GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
GIFT OF SERVICE
DR. JIM DIXON
JANUARY 5, 1986
EPHESIANS 4:11-13
His name is Mike Collin. He played football for Auburn University and coach ‘Shug Jordan years ago. Afterwards, Mike became a linebacker for the Miami Dolphins in the National Football League. One day, ‘Shug Jordan, his old coach from Auburn, came to Mike and said, “Mike, I’d like you to do a little recruiting for Auburn University.” Mike agreed to do this, and one day as he was about to head out on his first recruiting trip, he said, “Coach, what kind of players are we looking for? What kind of men? What kind of athletes are we looking for?” And coach said, “Mike, you know, there’s that fella who when he is knocked down, he stays down.” Mike says, “Yeah, coach, that’s not the kind of guy we’re looking for, is it?” Coach says, “No, Mike, it isn’t. But there’s that other fella. He’s knocked down, but he gets right back up. But when he is knocked down a second time, he stays down.” Mike says, “Well coach, that’s not the kind of guy we’re looking for either, is it?” Coach says, “No, Mike, it isn’t. But there’s that other guy. You knock him down and he gets back up and you knock him down and he gets back up and you knock him down and he gets back up and you knock him down again and he still gets back up.” Mike goes, “Coach, that’s the guy we’re looking for, isn’t it?” Coach says, “No, Mike, it isn’t. We’re looking for the fella that’s knocking everybody down.”
Have you ever wondered what kind of person God is looking for in this world? There are a lot of people knocking other people down. There are a few people who manage time and again to get back up, but what God is looking for more than anything else is a person who is willing to help other people get back up. God is looking for servants. God loves people who have a servant’s heart. And I can tell you this morning in all truth that there is nothing more precious to God than a servant’s heart. So this morning as we discuss the subject of the gift of service, I’d like us to examine three Greek words, all of which are used in the Bible, all of which are translated as “servant,” and each one of which manifests a different attribute of servanthood.
First there is the word doulos. Now, this word is sometimes translated “servant.” It describes a servant’s relationship to God. The word literally means “slave.” Now, this word doulos is not meant to describe our relationship to other people. It’s meant to describe the Christian’s relationship with God. If you would become a Christian and if you would become a servant of God, then before God you must become doulos. You must become a slave.
Now, I know many of you have heard of Peter Blood, the 17th-century British physician falsely accused of treason against King James II and subjected to an unjust trial. He was sold into slavery and taken to the British West Indies to the island of Jamaica. There he was purchased for 10 pounds by the niece of a man who would become the colonial governor. This woman had pity on Peter Blood and they fell in love, but he would not be hers until he was not hers, because, he said, “I would be free and I am no one’s slave.”
Peter Blood went on to become the infamous, notorious adventurer and Caribbean pirate Captain Blood. Of course, he did not really exist. He was the creation of fiction, Raphael Sabatini’s book called Captain Blood, and he was made famous by the 1935 movie starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. But Peter Blood manifests the spirit of mankind, because men and women would say, “I will be free. I am no one’s slave.”
The word slave has always been a hated word. Throughout history, the word doulos was a hated word. There were many slaves throughout the Greek and Roman world. In the Greek city of Sparta, there were 25,000 citizens and there were 500,000 slaves. Many historians believe that throughout the Roman Empire there were as many as 50 million slaves. Some of those slaves performed task and had responsibilities that gave them some measure of dignity. Other slaves, perhaps most slaves, performed tasks and had duties and responsibilities that were degrading to them.
But the truth is that all of those slaves were degraded simply because their lives were not their own. They were property. They were owned by other people. They were bought, they were sold. Their lives were not their own. Throughout many parts of the Roman world, they could be branded. Through some parts of the Roman world, slaves could be killed by their masters and no questions would be asked. They were simply property. Doulos was a hated word. And yet, incredibly, in the first and second centuries of Christendom, the apostles and the disciples began to take this hated word doulos and they began to use it to describe their relationship to the living God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With pride, they took this word doulos, slave, and applied it to themselves because they knew that every single person on the Earth is a slave.
