Article 10 - Holiness and Service

This is the original English version of a sermon preached in Portuguese on the 5th September 2010 at Sao Miguel Paulista Corps, Sao Paulo. I simplified it a little for greater ease of translation.
(All the bible readings are from the New International Version.)

Sao Miguel Paulista Corps Salvation Meeting 05/09/10

Text: Mark 10:45

Bible Reading: Mark 10:32-45

Theme: Holiness and Service
Mark 10:32-45

This morning, we have arrived at the penultimate article in our series of messages which have followed the Salvation Army doctrines. Our current General, General Shaw Clifton, is an enthusiastic encourager of holiness. He wants all Salvationists around the world to be holy people. He believes that God has particularly called the Salvation Army to be a movement demonstrates holy living.

William and Catherine Booth, the founders of the Salvation Army, were originally members of the Methodist Church and, as such, were part of what was called the Holiness Movement came into being in the 18th and 19th Century and included a number of different denominations. We might perhaps say that this holiness movement placed a special emphasis on holiness in the life of the Christian. Indeed, we might say that it emphasised the need for holiness in the Christian life, above everything else.
And this is why within the Salvation Army´s statement of its beliefs, the doctrines, we find a doctrine specifically about holiness. Let´s read together the tenth doctrine.

10. We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be "wholly sanctified", and that their "whole spirit and soul and body" may "be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ". (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Now what does the doctrine mean when it talks about being “wholly sanctified”, and being “preserved blameless”? Well, sanctification is about cleansing. When we put our faith in God the Son, Jesus Christ, to save us from sin then what actually happens at that moment is that God the Holy Spirit comes to us and cleanses us from sin. He cleanses us from all past sin, first of all, by bringing us forgiveness, through the Son.
But the cleansing doesn´t just stop there, no! Then the Holy Spirit goes on to cleanse us from the desire to sin in the future. He gives us the power to resist the temptation to sin. He gives us the mind and heart of Jesus. And in this cleansed state, we can stand blameless before God.

Now, if we look in the bible, it is obvious why God does this for us. God loves us very much because we are his children whom he created. And so, he desires to bless us. But the bible tells us that whilst we remain sinful, we cannot see God: we cannot stand before his divine holiness and commune with him. Even if we come to worship him and ask for his presence to be with us, he will not come to us if we still have our sins upon us. If we have committed sins and have not repented of them and called on the name of Jesus for forgiveness, then God cannot forgive us; he cannot pretend our sins have not been committed; he cannot just overlook them. If he ignored our sins, then he would be unjust to those who have suffered because of our sins.

But the great news of the gospel is that our faith in Jesus Christ enables the Father to forgive our sins and to make us clean, so that we may stand before his holy presence and be accepted as his holy children.

However, this is not the only reason why God wants to cleanse us. He also wants to cleanse us so that he can use us. You will remember that in the Old Testament all the items that were used in the worship of God in the ancient temple in Jerusalem needed to be cleansed and dedicated before they were fit to be used for his service. (You can read the story of how King Solomon constructed and furnished and dedicated the first temple and all its equipment in chapters five to nine of the first book of Kings.) Now this was also true of the priests who served at the altars of the temple. They had to go through rituals of cleansing before they could perform their service to God.

The Apostle Peter picks up this idea when he says in 1 Peter 2:5,9 that Christians are “a holy priesthood’,“a holy nation”.
Christians have been cleansed, made holy by faith in Christ and the infilling of the Holy Spirit for a purpose. They have a new role in the world.

Before they became Christians, they served other gods. They had made idols for themselves out of worldly wealth or power or superstitions or their own desires. But now, as God´s holy priesthood, they have a new work, and that is to serve God. But what does God want? He doesn´t need anything. He is God; he is perfect, complete, without a need of anything. But God tells us clearly in the bible that he does want one thing. He wants all his children back in his family! He wants all his children to return to him. He wants all his children to be free of pain and suffering and fear and sadness. This is what God wants! And part of the blessing of holiness for us, is that God gives us the great privilege of cooperating with Him in achieving what He wants. God makes us holy so that we can do his holy will. God makes us holy, and keeps us holy, so that we can serve others. And by serving others, we serve Him.

This sounds great doesn´t it? But actually, the reality of holiness is that it is often uncomfortable and disturbing stuff. It is the stuff of revolution. Holiness is really controversial radicalism. Our bible reading about the request of James and John demonstrates this. Was their request a holy request? And was the reaction of the other disciples to them a holy reaction?

1. Rulers over the gentiles.
You cannot have failed to notice that the election is going to happen very soon! Every day I have been watching politicians selling themselves on the TV in order to win votes. I suppose this is a necessary thing. It is absolutely essential that everyone who can, votes, or Brazil will lose its democracy. (I don´t think I need to say this to those of you who have experienced the alternative to democracy!) But these political advertisements are simply that, advertisements. They are selling something; and how do you know which product to buy? They all seem to me to be saying very much the same thing. Trust me, vote for me, and I will make Brazil a better place. I will make you wealthier, healthier, and happier.

