The Fifth Sunday in Lent NOT To Be Served Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “The Son of Man came NOT to be served, but to serve…” Dear Christian friends, The Holy Scriptures are full of talk about your service to God. Jesus not only said, “Be dressed and ready for service” (Luke 12:35), but He also said, “As you have done to the least of these brothers of Mine, you have done also to Me” (Matthew 25:40). God’s apostle Paul explained in last week’s Epistle that God “created us in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Paul also speaks in another place about learning to “serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). The first commandment can be faithfully worded this way: “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve” (Matthew 4:10). Add to this the voice of the prophets, who bellow repeatedly from the pages of the Old Testament, “Serve the Lord!” (Deuteronomy 10:12, Joshua 24:14, 2 Chronicles 30:8, 35:3, Psalm 2:11). In the midst of all this talk in the Scriptures about serving God, Jesus our God says in today’s Gospel, “I did NOT come to be served.” Whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. 1. When Jesus says, “The Son of Man came NOT to be served,” He is not overthrowing or rejecting everything else that God has said and written. When He says He “came NOT to be served,” Jesus does not mean for you to think that you have no active role in the life of Christ or His Church. The Scriptures are clear and Jesus is the faithful preacher of the Scriptures: “You SHALL worship the Lord your God and serve Him only” (Matthew 4:10). You MUST walk in the good works God “prepared beforehand” (Ephesians 2:10) and wrote into the Ten Commandments. The Scriptures not only require service to God, but they also warn us about disastrous consequences for our faith and eternal life if we should refuse such service: • “Be doers of the Word, and NOT hearers only,” says the Lord, “thus deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). • “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? … Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:14, 17). • Jesus said, Everyone who hears these words of mine and does NOT do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it (Matthew 7:26-27). 2. When Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “The Son of Man came NOT to be served,” He is placing our service to God into the perspective of God’s service to us. In what way shall we compare our service to God with God’s service to us? What analogies can even come close? • If our service to God is a raindrop, then God’s service to us is greater than all the oceans of the world combined into one. • If our service to God is an ounce of gold, then God’s service to us is all the world’s treasuries of gold piled into one unmeasurable trove. • If our service to God is a single ray of light, then God’s service to us is the sun and all stars shining together. • If our service to God is a single fencepost driven into the ground, then God’s service to us is the very cornerstone and foundation of the entire creation, which He laid in place for us “while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7) So great, so vast, so all-encompassing is our God’s service to us that—when compared to the way we must serve Him—Jesus can say in today’s Gospel, “The Son of Man came NOT to be served.” And that is not all Jesus says in today’s Gospel. After He said, “The Son of Man came NOT to be served, but to serve,” Jesus went on to describe with beauty and simplicity the manner in which He serves us: Whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. “To give His life as a ransom for many”: With these few Words, Jesus encompasses the limitless ocean of His vast love for you. With these Words, Jesus opens for you the golden treasury of His mercy and grace. In the Words “a ransom for many” the Sun of Righteousness rises for you with healing in its wings (Malachi 4:2). Your Lord Jesus wants you to know that He is your ransom, that is, the purchase price given for your freedom—freedom from sin, freedom from death, and freedom from the power of the devil. Thus God has written: • “Through [Jesus], forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by Him everyone who believes is set free from every sin” (Acts 13:39). • “… the Spirit of Life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). • “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, [Christ] Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). These are the Words of our God: “The Son of Man came NOT to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom from many.” Jesus our God did NOT speak these Words to us to set aside or overthrow our service to God. Jesus did NOT say these things in order to indulge our laziness or to exercise our futility. These Words of Jesus are for our confidence and our peace, that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days (Luke 1:74-75). Go. Do your service to God and do it wholeheartedly. Hold nothing in reserve. “Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only” (Matthew 4:10). because the Lord your God has commanded it. Even more, He has tenderly and mercifully “created us in Christ Jesus for good works… that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Man or woman, boy or girl: none of us should defy or deny what God has created us to be. As you proceed in your service to God, do it with joy. Move forward in the knowledge that your Lord Jesus has so fully, so completely worked for you, that there is absolutely nothing you can do to mess things up. In the forgiveness of our sins; in patient, daily guidance through life; in constant intercession before the Father; in any and every other gift, Jesus our Lord’s service to us is infinitely greater than our service to Him. His service is so much greater than our service to Him that He can even say, “The Son of Man came NOT to be served, but to serve.” And He shall indeed serve you, both now and forevermore.
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