At the Table Pt. 6 :: Power to Serve

Visit our website
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, welcome to the Vine Life Church Podcast. We're in Boulder, Colorado, and we're following Jesus by staying rooted in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission so that hearts are awakened with his all-inspiring love. In this time of social distancing, we're not currently gathering in person, but we invite you to stream the video from our weekend services online. And if we can help you in any way, reach out to us at VineLife.com. For now, here's a short sermon from last week in Vine Life. Again, thanks for joining us. Hey Vine Life, good morning. Welcome in. My name is Luke. I'm excited to bring the word today. And listen, before we even get started, I just want to acknowledge that there is literally nothing I can say right now that has the power to change your life. Only Jesus, the Spirit of God, has the power to transform us. Only Jesus can heal this world that we're in. And I just want to acknowledge that. Watching online is great, but encountering God, encountering the presence of Jesus is what we're after. We're not just trying to consume more sermons and content. You can get a million of those from a million different places. What I'm contending for, what I'm believing for today, is that Jesus wants to encounter you. And if you believe that too, let's pray together and invite the Holy Spirit of God to come and flood our living rooms, to flood these spaces, to fill us with faith where we've become weary, to fill us with anticipation, where we've, you know, we've we've kind of given up in some places in life. I believe that God wants to bring a new injection of life and faith. Let's pray this right now together. Let's pray. God, we thank you. We thank you that you are good. We thank you that you're faithful, and I thank you right now that your spirit is alive. And I pray for my brothers and sisters that are watching from across the nation, from across this region right here, that something would happen in this moment that transcends just another online service together. But but Holy Spirit of God, we thank you that you are at work drawing us closer to your heart. And I pray for encouragement. I pray for faith and outrageous joy to flood every heart and every home. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. I love you guys. And listen, I can't wait to see you tonight. We hope that uh I hope that you're able to make it July 19th tonight at 7 o'clock. Come with your umbrellas, your sunglasses, come ready to worship, come ready to bring an offering to God and to each other. It's gonna be awesome. So this morning, I do want to jump into this series, jet back into this series. We've been in a series the last several weeks called At the Table. It's been a really fun series and I think a really important series for us. Um as you guys know, we've been exploring the meals of Jesus, uh, which is funny because when the Son of God came to earth, he could have come in a lot of different ways. He could have come with chariots of fire, he could have come with armies of angels just ready to take over, and yet he came humble as a servant. And his primary ministry method, meals, dinner at the table with friends and enemies alike. In fact, the last several weeks we've explored so many of these meals, how he uh he prioritized going to parties with tax collectors, having slow meals, um, specifically with Mary and Martha, just to slow down the moment and be together. Uh we we uh we we talked about how how Jesus brought his disciples into a place of remembrance, and he broke the bread and drank the cup with them and told them to do that as they would remember him and to break that meal together. And then we saw Chef Jesus cooking breakfast on the beach, inviting Peter back into this beautiful moment of love and restoration and belief as he would recommission Peter to go feed his sheep. And uh and all of these things took place around tables of some sort, intimate times together. And uh again, I really believe that that this has been a significant time to explore the meals of Jesus because we're living in significant times. Every week, as you know, things are heating up, the thermometer continues to go up, and every time you hope that things are gonna chill out and normalize, they're not. And uh it may not be for a while, and that's okay because God is still with us. God is still present even when our nation is divided, even when things feel tense, even when you can't agree with uh people that are near you. Um God is present in all of this, and in fact, the tension that we're feeling. Somebody worded it like this uh this last week. It's almost like heaven and earth are coming so close that there's a rumbling that's happening. Heaven is pressing into earth. And if you play guitar, you know what the sounds like. If you're tuning a guitar, the closer that you get to the right key, the more dissonance you start to feel, and you start to hear it. It starts to vibrate louder and louder and louder until it kind of finally locks in. I I have a sense that we're in a time where heaven is actually, it doesn't feel like it sometimes, but heaven is coming in and it's exposing where heaven and earth have not been aligned yet, and God is saying, it is time. It's time to bring all of earth into alignment with what I'm doing. And so and so we see how Jesus did that. How did Jesus bring alignment? Well, he did that