The Bible tells us that everyone in this world is in bondage to death. Every single person on the Earth is in bondage to death. The Bible says everyone in this world is a slave to sin. The Bible says many people don’t know it but they are slaves to Satan and we are slaves to ourselves and to our own passions. The Bible tells us that in that moment that we’re willing to come before God and acknowledge that we are His property—willing to come before Jesus Christ and say our lives are not our own—an incredible thing happens. The Bible tells us that in that moment we begin to be set free. This is the mystery of the gospel: only as you give yourself as a servant to God do you begin to be set free from Satan. Only then do you begin to be set free from death itself—free from sin and free from self.
It’s in that moment—the moment when you acknowledge that you belong to Jesus Christ and you give yourself to Him as a servant—the Bible says that you are actually born into the family of God and you become a child of God. Now, here is the mystery. In the Bible, a Christian is not only called a servant. A Christian is called a child of God. A Christian is called a son and a daughter of God—children of God, heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ. We are royalty. But it only happens in that moment when you’re willing to be before Him a slave. That is the truth of the gospel.
There is a passage of the scriptures that is, for me, one of the most beautiful passages. It tells us of the angel Gabriel. We know very little about this angel called Gabriel. The Bible says that he is high and lifted up. The Bible says he stands in the presence of God. Perhaps he is an archangel. We do not know. But the Bible says he came to Earth and he visited Mary the Virgin before she conceived. And Gabriel said to her, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with thee.” The Bible says Mary was afraid. She was troubled in her spirit. She was startled, confused, and the angel Gabriel said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you found favor with God and you shall conceive in your womb. You shall bear a son and you shall call His name Jesus. He shall be great and He shall be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord shall give to Him the throne of His father, David, and He shall rule over the house of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom there shall be no end.”
Mary said, “How can this be, since I have not a husband?” The angel said, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon you. The power of the Most High shall overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your kinswoman, Elizabeth, has also conceived. This is now the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God, nothing shall be impossible.” Then Mary makes one of the most beautiful responses in the whole of the scriptures. Mary says, “Behold, I am the bondservant of the Lord. Be it done to me in accordance with your will.” That Greek word “bondservant” is this word doulos.
“Behold,” she said, “I am the slave of the Lord. Be it done to me in accordance with your will.” If you’re a Christian, you had a moment like that. You had a moment when you were willing to say, “I am the bondservant of the Lord. Be it done to me.” And that is where servanthood begins. That is why the Apostle Paul, minister to the Gentiles, begins his letters by saying, “Paul, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” That is why Peter, the great head of the church at Rome, began his letters by saying, “Peter, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” That is why James, the great head of the Jerusalem church, began his letter by saying, “James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” That is why Jude began his letter by saying, “Jude, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” And that Greek word for servant is the word doulos, slave. So, this word described the servant’s relationship to God.
Secondly, there is the word leitourgos. This word is sometimes translated “servant.” This word describes a servant’s relationship to the church. Do you have the gift of service? Do you have a hunger to serve the kingdom of Jesus Christ? Do you have a hunger to serve the church, as indeed all Christians are called to serve the church?
Now, I know that all of you have tasted honey. I assume that most of you have seen a beehive, but probably very few of you actually know what goes on within the hive. Now, there are three different types of bees. There is the queen bee, there are the drone bees, and there are the worker bees. The queen doesn’t do a whole lot. She simply mates with the drones and she bears eggs. That keeps her pretty busy. She bears as many as 2,000 eggs in a single day. In the course of an average year, the queen bears 200,000 eggs. The average queen lives five years. In the course of that time, she bears more than 1 million eggs.
The drones do even less than the queen. There aren’t too many drones. They develop from unfertilized eggs. They are big, they are awkward, they are clumsy, and they are male. They don’t do much of anything. They eat a lot and they mate with the queen. Now, you might think that sounds like a great life, but the truth is that a drone’s life is very short, because after the drone has performed its function it is then left to starve to death by the colony. It is no longer fed and it is allowed to die.
Most of the work in the hive, virtually all of the work in the hive, is done by the worker bees. These worker bees go out and they gather the food. They gather nectar and they gather pollen and they gather water for the young. And when they find a clump of flowers, they come back to the hive and they perform a dance. Now, this is a great mystery and scientists don’t fully understand it, but they perform a dance outside the hive. Somehow, through that dance, they communicate to their coworkers where the flowers are.
