servant of God.
He was equal with God, but for the sake of God’s eternal purpose and God’s love toward mankind, He was willing to empty Himself of all the glory and honor attached to God.
He came into this world to take the form of a bondservant. A bondservant is a slave for life. Whose slave was He?
He was willing to take a lower place and submit Himself completely to God the Father. He was obedient even unto death—yes, the death of the cross.
Brothers and sisters, this is the blueprint of servanthood.
Before our Lord Jesus was crucified, He came to Jerusalem for the last time. The people welcomed Him. They thought that the King of Israel had come. Not only did the Jewish people flock to Him; even some Greeks wanted to see Him.
They came to Philip and said, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Philip and Andrew came and told the Lord, “Even the Greeks want to see You. Now is the time of Your glory.”
And you know what our Lord Jesus said?
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.
He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
The life here is our soul-life. If we are willing to lay down ourselves, we will keep it unto eternity. That is the way that our Lord shows us.
Then He says:
If any man serve me, let him follow me.
So, brothers and sisters, I think the way is very clear. If we really want to serve God, the Lord says, “Follow Me.” Wherever I go, you go.
Thank God that in the last days there will be a people who will follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.
Most people will say that the way is too hard. If it means death to yourself, it is too hard. “Who can hear it?”
But thank God, there will be a people who are constrained by the love of Christ, willing to follow the Lamb. Brothers and sisters, these are the people who really serve Him.
If any man serve me, him will the Father honor.
Dear heavenly Father, we are ever grateful that Thou hast not only saved us, but Thou art even willing to allow us to serve Thee. What grace!
But Lord, we confess that we are all unprofitable servants. Have mercy upon us.
We pray that Thou wilt open heaven and reveal Thy beloved Son to us in such a way that we may follow Him.