over meals, and he could have come anyway, but he came eating and drinking. The scripture says that the Son of Man came eating and drinking. Why? Because the table, in a place of division, in a place where he things are heating up, the table is a place of dignity, of honor, and healing and reconciliation. Again, Jesus came to us. He could have come in any way, but he came eating and drinking. Why? Why would that matter so much to him? Because the table represents so many different things. The table, as we've already looked at, represents belonging. It represents remembrance and restoration, it represents reconciliation and healing and honor and dignity and sitting at the table with other image-bearers of God, it leaves us no choice but to value each other and to stay connected to each other in an intimate way. And that's part of the calling. That's why we're looking at this, because the church, God's design for the church, is that we would be a people that cause our neighborhoods and our nation and the cities that we inhabit to flourish. The people that spend time with us, God wants us to pour something into them so that they become to f they can come to flourish in his life as well. And so that's why I love looking at these meals. And we're gonna look at this one now in John chapter 13. A couple weeks ago we we looked at this meal as well. This is at the Last Supper, but we're gonna look at this from a different angle, captured in the Gospel of John. And see, in this particular passage, we know that Jesus is winding down his earthly ministry. He had been walking with his disciples for three years. Okay? Twelve men given to him by the Father by name, and uh and he had been pouring the best of his life into them, teaching them, training them, introducing them to life in the kingdom. And we we read in this passage, it starts out saying that his hour had come and he knew it. He knew that things were wrapping up, things were kind of finalizing for him in this chapter. Um and so you can imagine at this point, Jesus is is wondering how do I summarize this last three years? How do I bring it to a close? What's the exclamation point that goes on this whole time? What's the final scene of the final meal of intimacy with these guys? And here's what we read in John 13. It was just before the Passover festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own, who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God. Okay, so I'm just gonna stop there for a moment. And again, we read that the hour had come. They're at the Passover festival, supper is being prepared, it was in progress, things were already set into play. Judas was already, you know, things were already spinning with Judas. He was about to betray Jesus. And there was this moment of realization. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God. I just want you to imagine this for the second if you were Jesus and if you just had this realization that, oh my gosh, I'm the most powerful person in this room. I'm the most powerful person on the planet right now. Um the Father has literally given all things to him. And not only that, not only was he powerful, but he had he knew inside, in his identity, he knew that he had come from God, and no matter what happened, he was going to God. How much more confident could you feel at this point in time if you were Jesus? What else would you need to know? Nothing else would be able to do it. He knew that he was a loved son that originated in heaven from God the Father. And he had come on mission and he was about to leave and return to God. And in the meantime, God had put everything under his power. And uh, how how would you feel if you were him? What are the types of things that you would do if you were the most powerful person on the planet? Right? I just want you to think about that for a second. Maybe you've experienced that before, at least being the most powerful person in the room, right? Some of you know what that feels like if you're in a leadership position or if you run a company or if you have employees, or or maybe you've just been in different uh situations where dynamically you people look to you uh to know what to do. Maybe you had more affluence or influence than other people in the room. You had more connections, you had more social power, however you want to word it. What do you do? How do you perceive power when you hold it? Many of us have an interesting relationship with power. So many in our culture, uh, when it comes to power, we just try to accumulate more of it. And maybe you've experienced this before, uh, where you feel like really the goal is to have as much power as possible, where you spend your life fighting for yourself, always trying to climb your way up in your career or your social status or your likes on Facebook. Um, and in this point of view, as it relates to power, uh in life there are winners and there are uh losers, and the powerful ones are the ones that win. And so we want to win because uh we have uh we have learned a message in our life that the powerful people are the ones that get things done. The powerful people are the ones that make a difference in history. And so we you know we we we we try to accumulate power um throughout the course of our life. Maybe that's been your experience at some point in your life, right? The accumulation of power. But there's a flip side as well. Others of us have a different relationship with power. Maybe it's because we've been abused