We must pray for our politicians, and we must pray, in particular, that God will raise up Christian politicians who will do his will in this area of politics. I noticed that some well-known church leaders have appeared in some of these television adverts to give their support to certain candidates. This is interesting, because a common criticism of politics seems to be that the more powerful politicians become, the more they become removed from the people that they are supposed to represent and serve.

Some of them may have once lived in the favelas, or in the poorer bairros, but when they become powerful, they often move to better districts and nicer houses and have the lifestyle of the wealthy.

Now the life of Jesus challenges all of this. During his years of ministry, Jesus attracted a great following. The politicians in his country were afraid of this great crowd and what Jesus might do with it. And yet, Jesus didn’t use this power to gain money and buy a big house and a big camel. Right up to the time that he was arrested, Jesus lived and walked among the ordinary people, and very often the poor and excluded people too.

You see the great danger with political power, wherever it is found, is self-interest. This was the danger that James and John faced. They realised that they were with someone with great power. Jesus was clearly someone who had the potential to overthrow the Romans and create and new Jewish state that would last forever. Now maybe we should be more kind to James and John. Perhaps the bible can be interpreted to say that they did almost understand that the way of Jesus was the way of a martyr, the way of the suffering servant, but then they still thought that after all the necessary suffering, the Son of God would receive his glory. And if so, they wanted Jesus to promise them a special place of honour in that glory, presumably because they had followed him so faithfully.

But James and John and the other disciples had completely failed to understand what Jesus had been teaching them about his power. They had completely failed to understand the nature of the power that Jesus had already been demonstrating while he was with them. The holiness of Jesus, and therefore his divine power, is demonstrated by his selfless service. Jesus´ whole life was a life of service, culminating in his greatest act of service to every single one of us; he died for us. He showed us by his life and teaching and his death and resurrection that, according to God, the greatest power that we can have in this world, is the power to serve, because true service is an act of love.
This is what Jesus was talking about when he said,
Mark 10:45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
God, who has all the power in the universe, came to us to serve us because he loves us. And so Jesus explains to his disciples, and that includes you and I today, that we are not to desire the power of this world, because this is the devil´s idea of power. It is not true power. We are to desire the true power of God, which is to serve, which is to love, and this power is also the holiness of God.

2. Slave of all.
Jesus says to us, we are not to be like those people who love to order others about and who love to use their power and position to gratify themselves at the expense of others. No, if we, as disciples of Jesus, want to be great like him, then we must learn to follow his example and become a servant to others. We must become a slave of all.

Now this sounds very noble. And indeed, we sometimes talk of politicians and government officials as serving the public. But the actual truth is that politicians and government officials get paid for what they do. For them, there is a contract of some kind which says that if I do this service for you then you will pay me, or give me, this reward. And that is what most people seem to think about when we talk about service. We do not actually serve for nothing; we expect to get something in return. And thus we do not really serve out of love.

But Jesus´ call to service, his call to holiness, is exactly this; a call to serve out of love. We should serve others out of love for God, and we should serve everyone, without discrimination, because Jesus himself served everyone, without discrimination. Now this is very radically different from much of the public service that we see in the world around us.

If there is to be any reward for us at all, it will be in the form of a confirmation of something we already know. For when we realise that God is using us as his instrument with which to love someone, through our serving of them, this will confirm to us that God loves and accepts us as his children, and he always will.

But what exactly does this kind of service look like in reality? After all it is not that common. What does it mean to be a slave of all? How exactly do we serve one another? During my many years as a member of the church I’ve read and heard a lot of generalisation about holiness, but in the end, this just frustrates me. I do not know how you feel, but I want to know the specifics! How exactly do we serve others out of love? Or to ask the question in a different way, how exactly do we do holiness? What does holiness look like in everyday life?

Well, this morning, I want to offer you a simple test to see if you are being holy. And it is this: are you serving others?

Here is a list of things that may help us judge whether or not we are being holy. It is not, by any means, a complete list. Not at all. There is much more that can be said about being holy. However, I have tried to base it roughly on the apostle Paul’s teaching on the holy life that you can find in Ephesians 5, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Galatians 5:19-21. (You can look these verses up for yourself when you are at home.)