So, the bees go forth. The worker bees go forth to gather the food, and it takes one bee the course of its life to gather 1/10 of a pound of honey. 10 bees together can gather a pound of honey. In order to do that, those 10 bees must visit 3,360,000 flower heads. That is a lot of work, but they live to serve the hive. Then they guard the hive against invaders. They sting invaders to death, even other bees from other hives. They air condition the hive in the summertime by flapping their wings at great speeds. And in the winter, they heat the hive by flapping their wings at even greater speeds. They live to serve the hive.
Now, the hive cannot exist or function without the worker bee. In the same way, the church simply cannot live—the church cannot exist, it cannot survive—without Christians who are willing to be servants, willing to serve the church. Now, God gives many gifts of the Holy Spirit. He distributes them in accordance with His own will. Ours is to be open, His is to give. I believe there are very few Christians that God gives the gift of teaching to. A church simply does not need many teachers. There are very few Christians that God gives the gift of prophecy to. There are very few Christians that God gives the gift of healing to and very few Christians that God gives the gift of miracle working to. But you see, I believe with all my heart that there are many Christians that God gives the gift of service to because the church can’t exist without this gift called service. And before God, there is no gift any more important. The person who has the gift of service is just as precious to God as a person who has the gift of prophecy or exhortation or teaching or healing or miracles. So God gives His great gift, this gift called service.
About 12 years ago, Barbara and I worked at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora where we were in charge of the children’s Sunday school. As the Sunday school grew, we had more than a thousand children in the Sunday school. The recruiting job had become really big. We needed more than 120 full-time Sunday school teachers and more than 200 full- and part-time teachers. Barb and I went through the entire church directory every year, calling every single individual in the church asking if they wouldn’t serve in the Sunday school. In fact, I think it became kind of embarrassing. Whenever Barb and I were walking down the hall, people just began to head out the doors and didn’t want to see us.
But we discovered in that time that most people who teach in the Sunday school don’t really have the gift of teaching. They just love God. They love kids and they want to serve the church. That’s all. I might say it’s kind of unusual for men to become children’s Sunday school teachers. I don’t know why that is. I think some men feel that teaching children is somehow below them. I think that enrages God, or at least grieves Him, because our Lord Jesus Himself held little children in His arms and He’s told us that their angels constantly behold the face of the Father.
One teacher (his name was Bill) not only taught children in Sunday school but also helped us in everything relating to the church. Every month on Sunday mornings at 6:30 am we would have teachers’ meetings. Bill would come early, he’d help us set up the tables, he’d help us set up the cups, and set out the napkins and the silverware. He’d help us prepare the food. He didn’t just do that for teachers’ breakfasts. Bill did that for all the breakfasts at the church. He’d come early and he’d help set up. He served on committees in the church. He was on the Christian Education Committee that hired me. He served on evangelistic teams that went out. When the Fellowship of Christian Athletes needed huddle leaders, Bill volunteered because he loved to serve the church. Now, he had the gift to service. It was a great joy for him to serve the church, as it is for all people who have the gift to serve. But I think God would have us to understand that all of us are called to serve in some sense. It’s not meant to be a burden, really. God would have us to serve joyfully because we love Him so much and just as a natural outgrowth of our relationship with Him.
Even evangelism should be a natural outgrowth of our relationship with Him, not some kind of compulsion. If you really love the Lord, you want to tell people about it. Every once in a while, Barb and I overhear Drew or Heather saying something nice about us to a friend. It might be they’re talking to somebody on the telephone, or maybe they have somebody visiting the house and they’ll kind of brag on mom or dad and we’ll smile. You can’t help but feel kind of good. But they don’t do that by compulsion. I mean, I don’t get Drew aside and say, “Son, it’s been a month now since you’ve bragged on me to a friend.” You know, it’s just a natural outgrowth of their relationship with us. That’s how God wants it to be as we tell others about Him.