by power, powerful people before, or systems of power. So others of us resist power, claiming that power of any kind is actually wrong and corrupting. And so we resist authority, believing that if anyone has more power than another, it means oppression is bound to happen. So, with this point of view, we make it our aim to tear down any power structures. We we bring down leaders and officials, anyone who has been called to steward authority, we have this kind of antagonistic relationship with that. Who puts you in charge? Who told you you could run the show here? Who gave you the authority, right? And there's this kind of suspicion, this skepticism against any organization or institution that has power, right? And so again, some of us as it relates to power, we spend our days accumulating it. Some of us work to accumulate power for ourselves, but others of us defy power anywhere we see it at work. Right? Can you relate to either one of those pictures? In fact, we see that right now happening in culture. There's a lot of power struggles happening in government, in politics, and movements. There's a lot of this happening. Some are trying to accumulate power and wield power, others are trying to resist power. Okay? But what do we learn about power in this scene with Jesus? I would argue that in view of Christ, both perspectives miss the point. You see, Scripture would teach us that power is a gift from God to serve others. It's not a zero-sum game where some become more powerful and others become less powerful, yet, but in the kingdom of God, um, as the Spirit of God empowers people, it's so others can be empowered as well. We read this from the very beginning of Scripture in Genesis 1 and 2, where God, and God's a good creation when He when He created everything and He He brought Adam and Eve to life, we were created in the image and likeness of God. He then commissioned them to subdue the earth, to multiply, to be fruitful. Basically, what was he saying is, I'm giving you power to begin to bear fruit in the world. The power of God was given to them so that they could be a force of light and life in the world. And it's no different in Christ. Um when we come to life in Christ, God's intention is to bring power to us on the inside, not to serve ourselves, but become a reconciling force into the world. So Andy Crouch, she's the author of Playing God. It's the subtitles Redeeming the Gift of Power. Here's what he says about power. He says, it is a source of refreshment, laughter, joy, and life, and more power and of more power. See, power gets begets power. He continues, remove power and you cut off life. The possibility of creating something new and better in this rich and recalcitrant world. Life is power. Power is life, and flourishing power leads to a flourishing life. Of course, like life itself, power is nothing worse than nothing without love. And this is about how we see this is how we're about to see Jesus use his power. Okay? What did he do with his power? Let's keep reading in this passage. So verse 4. And after he realized he's the most powerful person in the room, verse 4 says this. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 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. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, are you gonna wash my feet? And Jesus replied, You do not realize now what I'm doing, but later you will understand. And it's it's it really is a significant, profound scene. Um, because the most powerful person on the planet at this point in time made a decision what to do with his power, and he chose to serve. He chose to wash his disciples' feet. And this is really important that we understand. He didn't start dominating and lording over his disciples, you know. As you can imagine, he may have done. He could have just flipped the switch and said, All right, you guys, um, you guys have barely made the cut over the last three years. I'm I'm I'm surprised you're even still here. Um so that said, before this thing, you know, really takes off, I'm gonna I'm gonna flip a switch, we're gonna bring the kingdom, we're gonna, we're gonna make this happen. I'm gonna I'm gonna get start getting things done, right? He could have just totally flipped the script and then set up a throne and uh and just then a whole power play, as it were. And in fact, that probably would have made his disciples really happy, uh, some of them, if if he would have just exerted dominance and just took over. Um, but that's not what we see. Um, we don't see the flip side. We don't see Jesus at this point saying, you know what, after all these all this time together, you just need to know we're all just kind of, this is just kind of level, this is kind of equal, you know, we're all just kind of the same. No, he didn't do that. He knew that he knew that he had an identity from the Father, that he had been sent from the Father, and that all power was given to him. So he didn't deny what had been given to him, but this is how he used it. He got down and he took the feet of his disciples and he began to wash them. And Peter, this is a very uncomfortable moment. This is not what the Messiah was supposed to do. And so Peter clearly had issues with this. And Jesus said to him, Listen, I know you don't understand what I'm doing. It doesn't look like what a king would do. This doesn't look like what the kingdom, you thought the kingdom was supposed to look like. You don't realize it now, but later you will