So which of these is serving others, is it taking the Lord’s name in vain, in other words, blaspheming, or is it honouring the Lord’s name?
Which is serving others, is it using swear words, making rude jokes and using innuendo, or is it using kind and edifying words?
Which is serving others, is it gossiping, especially saying things about people that you would not say to their face, or is it praising and being positive in what we say about people?
Which is serving others, is it saying malicious things to someone, or is it saying encouraging things to them?
Which is serving others, is it being angry about something that has happened or is it controlling oneself and forgiving?
Which is serving others? is it being unfriendly, rude, and practicing discrimination or is it being friendly, polite and inclusive?
Which is serving others, is it mocking and ridiculing, or is it complementing and praising?
Which is serving others, is it dropping litter or is it putting litter in the waste bin?
Which is serving others, is it being late, perhaps even not turning up for appointments and meetings, or is it being on time and being reliable?
Which is serving others, is it finding a jeitinho, or is it keeping within the rules?
Which is serving others, is it pushing in front of others in the queue, or is it letting others go first?
Which is serving others, is it keeping our money to ourselves, or is it being generous?
Which is serving others, is it spending all our time and energy on improving our own lives, or is it spending our time trying to improve the lives of others?
Which is serving others, is it having sex outside of security and responsibility of marriage, or is it waiting until we are married?
Which is serving others, is it abusing the environment by using wasting energy and water, or is it conserving the environment by being careful and responsible?
Which is serving others, is it always doing what we want, or is it always finding ways to help others?

As I say there are many other things we could talk about in terms of whether we are serving ourselves or others, but to make this point about service and holiness even clearer let us quickly consider some examples of people we might all agree could be called holy.

Firstly, hopefully nobody will want to argue with me when I say that the founders of the Salvation Army, William and Catherine Booth were holy people. Now they were not perfect people by any means; if you read their life stories in the history books you might feel that occasionally they made some mistakes in their behaviour towards certain people. But if we consider their lives overall, I would say they were holy people. And I would argue that the evidence for this is not so much in their recorded words, but the evidence is in the record of their actions. They gave their lives to serving others. They gave their time, money, health and strength to preaching the gospel and to organizing assistance for the poor and oppressed. William Booth raised money so that he could feed the poor, create jobs for the unemployed, provide care for prisoners’ families, rescue prostitutes, and much, much more.

Then there was Francis of Assisi: a true saint in the best sense of the word. Francis was a rich young man who lived in the 12th and 13th Centuries and who gave up everything he had to follow Jesus. His ministry included preaching the gospel to everyone he met and creating a movement of monks who became poor to minister to the poor.

And finally, there was Mother Teresa of Calcutta: one of the most famous women of the twentieth century, who devoted her life to serving the sick and the poor in the slums of India, and around the world.

Now, none of these people were perfect, but I would suggest that they were all holy, and lived holy lives, and this is proven by the fact that they lived lives of service to others.

3. Following the suffering servant.
And by living holy lives of service, these saints were following the example of Jesus Christ. And if we too want to be holy, as Jesus commands us to be, then we too must serve others, just as he did.
Jesus was always going to be a servant, because the Father from whom he came was never going to allow all his beloved children to be destroyed by sin and suffering and death. This is made clear in the Old Testament when Jehovah refuses to allow the Jews to be completely destroyed but makes them the promise of a future messiah.

God reveals to the prophet Isaiah the price that he is prepared to pay in order to save his children. God is willing to become a man, to be rejected and to suffer death on a cross so that he can save his children.

Isaiah 53:10-12

This is true service to others. Jesus gave up his glory, his reputation, his comfort, his family, any worldly security that he had, and finally, he gave up his life, all in the service of others. He serves us now by making it possible for our sins to be forgiven; he serves us now by answering our prayers; he serves us now by healing us; he serves us now by giving our lives a great purpose and meaning, which is to love others, to serve others; he serves us now by giving us a hope of eternal joy with God in heaven. He gave up everything to serve us, because he is pure love. And Jesus wants to be our example, and our guide to how to be a servant, how to be holy.

Saints of God, this morning, the challenge of God’s word is this: am I a servant? Am I a slave of all? Or am I still trying to be somebody important? Am I daily trying to serve others? Or do I try to fit others into the demanding business of serving myself?

These questions are life-changing questions, because if you really do want to be holy, if you really do want to be like Jesus, then you might have to change your whole way of life to do it! You might have to change your job, change where you live, change your friends, your hobbies, you might even have to sell things or give them away, and you might have to make difficult decisions about your money, about your desires and your dreams for the future.

But if you genuinely want to be holy, if you are so grateful to God for your salvation that you would do anything to please him, then the Holy Spirit will show you what to do. He will speak to you, perhaps through a vision, perhaps through a piece of scripture, perhaps through a special word from another Christian, perhaps through an unusual opportunity or circumstance; but the Holy Spirit will speak to you, and he will say, I want you to be more holy, I want you to be more like Jesus, I want you to serve others more!

The truth from scripture is that all Christians are called to become more and more holy. They are all called to serve more and more. If someone was asked to describe you, would they say that you are a true servant of God? That is what the Word of God says to us this morning. Jesus calls us to be like him, a slave of all. What is the Holy Spirit going to do with you? The most important thing is to say yes to him; to say, yes Holy Spirit, I want to be holy, I want to serve, help me to be holy, help me to serve. And the Holy Spirit will do that work in you.