Every once in a while, Drew and Heather (not as often as we’d like) clean their room without being asked or they do the dishes without being asked. And they’re so proud and they come and they get us and they say, “Come into the room.” And then they say, “Look!” And they’re just so happy and it makes them so glad. And they want to please us. See, God wants us to be like that in our service of the church. Leitourgos: to serve the church. The word leitourgos originally was used of public service, serving the state (either involuntarily or voluntarily). But the early church took this word and applied it to the kingdom of Christ and used it to refer to service of the church. Servants serve the church.
Thirdly and finally, there is this Greek word huperetes. This word is translated as “servant,” but it describes the servant’s relationship to human authority. A servant, a true servant of God, doesn’t have an ego problem. A servant of God doesn’t feel the need to always be in authority. Now, a servant from time to time may be called upon to lead and may be able to lead. But when it’s truly a servant, their leadership is not for the purpose of ego gratification but simply for the purpose of service. A servant is able to work under the authority of other people.
This Greek word huperetes literally means “under-rower.” It’s used to describe the galley slaves that rode the oars on the lower levels of the Roman ships that moved through the Mediterranean Sea. If you saw the movie Ben-Hur (and I’m sure many of you did), you remember how Charlton Heston, Judah Ben-Hur, was sold into slavery and he became a galley slave. He began to row the oars on the lowest level of the Roman ship. You remember the Roman officer who would beat the drum. And if he picked up the pace, then the oarsmen had to pick up their pace. He would pick up the pace if they needed to ram another ship or if the captain wanted to water ski (just kidding). If he slowed down the pace, the oarsmen could slow down their pace. Now, it is true that in the church of Christ everyone needs to take an oar, but that’s not the primary meaning of huperetes, or “under-rower,” because the primary meaning does not focus on rowing.
The primary meaning focuses on “under.” This word huperetes began to be used for people who are able to function under authority. It meant people who didn’t have to beat the drums—people who are willing to let other people beat the drum. We desperately need that in the church. And we need it in the world.
Leonard Bernstein, the famous orchestra conductor, was asked, “What’s the hardest instrument in the world to play?” He didn’t even hesitate. He said, “Second fiddle. Or second French horn or second violin or second trumpet, or second anything.” That’s because we live in a world where everybody wants to be first. Everyone wants to be on top. Everyone wants to be the best. But he said, “Unless people are willing to be seconds, we’ll never have harmony. And if there’s no harmony, there is no music.”
We live in a world of ascensionism. That is the philosophy of this world. It’s a philosophy of seeking to ascend to the top. It’s the American way. We’re taught from our earliest days that we should be better than other people, that we should strive to be the best. Our self-esteem and our self-worth is rooted in that. It’s deep within us. The Bible has a whole different message. What I’m saying here I know is not easily received because it’s just contrary to the way the world thinks. God wants us to know that this philosophy of ascension didn’t come from Him. It was Satan who in the beginning said, “I shall ascend above the stars of God. I shall set my throne on high.”
God loves a servant’s heart. God doesn’t want you to seek to be the best. He simply wants you to do your best. Whatever gifts, whatever talents, whatever abilities He has given you, He wants you to cultivate them. He wants you to use them. He wants you to become all you are meant to be. But He also wants you to want other people to become their best, and there should be no consideration as to who is the best. God doesn’t want you to strive to be on top. If God does place you in a position of leadership, He wants you not to view it as a means of ego gratification but simply as another means of service, because God loves a servant’s heart.
There is that strange passage in the scriptures in the 20th chapter of Matthew. Jesus is standing outside of Jerusalem with His followers. And He says to them, “We are going to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes. They will condemn Him. They will give Him into the hands of the Gentiles for mocking, for scourging, and for crucifixion. But He will be raised on the third day.”
The Bible says, “Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Him, bringing her two sons, James and John. Kneeling before the Lord, she besought Him. And Jesus said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said, ‘Grant that these two boys of mine might sit one at Your right hand and one at Your left hand when You come into Your kingdom.’ Jesus answered, ‘You don’t know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?’ The two sons answered and they said, ‘We are able.’ Jesus said, ‘You shall indeed drink My cup. But to sit at My right hand or My left hand is not Mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by the Father.’” The Bible tells us that the 10 disciples began to be angry and indignant at these two brothers when they saw this. So the Bible tells us Jesus called the 12 close to Himself and He said to them, “You know how the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. He who would be greatest among you must be your servant, and he who would be first among you must be your slave.”