understand. And that's powerful. How true is that for us that when God comes into our lives, a lot of times we don't understand what he's doing until much, much later. So Jesus chose to serve. Here's how the passage continues in verse 8. No, said Peter, you shall not you shall never wash my feet. And Jesus answered, Unless I wash you, you have no part with me. Then, Lord, Simon Peter replied, not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well. And Jesus answered, Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet. Their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you. For he knew he was going to betray him, and that was why he did not that is why he said, Not everyone who was clean. And this is another layer of profound, significant dialogue at this meal that Jesus has with his disciple Peter. He says, Not only do I need to wash you, but unless I wash you, you actually have no part in me. What? You have no part in me. That's, I mean, that's that's totally beyond. Not only is Jesus serving him, but he says, unless you let me serve you, you have no part in me. Unless you let me love you, unless you let me give myself for you, you cannot actually be part of what I'm doing. And this is the exclamation point on the radical ministry of Jesus. So much that we cannot follow Jesus unless we first know what it means for him to love us and serve us. Do you hear that right? This is what Jesus is saying to Peter. Unless you let me serve you, you actually cannot follow me. You cannot be a part of what I'm doing. You'll have no part in me. See, this is important because a lot of us, we want to do think great things for Jesus, but how profound is it that God's first priority for us is to love us and to for us to know in our heart of hearts that he has given himself to serve us, that he knows our needs. He's not just trying to get things from us, but he wants to love us and to serve us, even the ones who betray him. And that's what he says. He knew what he was, he knew who was around the table, he knew Judas was there. In fact, he knew what Peter was about to do, to deny Jesus a few times. And Jesus says, You have no part in me unless I can love you as a servant. In verse 12, this continues. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. Do you understand what I have done for you? He asked them. You call me teacher and lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you as an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is the messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. I don't I'm not sure there's any more passage of scripture that is more clear about what Jesus is after in the lives of his people. You know, after after he recognized that he had power, he got down and served Peter and he washed all of his disciples' feet, and then he brings it in, he drives the point home and he says, Do you understand what just happened?

unknown 21:59

Right?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

You understand you call me teacher and lord. Do you know why? Because I am teacher and Lord. I'm I I I have been given all things. So just let's be clear on that. But did you just see what I did for you? I use my lordship not to dominate and not to take from you, but to give to you, to serve you. Why? Because I love you. The nature of the ministry of Jesus is deeper and deeper and deeper love. It's to go lower and lower and lower to serve the people around us. See, Jesus redefines power. He came with a new kind of kingdom. He didn't come to eliminate lords and governments and rulers and bosses and masters. He didn't come to eliminate that. He came to redefine what it meant to wield that kind of power. And he said, Listen, I am Lord, and because I'm Lord, I chose to serve you in this way. And if I serve you in this way, you ought to do the same. And if you do it, you are going to be blessed. And this is why I love Jesus, because he gave us a roadmap for our most powerful and effective ministry. As we are learning, uh, as we're learning to do what he does, as we're learning to live the Jesus life on earth, especially in this moment, this is so critical that we get this. All of us are powerful. We've been empowered by the Spirit of God. We've been given power in a variety of different ways. It's not to use for ourselves, it's to use to serve those around us. And this is why I love the early church. They didn't concern themselves with the accumulation of power, trying to leverage relationships and networks. They weren't just trying to grow and trying to gather as much to themselves so that they could earn a place of influence. No, they knew they were already powerful. They had been filled with the Holy Spirit of God, tongues of fire. They didn't need convincing. They knew who they were too. So as they went out, they ministered out of that power, loving people fiercely, taking in the poor. They would became a new kind of people as they would heal the sick and cast out demons. They focused, they oriented their life on becoming a people of outrageous, awe-inspiring love. It went out from them because they knew they were powerful on the inside. And we should too. And this morning, as you're listening into this, I just want to speak this into your computer today, into your mobile device. However, you're watching, I just want to remind you that you are powerful. If you have not been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I pray that that begins to happen. That happens even now. Have people come around you to pray, to be filled with the new power from on high. But even aside from that, God has probably given you unique ways that you are powerful in your life. And He wants to show you how to use that power to serve others. And so some of us think that maybe that's not true. I have nothing to give, and that's actually not true. We all have something to give, we all have power in our lives. I remember the first time I went to on a missions trip back in high school. I got to go to Guatemala, and this is my literally my first time, like even on an airplane. Uh I I flew from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Guatemala with a bunch of high schoolers, and and we went to travel to different villages. The first sermon testimony I've ever brought, it was terrible, but it was so f it was it was great. I mean, it was great at the same time, right? It was powerful because it was so terrible that God had to work through it. Um but one of the things on the trip, we we had brought down huge duffel bags full of shoes because we wanted to give shoes to all these village kids. And and if you've ever traveled out of the country, especially to some poor areas, when you and you're a white person, you show up, there's a power dynamic that exists right away. And and you show up into a room, um, people stop, they'll listen. They want they want to listen to you, they're trying to honor, they want to respect, they they don't know why you're there, what you need, but they they want to give room. And so it's a powerful thing. When you show up as a white person, uh I didn't feel that though, right? Because I'm like this 17-year-old white kid from from Fort Wayne, Indiana, um, that played a little guitar, had never spoken a message in his life, had nothing, I didn't feel like I had anything to give but some shoes, right? And I remember this one day we we invited all the kids of a village to come into this church, and there were benches set up all around the church and wash spations, and and the kids would come in, and uh, and they they were looking to us like, what are you gonna do? Like, what what do you have? And we could have just given them the shoes and these gifts, these toys that we had brought, but instead we had them sit on the benches, and one by one we we took the pulled the shoes off the kids and and we washed their feet in these wash basin basins. I'll never forget it. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life because uh it was a place of humility, it was a place of learning to love and honor the least of these. And and one by one we would wash their feet and just pray for them, these little children, and then give them a new pair of shoes. And uh and I remember just feeling so close to the heart of God, and even telling the story now, I just feel so close to the heart of God because that's what He does for us. They they didn't know why we were there, they didn't know uh what we were gonna come and do, what we were gonna come and bring. But we we got down and we used this powerful moment to get down on our knees and to wash their feet and to bring them a good gift. And guys, this is what God is calling us to do in this moment. God wants us to be full of confidence and life and power so that we can continue to minister life and encouragement, to come low and serve the people in our lives. And even as we talk about hosting a meal, you need to know that hosting a meal, having people to your table, that is a position of power. It's a position of influence. You you are able to bring people in and to a place of love and hospitality, to set a place before them where you can mutually be together in the presence of God, in the presence of each other. It is a place of power that God has called us to host and to serve the world. And I want to encourage you in that as we end this time, as we end this morning in the service, I want you to get this picture that God wants you to know how much He loves you and serves you to the degree that you are left with nothing else but a heart of overflow to look at the people in your life and and and find ways to serve and bring yourself low. This is what we're called to do. This is what the world needs from us in this moment. And this is what Jesus came to bring home. This is how he ended. And I love how the scholar N. T. Wright says it like this. Um T. Wright says it like this. I firmly believe that when Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal. And so let's pray together this morning that this would enter into us and that we would become powerful as we serve the people around us. So, God, I pray for my brothers and sisters who are watching today. I thank you for this time, Lord God, that your word does not return void, and I thank you for this scene, this intimate scene where you brought your disciples in, and you could have leveraged your power in any way, and you use it to serve, you use it to go low. May it be so with us, Lord God. I pray for more opportunities even this week with the people in our lives where we could expect and demand and ask things from them, but God, give us unique opportunities to encourage and to breathe life and love in radical ways that only speak to what kind of lordship you came to establish. I thank you that your kingdom is alive and your kingdom is moving to each and every person watching today. So I bless them in the power of the Holy Spirit to move out in your name. And it's in Jesus' name we pray.